Sat, May 26th from 10am-6pm
Hayes Valley Farm, 450 Laguna Street, SF
A festival to help educate, inspire and spread sustainable living and self-sufficiency skills.
Scheduled Workshops:
Worm bins, bike powered machines, cob ovens, urban composting, urban gardening in the Bay and container gardening, cohousing and intentional communities, fruit trees, seed-saving, food preservation (wine-making, pickling, miso), disaster preparedness, herbal medicine, herb growing, teas and tincture making, bee-keeping and pollination, backyard livestock (with live chickens and ducks), insects as food, sprouting, solar ovens, mushroom cultivation, soap-making, cheese and yogurt making, natural dyes, candle-making, diy green cleaning, natural beauty, nonviolent communication, water catchment, place-making and more! (Habra traduccion en Espanol, limited Cantonese translation).
Admission: Ticketing on Eventbrite http://homesteadskillsharefestival.eventbrite.com/ and cash only at the door. Payment of 2 hours donation to Hayes Valley Farm through www.bace.org and/or $20 donation to the BACE Timebank. Kids are free, families welcome. Free & donation-based food onsite and benefit dinner at end of Festival. Rain or shine. No refunds.
Co-sponsored by: the BACE Timebank, Hayes Valley Farm, SF Permaculture Guild, SF Urban Agriculture Alliance, PODER (SF), Occupy SF Sustainability Working Group, the Institute for Urban Homesteading, Transition SF, KitchenGarden SF, SF Bee-Cause, the Connection Action Project, SF Free School, Just One Tree, Ohlone Herbal Center, Planet Drum. Thanks to our media sponsor, Shareable.net. Please contact mira at sfbace.org for more info.
Presenters: SF Permaculture Guild, Urban Permaculture Institute, Connection Action Project, Rock the Bike, Shoe Shine Wine, Briones Self-Sufficiency and Urban Homesteading Circle, Taproot Medicine, Mushroom Maestros, Canticle Farm, Tatiana Florentina Craft Almendral, The Village Farm & Fairy Ring Herbs, Institute for Urban Homesteading, SF Bee-Cause, Cohousing California, Kitchen Garden SF, SF Seed Library, Hayes Valley Farm, Alemany Farm, Living Earth Structures, Hayes Valley Farm, Urban Homesteading Institute, Tina Grecchi, Transition SF, Ohlone Herbal Center, Mira Luna, Gabriel Cole, Jennifer Fernandez
Music: Alma Desnuda will be headlining and Nicco Tyson will be playing during the dinner and silent auction.
Food: Arizmendi on Valencia, PODER (SF) and Occupy SF!
Spanish Translation: PODER (SF)
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The Cob Cat House that Community Built
By Mira Luna
03.28.12
This is a story about how my cat finally came home, because my community built a home for her without money.
A few years ago I had to find a temporary home for my cat, Cleo. This is a story about how my cat finally came home, because my community built a home for her without money.
About four years ago I became ill around the time I lost my job as the economy tanked. Fortunately, my best friend took Cleo on her farm in Oregon and she's been living there happily ever since. Late last year my partner and I created a cat-friendly housing collective and moved in together. I wanted to bring Cleo home from the farm, but she needed to be outside of our new house during the day in order for everyone in the house to be happy.
It became clear that we had to build a dwelling for Cleo before she could come home. I wanted to find out if it was possible to build a sustainable cat house without money since I don't have much. Plus, I thought it would be a fun experiment in living in the sharing economy. I’d taken a couple basic workshops on cob ovens and the ovens looked like small animal dwellings so I decided I’d use a cob oven as a model.
In a stroke of luck, the day after I decided to build a cob cat house, an email about free straw bales was posted to a local urban agriculture listserv. Bob Besso of Recology (an urban reuse and recycling center) met up with me to pick up the straw bales he’d posted, helping me load them into my car. Bob later posted another email about a wood structure, which would be used to provide rain protection for the cob house. When I went to pick it up, Bob took one look at my tiny car and the big wood box and decided it would be safer if he delivered it to my house in his pick up truck. He took a half hour off work to help us out.
Kerrick designing the cat cob structure, photo by Marshall Hilton
Then I posted my need for help to design the cob structure to our local timebank in San Francisco, still feeling uncertain in my mastery of cob. I got several responses. A fellow named Kerrick Lucker responded. He had taken a cob building class at Emerald Earth (one of the best places to learn cob in the country) and wanted to help me design the structure. We met to assess the site and draw out the design specifically for a cat and the local microclimate and laid out the shape of the foundation. I paid him three hours on the Timebank for his consultation. Kerrick also offered some left over clay and sand for free that was needed for the cob mixture, which I picked up from the house he'd just moved out of, saving him some effort to move it himself without a car.
Read the rest of the article on Shareable.net.
03.28.12
This is a story about how my cat finally came home, because my community built a home for her without money.
A few years ago I had to find a temporary home for my cat, Cleo. This is a story about how my cat finally came home, because my community built a home for her without money.
About four years ago I became ill around the time I lost my job as the economy tanked. Fortunately, my best friend took Cleo on her farm in Oregon and she's been living there happily ever since. Late last year my partner and I created a cat-friendly housing collective and moved in together. I wanted to bring Cleo home from the farm, but she needed to be outside of our new house during the day in order for everyone in the house to be happy.
It became clear that we had to build a dwelling for Cleo before she could come home. I wanted to find out if it was possible to build a sustainable cat house without money since I don't have much. Plus, I thought it would be a fun experiment in living in the sharing economy. I’d taken a couple basic workshops on cob ovens and the ovens looked like small animal dwellings so I decided I’d use a cob oven as a model.
In a stroke of luck, the day after I decided to build a cob cat house, an email about free straw bales was posted to a local urban agriculture listserv. Bob Besso of Recology (an urban reuse and recycling center) met up with me to pick up the straw bales he’d posted, helping me load them into my car. Bob later posted another email about a wood structure, which would be used to provide rain protection for the cob house. When I went to pick it up, Bob took one look at my tiny car and the big wood box and decided it would be safer if he delivered it to my house in his pick up truck. He took a half hour off work to help us out.
Kerrick designing the cat cob structure, photo by Marshall Hilton
Then I posted my need for help to design the cob structure to our local timebank in San Francisco, still feeling uncertain in my mastery of cob. I got several responses. A fellow named Kerrick Lucker responded. He had taken a cob building class at Emerald Earth (one of the best places to learn cob in the country) and wanted to help me design the structure. We met to assess the site and draw out the design specifically for a cat and the local microclimate and laid out the shape of the foundation. I paid him three hours on the Timebank for his consultation. Kerrick also offered some left over clay and sand for free that was needed for the cob mixture, which I picked up from the house he'd just moved out of, saving him some effort to move it himself without a car.
Read the rest of the article on Shareable.net.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
San Francisco Announces Sharing Economy Working Group
From Shareable.net
By Neal Gorenflo
03.27.12
It's an important day in the sharing economy.Mayor Edwin M. Lee of San Franciso announced today the formation of The Sharing Economy Working Group, the first of its kind in the U.S. and perhaps in the world. The purpose of the working group, "is to take a comprehensive look at the economic benefits, innovative companies and emerging policy issues around the growing 'sharing economy'”. This could catalyze other cities to take similar action.
Read the article here.
By Neal Gorenflo
03.27.12
It's an important day in the sharing economy.Mayor Edwin M. Lee of San Franciso announced today the formation of The Sharing Economy Working Group, the first of its kind in the U.S. and perhaps in the world. The purpose of the working group, "is to take a comprehensive look at the economic benefits, innovative companies and emerging policy issues around the growing 'sharing economy'”. This could catalyze other cities to take similar action.
Read the article here.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
A New Way to Occupy City Hall: Participatory Budgeting
Gabriel Hetland and Abigail N. Martin
From the Nation
March 15, 2012
Despite worries that the Occupy movement would not survive the winter, activists continue to highlight ordinary Americans’ frustration with the dysfunction of “the world’s largest democracy.” In January, “Occupy Congress” descended upon Capitol Hill, and in early March students across California organized to “Occupy the Capitol” in Sacramento. But Occupy has done more than just highlight the inadequacies of American-style representative democracy. It is giving direct, participatory forms of democracy, like the General Assembly model, a new lease on life. So far, Occupy’s participatory democratic decision-making has been confined to public spaces outside the halls of government power. The question for Occupy is, can the movement bring participatory democracy inside?
Participatory budgeting, a relatively novel form of participatory governance that is not dissimilar from the vaunted New England “Town Hall” meetings, represents one promising model. The best-known “modern” example of participatory budgeting, also known as PB, was initiated by the Workers’ Party in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the late 1980s. Since that time, PB has spread to hundreds of cities and a number of state governments around the world. Although the specific details vary, PB (almost) always involves grassroots public assemblies that give ordinary citizens the chance to deliberate about and exert some degree of control over public spending.
On the ground, PB is demanding. It is no surprise that participatory democracy requires extensive participation by ordinary people. But the impact is impressive. In Porto Alegre, PB has led to civic empowerment, more transparency over government spending and a redistribution of public resources. In Chicago and New York, anecdotal evidence suggests similar benefits.
Before the raids that spelled the end of physical occupation, a number of Occupy groups began discussing the potential for PB to become part of the movement’s strategic repertoire. Excited by the advent of PB in four city council districts in New York City, Occupy Wall Street held a PB teach-in last October. Since then, Occupy groups up and down the East Coast from Boston to Greensboro have followed suit and are exploring ways to bring PB to their cities. The Participatory Budgeting Project, a New York based non-profit, has organized a conference on PB to be held at the end of March in New York, and Occupy activists from a number of cities, including Boston, Chicago, New York and Oakland, are expected to attend. Conference goers will have the opportunity to observe assemblies in the four city council districts where PB was introduced last fall. These assemblies will decide how to spend nearly $6 million (a bit over $1 million per district), surpassing the $1.3 million that was distributed in Chicago’s 49th ward by alderman Joe Moore, who became the first US politician to introduce PB in November 2009.
Not all Occupy activists have embraced PB. In October, a proposal to support PB was voted down at Occupy Oakland, in part due to a general resistance to engage formal political spaces. However, supporters of that proposal came together as a group called the Community Democracy Project (CDP) to continue to work to bring PB to Oakland. Through a voter initiative, CDP’s goal is to revamp the Oakland City Charter to make way for the creation of neighborhood assemblies that would be given decision-making power over the city’s entire discretionary budget. Despite Occupy Oakland’s initial reluctance to support PB, CDP members (including the authors of this piece) have continued to engage the movement. At Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly this past Sunday, many activists appeared ready to embrace PB when approached by CDP. But not all were convinced. One woman commented that she was not interested in PB because, “I think the system needs a total overhaul."
Is participatory budgeting an answer to the question of what’s next for Occupy? Perhaps. But, in order for this to happen, proponents of the strategy need to convince Occupy activists that PB can do more than provide window dressing for continued elite and corporate control over political decision-making. Many in the Occupy movement are deeply skeptical of anything that smacks of cooperation with the state. To make PB meaningful (and convince skeptics that it is worth pursuing), two things need to happen. First, the rift between the seemingly irreconcilable logics of institutional and insurgent politics has to be bridged. Just as significantly, corporations and the wealthy must be forced to pay their fair share in taxes. Otherwise PB will amount to little more than popular control over austerity.
As Porto Alegre and other cities have shown, PB requires (and can help lead to) functioning government institutions. But to be effective, institutional reforms like PB must be accompanied by popular struggle and direct action. One of the most impressive examples of PB, in the Venezuelan municipality of Torres, demonstrates this well. Since 2005, ordinary citizens in Torres have had control over 100 percent of the local investment budget. This represents a significant victory for popular power, but it did not come without a fight. PB was vigorously supported by Torres’ (now ex-) mayor Julio Chávez but was opposed by a majority of Torres’ city councilors. In order to overcome their opposition, Chávez mobilized hundreds of supporters to physically occupy City Hall, after which the councilors agreed to implement PB. Torres underscores an important point: PB should not be seen as a reformist alternative but a radical extension of the insurgent logic underpinning the Occupy movement.
The rejection of “trickle-down” economics and what Paul Krugman calls “destructive fiscal austerity” is equally important for PB to take root. Occupy has shown that the consequences of market fundamentalism – poverty, rising inequality, and crippled democratic institutions – will not be tolerated forever. To achieve the radical transformation of political and economic institutions that the US – and the world – so desperately needs, the insurgent energy of Occupy must be combined with radical-but-concrete measures such as PB, progressive taxation, and the fight to end of corporate personhood.
From the Nation
March 15, 2012
Despite worries that the Occupy movement would not survive the winter, activists continue to highlight ordinary Americans’ frustration with the dysfunction of “the world’s largest democracy.” In January, “Occupy Congress” descended upon Capitol Hill, and in early March students across California organized to “Occupy the Capitol” in Sacramento. But Occupy has done more than just highlight the inadequacies of American-style representative democracy. It is giving direct, participatory forms of democracy, like the General Assembly model, a new lease on life. So far, Occupy’s participatory democratic decision-making has been confined to public spaces outside the halls of government power. The question for Occupy is, can the movement bring participatory democracy inside?
Participatory budgeting, a relatively novel form of participatory governance that is not dissimilar from the vaunted New England “Town Hall” meetings, represents one promising model. The best-known “modern” example of participatory budgeting, also known as PB, was initiated by the Workers’ Party in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the late 1980s. Since that time, PB has spread to hundreds of cities and a number of state governments around the world. Although the specific details vary, PB (almost) always involves grassroots public assemblies that give ordinary citizens the chance to deliberate about and exert some degree of control over public spending.
On the ground, PB is demanding. It is no surprise that participatory democracy requires extensive participation by ordinary people. But the impact is impressive. In Porto Alegre, PB has led to civic empowerment, more transparency over government spending and a redistribution of public resources. In Chicago and New York, anecdotal evidence suggests similar benefits.
Before the raids that spelled the end of physical occupation, a number of Occupy groups began discussing the potential for PB to become part of the movement’s strategic repertoire. Excited by the advent of PB in four city council districts in New York City, Occupy Wall Street held a PB teach-in last October. Since then, Occupy groups up and down the East Coast from Boston to Greensboro have followed suit and are exploring ways to bring PB to their cities. The Participatory Budgeting Project, a New York based non-profit, has organized a conference on PB to be held at the end of March in New York, and Occupy activists from a number of cities, including Boston, Chicago, New York and Oakland, are expected to attend. Conference goers will have the opportunity to observe assemblies in the four city council districts where PB was introduced last fall. These assemblies will decide how to spend nearly $6 million (a bit over $1 million per district), surpassing the $1.3 million that was distributed in Chicago’s 49th ward by alderman Joe Moore, who became the first US politician to introduce PB in November 2009.
Not all Occupy activists have embraced PB. In October, a proposal to support PB was voted down at Occupy Oakland, in part due to a general resistance to engage formal political spaces. However, supporters of that proposal came together as a group called the Community Democracy Project (CDP) to continue to work to bring PB to Oakland. Through a voter initiative, CDP’s goal is to revamp the Oakland City Charter to make way for the creation of neighborhood assemblies that would be given decision-making power over the city’s entire discretionary budget. Despite Occupy Oakland’s initial reluctance to support PB, CDP members (including the authors of this piece) have continued to engage the movement. At Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly this past Sunday, many activists appeared ready to embrace PB when approached by CDP. But not all were convinced. One woman commented that she was not interested in PB because, “I think the system needs a total overhaul."
Is participatory budgeting an answer to the question of what’s next for Occupy? Perhaps. But, in order for this to happen, proponents of the strategy need to convince Occupy activists that PB can do more than provide window dressing for continued elite and corporate control over political decision-making. Many in the Occupy movement are deeply skeptical of anything that smacks of cooperation with the state. To make PB meaningful (and convince skeptics that it is worth pursuing), two things need to happen. First, the rift between the seemingly irreconcilable logics of institutional and insurgent politics has to be bridged. Just as significantly, corporations and the wealthy must be forced to pay their fair share in taxes. Otherwise PB will amount to little more than popular control over austerity.
As Porto Alegre and other cities have shown, PB requires (and can help lead to) functioning government institutions. But to be effective, institutional reforms like PB must be accompanied by popular struggle and direct action. One of the most impressive examples of PB, in the Venezuelan municipality of Torres, demonstrates this well. Since 2005, ordinary citizens in Torres have had control over 100 percent of the local investment budget. This represents a significant victory for popular power, but it did not come without a fight. PB was vigorously supported by Torres’ (now ex-) mayor Julio Chávez but was opposed by a majority of Torres’ city councilors. In order to overcome their opposition, Chávez mobilized hundreds of supporters to physically occupy City Hall, after which the councilors agreed to implement PB. Torres underscores an important point: PB should not be seen as a reformist alternative but a radical extension of the insurgent logic underpinning the Occupy movement.
The rejection of “trickle-down” economics and what Paul Krugman calls “destructive fiscal austerity” is equally important for PB to take root. Occupy has shown that the consequences of market fundamentalism – poverty, rising inequality, and crippled democratic institutions – will not be tolerated forever. To achieve the radical transformation of political and economic institutions that the US – and the world – so desperately needs, the insurgent energy of Occupy must be combined with radical-but-concrete measures such as PB, progressive taxation, and the fight to end of corporate personhood.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
unMoney Convergence
April 24th, 2012 8am-6pm
San Francisco, CA.
We are inviting innovators to converge on April 24 in The Bay Area for the 2012 unMoney Convergence to engage in an evolutionary conversation on money. In the wake of the financial crises around the world, new approaches are emerging in the ways that currency moves and property is held. We invite you to these explorations.
Our goal is to bring foster dialogue and collaboration among the range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems and to explore connections with issues of land and property tenure. In addition to topics on alternatives to the current currency systems, we invite all who are looking at new ways to look at land tenancy and stewardship, hard currency versus energy, time and food based currencies. We are looking for synergies between folks who see the need for more grounded, materially based economics and those looking at the spiritual, energetic and values based approaches.
In April 2008, the first Unmoney convergence was hosted in Seattle with a similar range of participants. Relationships were built and several interesting projects were explored.. Since then, we have gone through a financial meltdown around the world that has its roots in flawed economic theory and corrupt financial practices. In 2012, it is even more apparent that we need a fundamental shift in the approach to currency and the principles underlying our local and interconnected global economies.
range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems and to explore connections with issues of land and property tenure. In addition to topics on alternatives to the current currency systems, we invite all who are looking at new ways to look at land tenancy and stewardship, hard currency versus energy, time and food based currencies. We are looking for synergies between folks who see the need for more grounded, materially based economics and those looking at the spiritual, energetic and values based approaches.
In this era, we understand in even more profound ways the need to rebuild local economies, slowing down the global growth economy and provide lively hoods for many millions of people who have been displaced from their work, their land and their homes by un- rooted global economic dynamics. This one day conference proximate to The Future of Money and Technology conference will explore the deep questions that participants bring around these topics.
The invitation is being made to social-entrepreneurs, academics, economists, bankers, philanthropists, business men and woman, system changers, lenders, borrowers and barterers. In addition we are inviting members of the Slow Money movement, those involved in Land Trusts and others concerned about housing, farmland preservation etc. to look at the intersection of land and currency.
Most of the conference will be participant driven, the agenda will be created live over the course of the event by those attending. We will primarily use Open Space Technology to organize ourselves. Everyone attending is welcome to present or lead a discussion about the topics they are interested in. Feel free to add a workshop and/or discussion you would like to attend, facilitate or lead when you register.
Our goal is to bring together and support deep dialogue and collaboration between the range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems.
We encourage your participation and your support...
Topics covered will include :
micro-credit
slow money
local currencies
complementary currencies
time dollars
retail trade exchanges
LETS
state of the art transaction software & hardware technologies
money & spirituality
ecological accounting
monetary theory
social venture & entrepreneurship
value network mapping
equity sharing
energy backed currency
organizational structures
gift economies
barter
unMoney is a project of Planetwork
Register here.
San Francisco, CA.
We are inviting innovators to converge on April 24 in The Bay Area for the 2012 unMoney Convergence to engage in an evolutionary conversation on money. In the wake of the financial crises around the world, new approaches are emerging in the ways that currency moves and property is held. We invite you to these explorations.
Our goal is to bring foster dialogue and collaboration among the range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems and to explore connections with issues of land and property tenure. In addition to topics on alternatives to the current currency systems, we invite all who are looking at new ways to look at land tenancy and stewardship, hard currency versus energy, time and food based currencies. We are looking for synergies between folks who see the need for more grounded, materially based economics and those looking at the spiritual, energetic and values based approaches.
In April 2008, the first Unmoney convergence was hosted in Seattle with a similar range of participants. Relationships were built and several interesting projects were explored.. Since then, we have gone through a financial meltdown around the world that has its roots in flawed economic theory and corrupt financial practices. In 2012, it is even more apparent that we need a fundamental shift in the approach to currency and the principles underlying our local and interconnected global economies.
range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems and to explore connections with issues of land and property tenure. In addition to topics on alternatives to the current currency systems, we invite all who are looking at new ways to look at land tenancy and stewardship, hard currency versus energy, time and food based currencies. We are looking for synergies between folks who see the need for more grounded, materially based economics and those looking at the spiritual, energetic and values based approaches.
In this era, we understand in even more profound ways the need to rebuild local economies, slowing down the global growth economy and provide lively hoods for many millions of people who have been displaced from their work, their land and their homes by un- rooted global economic dynamics. This one day conference proximate to The Future of Money and Technology conference will explore the deep questions that participants bring around these topics.
The invitation is being made to social-entrepreneurs, academics, economists, bankers, philanthropists, business men and woman, system changers, lenders, borrowers and barterers. In addition we are inviting members of the Slow Money movement, those involved in Land Trusts and others concerned about housing, farmland preservation etc. to look at the intersection of land and currency.
Most of the conference will be participant driven, the agenda will be created live over the course of the event by those attending. We will primarily use Open Space Technology to organize ourselves. Everyone attending is welcome to present or lead a discussion about the topics they are interested in. Feel free to add a workshop and/or discussion you would like to attend, facilitate or lead when you register.
Our goal is to bring together and support deep dialogue and collaboration between the range of interesting emerging ideas around money and exchange systems.
We encourage your participation and your support...
Topics covered will include :
micro-credit
slow money
local currencies
complementary currencies
time dollars
retail trade exchanges
LETS
state of the art transaction software & hardware technologies
money & spirituality
ecological accounting
monetary theory
social venture & entrepreneurship
value network mapping
equity sharing
energy backed currency
organizational structures
gift economies
barter
unMoney is a project of Planetwork
Register here.
Crowdfunding Law Needs Your Support
From SELC
March 8, 2012
Faced with regulatory and financial barriers to accessing mainstream investment capital, many entrepreneurs have turned to crowdfunding platforms such as KickStarter and IndieGoGo to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. These small-dollar donations demonstrate that regular non-wealthy folks want to support local entrepreneurs in their community. If entrepreneurs could also offer investment opportunities to the crowdfunding "crowd", they could potentially access millions of dollars of investments from their communities and networks that already support their businesses, without the financial and logistical challenges of regular securities registration.
H.R. 2930, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, which would exempt crowdfunded investments from state and federal securities registration, introduced by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) overwhelmingly passed the House last November (407-17) with White House support. Two other crowdfunding bills are in the Senate Banking Committee: S. 1971 (Scott Brown, R-MA) and S. 1970 (Jeff Merkley, D-OR).
These crowdfunding bills can be traced back to the Sustainable Economies Law Center's July 2010 rulemaking petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC File No. 4-605), which petitioned the Commission to create a registration exemption for crowdfunded investments. Our work caught the eye of small business advocates, who in turn created online petitions, testified at Congressional hearings, and lobbied Congress to introduce a crowdfunding bill.
The current crowdfunding bills, which enjoy bipartisan support, are now stalled in the Senate. Small business advocates have learned that the Senate wants to see more public interest in these proposals before moving forward. To demonstrate public interest (as well as the power of crowdfunding), SELC's allies have launched a campaign to take out a full page ad in the Washington D.C. newspaper Politico, which is distributed in printed form to Congressional staffers and other DC types. For more information or to participate in this crowdfunding effort, click here.
March 8, 2012
Faced with regulatory and financial barriers to accessing mainstream investment capital, many entrepreneurs have turned to crowdfunding platforms such as KickStarter and IndieGoGo to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. These small-dollar donations demonstrate that regular non-wealthy folks want to support local entrepreneurs in their community. If entrepreneurs could also offer investment opportunities to the crowdfunding "crowd", they could potentially access millions of dollars of investments from their communities and networks that already support their businesses, without the financial and logistical challenges of regular securities registration.
H.R. 2930, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, which would exempt crowdfunded investments from state and federal securities registration, introduced by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) overwhelmingly passed the House last November (407-17) with White House support. Two other crowdfunding bills are in the Senate Banking Committee: S. 1971 (Scott Brown, R-MA) and S. 1970 (Jeff Merkley, D-OR).
These crowdfunding bills can be traced back to the Sustainable Economies Law Center's July 2010 rulemaking petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC File No. 4-605), which petitioned the Commission to create a registration exemption for crowdfunded investments. Our work caught the eye of small business advocates, who in turn created online petitions, testified at Congressional hearings, and lobbied Congress to introduce a crowdfunding bill.
The current crowdfunding bills, which enjoy bipartisan support, are now stalled in the Senate. Small business advocates have learned that the Senate wants to see more public interest in these proposals before moving forward. To demonstrate public interest (as well as the power of crowdfunding), SELC's allies have launched a campaign to take out a full page ad in the Washington D.C. newspaper Politico, which is distributed in printed form to Congressional staffers and other DC types. For more information or to participate in this crowdfunding effort, click here.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Biketopia: a Model Organization for the Next Economy
By Mira Luna
02.14.12
From Shareable.net
I like to think of utopia as the space where idealism meets reality. Over the years, I have found few radical social change projects that met reality without failure or conflict, especially within a capitalist economy. Transformative projects often fail to take off and end up disillusioning their founders and volunteers. The Bike Kitchen model is one of those unique exceptions that we can try to learn from.
The first time I visited the San Francisco Bike Kitchen, I was struck by the seemingly limitless energy – it was bursting at the seams with volunteers and clients waiting to work on their own bikes. As other local nonprofits and business are struggling or closing up shop, I wondered what makes this model different.
Bike Kitchens have been around since the 1980s, and the earliest recorded one was in Austria. There is little documentation about how they spread, but now they're all over the world: from Argentina to France to Ghana and over 200 in the US alone. Their common mission tends to be bike access for everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status. Reciprocity and self-empowerment are the key operating principles. Everyone’s contribution matters regardless of skill level.
Almost all Bike Kitchens share a remarkably similar model, perhaps because it works so well although there is some variation. Some have “earn a bike” programs for kids, and some, like Bike Not Bombs. repair and ship bikes to developing countries. The Bicycle Organization Project explains what constitutes a community bike shop:
Non-profit bicycle organizations
Bike shops that are accessible to people without money
Shops that have an educational focus, teaching others how to fix bikes
Shops that are volunteer run
Shops that provide free or low-cost services to the community
Organizations that recycle bicycles and parts
Most of these workshops charge small shop day use or periodic membership fees, around $5 per day to use. As ecologically minded organizations, they recycle bike parts and get donations from bike companies to sell at low cost or as “digging rights” for a bigger bike project. Some have flat “build a bike” fees to cover the cost of staff supervision, parts, frame, etc. to build an entire bike from scratch (from a minimal $30 to $60 or a six hours work trade). Patrons at SF Bike Kitchen have a third payment option – to volunteer for another nonprofit on the local Timebank and use their Timebank hours to pay. Shops offer bartering so that costs can be paid in labor instead of money by their lowest income customers, reducing barriers to participation from diverse groups. For this reason, some kitchens, like Colectivelo in Oakland, California, use no money at all.
Kitchens are different from regular bike shops in that they involve their patrons learning to fix their own bikes and becoming self-sufficient mechanics. Volunteer staff may guide them or teach them in classes, but the work is done by the patrons in a learn-by-doing methodology, which is critical in mastering bike maintenance and repair. To keep the shops sustainable, patrons are recruited to be volunteer staff, teaching others at whatever level they are at. SF Bike Kitchen staff seem to love their jobs, are obsessed with bikes, and reliably show up for weekly 5-hour shifts. The San Francisco Bike Kitchen has more patrons than it has space, so there is usually a line at the door even before the kitchen opens.
Bike Kitchens are surprisingly easy to start. Some begin out of a personal garage, like Bozeman Kitchen, sharing tools and skills informally. Biketopia in Berkeley opened and took just two months from conception to become an incorporated nonprofit with storefront shop, stands, tools, and a youth program. Founder Zach Cohen volunteered at the San Francisco Bike Kitchen as staff and earned Timebank hours at BACE Timebank, which he then used to create his own community bike shop in the East Bay. The hours paid for business plan, development, logo design, marketing and helped recruit a dedicated Board member. The SF Bike Kitchen donated the bike stands through its grant program. A local youth organization supplied volunteers to give at-risk youth employment skills. Zach explained his passion in an interview with EcoLocalizer, “I believe the most important form of activism is the creation of alternatives to the failing establishment. Biketopia’s goal is to address diverse social problems with one comprehensive model that builds community while implementing solutions to youth homelessness, climate change, interest based money, and public health.”
I was shocked to find out that despite charging minimal fees for shop use, Bike Kitchens are financially robust nonprofits. The San Francisco Bike Kitchen does so well it makes grants to other organizations, including non-bike organizations. SF Bike Kitchen’s annual Tour de Cupcake fundraiser sold out last year in just 6 days.
Colectivelo charges its patrons nothing. If people want to take something physical from the shop, they are asked to propose a work-trade to help the shop. It can be pretty much anything, as long it seems sincerely offered. Coordinator Morgan Kanninen says, "We make sure folks know about how the shop runs, what its challenges are, and that their opinions of what would help the shop are valuable. From there, what they want to do is really up to them. We don’t have rates for the number of hours it takes to earn something … it’s really valuable for this to be a co-created space. Someone painted us a landscape painting with a bike on it. " Colectivelo's rent is paid by the Catholic Worker organization and they receive parts and tool donations, which allows them to not pass on operating costs to their low income patrons, many of whom are undocumented immigrants.
Bike Kitchens are sometimes run with a collective-style governance structure. Because patrons pay for membership and day use, patrons often do most of the Bike Kitchens' governing. A blurry line may exist between patron, casual volunteer, and volunteer staff as everyone helps everyone else. SF Bike Kitchen Board member Lorae Fernandis believes that, “Paying minimal fees creates a dynamic where volunteer staff feel like they can ask the patrons to pitch in with work, rather than being passive customers and customers want to help because it’s their bike kitchen. There can be some inefficiencies in decision-making and executing tasks without much hierarchy but we think this model is important to community work.”
Read the rest of the article here.
02.14.12
From Shareable.net
I like to think of utopia as the space where idealism meets reality. Over the years, I have found few radical social change projects that met reality without failure or conflict, especially within a capitalist economy. Transformative projects often fail to take off and end up disillusioning their founders and volunteers. The Bike Kitchen model is one of those unique exceptions that we can try to learn from.
The first time I visited the San Francisco Bike Kitchen, I was struck by the seemingly limitless energy – it was bursting at the seams with volunteers and clients waiting to work on their own bikes. As other local nonprofits and business are struggling or closing up shop, I wondered what makes this model different.
Bike Kitchens have been around since the 1980s, and the earliest recorded one was in Austria. There is little documentation about how they spread, but now they're all over the world: from Argentina to France to Ghana and over 200 in the US alone. Their common mission tends to be bike access for everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status. Reciprocity and self-empowerment are the key operating principles. Everyone’s contribution matters regardless of skill level.
Almost all Bike Kitchens share a remarkably similar model, perhaps because it works so well although there is some variation. Some have “earn a bike” programs for kids, and some, like Bike Not Bombs. repair and ship bikes to developing countries. The Bicycle Organization Project explains what constitutes a community bike shop:
Non-profit bicycle organizations
Bike shops that are accessible to people without money
Shops that have an educational focus, teaching others how to fix bikes
Shops that are volunteer run
Shops that provide free or low-cost services to the community
Organizations that recycle bicycles and parts
Most of these workshops charge small shop day use or periodic membership fees, around $5 per day to use. As ecologically minded organizations, they recycle bike parts and get donations from bike companies to sell at low cost or as “digging rights” for a bigger bike project. Some have flat “build a bike” fees to cover the cost of staff supervision, parts, frame, etc. to build an entire bike from scratch (from a minimal $30 to $60 or a six hours work trade). Patrons at SF Bike Kitchen have a third payment option – to volunteer for another nonprofit on the local Timebank and use their Timebank hours to pay. Shops offer bartering so that costs can be paid in labor instead of money by their lowest income customers, reducing barriers to participation from diverse groups. For this reason, some kitchens, like Colectivelo in Oakland, California, use no money at all.
Kitchens are different from regular bike shops in that they involve their patrons learning to fix their own bikes and becoming self-sufficient mechanics. Volunteer staff may guide them or teach them in classes, but the work is done by the patrons in a learn-by-doing methodology, which is critical in mastering bike maintenance and repair. To keep the shops sustainable, patrons are recruited to be volunteer staff, teaching others at whatever level they are at. SF Bike Kitchen staff seem to love their jobs, are obsessed with bikes, and reliably show up for weekly 5-hour shifts. The San Francisco Bike Kitchen has more patrons than it has space, so there is usually a line at the door even before the kitchen opens.
Bike Kitchens are surprisingly easy to start. Some begin out of a personal garage, like Bozeman Kitchen, sharing tools and skills informally. Biketopia in Berkeley opened and took just two months from conception to become an incorporated nonprofit with storefront shop, stands, tools, and a youth program. Founder Zach Cohen volunteered at the San Francisco Bike Kitchen as staff and earned Timebank hours at BACE Timebank, which he then used to create his own community bike shop in the East Bay. The hours paid for business plan, development, logo design, marketing and helped recruit a dedicated Board member. The SF Bike Kitchen donated the bike stands through its grant program. A local youth organization supplied volunteers to give at-risk youth employment skills. Zach explained his passion in an interview with EcoLocalizer, “I believe the most important form of activism is the creation of alternatives to the failing establishment. Biketopia’s goal is to address diverse social problems with one comprehensive model that builds community while implementing solutions to youth homelessness, climate change, interest based money, and public health.”
I was shocked to find out that despite charging minimal fees for shop use, Bike Kitchens are financially robust nonprofits. The San Francisco Bike Kitchen does so well it makes grants to other organizations, including non-bike organizations. SF Bike Kitchen’s annual Tour de Cupcake fundraiser sold out last year in just 6 days.
Colectivelo charges its patrons nothing. If people want to take something physical from the shop, they are asked to propose a work-trade to help the shop. It can be pretty much anything, as long it seems sincerely offered. Coordinator Morgan Kanninen says, "We make sure folks know about how the shop runs, what its challenges are, and that their opinions of what would help the shop are valuable. From there, what they want to do is really up to them. We don’t have rates for the number of hours it takes to earn something … it’s really valuable for this to be a co-created space. Someone painted us a landscape painting with a bike on it. " Colectivelo's rent is paid by the Catholic Worker organization and they receive parts and tool donations, which allows them to not pass on operating costs to their low income patrons, many of whom are undocumented immigrants.
Bike Kitchens are sometimes run with a collective-style governance structure. Because patrons pay for membership and day use, patrons often do most of the Bike Kitchens' governing. A blurry line may exist between patron, casual volunteer, and volunteer staff as everyone helps everyone else. SF Bike Kitchen Board member Lorae Fernandis believes that, “Paying minimal fees creates a dynamic where volunteer staff feel like they can ask the patrons to pitch in with work, rather than being passive customers and customers want to help because it’s their bike kitchen. There can be some inefficiencies in decision-making and executing tasks without much hierarchy but we think this model is important to community work.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)