Imagine if you could buy a cup of coffee from Starbucks in your town at a discount with local community money. Think Norman Rockwell.

Berkshares, in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, developed by Susan Witt, allows community members to grow their businesses locally and use their Berkshares at over 400 area businesses and 200 home-based businesses. Norman Rockwell, who hails from those parts, is featured on the bill.

The concept of local dollars isn’t new and was used briefly during the depression to stimulate spending in local communities. Slow Money, founded by Woody Tausch, is modeled on the 20-year old slow food movement and promotes investing in small food enterprises and local food systems.

It also focuses on connecting investors to their local economies. The economic downturn has forced investors to take a second look at where their dollars are going. What better place than back into our local communities and food enterprises? Slow money’s goal is to have a million people investing 1 percent of their assets in local food systems within a decade.

The slow food movement, “links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment,” according to the slow food website. Slow money is a natural outgrowth of this movement with the important extra ingredient of developing new financial products and services that can connect investors to their local economies.

Many businesses such as Whole Foods are cashing in on the principles promoted by Slow Money. Companies that share the community focus with a for-profit orientation and a slightly different twist include Groupon.

Offering daily coupons, Groupon customers can join together and get a sizeable discount on items in their local communities ranging from yoga classes to Indian restaurants. This takes advantage of both large group buying power and close proximity of the featured businesses. Whole Foods, established in 1980, is a green grocer with over 50,000 team members and 300 stores that, “cares about our communities and our environment,” as stated in their website.

What do whole and slow foods and fast and slow money have in common?

Social capital values social networks. Fast money and large corporate organizations don’t focus on promoting ‘nurture capital.’

As stated in slow money’s principles, “the 21st Century will be the era of nurture capital, built around principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place and non-violence.” Cooperation will be an important component of slow money’s focus. And there is the benefit of working together and giving back to our community which companies like Whole Foods actively promotes and is consistent with slow money principles.

Environmental challenges aren’t the only hurdles in our nation’s future. We are also changing the fundamental way we look at business ventures and how we can all work together and contribute to make a better community. And getting a great cup of coffee at a discount is just the beginning!

For more information see:

 http://www.slowmoney.org/about.html

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/.