About Community Stack
Building the next generation of social infrastructure.
Community Stack builds, operates, and stewards the infrastructure communities rely on. We support technical, civic, and third-sector communities through owned communities, conferences, platforms, commercial services, responsible insight, campaigns, and research.
What We Are
A community infrastructure group, not an events company.
We operate communities directly. We support the wider community-led market. We build platforms. We create discovery tools. We develop responsible insight. We run campaigns and research programmes that shape what comes next.
Owned communities, conferences, and practitioner networks across tech and third sector
Commercial services for communities, sponsors, enterprises, and portfolio companies
Platforms, discovery infrastructure, and responsible insight systems
Leadership
Founded and run by community operators.
Ethan Sumner
Co-Founder & CEO
Community organiser and technologist from Barnsley
Community organiser and technologist from Barnsley. Ethan has spent years running grassroots meetups across Yorkshire, and has worked at Microsoft, Mastercard, and global consultancies, where he saw both how technology can transform careers and how digital exclusion can leave whole communities behind. He leads strategy, partnerships, and the operational model.
LinkedIn
Mercedes Moxon Greenfield
Co-Founder & CTO
UK Robotics Champion, accessibility advocate, and engineer from Sheffield
UK Robotics Champion, accessibility advocate, and engineer from Sheffield. Mercedes leads platform delivery with an accessibility-first, inclusion-led approach, because the people who most need community support are often the same people excluded by complicated technology. She is responsible for Engine, Switchboard, and the technical standards that hold the portfolio together.
"Accessibility isn't about ticking boxes or meeting legal requirements. It's about understanding that the people who most need community support are often the same people who get excluded by complicated technology."LinkedIn
Why We Exist
Communities are infrastructure. The systems supporting them are not.
The Reality
Communities move knowledge, create opportunity, build careers, support participation, shape markets, and reach people that institutions often miss.
Fragmented tools
Volunteer labour
Inconsistent funding
Platform dependency
Community Stack exists to close that gap.
We treat communities as long-term infrastructure. That means building the platforms, operating standards, commercial models, discovery layers, and stewardship structures that help essential networks last.
Beyond individual organisers, funding cycles, and market shifts.
Where We Came From
Built from inside the work.
Community Stack was not founded from a slide deck or market theory. It was built by people who were already doing the work.
Years of organising grassroots meetups, supporting speakers, finding sponsors, running events, building networks, and absorbing the operational pressure when the systems around communities failed.
The Pattern We Saw
Communities with strong networks, funding, and visibility could grow. Communities doing equally valuable work, but without access to those advantages, often struggled with discoverability, capacity, governance, and sustainability.
Community Stack was created to address that imbalance.
Not as one product. Not as one event series. As a long-term operating model for community infrastructure.
Mission
To build and steward the next generation of social infrastructure.
Helping technical, civic, and third-sector communities become more discoverable, resilient, accessible, sustainable, and better understood.
Vision
A world where communities are treated as critical infrastructure.
Technical communities, charities, grassroots organisations, civic groups, and local networks should not have to survive on accidental discovery, fragile tooling, or short-term funding.
Our Purpose
Making communities easier to find, run, sustain, understand, and protect.
Easier to find
Helping people discover the organisations, events, services, and networks that can support them.
Easier to run
Providing shared tools, platforms, governance, commercial support, and operating infrastructure.
Easier to sustain
Building long-term models for funding, stewardship, accessibility, partnerships, and resilience.
Easier to understand
Creating responsible insight that helps communities, partners, funders, and institutions make better decisions.
Harder to lose
Ensuring vital communities can outlast individual organisers, fragile tooling, short-term funding, and market shifts.
The Six Pillars
One operating model for community infrastructure.
Community Stack is built around six connected pillars. Each pillar supports a different layer of the community infrastructure system. Together, they allow Community Stack to operate communities, support the wider market, build platforms, create discovery infrastructure, steward insight, and research what comes next.
What We Have Built
One operating model, proven through real communities.
Since launching in 2025, Community Stack has grown from a South Yorkshire-born idea into an international community infrastructure group.
Community Stack founded
Launched as a stewardship-led operator for community infrastructure.
Mercedes Moxon Greenfield joined as CTO
Bringing accessibility-first platform leadership into the company.
Community Switchboard announced
Introduced as the discovery and participation layer for the third sector.
First conference delivered
Northern DevOps & Platform Conf launched, proving the operating model at scale.
Community Engine launch
The operating system for communities launched on September 7th.
Cloud Platform Engineering London acquired
Expanded the DevOps and platform engineering ecosystem.
Community Stack expanded into APAC
The portfolio became genuinely international.
2026 conference programme launched
Built across DevOps, cloud native, AI, security, and venture.
Community Switchboard launched nationally
The discovery layer for charities, grassroots groups, and community organisations went live.
Community Link launch
Commercial services layer for communities, sponsors, and enterprises launched.
Built in Barnsley
Headquartered in South Yorkshire. Deliberately.
Most organisations with our ambition would set up in London. We did not, and we will not.
Community Stack is rooted in South Yorkshire because this region understands community infrastructure. Mining communities, working men's clubs, mutual aid societies, the cooperative movement, local organising, and civic resilience have shaped this place for generations.
That history matters.
Being based in Barnsley keeps us close to the communities too often left out when infrastructure is designed elsewhere.
Building from inside that reality.
Our hubs, partnerships, campaigns, and reinvestment model reflect that. We are building national and global infrastructure from South Yorkshire, with local identity protected rather than flattened.
This is not a brand position. It is an operating decision.
Operating Principles
How Community Stack makes decisions.
Infrastructure first
We build for durability, not hype.
Stewardship before scale
Growth matters, but trust matters more.
Local agency, shared standards
Each community keeps its identity while benefiting from shared infrastructure.
Accessibility by default
Accessibility is part of the infrastructure, not an enhancement.
Reinvestment over extraction
Revenue is used to improve quality, governance, technology, accessibility, resilience, and sustainability.
Trust by design
We are clear about who runs communities, how decisions are made, and how value is reinvested.
Responsible intelligence
Insight must serve communities, not exploit them.
Impact over activity
We measure outcomes, not activity for its own sake.
Open where possible, responsible where necessary
We share what we can while protecting member privacy, community trust, and sensitive relationships.
Strategic Aims
Ten objectives. One long-term mission.
These are the outcomes Community Stack is organised to achieve as a community infrastructure group.