A resilient community platform?

There is a clear need for a certain kind of community web platform which I have never seen articulated. The communities that need it either don't know, or are thinking locally, or aren't investing in web technologies, and the commercial sphere isn't addressing this need at all.

Through building a web platform oriented around community currencies, Community Forge I have understand the need for much more general purpose tools. The possibilities are so many and so various that they should be developed by 3rd parties. But surely someone is doing this already?

Most local community groups struggle to maintain a web presence with basic tools like a calendar and newsletter. They use retired and semi-skilled people whose knowledge is often out of date. Many of them forget to check the open source options before they start developing, and build strange structures which can never be re-used.

The Transition Drupal group (connected to Transition Towns) have been talking for over a year about building a Drupal distribution and giving a site to each initiative, but they haven't had a proper requirements discussion yet. And there is no budget.

In Estonia Community Tools have been working for a year on a Drupal distribution for real-world communities. I believe this may be the best model we have so far. They are fortunate enough to be paid by forward thinking Estonian institutions.

Then there is Nodilus, which seems to have stalled I guess because of funding, but which planned to use Drupal.

There must be countless other initiatives seeking to free us from Facebook, and countless voluntary effort available for this important work, what is lacking is coordination.

I would very much like the next thing that Community Forge offers to be part of a collaborative effort. I propose there be a small core distribution and a long list of different Drupal 'features', which could be developed independently, by different actors. The tools we need are not for online avatars who share a geeky obsession and then vanish. We need to support REAL WORLD communities, that's the novelty. In REAL WORLD communities people live close by, they meet in the shops, they exchange physical goods, they socialise and work together, they care for each other, and many have been there all their lives. Some of them don't even use computers!
So here is a list of the kinds of 'features' that I have identified

• Classified ads, geopositioned, with privacy options and categories.
• Some kind of lending management/checkout system for common goods. LIke the merci module but maybe simpler
• A payment system which could be denominated in virtual national currency, and maybe hours, like a time bank. (That's my dept.)
• something to help with ridesharing, might have to hook into an outside network, if there is one with a usable API
• A reputation system which is considerate of the fact that everybody knows everybody
• A group buying organiser
• A calendar with reminder
• newsletter and discussion groups
• A semi-sophisticated governance tool, perhaps giving extra credence according to the reputation system and/or to hours spent
• A trust-routing algorithm

Right now I'm working on the Community Accounting module for Drupal 7. I am passionate about that work and less passionate about building a whole community platform and migrating and supporting all the users I already support. So we wait