My coworking space is a trustee and we give out loans in the pgh area. There has been much less interest in this from my community than I thought. I think it's just a bit odd because all the members of our space are "too close" with people getting loans. Meaning that friends or other members in the community are getting loans and I think the similarity in income (most borrowers make 20k, most coworkers make around 40) that makes them less likely to invest.
ymmv On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Jason Delia <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all. I love this group. So much information. > > I don't actually have a coworking space yet but I have begun the process of > reaching out to my community to find potential members and bootstrap the > entire process. I've been thinking a lot lately about what I MIGHT do if my > space ever gets off the ground. > > One thought I had was around using kiva.org for building a sense of > community in your space. If you are not familiar, Kiva is a non-profit that > allows people to provide small loans to others in impoverished countries > looking for small business loans. Once the borrower repays the loan it goes > back into your Kiva account and you get to make another loan. > > Wouldn't it be great if you created an account on Kiva for your community. > Members could contribute however much they would like to the Kiva account, > with you as the space owner perhaps matching their donations and, as a > community, you come together to decide which borrowers to loan your funds > to. This wouldn't be a one time event either. As loans get repaid, money > is once again available to be loaned out and your community would come > together again and again to find new borrowers. Kiva provides regular > updates on the progress the borrower is making so you could have a bulletin > board or some other way to keep the community updated on how they are > helping. > > Seems like this would be a win for everyone involved. For relatively little > money you are helping to change people's lives; your members will feel good > about contributing to the causes; your community will be stronger as your > members come together to make decisions collectively; and a stronger > community will lead to more members joining and using your space. > > Jason > http://brainyspace.co/working > > -- > Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
