Printing Money, Making Change

Very cool and well written article on the possibilities of local currencies for empowering folks in community, sell coupons for cheese maybe to be redeemed?
Hmmm, tasty and fertile ideas.

lov
thom


http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/publications/essay_orion.html


PRINTING MONEY, MAKING CHANGE:
The Future of Local Currencies

by Susan Witt

Published in Autumn 1998 issue of Orion Afield, 195 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, www.oriononline.org

On May 30, 1998, the New York Times Metro Section carried a front page story about Thread City Bread, a local currency issued in Willimantic, Connecticut. Within a few days CNBC, ABC World News Tonight, Voice of America, Fox News in Boston, Northeast Magazine, as well as several regional papers, TV and radio stations had swooped into Willimantic to interview selectpersons, bankers, and shop owners about their homemade money.

Popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s when federal dollars were in short supply, local currencies are experiencing a revival in North America, but for new reasons. In the 1990s small towns and inner city neighborhoods are discovering that local scrip helps to define regional trading areas, educate consumers about local resources, and build community. Willimantic joins the more than 65 different communities in the United States and Canada where you can use colorful bills with names like Dillo Hours and Barter Bucks for anything from buying groceries to having your hair cut or your computer repaired.

It started in 1989 when Frank Tortoriello, the owner of a popular restaurant in the Southern Berkshire region of Massachusetts, was rejected for a bank loan to finance a move to a new location. In a small community word spreads quickly. The Berkshires are also home to the E. F. Schumacher Society. All of us in the office knew the Deli; we ate lunch there and recognized that Frank had a committed clientele who could afford to take a risk to keep the cherished luncheon spot in business. We suggested that Frank issue Deli Dollars as a self-financing technique. Customers could purchase the notes during a month of sale and redeem them over a year’s period after The Deli had moved to its new location. Martha Shaw, a local artist, donated the design for the notes which were dated and read “redeemable for meals up to a value of ten dollars.” Frank sold ten-dollar notes for eight dollars and in thirty days had raised $5,000. Over the next year, Frank repaid the loan, in sandwiches and soup, rather than hard to come by federal dollars. Berkshire Farm Preserve Notes, Monterey General Store Notes, and Kintaro Notes soon followed in what looked like a movement.

Paul Glover of Ithaca, New York, saw the media coverage of the Berkshire notes and liked the idea of hand-to-hand currency that let consumers support local business through pre-purchase of products, but he wanted to broaden the concept. Instead of each business issuing its own notes, why couldn’t the community as a whole issue a local scrip? To learn how this might be done, he spent a week doing research on the history and theory of regional issue of scrip at the E. F. Schumacher Library, and had long discussions with one of its founders, Robert Swann, who has spent a lifetime promoting local currencies.


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