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Crowdfunding

Two Different Models To Erasing Medical Debt

March 2, 2026 Anabel Peterman, Next City. , , ,
When Lucy Becker got the letter, she had a hunch what it was about. Just a couple of weeks prior, she had read an article in CivicLex about her local government’s new initiative to erase $90 million in medical debt for residents. “My mom always keeps a little stack of my mail. The first one on top said [Lexington]-Fayette Urban County Government, and I was like, no way,” says Becker, a 28-year-old musician in Lexington, Kentucky, who has racked up thousands in medical debt due to injuries and severe allergies – debt she thought there would be no escape from.

Crowdfunded Real Estate Projects Bring In Community Investors

January 7, 2026 Sandra Larson, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
West Oakland’s 7th Street was historically home to a bustling Black business corridor known as the “Harlem of the West.” During the day, it served customers looking for grocery stores, pharmacies, ice cream parlors, and lunch spots. At night it had a legendary blues music scene that flourished from the 1930s through the 1960s. One of that scene’s anchors was Esther’s Orbit Room, hosting the likes of T-Bone Walker, Ike and Tina Turner, Etta James, and many other well-known acts in its heyday. In the second half of the 20th century, however, the thriving district suffered waves of economic decline, displacement and fragmentation, with the disappearance of wartime jobs and the construction of new freeways and BART tracks cutting right through the neighborhood, leaving a string of vacant or underused properties.

Mirlo Is Building Cooperative Tools For Music Distribution

December 16, 2025 Mittens XVX, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
Trying to stay consistent at running a DIY punk website for years often brings me a weird kind of pressure and internal conflicts: the routine of reviewing as many records as possible, the inertia of keeping up with the endless stream of new releases. And while I always care about lyrics, politics, and the band’s overall background, message, and context, in the end most bands and labels sending me music still feel like they’re grasping for attention in a world where the collective attention span is almost zero. Despite all the embedded politics in punk, DIY Conspiracy can still end up looking like just another music website with reviews and interviews, feeding free traffic and implicit endorsement to Bandcamp, YouTube, and other platforms.

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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