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A Recipe for Successful Community Currency

by Paul Glover

Printing local money sets the table for a feast provided by your city or town. Here are my suggested ingredients for spicing local trade with local cash.

1. HIRE A NETWORKER. During the past 15 years, nearly 100 American community currencies have come and gone. Ithaca’s HOURS became huge because, during their first eight years, they could rely on a full-time Networker to constantly promote, facilitate and troubleshoot circulation. Lots of talking and listening.
Just as national currencies have armies of brokers helping money move, local currencies need at least one paid Networker. Your volunteer core group-- your Municipal Reserve Board-- may soon realize that they’ve created a labor-intensive local institution, like a food co-op or credit union. Playing Monopoly is easier than building anti-Monopoly.
Reduce your need to pay the Networker with dollars, by finding someone to donate housing. Then find others to donate harvest, health care, entertainment.

2. DESIGN CREDIBLE MONEY. Make it look both majestic and cheerful, to reflect your community’s best spirit. Feature the most widely respected monuments of nature, buildings, and people. One Ithaca note celebrates children; another displays its bioregional bug. Use as many colors as you can afford, then add an anti-counterfeit device. Ithaca has used local handmade paper made of local weed fiber but recently settled on 50/50 hemp/cotton. Design professionally-- cash is an emblem of community pride.

3. BE EVERYWHERE. Prepare for everyone in the region to understand and embrace this money, such that it can purchase everything, whether listed in the directory or not. This means broadcasting an email newsletter, publishing a newspaper (at least quarterly), sending press releases,

When Going Gets Tough, Local Currency Gets Going

www.washingtonpost.com

By Karla Adam
Special to the Washington Post
Sunday, September 27, 2009

LONDON -- Throughout Britain, people are hanging on to their hard-earned pounds, scrimping and saving as they ride out the recession.

But in a few communities, people are taking a different tack: printing their own money and spending it. No, the queen's image on the iconic British pound isn't being counterfeited. Instead, some communities are producing their own scrips -- some of the latest have painter Vincent van Gogh's face on them -- which can be used much like cash at participating businesses.

The latest community to do so is Brixton, the second area in Britain this month that introduced its own currency. With an initial run of 40,000 notes in various denominations, it is the most ambitious project here of its kind so far.

Tim Nichols is project manager for the Brixton pound, one of the alternative currencies created by some British communities to ride out the tough times. (By Karla Adam -- The Washington Post) Sometimes called Britain's Harlem, the Brixton is a multiethnic area in south London with a large African Caribbean population and a vibrant atmosphere. The kind of mind-set seen in this bustling and close-knit community is crucial for any local currency plan to work, say economists, adding that like any other form of exchange, the success of the Brixton pound will hinge on the continued confidence and willingness among people to use it.

Dollars with Good Sense: DIY Cash

Local currencies value time, build community, and keep business moving even when credit dries up.

by Judith Schwartz

YES! Magazine - Summer 2009



	BerkShare board member Asa Hardcastle visits Berkshire Bank in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to exchange his federal dollars—95 cents for each $1 BerkShare. Photo by Jason Houston, jasonhouston.com

Total dependence on one currency is like total dependence on one crop, or, for that matter, a single energy source: there’s always the risk that crop failure or a cutoff in supply will topple the whole system. This is the scenario we’re seeing now—credit has dried up and unemployment is soaring. In small pockets throughout the world, in rural areas and inner cities, and spots as far-flung as Bavaria and Thailand to Massachusetts and Michigan, people are responding by launching their own currencies. Such monetary renegades are not simply thumbing their noses at the dollar (or the mark, or the euro, or the baht…) They are making a carefully considered choice to promote the well-being of their communities.

“From the beginning we had two objectives—to promote the region and promote local charities,” says Christian Gelleri. In 2003, Gelleri and a group of his students at a Waldorf School developed the Chiemgauer currency in the Lake Chiemsee region of Bavaria, Germany. Since then, some 3 million Chiemgauer notes (equivalent in value to the euro) have been placed in circulation. The currency, accepted by 600 businesses in the region, typically is spent and spent again 18 times a year—three times more than the Euro. This means that the currency is encouraging trade and cooperation in the region, which keeps the shops and restaurants and artisans active. Think of this faster rate of use (what economists term “velocity”) as a kind of reinvestment in the community.