I’ve known Daniel Greenberg for a while now. He pioneered the Living Routes ecovillage education program, which I was a big fan of. He’s also been involved with the Ecovillage Network of the Americas and the Global Ecovillage Network for a long time, not to mention a long time friend of the FIC. So when he contacted me about his new initiative, EarthDeeds, I immediately paid attention.
Money’s been on my mind for a while (don’t worry I’ll tie this back in). My efforts to revamp the Communities Conference kitchen had me do my first crowdfunding campaign. I’m working with a forming ecovillage that’s looking at a multi-million dollar development cost. The FIC is actively looking at how to increase revenues to expand programs. Money is a challenging thing, but it’s essential to all the amazing things we want to do. We don’t want to deal with it but were constantly trying to figure out how to get more of it. This is part of why we decided this year’s Monday program would be Money in Community.
EarthDeeds is working to funnel money towards eco-minded projects, while also addressing one of the core conundrums environmentalist organizers face: burning carbon to go to great events. Not only do a lot of the great things we want to do cost money, many of them involve burning fossil fuels. We’re working on creating a sustainable world, and organizing on national and international levels is an important part of that.
We decided to partner with EarthDeeds this year to help address our corresponding contributions to climate change. EarthDeeds is pioneering the concept of onsetting (as opposed to carbon offsetting). The idea is pretty similar, but with a much more grassroots approach.
Participants will be asked to calculate their carbon emissions from travel on the EarthDeeds website. This will give them an amount of money they’re asked to contribute or raise to go towards a project. There will be a crowdfunding aspect in that the participants can raise the money from others rather than donating it themselves, i.e. anyone will be able to donate.
We’ll be accepting project proposal until July 1st. By July 15th we’ll announce the finalists. At that point we will create a multi-voting system by which 3 projects will be selected for funding. Voting will end on Aug 15th, after which the 3 projects to be funded will be announced. Donations will be accepted until the end of the conference on Monday, Sept 7th.
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