Community Growth Fund
Formally BWOB (Buildings With Out Banks)

Birth of the Community Growth Fund by Frank Higdon (reprinted from the Green Revolution, Oct. 2007)

At our October board meeting, I chaired a rare gathering of the Building Without Banks Committee, aka BWOB, with a couple of simple goals. My primary goal was to propose a name change for the committee—so that we had a title that really captured a proactive and positive vision for the funds that Mel Leasure so generously donated to the committee some years ago. Building without banks is a worthy goal, but it rang as an awkward and slightly negative acronym in some ears. My ears were ringing not long after joining the committee in 2005. In addition to changing the name, my other intention that fine October morning was to expand the committee’s purpose from a tight focus on financing building projects on community land, to a more inclusive purpose of helping stimulate small business start-ups, home improvements, social entrepreneurship, and other types of “community” projects that require our support and financial backing. In the end, we met briefly, had a great roundtable dialogue, and there was general support of me guiding BWOB in a new direction. Later at the open meeting, more than a dozen SOL members muddled through a “naming process” to discover a new title that honored the committee’s roots while trumpeting its new mission. The result was the “Melvin N. Leasure” Community Growth Fund (CGF) committee.

In much the same way as one names a child—well, that’s the easy stuff. Now we need to draw on everyone’s creativity and input to chart the committee’s new direction. In early 2007, the CGF committee will be reviewing its borrowing guidelines and outlining a new set of procedures that will allow more funding to make its way into our communities for worthwhile purposes. One idea is to base our lending on the microfinance principles of the Grameen Bank. This approach would essentially require two or more SOL members to co-sponsor a CGF applicant in the hope that increasing community involvement and peer mentoring will make for better projects and improve the likelihood of timely loan/grant repayment. Another idea is to create a new type of “intentional finance” where SOL members can make “investments” in worthy projects without the goal of earning personal profits. Nonprofit loan funds like this are sprouting up in response to funding needs in the developing world (See www.kiva.com for an example). While many ideas have been floating about, no firm decisions have been made at this time. It is important to keep in mind that we all want the CGF to grow over time, but it is important that the funding be active in building stronger relationships within SOL and creating personal and professional opportunities for those living “in community”. Interested members should feel free to contact me if you have ideas or financial concepts that you think would be helpful as we draft the new CGF guidelines over the next few months. In the meantime, the established guidelines and application packet will be used to evaluate member projects. Thanks for all of your help and support so far, I look forward to hearing from you all in 2007 and beyond!

For more information on how you can help contact:

Community Growth Fund
c/o School of Living
215 Julian Woods Lane
Julian, PA 16844
814/353-0130
tarr46@comcast.net