The need for an Open Money Foundation

February 1st, 2009

I’ve discussed this topic with Michael Linton and Marc Armstrong this WE.

Problem: community currencies are a $0 Billion market and promoting their development in a way that ensures and maximizes their potential for communities is expensive. Examples include travel costs or Web hosting costs. Today, although many parties are interested in the development of community currencies, there is no organization that represent their common interests that is able to officially receive donations for interested parties. These common interests today are mostly public awareness and technology interoperability, but will eventually include – should we be successful – right to exist under rules dictated by the government of each nation where these currencies are used.

Solution: we formalize Open Money into an Open Money Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to ensuring and maximizing the potential of community currencies. We use Community Way to raise money: corporate sponsors that may include telcos, computer manufacturers, airlines, etc. These companies donate to the foundation their excess capacity in the forms of consumer coupons/vouchers (ex. voice minutes, bandwidth, computers, offices, miles, etc.) and the foundation uses these donations to finance its mission either by directly using them, or by reselling them for the currency needed.

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Posted by Guillaume Lebleu Filed in communityway, fundraising, openmoney
Comments
  • Ryan Lanham

    I'm in. Tell me how I can help.

  • G,

    Sounds very good. I would like to participate if possible. editor@dgcmagazine.com Skpye IM 'digitalcurrency'

    Mark Herpel

  • I like this idea. What does Michael Linton think of it? Lots would have to be explored about how such an OPEN MONEY organization would be structured. Decision making processes, allocation of resources, etc. Perhaps using some sort of flow system WITHIN the organization could satisfy these needs. See http://newcurrencyfrontiers.bl... for exploration of flow language.

  • Hi Alan, thanks for stopping by.
    Michael is keen on this idea. I agree with you that there is a lot to think about. re: "using some sort of flow system WITHIN the organization", one thing Michael suggested, which may be close to what you are talking about, is to eat our own dog food: linking voting rights to contributions donated, which would be of various kinds (fiat national currency, people's time, corporations' products/services such as phone time, bandwidth, hardware, software, ad clicks, etc.). If you have specific ideas on how the concepts you are developing could be applied, we would be delighted to read and discuss them.

  • chender

    I agree this is worth exploring. I know you are familiar with Totnes in England as one example and there are others in France. There simply has to be better ways to deal with money.

    Totnes: http://thebankwatch.com/2008/0...

  • mtirel

    That's a great idea !
    I will see Bernard Lietaer this week and tell you what he thinks about it I ( http://www.lietaer.com/ )
    I just finished his great book : "Monnaies Régionales". See here for a synthesis in french: http://connecteur.blogspirit.c...

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