What’s a Common Fund?
A Common Fund is a way of pooling our money (our savings, money we earn with our cooperative enterprise, grants or gifts we bring in) and making it available to each other as no-interest loans or collectively-decided-on gifts.
In the Mutual Aid Network context, a Common Fund is any one type or hybrid of some of these models. We also intend to create new types of common funds that can be used to readily volunarily redistribute wealth.
In our Common Fund, each of us becomes a member and we track our deposits on a spreadsheet like this.
While our savings sit in the account, we can decide together to loan out that money to other members. You can also take a loan. We collectively decide the terms, and they need to be in accordance with our core values and the agreements and priorities we make together.
We can accept savings as well as gifts, and we can make gifts as well as loans. It’s all up to us.
Check out some ways we’re dreaming of applying Common Funds for Housing Access and Land Stewardship from our Solidarity Summit 4.20.20 Meeting recording
Here's a simple game to help de-mystify it.
Here's a more complex updated game..