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Public Venture Specification

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Public Venture

Turn Important Questions Into Investigations.

Public Venture is an open source public-interest sponsorship specification for funding independent investigations, research, projects, and public missions without purchasing control over outcomes.

Purpose

Public Venture provides a structured framework for individuals, businesses, foundations, universities, governments, nonprofits, and communities to fund clearly defined public-interest missions.

The specification separates the authority to fund a mission from the authority to determine its findings, conclusions, methods, editorial decisions, research outcomes, or operational results.

The governing principle is:

You may sponsor the question. You may not purchase the answer.

Public Venture is designed to support missions including investigative journalism, scientific research, government audits, civic investigations, infrastructure initiatives, education, economic development, nonprofit programs, public-interest technology, emergency response, and other defined public purposes.

Core Principles

Mission Independence

A sponsor may select and fund an eligible mission but may not purchase control over its outcome.

Sponsors must not be permitted to require:

  • A predetermined finding or conclusion
  • Suppression of unfavorable findings
  • Alteration of research results
  • Editorial control
  • Control over investigative methodology
  • Selection or removal of evidence for financial reasons
  • Operational decisions reserved for the mission operator
  • Publication decisions where independence is required

Defined Mission

Every sponsored mission must have a unique Mission ID and a clearly defined scope.

A mission should identify:

  • Mission name
  • Mission ID
  • Purpose
  • Scope
  • Operator
  • Objectives
  • Funding target
  • Funding threshold
  • Duration
  • Activation conditions
  • Deliverables
  • Governance rules
  • Independence requirements
  • Disclosure requirements
  • Cancellation conditions
  • Refund conditions
  • Applicable financial terms

Separation of Authority

Financial sponsorship authority must remain separate from editorial, investigative, research, and operational authority.

The system must maintain clear distinctions between:

  • Sponsor
  • Funding administrator
  • Escrow or custody provider
  • Mission operator
  • Investigator or researcher
  • Editor or publication authority
  • Auditor
  • Public oversight authority

No sponsor may acquire mission authority solely through financial contribution.

Transparency

Material information concerning sponsorship, funding, escrow, investment, earnings, expenses, fees, releases, refunds, deliverables, and mission status must be documented and auditable.

Public Venture should support both human-readable and machine-readable records.

Core Modules

Mission Registry

Maintains the authoritative registry of missions.

The module provides:

  • Unique Mission IDs
  • Mission profiles
  • Mission status
  • Mission classification
  • Mission operators
  • Funding targets
  • Funding thresholds
  • Activation conditions
  • Mission duration
  • Mission history
  • Public mission metadata

Mission Creation

Provides the framework for proposing and defining new missions.

Mission creation must establish the purpose, scope, responsible operator, funding requirements, independence requirements, deliverables, duration, and financial conditions before sponsorship begins.

Mission Classification

Allows missions to be classified according to their purpose and operating context.

Supported classifications may include:

  • Journalism
  • Scientific research
  • Government audit
  • Civic investigation
  • Education
  • Infrastructure
  • Economic development
  • Nonprofit programs
  • Public-interest technology
  • Emergency response
  • Community initiatives
  • Other public missions

Sponsorship Engine

Manages the creation, acceptance, tracking, and settlement of sponsorships.

The module provides:

  • Sponsorship creation
  • Mission selection
  • Contribution amounts
  • Sponsorship terms
  • Sponsor disclosures
  • Sponsorship status
  • Funding records
  • Sponsorship cancellation
  • Refund processing
  • Final settlement

Every sponsorship must reference a specific Mission ID.

Funding Threshold Engine

Defines the financial conditions required for a mission to activate.

The module supports:

  • Minimum funding thresholds
  • Maximum funding limits
  • Funding deadlines
  • Threshold status
  • Oversubscription rules
  • Matching funds
  • Challenge funding
  • Automatic mission activation
  • Automatic mission cancellation

Funding conditions must be established before the applicable sponsorship period begins.

Escrow and Capital Preservation

Sponsored funds must remain independently escrowed until predefined activation conditions are satisfied.

The module provides:

  • Independent escrow
  • Capital-preservation requirements
  • Sponsor-level accounting
  • Defined maximum holding periods
  • Approved investment instruments
  • Investment tracking
  • Interest attribution
  • Milestone-based releases
  • Refund processing
  • Final settlement

Escrowed capital must be maintained exclusively in approved capital-preservation instruments.

Every sponsorship must have a defined maximum holding period. If a mission is not accepted, activated, or otherwise proceeds according to its funding agreement within that period, the sponsorship must automatically terminate and the sponsor must receive the full principal amount plus attributable investment earnings, less only explicitly disclosed and contractually authorized escrow costs.

Financial Disclosure and Auditability

All sponsored funds, investments, earnings, fees, expenditures, transfers, releases, and refunds must be fully documented and auditable.

Every investment instrument must be officially identifiable and supported by authoritative documentation.

Investment records may include:

  • Instrument name
  • Instrument type
  • Issuer
  • Issuing institution
  • Official security identifier
  • Purchase date
  • Maturity date
  • Purchase price
  • Face value
  • Interest rate or yield
  • Quantity
  • Current value
  • Interest earned
  • Redemption value
  • Liquidation date
  • Custodian
  • Official supporting documentation
  • Applicable fees

Every expense associated with sponsored funds must be individually documented.

Expense records may include:

  • Date
  • Amount
  • Recipient
  • Purpose
  • Category
  • Authorization
  • Related milestone
  • Invoice or receipt
  • Payment method
  • Conflict disclosure

No material financial activity may be concealed, aggregated in a manner that prevents meaningful review, or altered without maintaining a verifiable historical record.

Sponsor Registry

Maintains sponsor records and sponsorship relationships.

The module supports:

  • Sponsor identity
  • Organization information
  • Sponsorship history
  • Disclosure requirements
  • Conflict disclosures
  • Sponsorship amounts
  • Mission relationships
  • Public attribution preferences

Mission Governance

Defines governance authorities and decision boundaries for each mission.

The module establishes:

  • Mission operator authority
  • Sponsor limitations
  • Editorial independence
  • Research independence
  • Operational authority
  • Oversight responsibilities
  • Approval requirements
  • Conflict management
  • Governance changes

Independence Framework

Provides enforceable protections against sponsor influence over mission outcomes.

The framework must prevent financial sponsorship from becoming a mechanism for purchasing:

  • Findings
  • Conclusions
  • Editorial positions
  • Research results
  • Investigative outcomes
  • Evidence selection
  • Publication suppression

Financial Transparency Ledger

Maintains the authoritative financial history for each mission.

The ledger tracks:

  • Sponsorship commitments
  • Escrow deposits
  • Investment transactions
  • Investment earnings
  • Fees
  • Fund releases
  • Expenses
  • Transfers
  • Refunds
  • Final settlement

Every dollar must be traceable from sponsorship through final settlement.

Investment Disclosure

Provides public and auditable records for assets used to hold sponsored funds.

The module records the identity, custody, purchase, valuation, earnings, maturity, redemption, and disposition of each approved investment instrument.

Expense Transparency

Provides detailed records for expenditures from sponsored funds.

Each expense must be linked to the applicable mission and recorded with sufficient information to allow meaningful independent review.

Fee Transparency

Requires all applicable fees to be disclosed before sponsorship.

Potential fees include:

  • Escrow fees
  • Custody fees
  • Transaction fees
  • Payment processing fees
  • Administrative fees
  • Audit fees
  • Legal fees
  • Investment-related fees
  • Refund fees
  • Currency conversion fees

No undisclosed fee may be deducted from sponsored funds.

Continuous Reconciliation

Continuously reconciles sponsorship, escrow, investment, custody, expense, and mission accounting records.

Discrepancies must be recorded and remain visible until resolved.

Immutable Financial History

Financial records must maintain a verifiable historical record.

Corrections must create new records identifying:

  • Original entry
  • Corrected entry
  • Reason for correction
  • Date
  • Authorized party

Historical records must not be silently replaced or deleted.

Deliverables Registry

Defines and tracks the outputs expected from each mission.

Deliverables may include:

  • Investigative reports
  • Research papers
  • Audits
  • Public datasets
  • Educational materials
  • Infrastructure projects
  • Software
  • Public records
  • Policy analyses
  • Community services
  • Other defined outputs

Milestone Engine

Supports objective milestone-based funding releases.

Milestones must be defined before sponsorship or activation and must use objective criteria wherever practical.

Milestone conditions must not be structured to give sponsors control over mission outcomes.

Public Dashboard

Provides public visibility into mission activity.

The dashboard may display:

  • Mission status
  • Funding progress
  • Sponsorship totals
  • Escrow status
  • Investment holdings
  • Investment earnings
  • Expenses
  • Fees
  • Milestones
  • Deliverables
  • Disclosures
  • Audit status
  • Final settlement

Disclosure Framework

Defines information that must be disclosed to sponsors, participants, auditors, and the public.

Disclosure requirements must be appropriate to the mission and must protect legitimate privacy and security interests.

Conflict of Interest Management

Identifies and manages financial, organizational, personal, and institutional conflicts.

The module supports:

  • Conflict declarations
  • Relationship disclosures
  • Sponsor disclosures
  • Operator disclosures
  • Investigator disclosures
  • Reviewer disclosures
  • Conflict mitigation
  • Public conflict records

Audit Framework

Provides independent verification of financial, governance, and mission records.

Audits may examine:

  • Sponsorship records
  • Escrow records
  • Investment records
  • Expenses
  • Fees
  • Deliverables
  • Milestones
  • Conflicts
  • Governance
  • Mission completion
  • Final settlement

Evidence and Provenance

Provides provenance records for evidence, research materials, investigative sources, datasets, documents, and other mission outputs.

The module supports:

  • Evidence identification
  • Source records
  • Provenance chains
  • Evidence timestamps
  • Integrity verification
  • Research records
  • Supporting documentation

Mission Lifecycle

Defines the complete lifecycle of a mission:

  • Proposed
  • Defined
  • Open for sponsorship
  • Funding threshold reached
  • Accepted
  • Activated
  • In progress
  • Milestone review
  • Deliverables submitted
  • Completed
  • Cancelled
  • Expired
  • Financially settled

Mission Cancellation

Defines conditions under which a mission may be cancelled.

Cancellation rules must be established before activation and must specify the treatment of remaining funds, investment earnings, expenses, and sponsor refunds.

Refund Engine

Automatically processes eligible sponsor refunds.

The module supports:

  • Failed funding thresholds
  • Rejected missions
  • Cancelled missions
  • Expired missions
  • Maximum holding period expiration
  • Sponsor-eligible refunds
  • Principal reconciliation
  • Investment earnings attribution

Emergency Missions

Supports accelerated public-interest funding for urgent missions.

Emergency missions must still preserve:

  • Mission definition
  • Funding records
  • Financial transparency
  • Independence requirements
  • Escrow protections
  • Auditability
  • Final settlement

Dispute Resolution

Provides mechanisms for resolving disputes concerning:

  • Sponsorships
  • Funding conditions
  • Milestones
  • Expenses
  • Conflicts
  • Governance
  • Deliverables
  • Refunds
  • Financial records

Dispute procedures must not allow sponsors to purchase control over mission outcomes.

Anti-Capture Controls

Prevents concentrated financial interests from controlling missions.

Controls may include:

  • Sponsorship limits
  • Sponsor concentration disclosures
  • Independence requirements
  • Governance separation
  • Conflict monitoring
  • Funding diversity requirements
  • Sponsor influence restrictions

Funding Diversity

Supports diversified sponsorship so that a mission does not become dependent on a single financial source.

The module may provide:

  • Sponsor concentration limits
  • Matching programs
  • Community sponsorship
  • Foundation sponsorship
  • Business sponsorship
  • Public funding
  • Government funding
  • Challenge funding

Mission Discovery

Provides mechanisms for discovering missions based on:

  • Mission category
  • Location
  • Funding requirement
  • Funding progress
  • Public interest
  • Sponsor eligibility
  • Mission status
  • Deadline
  • Impact area

Analytics

Provides aggregate analysis of mission and funding activity.

Analytics may include:

  • Funding patterns
  • Sponsorship concentration
  • Mission completion
  • Funding velocity
  • Mission categories
  • Geographic distribution
  • Public participation
  • Financial performance

Analytics must not expose protected information or undermine mission independence.

Reporting

Provides standardized reporting for sponsors, operators, auditors, governments, foundations, and the public.

Reports may include:

  • Mission reports
  • Financial reports
  • Sponsorship reports
  • Audit reports
  • Milestone reports
  • Deliverable reports
  • Impact reports
  • Final settlement reports

Impact Measurement

Provides mechanisms for measuring mission outcomes against predefined objectives.

Impact measurement must distinguish between measurable mission outcomes and sponsor preferences.

Privacy Controls

Protects personal and sensitive information while preserving required transparency.

The module supports:

  • Public and private records
  • Data minimization
  • Sponsor privacy controls
  • Sensitive information protection
  • Controlled disclosures
  • Legal retention requirements

Privacy controls must not be used to conceal material financial activity or required public disclosures.

Access Control

Defines permissions for sponsors, mission operators, auditors, administrators, investigators, researchers, reviewers, and public users.

Access permissions must enforce separation of financial, operational, editorial, investigative, and oversight authority.

Notifications

Provides event notifications for:

  • Funding milestones
  • Mission activation
  • Mission cancellation
  • Escrow events
  • Investment maturity
  • Milestone decisions
  • Deliverables
  • Audit events
  • Refunds
  • Final settlement

Integrity and Security

Protects the integrity, availability, confidentiality, and authenticity of mission and financial records.

Security controls must protect against:

  • Unauthorized financial activity
  • Record manipulation
  • Sponsor impersonation
  • Unauthorized mission changes
  • Fraud
  • Data corruption
  • Unauthorized access
  • Financial capture

Optional Plugin Modules

Optional plugins extend Public Venture for specialized use cases without requiring specialized functionality in the core specification.

Journalism Plugin

Provides specialized workflows for investigative journalism.

Features may include:

  • Investigation missions
  • Editorial independence controls
  • Source protection
  • Publication workflows
  • Investigative deliverables
  • Journalism disclosures
  • Sponsor attribution

Research Plugin

Provides specialized workflows for scientific and academic research.

Features may include:

  • Research proposals
  • Research milestones
  • Study deliverables
  • Research provenance
  • Data publication
  • Research disclosures
  • Peer review workflows

Government Allocation Plugin

Provides mechanisms for public-sector funding of defined missions.

The module may support:

  • Government sponsorship
  • Public budget allocation
  • Participatory allocation
  • Public mission registries
  • Citizen-directed funding
  • Public audits
  • Government reporting

Government deployments must comply with applicable public-finance, procurement, appropriations, ethics, records, and other legal requirements.

Citizen Sponsorship Plugin

Allows individuals and communities to collectively sponsor public-interest missions.

Features may include:

  • Individual contributions
  • Community funding pools
  • Collective sponsorship
  • Public voting or prioritization
  • Contribution limits
  • Community dashboards

Business Sponsorship Plugin

Allows businesses to fund public-interest missions while preserving mission independence.

The plugin must distinguish sponsorship recognition from mission control.

Foundation and Philanthropic Funding Plugin

Provides workflows for foundations and philanthropic organizations.

Features may include:

  • Grant-style missions
  • Restricted funding
  • Matching grants
  • Challenge grants
  • Foundation reporting
  • Impact reporting

Matching and Challenge Funding Plugin

Allows sponsors to commit matching funds or create conditional funding challenges.

Matching rules must be objective, transparent, and established before qualifying sponsorships are made.

Emergency Mission Plugin

Provides specialized workflows for urgent public-interest missions requiring accelerated funding.

Public Records Plugin

Links missions to public records, government documents, datasets, filings, and other authoritative sources.

Evidence Provenance Plugin

Provides advanced provenance tracking for investigative, scientific, legal, and civic evidence.

Federation Plugin

Allows independent Public Venture implementations to exchange compatible mission, sponsorship, financial, and deliverable records.

Federation must preserve:

  • Mission identity
  • Financial integrity
  • Attribution
  • Independence rules
  • Provenance
  • Auditability

API Plugin

Provides machine-readable interfaces for external applications and services.

APIs should expose only data and operations permitted by the mission’s privacy, security, governance, and access-control rules.

Integration Plugin

Provides connectors for compatible financial, accounting, identity, publication, research, auditing, and civic systems.

Integrations must not compromise the independence, transparency, or financial integrity requirements of the specification.

Interoperability

Public Venture implementations should use portable, documented representations for:

  • Missions
  • Sponsors
  • Sponsorships
  • Funding conditions
  • Escrow records
  • Investments
  • Expenses
  • Fees
  • Milestones
  • Deliverables
  • Audits
  • Disclosures
  • Refunds
  • Final settlements

Implementations should avoid unnecessary vendor lock-in.

Open Source Requirements

Public Venture is designed as an open source specification.

Implementations should support:

  • Transparent governance
  • Portable data
  • Interoperability
  • Independent implementations
  • Auditable records
  • Extensible modules
  • Public documentation
  • Contribution under the applicable license

Accountability

A Public Venture implementation must be able to demonstrate:

  • Who funded a mission
  • What mission was funded
  • How much was committed
  • Where funds were held
  • How funds were invested
  • What earnings were generated
  • What fees were charged
  • What expenses were incurred
  • Who received funds
  • Which milestones were completed
  • Which deliverables were produced
  • What conflicts were disclosed
  • What audits were performed
  • What funds were refunded
  • How the mission was financially settled

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Optional

License & Notice Requirements

Public Venture is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

  • All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
  • Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
  • Public Venture specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
  • The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
  • When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
  • Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

Notice – Public Venture

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

  • Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – September 06, 2026
    Created the repository for Public Venture. Developed the open source public-interest sponsorship specification for funding independent investigations, research, projects, and public missions without purchasing control over outcomes.
  • [Add other contributors here] – [Date]
    [Describe contribution in one sentence]

License – Public Venture

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points

  • You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
  • All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
  • The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.

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