Keeping Money Local Description

People in southern Illinois are building local community resilience in the face of climate change. Self-sufficiency in energy and food is a key part of this effort, and can result in more and better jobs in the region. Keeping our money local, supporting local producers, and investing in local businesses is something everyone can do to support this effort. In this seminar series, we’re exploring topics of community self-sufficiency, buying local, developing cooperative employee-owned businesses, and investment strategies that keep money local. Speakers will cover topics that can benefit our region, as well as initiatives that are already underway. The goal is to educate and inspire everyone to action in helping to make our region prosperous, productive and sustainable. Download PDF Flyer.

This is just the beginning for Keeping Money Local! As we recover from the human and economic devastation that COVID-19 has wrought, our best opportunities lie with a just transition to a clean energy economy. We are bringing together organizations across southern Illinois to provide the necessary education and spur beneficial action. It’s not only what’s best for humanity, the environment and our economy, it’s also a lot of fun. We are exploring new ways of doing things that benefit those who are actually doing the work and taking the risks. Register on https://cleanetwork.com where you can join discussions and projects for keeping money local.

Amy McMorrow Hunter – CLEANetwork.com – A Local Network for Capacity Building

Amy is the President/CEO of The Climate Economy Education Inc (TCE), a nonprofit for education on lifestyles and business models that are good for the climate, economy and humanity. Amy’s introducing TCE’s CLEANetwork, an online platform for community capacity building. The challenges we face in our communities require everyone’s courage, creativity and cooperation, and that’s what CLEANetwork aims to facilitate. Amy will provide a brief introduction of the three facets of CLEANetwork:

Education and Training – CLEANetwork aims to serve as a hub for education and training in the economic and societal transformation that’s already underway.

Clean Jobs and Ventures – New ways of doing things, new ventures and jobs can be created in everything we do, from energy to food to leisure, to do things in new and better ways. CLEANetwork aims to help people find their niche, find jobs and/or start new ventures.

Strengthening Communities – CLEANetwork’s helping to kickoff new community ideas and also training people in communities to serve as the “catalyst” to to energize actions and ensure they come to fruition.

Beau Henson – Solarize Southern Illinois

Beau Henson is the founder of Inspiration Point Solutions. He spent several years as a regional planner and economic development specialist at Greater Egypt Regional Planning and Development Commission, and was a fellow at the Delta Leadership Institute.

If you are a homeowner or small business owner residing in Franklin, Jackson, Union, Perry and Williamson County, you may be eligible to participate in this first-time solar group buy program in Southern Illinois. Hosted by Solarize Southern Illinois Working Group. Like other programs of its type, it lowers the solar installers’ “soft costs” further by providing up-front customer education en masse and localizing the coverage area. This allows you to go solar for a lower price and move your community toward achieving its sustainability goals. For each installation, Solarize Southern Illinois will help fund the new Southern Illinois Renewable Energy Fund to help low-income community members go solar.

Jennifer Rollison and Leah Maciell – Cristaudos/Southern Illinois Food Cooperative

Jennifer Rollinson & Leah Maciell are representatives of Cristaudo’s and the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen. They will be providing an overview of some issues they’ve been dealing with as a local business. As a restaurant it’s always hard to exist in a small town with a fluctuating economy-it’s a struggle.  With the pandemic, it became more important than ever to pull together as a community and share resources. This way of looking at a restaurant, through the lens of what is best for the community and people who need food, will help create a more sustainable model while also helping tackle food insecurity in our area. Creating the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen and working with community groups has shown that we need a Community Kitchen/Food Hub in our community.

Chuck Paprocki – Carbondale Spring Revolving Loan Fund

Carbondale Spring is in the process of developing a revolving loan fund that will help capitalize small locally owned businesses and workers cooperatives. We will make loans primarily based upon what we define as social capital.  This includes the business’ personal and business relevance to creating the economic infrastructure that meets people’s basic needs; their social network of supplies and consumers within the community; and their shared values and emotional connection with the Loan Fund’s purpose, goals and objectives. 

This mission is driven by the fact that there is a concentration of economically marginalized families and business owners in our region who have few options, particularly when hard times hit. Without access to proper resources our region’s local small businesses are left to expire and with them the foundation of our communities. 

To reverse this negative trend, we propose creating a Revolving Loan Fund that can facilitate the growth and development of local small businesses and worker-owned cooperatives by providing valuable funding. The Revolving Loan Fund will lend funds from a pool of money to eligible recipients who have created growth strategies that save/create jobs and build local small business ownership capacity. The returned payments in the form of interest and principle will then be relent to invest in other qualifying projects as they present themselves. 

Worker-owned cooperatives have historically proven to be more stable fixtures in a community because they have the ability to expand the base of ownership and civic engagement and create a sustainable system by which to meet the basic needs of the local people.

Southern Illinois Community Foundation

About Southern Illinois Community Foundation: The mission of the Southern Illinois Community Foundation is to engage the people of southern Illinois in building a tradition of philanthropy. The Southern Illinois Community Foundation is committed to creating an opportunity for donors to participate in local community development efforts to address the changing needs of our community through charitable giving. This will be accomplished by building a regional endowment, designated funds, field of interest funds, donor-advised funds and undesignated funds in order to enhance the quality of life throughout our region.

Southern Illinois Community Foundation’s Statement of Support: SICF is proud to sponsor this community development series.  Communities throughout Southern Illinois are facing challenges on how to thrive in this economy.  We see the ability to invest in our local economy and the development of local small businesses as a key component to future growth and development in our region. 

Carbondale Spring

About Carbondale Spring: Carbondale Spring is a people’s movement that is working to create a local economic that is self-reliant in meeting local people’s basic needs. Current projects promote food autonomy, renewable energy, a team of care workers, and the creation of locally owned and controlled workers cooperatives. We see these projects as essential to creating real social security for people at a time when the global economy has side-tracked our area and our natural environment is threatened by business as usual practices. We believe that the City of Carbondale has a role to play in helping people to meet their basic needs and should adjust its funding prioritize away from excessive policing to meeting basic needs.

Carbondale Spring’s Statement of Support: We are proud sponsors of the Keeping Money Local Seminar Series because we believe that local self-reliance cannot be achieved without the participation of the majority of local people. To achieve greater self-reliance requires the investment of local dollars in local businesses and services. It cannot be achieved by government doles or loans by multinational corporations. This important Seminar Series will help local people understand how they can become a part of this new economy by investing their hard-earned dollars in their own community, where they will have greater impact for good, instead of on Wall Street that does not have the interests of our local community in mind.

The Climate Economy Education Inc

About The Climate Economy Education Inc: The Climate Economy Education Inc is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to help everyone, everywhere generate people-centered climate ventures through education and programs so every individual achieves prosperous net zero emissions in their lifestyles and work in order to bring and keep all the Earth’s natural systems in balance for current and future generations.

The Climate Economy Education Inc’s Statement of Support: Finance is a key to the massive transformation that is required to adapt lifestyles and business models that are good for the climate, economy and humanity. We’ve been told there are certain ways we’re supposed to work and invest that have worked well for a few and leave most others in a daily unnatural worry of paying off debts and putting food on the table. This event should inspire action to implement new business models and investment strategies that have been proven to be widely beneficial elsewhere and should be spread community by community. We’re going to help lead this effort in southern Illinois.

Cristaudo’s and the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen

About Cristaudo’s and the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen: Cristaudo’s is a small, local café, bakery and catering business which also includes a gift shop called 6Pence. The goals of Cristaudo’s are to fuel, support and entertain the community by offering a variety of products and services under one roof featuring continental cuisine and locally, regionally and sustainably produced items. Currently, Cristaudo’s has joined with other local organizations to create the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen.  Through this program we are able to support other local restaurants who are struggling because of the pandemic, while providing free meals to help alleviate food insecurity in our community. To continue to expand on this, we are also looking at ways a worker-owned cooperative structure would strengthen these efforts.  We feel that by working together in this style, a vibrant and thriving community can be maintained. 

Statement of support: We are proud to support the seminar series ‘Keeping Money Local’.  It is the support of community members that has always been the building block of any local business or organization.   It is this collaborative effort that makes our community. The emphasis of this seminar on new business structures and investing locally is a continuation of this notion that can create a stronger and self-sustaining economy for our future.  

Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association

About Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association (www.eeca.coop): Egyptian Electric Cooperative is a southern Illinois consumer-owned electric cooperative that was established in 1938, suppling electric service to more rural members predominantly in portions of Jackson, Randolph, Perry, and Williamson counties. We/They are a distribution utility, serving over 15,000 households, commercial and industrial accounts. Egyptian Electric is headquartered in Murphysboro and maintains nearly 2,000 miles of line. Membership base is an average of 7.5 meters per mile of line, compared to the investor-owned companies averaging 35 customers per mile of line.

Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association Statement of Support: Concern for community is one of our cooperative principles that sets us apart from other utilities. We know that our core job is to keep the lights on; but our passion is for our communities. Because we live and work here too, and we want to make it a better place for all.

City of Harrisburg

About City of Harrisburg: The City of Harrisburg is a municipality located within the heart of Southeastern Illinois. As an organization comprised of elected officials and City workers, we are dedicated towards the improvement of the quality of life within the community and to look towards a more prosperous future for our residents. In working strategically with partner organizations throughout the region, leveraging existing resources, and helping our community thrive, the City is actively working towards seeing the community improve. Our philosophy is deeply set in working cooperatively with other organizations and members of the public, because working together, we are a stronger.

City of Harrisburg Statement of Support: The City of Harrisburg supports the initiatives as put forth by this web series in the alternatives available to the conventional molds of entrepreneurship that has embodied Southeastern Illinois. In working with new models and forming a community engagement perspective, the possibilities are endless towards the potential revitalization of our area and region.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2020
Contact: Byram Fager, Southern Illinois Community Foundation, 618 997 3700, blfager@sicf.org; Amy McMorrow Hunter, The Climate Economy Education Inc, 618 713 2896, amy@theclimateeconomy.com
Website: www.keepingmoneylocal.com 

Investment in Southern Illinois communities and people is the focus of this upcoming webinar series

Local organizations cooperate with the goal to increase regional long-term self-sufficiency

A webinar series coming up in October-November on “Keeping Money Local” will feature experts in local self-sufficiency, supporting local businesses, new business forms and local investment strategies. Speakers and panelists from local businesses will cover topics that can benefit our region, including initiatives that are already underway. The goal is to educate and inspire everyone to action in helping to make our region prosperous, productive and sustainable, and increase our regional self-sufficiency. View sponsorship opportunities and register at www.KeepingMoneyLocal.com. These events are free and open to the public. Registration is required for each seminar. Seminar dates, times, and speakers follow:

Monday – Oct 19, 2020 6-7:30pm – The Big Picture – we’ll be learning about local self-sufficiency, what it means and how we can achieve it, and tools we can start using today.

• James Quilligan – Carrying Capacity of the Land
• Chuck Paprocki – Elements in Creating a Self-Reliant Local Economy
• Amy McMorrow Hunter – CLEANetwork.com – A Local Network for Building Capacity

Monday – Oct 26, 2020 6-7:30pm – Supporting The Local Economy – what it means to support local business creation and growth, and examples of local initiatives to spur growth

• Michael Shuman – Pollinating Local Success
• Amy McMorrow Hunter – ShopCarbondale.com, a Local Pollinator
• Beau Henson – Solarize Southern Illinois – Community Solar Program

Thursday – Nov 12, 2020 6-7:30pm – New Business Forms – Worker cooperatives, what they are and how they work, and how you can switch to this business form

• Sandra McCardell – Worker Cooperatives
• Rob Brown – Transitioning to Workers Cooperatives 
• Jennifer Rollison and Leah Maciell – Cristaudo’s & Southern IL Collaborative Kitchen

Tuesday – Nov 17, 2020 6-7:30pm – Local Investing –  DIY investment strategies as alternatives to the stock market, including self-directed IRA’s and solo 401k’s, and a new local revolving loan fund

• Michael Shuman – Cutting Edge Local Investment Opportunities
• Kristen Barker – Revolving Loan Funds
• Chuck Paprocki – Carbondale Spring Revolving Loan Fund

About invited speakers:

• James Quilligan: analyst, administrator, and policy adviser in the field of international development since 1975, presently Managing Director of the Centre for Global Negotiations and Global Commons Trust
• Michael Shuman: economist, attorney, entrepreneur, and a leading visionary on community economics, author of several books including “The Local Economy Solution” and “Put Your Money Where Your Life Is”
• Sandra McCardell:  Coordinating Director at the Cooperative Catalyst of New Mexico
• Rob Brown: Director of the Cooperative Development Institute’s Business Ownership Solutions (BOS) program
• Kristen Barker: Executive Director at Co-op Cincy

Local speakers include Chuck Paprocki of Carbondale Spring, Beau Henson for Solarize Southern Illinois, Amy McMorrow Hunter of The Climate Economy Education Inc and ShopCarbondale.com LLC, and Jennifer Rollison and Leah Maciell of Cristaudo’s and the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen.

More information about speakers, biographical information and organizations is available on the website.

The events are organized locally by the Southern Illinois Community Foundation, Carbondale Spring, Cristaudo’s and the Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen, The Climate Economy Education Inc, Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association, and City of Harrisburg. The webinar series is just the beginning of the group’s work, as working groups for local entrepreneurship, cooperatives and investment will be formed over the course of the series.

Southern Illinois Community Foundation’s Statement of Support (www.sicf.org): SICF is proud to sponsor this community development series.  Communities throughout Southern Illinois are facing challenges on how to thrive in this economy.  We see the ability to invest in our local economy and the development of local small businesses as a key component to future growth and development in our region. 

Carbondale Spring’s Statement of Support (www.carbondalespring.org): We are proud sponsors of the Keeping Money Local Seminar Series because we believe that local self-reliance cannot be achieved without the participation of the majority of local people. To achieve greater self-reliance requires the investment of local dollars in local businesses and services. It cannot be achieved by government doles or loans by multinational corporations. This important Seminar Series will help local people understand how they can become a part of this new economy by investing their hard-earned dollars in their own community, where they will have greater impact for good, instead of on Wall Street that does not have the interests of our local community in mind.

The Climate Economy Education Inc’s Statement of Support (www.theclimateeconomy.com): Finance is a key to the massive transformation that is required to adapt lifestyles and business models that are good for the climate, economy and humanity. This event should inspire action to implement new business models and investment strategies that have been proven to be widely beneficial elsewhere and should be spread community by community. We’re excited to help lead this effort in southern Illinois.

Cristaudo’s/Southern Illinois Collaborative Kitchen Statement of Support (www.cristaudos.com): We are proud to support the seminar series ‘Keeping Money Local’. It is the support of community members that has always been the building block of any local business or organization.  It is this collaborative effort that makes our community. The emphasis of this seminar on new business structures and investing locally is a continuation of this notion that can create a stronger and self-sustaining economy for our future.  

Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association Statement of Support (www.eeca.coop): Concern for community is one of our cooperative principles that sets us apart from other utilities. We know that our core job is to keep the lights on; but our passion is for our communities. Because we live and work here too, and we want to make it a better place for all.

City of Harrisburg Statement of Support (www.thecityofharrisburgil.com): The City of Harrisburg supports the initiatives as put forth by this web series in the alternatives available to the conventional molds of entrepreneurship that has embodied Southeastern Illinois. In working with new models and forming a community engagement perspective, the possibilities are endless towards the potential revitalization of our area and region.

Download Press Release PDF