The Opportunity Finance Network is now taking donations to channel funds from concerned citizens to community investment projects that will help finance and create lasting new jobs in low-income communities across the United States. Starbucks is one of the most visible partners, and is giving bracelets that read “Indivisible” to anyone who donates $5 or more. The project is helping to crowdsource the national investment in new job creation.
One of the keys to long-term economic recovery has to be the rebuilding of the base of capital at the community level, where more people are able to leverage their economic activity to move up into a vibrant and sustainable middle class. With Congress in disarray over opposition to such policies, concerned citizens, businesses and social enterprises are now taking the lead in developing or redeveloping affordable asset-building at the community level.
The Opportunity Finance Network may be just one example of what could be a new national paradigm for financing projects that lead to sustained job creation: people put in what they can, when they can, and institutions devoted to fomenting socio-economic vibrancy, not seeking profit or personal or factional gain, devote those funds to local entities, individuals and start-up businesses, NGOs and community groups, that will provide not only jobs but a way to sustain them.
The project is another example of what seems to have been the defining characteristic of political and economic change in 2011: people are simply taking the reins where powerful institutions will not or cannot lead. From citizen volunteering to Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street, to the incredible apotheosis of crowdsourced do-gooding, like the Kiva microlending initiative, people are now taking control of the human condition, whether governments support them or not.
Working together to effect positive change is what the most virtuous projects of all kinds do, and need to do, and 2011 has seen upheaval across the spectrum, as citizens, students, innovators, artists, educators and entrepreneurs, are finding new ways to use the collective will of “the crowd” to produce better outcomes in the vast “elsewhere” that is the world at large.
People are connecting to people to create solutions to big problems, or to brainstorm expressions of discontent. The Opportunity Finance Network is a start, a jumping off point, from which many good things can happen for building community-level economic vibrancy, through Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI). It is the people working at the human-scale, in the community, creating new projects and putting them into practice, that will make the ultimate difference.