How It Works
It’s actually pretty simple: Put Money In. You Get Credit.
When you put money on your CGPay app, the money goes into a Community Fund and you get that much credit to spend at a participating business or for person-to-person payments. The business uses our CGPay app, at no cost to either you or the business. No credit card fees!
That credit can be used to pay employees and suppliers, to spend again at a participating
business. The credit circulates in your community and the Community Fund Grows.
Flow Chart
Participating businesses use that credit to purchase from other Common Good Businesses and pay employees
Who it serves: Community Fund
The money you put in from your bank account is still there in the Community Fund. That’s the “float”, representing the amount of credit being actively used, going in circles within the Common Good system.
The Community Fund typically holds about $250 per member. With a thousand members, for example, that’s a quarter million dollars. If you get more credit than you can easily spend within the Common Good system just transfer it to your bank account and the Community Fund goes down by that much.
As the amount in the Community Fund grows overall, we can invest it together, democratically, in worthwhile projects for the community and the common good. The local Common Good community members make the funding decisions.
Economic Democracy
Community control is the real power and purpose of the Common Good system. Community-level democracy allows us to decide what our funding priorities should be, then issuing Common Good credit to fund our decisions.
No central authority rules the Common Good system. Common Good has developed a powerful combination of democratic practices— Common Good Democracy™ — and recommends communities adopt this hybrid system as a starting point before customizing their local decision system.
In Common Good Democracy every voice counts. Common Good Democracy embraces these core principles:
- In-person human contact can deepen trust, enhance creativity, and help build consensus.
- Everyone’s voice is represented equally.
- Active participation by all members is valued and encouraged.
- Voting is easy and produces the most preferred widely-acceptable result.
Who can use the Community Fund?
Each Common Good Community is responsible for adapting these steps to its own situation, to maximize community-centered economic democracy. The community’s Trustees or Members may propose an issue for discussion and decision.
Typical issues might include:
- Setting the community’s funding priorities for the coming year.
- Considering specific investments or grants to advance the common good locally and elsewhere.
- Funding incentives for sustainable business practices.
Members narrow the proposals to a handful of options, formulate questions, and organize final proposals for voting. Typically the voting period is seven days.
- Vote: Members vote online or in person at a community center before the voting period ends.
- Results: Results are announced automatically online ONLY when all the votes have been accounted for. Results will NOT be disclosed while the voting is open.
- Objections: Voters are encouraged to “veto” an option if they have a moral or ethical objection, always giving a reason for the veto. If any winning option is vetoed by 5% or more of the voters, the issue goes back for further discussion.
How is this any different from a Community Loan Fund?
Tested & Proven
