TRUST · MISSION TRUST
A Perpetual Purpose Trust holds the company’s purpose.
Not a board majority. Not a founder’s good intentions. A standalone legal entity whose only beneficiary is the mission itself.
Public benefit corporations are necessary but not sufficient. A PBC board can be voted out, an acquirer can install a new board, and a new board can repaint the mission. The Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT) is the structural defense against that drift.
How it works
The Zion Mission Trust is a standalone, perpetual non-charitable purpose trust governed by the Mission Trust Agreement. Rather than a single control share, the Trust holds a standing equity stake in the Corporation — not less than 3.0% and not more than 5.0% of fully-diluted equity by the close of the first preferred-stock financing — together with consent rights over the actions that touch the mission. The Trust’s sole beneficiary is the stated purpose: "to build and maintain public infrastructure for households at the ALICE Threshold."
Because the Trust’s beneficiary is a purpose and not a person, the Trust cannot be persuaded by a buyout. There is no shareholder to compensate for surrendering the mission; its stake and its consent rights are not for sale.
The Trust Advisory Board
The Trust’s purpose is interpreted and defended by a Trust Advisory Board. The TAB has three to five seats, with representation reserved for the population the company serves: ALICE-Threshold community members, partner-organization leaders, and frontline case-managers. By a majority of its members the TAB may veto a defined set of “Enumerated Decisions” — amendments to the Certificate of Incorporation, change-of-control transactions, changes to the corporate form, and policy changes that materially affect the Charter Commitments. That veto is overridable only by a 66⅔% stockholder vote together with the Mission Trust’s written consent.
TAB members are nominated and confirmed under a public process. Seats are time-limited and non-self-renewing. The first TAB cohort is seated alongside the Pre-Seed close.
What the Trust cannot do
The Trust does not run the company. It does not approve hires, set salaries, choose product roadmap, or block ordinary commercial decisions. It exists to defend the purpose, not to micromanage. If the board and the trust are in routine alignment, the trust is invisible — that’s the design. The trust becomes visible only when the company is at a fork that touches purpose, and that’s when its voice is decisive.
What this means for investors
Equity investors hold ordinary common or preferred shares. They have all the usual economic and information rights, plus the protections the PBC form already provides. The Trust’s minority stake and the Trust Advisory Board’s veto do not redirect economic upside; they only constrain the ability to redirect the corporation away from its stated purpose. For an investor whose thesis is "we want this mission to survive contact with later capital rounds," the structure is a feature.
Investors who would only invest if they could later replace the mission are not a fit for Zion. The structure is explicit about this — and the structure is the deal.
DOCUMENTS · Mission Trust Instrument (PDF · 11 pp). See also: Charter, No Core Paywall Pledge.