TURMEL: Community-currency loan stimulates flurry of economic activity in Philadelphia
KingofthePaupers
several times, I was even invited to one of their parties, so
it's particularly heartening to hear them doing good for the
needy people of Philadelphia. I hope our enthusiastic
encouragement helped bring about this "Good News" story in our
world of almost global misery:
Community-currency loan stimulates flurry of economic activity
Human-services organization turns to non-U.S.-backed funds to pay
employees annual bonuses, expand programs for those it serves
Jct: Wonderful. Local currency for local exchanges.
Submitted by: Resources For Human Development
Categories: Community Development, Finance
Posted: Dec 28, 2009 - 10:36 AM EST
Jct: Bet this doesn't make the MSM Main Stream Media
CSR: PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 28 /CSRwire/ - A national nonprofit that
borrowed 25,000 Equal Dollars, a currency complementary to the
U.S. dollar, has made its first payment on the five-year,
interest-free loan, demonstrating that an adjunct economy in
bills and credits other than those issued by the Federal Reserve
can help corporations and families prosper when greenbacks are
scarce.
JCT: Wait until they learn it helps corporations and families
prosper when greenbacks are not scarce too.
CSR: Resources for Human Development (RHD) earlier this month
made its first installment on the loan in the amount of 1,000
Equal Dollars, a significant milestone considering the human-
services provider had to cultivate new income streams in Equal
Dollars to repay in the same currency.
JCT: They had to dream up ways to close the loop and succeeded.
CSR: "This experiment is working, and it's working well," said
RHD founder and CEO Robert Fishman. "And it can work for other
corporations, too, as well as governments and small businesses."
JCT: Har har har. Government lining up to borrow Equal Dollars
because they don't know how to run US dollars the same. Har har
har nyuk nyuk nyuk.
CSR: RHD negotiated the loan from Equal Dollars Community
Currency this summer, as it struggled to come up with a way to
provide annual bonuses for its Central Office employees amid a
tight budget in a lackluster economy. With the zero-interest
loan, RHD paid bonuses of 100 Equal Dollars to each of its 250
headquarters workers.
But that was only the start of RHD's efforts to make good on its
promises to repay the loan. Next, it had to make sure its
employees had meaningful goods and services on which to spend
their new Equal Dollars. And it had to ensure that it somehow
developed an income stream of Equal Dollars, so that it could
satisfy its debt. The Equal Dollars bank does not accept U.S.
dollars.
So RHD, a sprawling nonprofit with 160 people-helping-people
programs in 13 states and with stakes in several for-profit
socially conscious businesses, went to work.
It asked one of its for-profit spinoffs, Brothers' Keepers Hope
Improvement, which offers employment to ex-offenders, to pay rent
in Equal Dollars for space it uses at RHD's headquarters
building.
Then it expanded a weekly vendors' bazaar in which individuals
offer everything from handmade crafts and clothing to personal
hygiene items and household goods for a combination of U.S. and
Equal dollars. Each of the vendors pays a fee to RHD in Equal
Dollars in return for their booth and access to the consumers.
And, most significantly, RHD started a one-day-a-week produce
market for the community in unused space in its basement. Stocked
with fruits and vegetables donated by a large food wholesaler,
the market exchanges family-pack bags of food for equal amounts
of U.S. and Equal dollars, using the Federal Reserve bills to
offset transportation and related costs and stockpiling the Equal
Dollars to repay the debt obligation.
The produce market has become wildly popular, leading RHD to seek
out other "end of commercial life" products that it can breathe a
second life into and generate more Equal Dollars for corporate
coffers and more savings of U.S. dollars for consumers.
"The beauty of all of these activities is that they are
sustainable, that they save consumers U.S. dollars and that they
serve needs that otherwise couldn't be satisfied because of the
scarcity of government-issued money," said Peggy Mowatt, RHD's
chief operating officer.
JCT: And yet everyone's worried about printing more money to
cause inflation.
CSR: A natural outgrowth of RHD's efforts to generate income in
Equal Dollars has been the growth of other economic activity in
Equal Dollars.
For example, Brothers' Keepers president Gerald Hatten, faced
with paying rent in Equal Dollars to RHD, began accepting Equal
Dollars from clients engaging his firm in home-remodeling and
commercial-cleaning jobs. His clients, eager to save traditional,
U.S.-backed bills, scrambled to find ways to generate their own
Equal Dollars to pay Brothers' Keepers.
"It's amazing how rapidly this concept can spread throughout a
community," Hatten said. "One thing we didn't expect when we
began accepting Equal Dollars is that it also set us apart even
more from our competitors. It makes us special, and that's a leg
up in this economy."
Equal Dollars is beginning to pervade other facets of RHD's
operations as the organization learns how to apply the
complementary currency.
JCT: Nothing helps people learn faster than using it.
CSR: Just recently, when RHD launched a newspaper in Philadelphia
written by residents of its homeless shelters, it wrestled with
how to offer the shelter residents a credit line to buy
newspapers they would then distribute at a markup to passersby on
the street. The publication's business model called for those who
are homeless to pay 25 cents for each paper to offset printing
costs, with the remainder of each $1 exchange to supporters going
directly to the homeless distributor in an effort to offer them
enough income to leave the street behind.
JCT: Like the Toronto Street News that supports LETS but never
had a chance like this to make use of it.
CSR: The problem was the shelter residents couldn't afford even
the upfront 25 cents per paper.
"There just wasn't any money in the budget to advance them papers
they could distribute for $1 donations on the street to reinvest
in more papers," said Eddie Byrd, RHD's director of marketing and
communications and a consultant on the project. "So we came up
with the idea of giving each of the distributors a credit line of
10 Equal Dollars. That gives them 40 papers they can accumulate
$40 from. And that's all they needed to get up and running."
JCT: Microloans with new chips interest-free is smarter than
Yunus' Grameen Bank that loansharks small loans of old chips at
20%.
CSR: Deneene Brockington, director of the Equal Dollars Community
Currency, notes that even the newspaper's modest adoption of
Equal Dollars will spread the reach of the alternate currency.
JCT: Wait until they start taking ads for Equal Dollars.
CSR: "If that newspaper is giving a 10 Equal Dollar advance to,
say, 25 distributors, each of those 25 vendors is going to have
to come up with a way to earn at least 10 more Equal Dollars so
they can repay," she said. "That means more goods and services
are going to be offered to more people who will also want to earn
Equal Dollars so they can save on U.S. dollars. Equal Dollars is
generating more economic activity every day, and it's all
economic activity that wouldn't have happened if it depended on
Federal Reserve currency alone."
Equal Dollars Community Currency is focused on the Philadelphia
area. But its principles can be replicated anywhere.
JCT: But most people are pretty dense elsewhere.
CSR: RHD CEO Fishman believes financially strapped governments
should consider embracing Equal Dollars to ease the effect of
declining revenues from the recession.
JCT: Financially strapped governments should run a national Equal
Dollars to solve the effect of declining revenues.
CSR: "A community currency like this is more productive and
sustainable than, say, one-time stimulus funding," he said.
"Instead of endlessly scouring budgets for more cuts,
governmental entities could be using complementary currencies to
augment services to their citizens, and we would be please to get
them started."
JCT: Imagine, people talking about augmenting services in a world
of politicians dealing out cuts to budgets. Yeehaa, what great
news.
CSR: At RHD, Fishman is always thinking up new ways to fill the
corporate treasury with fresh Equal Dollars that can then be used
to reward employees and develop new services for those the
nonprofit serves.
"Equal Dollars is an engine of growth whose power we are only
beginning to enjoy," he said.
JCT: Hey, tell them we accept them in Canada at 50 Equal Dollars
per night private room in 100 cities. And at LETS timebanks all
around the world where they accept your $10 Equal Dollars
equivalent to one of our Hours. I guess they can trade with
Ithaca at $10 an Hour too.
CSR: With the strong creditworthiness RHD is building at the
Equal Dollars bank, expect to see more of RHD's growth from
return trips to the community currency's lending window.
To learn more about Equal Dollars, contact Deneene Brockington,
director of Equal Dollars, at den...@rhd.org or call
at
215-951-0300 215-951-0300, ext. 3027.
About Resources for Human Development
A national human services nonprofit founded in 1970, Resources
for Human Development serves tens of thousands of people every
year in 13 states. RHD delivers caring, effective and innovative
programs addressing intellectual and developmental disabilities,
behavioral health, homelessness, addiction recovery and more. In
partnership with local governments and those we serve, RHD builds
better lives, families and communities. To learn more about RHD
and its more than 160 programs, visit http://www.rhd.org
For more information, please contact:
Kevin Roberts Communications
Phone: 215-951-0300 ext.3714
Deneene Brockington Director, Equal Dollars
Phone: 215-951-0300, ext.3027
Eddie Byrd Director, Marketing & Communications
Phone: 215-951-0300, ext.3950
Phone 2: 610-389-7266
JCT: Boy, are you one organisation fulfilling your mission
statement. What incredible good news to think about how fast this
can spread. Robert Fishman should write a book.