Sustaining Technologies

Sustaining Technologies is a worker-owned and cooperatively managed (one owner = one vote) LLC.   We provide effective tools to harness the power of local money and the economic multiplier for communities that are building vibrant and resilient local economies.

The founders of Sustaining Technologies helped create and develop the Sonoma County GoLocal Cooperative network, a member of BALLE and AMIBA.

We strongly believe in the principles of BALLE and local living economies. Our experience with Sonoma County GoLocal Cooperative has given us a deep understanding of the challenges inherent in building a successful network. We support entrepreneurs pioneering the development of these networks, coaching them and using our tools for realizing systemic economic change in their communities.

Strategy

Building on the relocalization framework and leveraging the existing networks of BALLE and AMIBA, Sustaining Technologies has developed a strategy, organizational tools, and technology for growing strong networks from the ground up that will serve as the economic hubs of their communities.  We see four distinct implementation stages for relocalization networks that build on one another to create a holistic community economic system.  Each stage is explained in more detail below.

Organizational Development

Every organization, whether non-profit or for-profit, needs four primary elements in order to succeed: a plan, marketing, people and money.

While BALLE and AMIBA provide their member networks with a solid ideological framework, the non-profit, grassroots organizational models that tend to emerge often stall at some stage because they lack one or more of these four primary elements.  An organization, no matter how passionately its mission is conceived and understood, needs well-defined management practices and effective managers guiding the organization.  Sustaining Technologies has developed organizational tools to help relocalization networks move into advanced stages of achievement, utilizing organizational activities that convert good intentions into actual results.

Local First with Rewards Card

Once we help networks organize, they can be much more effective at implementing a “Local First” campaign -- the core of any effective localization effort.  Promoting a positive vision of what could be, networks can engage with the community to harness the economic multiplier and begin to reclaim local economic power.  Like any marketing strategy, successful local first campaigns should include . . .

  • Logic - Provide a rational argument (backing claims with solid research) for why localization enhances quality of life.
  • Emotion - Engage with the community in fun and creative ways, making it socially and emotionally appealing to participate.
  • Clear Path - Outline a series of easy steps that community members can take to participate in the shift.  A rewards card, for example, is an easy-to-use, engaging tool that incentivizes people to “go local first”.

Sustaining Technologies provides model operating procedures for implementing effective local first programs that can be tailored to the individual needs and markets of relocalization networks.  We also provide a community web platform that is integrated into our operational procedures, and serves as the local first online hub for the network.  Included features are . . .

  • Business Directory - A searchable and interactive directory with “micro-sites” for local businesses and non-profit organizations.  Micro-sites include location mapping, email and website links, business description, hours of operation, photos, videos, ratings, comments, printable coupons, and integrated rewards card.  Businesses and organizations get access to an easy, do-it-yourself interface allowing them to easily manage their micro-site, coupons, and rewards card programs.
  • Stories - An intuitive module for creating, publishing, organizing, and displaying web content that allows community members to engage in conversation with comments.  Utilizing “stories” effectively, networks can create websites that become the go-to resource for community information and news.
  • Events - Categorized and searchable, our events module allows users to post community events and easily find things to do in the community.  Networks can highlight specific events using the “special pick” designation.
  • Content Tagging - Business micro-sites, stories, and events can all be connected and consolidated through tagging.  This allows content to be organized and displayed in an unlimited number of ways, making websites very dynamic.  A powerful example is creating neighborhood homepages by assigning a neighborhood tag to related stories, events, and businesses.
  • Rewards Card - A network loyalty and local money system integrated into the business directory that incentivizes shopping at member businesses.  The system will evolve into a “community supporting” rewards card that allows automatic donation of local bucks to community non-profits.  This effective community engagement tool also functions as the first stage of a local “mutual credit clearing” system that facilitates cashless trade and barter transactions between members.

Community Exchange with Credit Clearing

A robust local first program is a great way to leverage the economic multiplier and stimulate a local economy, but more needs to be done to build local economies that will endure.  As trade relationships are strengthened, they can be formalized into a trading network that facilitates cashless exchange using specialized accounting software, paper notes, or both.  This ensures that regardless of the state of the national or global economy, a community can continue to connect buyers with sellers and employees with employers.

Sustaining Technologies has extensive expertise and resources for exchange system design.  Our rewards card system is poised to evolve into a fully functional exchange platform that will connect community members in the following ways.

  • Business-to-business - Short-term credit lines can be extended to business participants, who can use that credit to purchase needed goods and services from other businesses in the network.  Immediately via the platform software, the selling business can use the trade credit received to purchase from others in the network.
  • Business-to-citizen - Retail businesses can issue rebates back to their customers using the rewards card system that are spendable anywhere inside the network.  All participating businesses can pay their employees partial salary or bonuses in trade credit, which the employees can spend at participating businesses.
  • Citizen-to-citizen - Community members can use their trade credit to purchase goods and services from each other.  Eventually, “online classifieds” will be added to the system to make it easier to buy and sell.

In addition to businesses and citizens,  non-profits and government agencies can avail themselves of many creative opportunities to participate in the trade exchange.  Non-profits will be able to receive donations through the rewards card system, and governments can be given a credit line similar to businesses that would allow them to source goods and services from inside the network and pay employees with trade credits.

Community Investment & Cooperative Business Development

Formalizing trade relationships into an exchange system is key in creating a secure, resilient local economy.  But to solidify continued economic development in communities, local investment and business development programs should also be created.  This allows trade to be enhanced by identifying and filling “value gaps” with locally financed and community-owned enterprises.

Sustaining Technologies, working closely with Katovich Law Group, has developed an innovative “community cooperative” structure that allows members to invest equity capital in a co-op that is used to build new or enhance existing local enterprises to meet the needs of the community.   The GoLocal Cooperative is just such a co-op.  In addition, we are working on a “stakeholder cooperative” model where control of and benefit from an enterprise can be effectively balanced between all of the connected parties (see example below).