Our September list of organizations is highlighted as part of our 50th Anniversary Celebration of E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful
The intent of our 2023 “Schumacher Conversations” series is to inspire audiences of various backgrounds and interests to “start where you are,” to join in ushering forward a more just and regenerative economy. Alongside each monthly conversation, we’ll be shining light on aligned organizations and initiatives that are championing social and economic transformation in their respective fields. In curating these groups, we intend to provide inspired listeners with conduits to action, connecting individuals looking to support or join in with those already doing the workThe growing local currency movement is providing a positive way to respond to the alienation from the natural world fostered by an expanding global marketplace, and to restore the possibility of regional economies based on social and ecological principles…
— Susan Witt, “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered: 25 Years Later… With Commentaries”
- Bangla-Pesa
- BerkShares, Inc.
- Circle of Aunts and Uncles
- Grassroots Economics
- Hope Credit Union Enterprise Corporation
- Kola Nut Collaborative
- Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union
- Oak
- Positive Money
- RAMICS
- Vancity
- WIR
BerkShares is the local currency for the Berkshire Region, used at participating businesses in the area, like cash, to keep money in local circulation. BerkShares serve as a tool for community economic empowerment, and development toward regional self-reliance. Dubbed a “great economic experiment” by The New York Times, the currency distinguishes the local businesses that accept it, fostering stronger relationships between the responsible business community and citizens of the region. Fully backed by US Dollars on reserve with our community banks, BerkShares paper notes are exchangeable for US Dollars at nine branch offices of three area banks, and are accepted at over 350 locally-owned participating businesses. BerkShares are free to acquire, accept, and spend, and can be redeemed to U.S. Dollars for a 1.5% exchange fee. Every month BerkShares releases a Business of the Month story—special stories of area business owners, farmers, and community practitioners who accept BerkShares. You can read some of these stories on the BerkShares website. There you can also learn more about using BerkShares and read about the 350+ participating businesses.
The Circle of Aunts and Uncles provides low-interest loans and social capital to under-resourced entrepreneurs in order to co-create a more equitable, compassionate, sustainable, and vibrant local economy in the Great Philadelphia region. The group was co-founded by Judy Wicks—founder of the White Dog Cafe and numerous organizations—who believes that by investing in local entrepreneurs who are producing her community’s basic needs and inspiring Philadelphian’s to buy from local businesses, they can co-create a just and sustainable economy in their region.
The Circle of Aunts and Uncles serves as a vehicle for local entrepreneurs to access local lenders offering low-interest loans, as well as advice, business, and connections. The group’s first loan was made in November, 2015 to Hanifah Samad for her clothing business, Fason De Viv (Haitian for “lifestyle”). Since then they have loaned to a variety of entrepreneurs in the fields of food, fashion, art, and more.
To learn about all of the Circle of Aunts and Uncles’ entrepreneurs you can visit their website. There you can also apply for a loan or become a member of the Aunts and Uncles’ Circle.
Grassroots Economics works to improve the lives of those who are most vulnerable by focusing on community development through economic empowerment. They offer a collection of documents and tools to create community inclusion currencies, and to enable interactions between any community created currency and various technologies. Community Inclusion Currencies (CICs) are regional means of exchange that are derived from vouchers and supplement gaps in the national currency system. They create a stable medium of exchange tied to local development in the midst of global economic instability. Grassroots Economics has implemented community currency programs in over 45 locations across Kenya and assisted with 2 in South Africa and helped more than 60,000 small businesses, churches, and schools take an active role in their own economy and development. It is important to Grassroots Economics that people take, use, build on, and share what they have found to be useful in empowering communities to create and manage their own financial instruments. As a result, the group has created a collaborative documentation site with various learnings and tools, such as templates on designing legal frameworks surrounding community driven financial instruments and a glossary of relevant terms. All of which can be found via their website. 
The Kola Nut Collaborative (KNC) is a mutual support network, based in Chicago, of people engaged in reciprocal exchange of services, skills, and goods through a timebank where the currency is an hour of time for everyone. Their mission is to promote and sustain a robust timebanking infrastructure which supports non-monetary transactions amongst individuals and organizations, allowing a greater sum of the realized value of work to be retained and shared within local communities. Through membership in KNC people create and strengthen community bonds, create economic freedom by providing an alternative means to get needs and desires met, and encourage creativity in redefining self-sufficiency, interdependence and valuation of time. KNC uses Time and Talents as their timebanking platform, which consists of a digital ledger for the recording of hour exchanges between members, a directory of available skills, assets and unmet needs in your surrounding community and search options that make it easy to locate trading partners at a reasonable distance from your home. Membership in the timebank is open to any individual, business, or organization located in the Chicagoland area. For those interested in learning more about KNC and solidarity economies you can visit KNC’s website, which has published research, informative blog posts, and a podcast.
Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union (LES People’s FCU) is a non-profit financial cooperative that was organized in 1986 that promotes economic justice and opportunity in NYC neighborhoods. They offer affordable personal and business accounts, services, and loans.
LES People’s FCU is owned by their members and dedicated to providing high-quality financial services and community development investments in low-income, immigrant, and other underserved communities. In this way, they are a part of a broader cooperative movement committed to building a just economy and a world in which individuals share ownership and control over finance, their workplaces, housing, and land.
To learn more about LES People’s FCU and the services they provide you can visit their website.
Oak is a community currency for the people of Oakland, California. It will empower Oakland residents to spend crypto-enabled community currency locally with their favorite merchants. In this way, Oak is on a mission to create a prosperous, empowered, thriving, and regenerative Oakland.
Oak’s community currency, which they are calling Digital Dollars, has yet to enter its first pilot phase. In the meantime, Oak is organizing workshops and educational events for Oakland residents to learn about and explore crypto. They also have a public resource hub—the Oak community dashboard. There you will find opportunities to get involved with Oak, resources to learn more about crypto, and ways you can help share their vision.
Positive Money’s vision is for a money and banking system that enables a fair, democratic, and sustainable economy. In this economy wealth isn’t concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the big banks and government collaborate in a democratic way, and government and central bank mandates reflect the fact that we cannot sustain infinite growth on a finite planet.
They pursue this vision, and the system changes it requires, in six ways: educating and empowering people with facts on the money and banking system; researching problems with the money and banking system and developing solutions; building a diverse and skilled network to campaign for change; influencing people in power; leading and supporting an international movement advocating reform around the world; and communicating their work and ideas through social media, broadcast, and print news.
In their efforts to educate and empower, Positive Money’s website is host to a plethora of resources. These range from videos, books, and publications to local group resources and policy resources.
The Research Association on Monetary Innovation and Community and Complementary Currency Systems (RAMICS) is an international research organization. The mission of the Association is to promote academic research on diverse monetary and social exchange systems. The Association particularly focuses on innovative schemes that contribute to economic diversity, social cohesion, democratic participation and environmental sustainability, like complementary and community currencies. RAMICS hosts regular conferences and publishes new research.
Its main aim is to bring together the ideas of a number of theorists and theoretical traditions in various scientific disciplines to understand in a relevant way the proliferation of currencies since the turn of the millennium. The association fosters research that recognizes the role of history and evolutionary processes in the formation of monetary systems within capitalist and non-capitalist economies; it aims at analysing in theory as well as in policy, notably through connexions with practitioners, policymakers and various observers of these systems.
WIR is an independent complementary currency system in Switzerland that serves businesses in hospitality, construction, manufacturing, retail, and professional services. WIR was founded in 1934 by businessmen Werner Zimmermann and Paul Enz as a result of currency shortages and global financial instability. WIR’s purpose is to encourage participating members to put their buying power at each other’s disposal and keep it circulating within their ranks, thereby providing members with additional sales volume.
WIR issues and manages a private currency, called the WIR franc, which is used in combination with the Swiss franc to generate dual currency transactions. The WIR franc is an electronic currency reflected in clients’ trade accounts. Today, WIR has roughly 62,000 members. During times of general economic crisis the WIR Bank is fully operational, which dampens downturns in the business and helps stabilize the Swiss economy during difficult times.
Vancity is Canada’s largest community credit union, a financial co-operative that operates within the territories of the Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw people. They are a member-owned, community-based, full-service financial institution with 54 branches located across Canada. Vancity offers a full-range of financial products and services for individuals, businesses, and not-for-profit organizations, including daily banking, investments, mortgages, loans, and credit cards. As a values-based financial co-operative, Vancity is committed to transforming how banking is done so they can help their members and their local communities thrive financially, socially, and environmentally. For example, they provide “green” advice to members and financial support for organizations active in developing technology and services that benefit the environment. To learn more about Vancity and all the work they do for their communities you can visit their website.