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Crowdfunding

Community Investors Are Doing What Big Dollar Retail Investors Won’t

July 20, 2023 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. , , ,
Lyneir Richardson has been helping Black people buy the block since 1991 or 1992. Then a new lawyer at the First National Bank of Chicago, Richardson occasionally had to take on pro-bono assignments that popped up related to the bank’s community reinvestment obligations. One such pro-bono assignment sent him to his childhood neighborhood on the West Side to work on loan documents for a $100,000 loan from a community-based organization to a barbershop on Chicago Avenue. “The amount of the loan, $100,000 or $100 million, didn’t matter. It was the same documents, a promissory note, a mortgage,” Richardson says.

Millions Of Americans Crowdfunding To Cover Medical Expenses

February 24, 2020 By Amanda Mills, Nationofchange.org ,
According to a recent survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), 8 million Americans had started a campaign for themselves or someone in their household and more than 12 million Americans had started a campaign for someone else. These campaigns were created solely to pay for medical bills or treatments. Crowdfunding is when a person raises funds for a specific purpose in hopes others will contribute.

In The Era Of The Hunger Artist, We’re Crowdfunding To Survive

October 10, 2015 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com , , ,
By Matt Stannard for Occupy, “People became accustomed to thinking it strange that in these times they would want to pay attention to a hunger artist, and with this habitual awareness the judgment on him was pronounced. He might fast as well as he could – and he did – but nothing could save him anymore. People went straight past him.” — Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist,” 1922. Kafka’s hunger artist made performance of suffering his art. In the dismal twilight of corporate capitalism, many of us are becoming hunger artists by necessity, performing our suffering in hopes others can help us out.

The Share Economy Creating Sustainable Food Systems

August 30, 2014 Bronwen Morgan, www.occupy.com , , ,
At the end of the first week of August 2014, two different crowdfunding pitches closed almost simultaneously. FarmDrop, based in the UK, had raised three quarters of a million pounds, which was not far from double their original goal, from 359 investors. Open Food Network, based in Australia, had raised Aus$35,877 from 398 investors. Peering through the windows opened up by these two initiatives gives a clear view of rather different trajectories of the burgeoning "sharing economy." Crowdfunding’s heady mix of creative expression, cultivating an audience of potential investors, media-savvy PR pitch, and technical provision of ‘due diligence’ information about business plans and risk seems appropriate to the somewhat contradictory ethos surrounding the spread and growth of the sharing economy. As William Deresiewicz argued in the New York Times in 2011 in "Generation Sell": "Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business.... The small business is the idealized social form of our time. Our culture hero is not the artist or reformer, not the saint or scientist, but the entrepreneur. Autonomy, adventure, imagination: entrepreneurship comprehends all this and more for us. The characteristic art form of our age may be the business plan."

Victory Gardens DC Is Growing Food & Community

June 17, 2014 Lynda McCullough, www.foodtank.com , , , , , ,
Victory Gardens DC, a new urban farm in Washington, D.C., grew out of one young couple’s desire to serve city residents in a practical way. Alex Shek, an entrepreneur, and his wife Julia, a nurse, decided that the best way to help the people in their Southeast neighborhood is to provide healthy food to those who can’t afford it. With Alex’s business know how, Julia’s knowledge of healthy food and cooking, and the aid of some talented friends, they started an urban farm in their own neighborhood. Neighbors, local businesses, churches and contributors on indigogo.com have provided labor and money, and the couple’s dream is now a reality. Food Tank: What inspired you to start Victory Gardens DC? AS: My wife and I moved to the city from Northern Virginia with the idea of ministry and outreach in our heart, and we wanted to fill a need, a practical need, and how practical is food? The ability to find organic food or good fresh fruits and vegetables at a low cost in the city is really challenging, and I hope we can make an impact through providing food for those that can't afford it.

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