The Sovereign Stack: Infrastructure You Own and Control
CoreConduit's default recommendation — CoreConductor running locally, workflows on infrastructure you control, no vendor holding your data or your pricing hostage.
Our default recommendation
When an organization comes to us without a committed platform, we recommend the Sovereign Stack. That recommendation has a simple premise: you should own your operational technology, not rent it indefinitely from a vendor whose pricing, AI policies, and product decisions are outside your control.
What Is the Sovereign Stack?
The Sovereign Stack is operational infrastructure you own and control — locally hosted, self-contained, and built to last beyond any vendor relationship. At its center is CoreConductor, our local AI platform: document-aware drafting, knowledge-base Q&A across your policies and records, and workflow automation — none of which sends your data to a third-party cloud.
The Sovereign Stack is not anti-cloud. It's pro-ownership. Some organizations run it entirely standalone. Others run it alongside Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace — using those platforms for what they do well, while keeping sensitive data and AI processing local.
Two Tiers
CoreConductor alongside your existing tools
CoreConductor runs locally on hardware you control. Your sensitive documents, case records, donor files, and governance materials stay on your network — not uploaded to an AI vendor's cloud for processing. CoreConductor indexes them locally and provides AI drafting and Q&A from that local index.
This tier works with whatever tools your team already uses — M365, Google Workspace, spreadsheets, shared drives. The sovereignty is in the AI layer: nothing leaves your network to power it.
- Lower implementation barrier — no infrastructure rebuild required
- AI queries stay on your network — nothing sent to external APIs
- Can run on existing hardware or a modest dedicated device
- Compatible with any collaboration platform
Complete self-hosted infrastructure, provisioned and handed off
We provision a complete self-hosted infrastructure — hardware (Raspberry Pi 5 or comparable), CoreConductor, and the custom tooling your workflows need. We document everything and hand it off to you: runbooks for your IT person, training for your staff, and a system built to be understood and maintained without us.
This tier is appropriate when you're starting fresh, migrating off a cloud platform, or when the economics of subscription software have become untenable for your organization's size and growth.
- No ongoing per-seat fees — you own the hardware outright
- Every document, record, and communication stays on your hardware — nothing leaves your network
- Custom tooling for the workflows your org actually runs
- Documentation written for the people who'll maintain it, not for us
Why Sovereign-First?
Data ownership. Sensitive client records, donor information, case notes, and governance documents belong to your organization. A local system keeps them under your legal control — not subject to a vendor's data-processing terms, AI training policies, or breach exposure.
Cost predictability. Subscription software reprices. Microsoft Copilot changed its nonprofit pricing in 2026. Google has adjusted Workspace tiers. A self-hosted stack has upfront cost and ongoing maintenance — but no surprise renewals, no "your tier is being deprecated," no price increases tied to features you didn't ask for.
AI model independence. When you run AI locally (CoreConductor uses Ollama and open-weight models), your workflows don't break when a vendor changes their model, raises API prices, or retires a product. You upgrade on your schedule.
Compliance posture. For organizations handling protected health information, client mental health records, or legally sensitive case data, local processing is often the cleaner compliance answer — no data-processing agreements to negotiate, no third-party sub-processor list to audit.
Who It's For
The Sovereign Stack is our default recommendation, but it's the right fit for some organizations more than others. It works best for:
- Organizations handling sensitive client data — social services, behavioral health, legal aid, faith communities — where local processing is a meaningful risk reduction
- Budget-constrained organizations tired of subscription creep and looking for a path to predictable, owned technology
- Organizations that have been burned by platform changes — pricing shifts, feature removals, end-of-life announcements — and want infrastructure that doesn't move under them
- Organizations starting fresh without legacy platform investments to protect
If your organization is already on M365 or Google Workspace and your team is well-adapted to it, that existing investment is worth protecting. We serve those organizations well on the accommodation track — see M365 vs. Google Workspace and Seven Workflows on M365.
How We Get Started
The entry point is the Tech Health Assessment — a free, one-hour session that maps your workflows and produces three written deliverables:
- Workflow recommendations — specific, prioritized improvements for each of the six workflows your organization runs
- Sovereignty Posture Review — a map of your current vendor dependencies, data ownership gaps, and the complexity of moving toward a sovereign architecture
- Prioritized action plan — what to do first, what to do later, and what to skip
The Sovereignty Posture Review gives you a clear picture before any commitment. You'll know what it would take to move, what it costs to stay, and whether the Sovereign Stack or an accommodation track is the better fit for your organization's situation.
Ready to understand your options?
The Tech Health Assessment includes a Sovereignty Posture Review. One hour, three written deliverables, no obligation.