The Solar Guild is an early-stage public-purpose institution. Its purpose is to help people and communities improve the systems they depend on, carry forward what proves useful, and keep the resulting capacity serving public benefit across generations.
It accepts a standing responsibility to leave future people more capability, knowledge, agency, resilience, and options—and fewer avoidable burdens—while preserving their right to challenge, adapt, transfer, or responsibly end the mechanisms they inherit. This is an adopted aim, not a guaranteed outcome. Repeated public benefit, independent governance, enforceable succession, self-sustaining value return, and long-term continuity are not yet established.
The immediate method is a bounded Objective: concrete needs receive explicit terms, appropriate participation, relevant review, and a clear end condition.
This site is the official reference map. Dedicated articles hold the evidence, methods, status labels, safeguards, and open questions; the front page does not attempt to reproduce them all.
Current status
The three public sites and their first request paths are live. The core method and research library exist. Repeat results, broadly trusted work records, and independent governance are not yet established.
Available or opening now
Three public sites; no-fee business and career request paths; a contributor path; reviewed capability-network applications; the configured Farm catalog; and the research library.
Founding tests
Business value, career support, compensated work, expectation clarity, and one recurring handoff.
Not yet established
Repeat adoption, broadly trusted contribution records, independent governance, or recognized standards.
Reading rule: publication does not convert an aspiration into a capability or a hypothesis into a result. Each deeper article states its status, limits, and next review point.
Start by audience
Choose the situation that is closest to yours. Each brief states the current offer, what remains proposed, and the next relevant action.
Small businesses
The situation: A recurring operational problem is costing time or money, but the business does not yet need a permanent role or large consulting engagement.
The next step: Request a capacity-managed Business Problem Session, then decide whether the problem should stop, receive a referral, be scoped further, or become a separately agreed Objective.
Read the small-business brief →Job candidates and people at work
The situation: A capable person may need a clearer next move, relevant experience, or a more credible way to show what they can do.
The next step: Request a capacity-managed Work & Career Conversation. Private notes remain separate from any later Objective or participant-controlled contribution record; the service does not match candidates to employers.
Read the work and career brief →People who want to contribute
The situation: You want to help produce something useful without needing career support or bringing an organizational problem.
The next step: Choose a bounded Quest with a clear result and stated terms. The contributor path can begin without an employer, open position, or invitation.
Choose how to contribute →Organizations and working networks
The situation: Ownership, handoffs, acknowledgements, or expectations repeatedly break across people, shifts, contractors, functions, or systems.
The next step: Examine one recurring coordination failure and the safeguards required before an organization-sponsored Objective begins.
Read the organization brief →Browse the knowledge base
Open only the subject you need. The detailed articles remain available without forcing every reader through the full institutional argument.
What The Solar Guild is
The institution, its three public surfaces, its history, and the difference between current work and longer-term architecture.
Objectives and methods
How a concrete need becomes bounded work with explicit terms, a named decision-maker, relevant review, and a clear end condition.
Methods, networks, and Gardens
Private preparation methods, structured system feedback, three capability networks with reviewed applications, and the configured Farm of Gardens catalog.
Research and evidence
The underlying problems, cited sources, competing explanations, important limits, and tests The Solar Guild still has to pass.
Governance and safeguards
Proposed principles, participant rights, privacy boundaries, correction, funding limits, scoped authority, and unresolved governance questions.
Complete topic index
Every published article, including the research problem bank and reference material.
Operating boundaries
These are present policy directions and safeguards. Their publication does not prove consistent execution; practice and review must test them.
- Four-county founding scope
- The first local service area is Kent, Allegan, Kalamazoo, and Van Buren counties in Michigan. People and organizations elsewhere may apply; local requests receive founding-pilot priority.
- No-fee entry, capacity-managed
- The Work & Career Conversation is intended to remain a permanently no-fee public-service entry point. The Business Problem Session is a no-fee founding offer. Both are limited by real operating capacity; publication does not guarantee an immediate appointment or universal acceptance.
- Separate permissions
- A Work & Career Conversation does not silently create a candidate profile. Direct identifiers and free text are removed at the published boundary; only separately consented broad cohort counts may persist. Raw notes, contact data, exact dates, source-request identifiers, and identity crosswalks do not enter that aggregate.
- Open entry, earned authority
- Anyone may offer feedback, contribute, or declare interest in a bounded Steward role. Continuing authority must be earned through relevant contribution and granted for an explicit, reviewable, reversible scope.
- Institutional participation limits
- An employer, school, funder, association, or other institution may contribute a problem, expertise, access, or support under clear terms. Funding, status, or partnership does not grant access to private participant information, participation priority, control of a contribution record, governance authority, or a favorable public claim.