.In a more sustainable economy, everyone would have a vast array of local choices for investing, saving, and borrowing money.

We’re looking beyond Wall Street and giant corporate financial service providers and asking: How can community members pool their financial resources to support the thriving of our local economies? Click below to learn more about our projects and resources:

We develop resources, incubate projects, and advocate for policies to give communities greater control of and access to capital and financial services. We navigate legal and practical questions around local investing, community-sourced capital raising, lending circles, complementary currencies, mission investing, and more. To finance local enterprises, land, and farms, we help communities tap into pools of capital, such as community capital (savings and investments of ordinary people), retirement savings, foundation endowments, and more. 

Resource Libraries

- CommunityEnterpriseLaw.org with information financing, local investing, business entities, employment, and land and housing
- CommunityCurrenciesLaw.org with information on barter, time banks, and local currencies.

Resource Guides

- Grassroots Financing Guide for California Farmers
- Capital Raising for Worker Cooperatives: Using the AB 816 Community Investor Provision

Videos

- Securities Law Basics video, featuring squirrel cartoons!
- Legal Basics for Time Banks and Barter Exchanges, featuring soup cartoons!
- Legal Basics for Complementary Currencies, Part 1
- Legal Basics for Complementary Currencies, Part 2

Policy Advocacy

Our policy advocacy and research has included: 

- Local Economies Securities Act
- AB 816
- Tax Incentives for Local Investing
- CA Alternative Currencies Act (AB 129): Described here, here, and here, this was a bill to legalize the creation of new currencies in California. While this bill was signed into law, it did not go into effect due to a very strange fluke in the California legislative process. The section of California law (Corporations Code 107) that this legislation intended to remove is still on the books.
- Advocacy to change the CA Money Transmission Act: Described in this blog and this blog.

Contact

If you have questions or would like to get in touch about this project, contact Grassroots Finance Attorney, Cameron Rhudy at [email protected].

This work is funded, in part, by a grant from the Clarence E. Heller Foundation.