How It Works
Good work often leaves no trace. Someone plants forty trees or clears a riverbank, and a month later there is nothing to show a funder except a memory. Green Goods fixes that one problem: it turns work into a record that the community itself has checked.
One piece of work, start to finish
An example, with made-up names.
- Record the work. Ama plants twelve mango seedlings on a hillside with no signal. She chooses the tree-planting action, takes two photos, enters “12”, and taps Upload Work. The app says Saved offline.
- Send it. Back in town, she opens Your Work and taps Upload all. The item changes to In review.
- Review the evidence. Kofi, a steward, checks the photos and count. He knows the place from a recent visit. He chooses Medium confidence and taps Approve.
- See the result. Ama sees Approved in Your Work. The public record shows her work and the steward's decision to anyone considering supporting the garden.
Choose a confidence level to enable Approve.
Where the tools meet
The app and dashboard work with the same public record. The website lets other people read it. A review adds a separate decision; it does not send a payment.
The arrows show records and decisions. A supporter chooses whether to fund a garden separately. The Funder Guide explains those choices; the builder architecture has the technical map.
The loop, step by step
1. Plan
A garden is a community doing regenerative work together. Before the work starts, someone who knows the subject writes an assessment: where the garden is starting from, what it wants to change, and how it will measure that. It is the "before" picture.
The garden also has actions: the kinds of work it tracks, such as planting a tree, sorting a load of waste, or checking a solar panel. Each action says what photo to take and which details to give.
2. Document
A gardener does the work and records it in the app: choose the action, take photos, fill in a few details, send. That record is called work.
It takes a few minutes and works without a signal. The work is saved on the phone first and sent when the gardener is back in range.
3. Review
A steward from the same garden looks at the photos and details and decides. They approve the work, or reject it with a note on what to fix. Their decision is saved next to the work as its own record, with their reason and how confident they are.
4. Certify
When a garden has a body of approved work that tells one story, a steward can bundle it into an impact certificate: one claim that says "this garden did this, in this period." This step is still being switched on. Read Mint Impact Certificate for the current limits.
5. Fund
Anyone can read a garden's approved work on its public page. A supporter who likes what they see can donate to the garden's shared fund, or endow it with a deposit whose earnings go to the garden. The garden uses that support to do more work, and the loop starts again.
What an approval is, and is not
Approval is the idea everything else rests on, so it is worth being exact about it.
What it is
- A person's judgment. A steward from the garden looked at the evidence and decided the work happened as described.
- A signed record. The decision is saved with the steward's account, their reason, and their confidence level.
- Separate from the work. The gardener's record and the steward's decision are two records. Neither can rewrite the other.
- Public and permanent. Anyone can read both, and neither can be edited or deleted afterwards.
What it is not
- Not a payment. Nothing is paid when work is approved.
- Not an outside audit. The reviewer belongs to the same community. That closeness is the strength of the review, and also its limit.
- Not a measurement of results. It says the work was done. It does not say how much carbon a tree will store.
What a good record contains
Each action asks for four kinds of information, in plain form:
| The question | An example |
|---|---|
| What did you do? | Planted trees in the east plot |
| What did it produce? | 12 mango seedlings, photographed |
| What changed? | More of the plot is covered |
| Why does it matter? | Shade, fruit, and soil that holds |
The first two come from the gardener, with every piece of work. The last two are what the garden's assessment and its certificates are for.
Where the money fits
A garden can hold money in two ways.
- A shared fund. Donations land here. Gardeners in the garden can claim from it, up to limits the garden sets, and each claim records what it is for.
- An endowment. A supporter's deposit stays theirs and can be withdrawn. Its earnings go to the garden when a steward collects them.
Three things are worth saying plainly:
- Approval and payment are separate. How a garden rewards its people is the garden's decision.
- An endowment is not guaranteed. A supporter can get back less than they put in.
- Green Goods does not promise a charitable receipt or tax deduction. Check any separate arrangement with the garden.
The Funder Guide has the details.
Where Commitment Pooling fits
A shared fund supports a garden as a whole. Commitment Pooling helps the community organize specific promises: an offer to do work or provide support, or a request for it. A pool holds the shared rules for those promises, including who can confirm that one was kept.
For example, a garden could agree on a promise to plant and care for seedlings. Work records can provide evidence toward it. Reviewing those records and confirming the promise are related decisions, but they are separate: linking work does not by itself mean the promise is fulfilled.
If the promise includes financial support, payment follows its agreed conditions and a separate payment process. Work approval alone does not release money. A donation to the shared fund and an endowment also remain separate ways to support a garden.
Commitment Pooling is part of Green Goods 2.0. A garden can use it once its steward has set up the pool; what you can do depends on your role and the selected action. A promise can carry a G$ reward, which a steward sends from the garden's Safe on Celo after the promise is kept. Follow the gardener guide or the steward guide.
Built for the field
- No app store. You install Green Goods from the website onto your phone's home screen.
- No password. You sign in with your fingerprint, face, or screen lock. Your phone keeps a passkey for you.
- No signal needed to record. Work is saved on your phone. Nothing is added to your garden's record until you send it with Upload all.
- Your language. The app is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. These docs are in English only for now.
Who does what
| Role | In one line | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Gardener | Does the work and documents it | Gardener Guide |
| Steward | Runs the garden and reviews its work | Steward Guide |
| Evaluator | Helps the garden set its starting point and goals | Evaluator Guide |
| Funder | Supports a garden with a donation or an endowment | Funder Guide |
| Community member | Lives alongside the work, and can read a garden's public record | Gardens on the public website |
You have seen how the loop works. Here is why it exists and who it is for.