This chapter establishes the fundamental disconnect between technological and productive capabilities and socio-ecological outcomes: despite our capacity to meet everyone’s basic needs with lower resource use, billions remain deprived while ecosystems face accelerating destruction. This contradiction stems from social arrangements that systematically prioritize profit-maximizing surplus over meeting needs sustainably. The chapter introduces community-based organizations (CBOs) as spaces where collective action can be organized prioritizing access to needs. By examining nineteen organizations across multiple sectors, the book illuminates how CBOs maintain a distinctive focus on needs through ethical coordination mechanisms despite operating within broader unsustainable production-consumption systems. Two main research questions guide the analysis: which organizational characteristics enable CBOs to prioritize socio-ecological concerns, and what facilitates or hinders their adaptation and spread.