Help Wanted: Common Good Bank Organizer

Common Good Finance is hiring dozens of organizers throughout the United States, full or part time, to promote the Common Good Bank concept for sustainability, economic justice, and community-based democratic funding. Experience in marketing, fundraising, or community organizing helps but is not required.

About Common Good Finance
a social mission with a bank

Common Good Finance™ creates democratic, community-based economic solutions for sustainability, economic justice, and the good of all. Without democratic economics, communities are at the mercy of big business and distant government. We need a way to plan and invest locally, for thriving local economies and a sustainable future.

We envision a society in which communities everywhere gather to decide for themselves what their funding priorities should be — for sustainable agriculture and energy systems, for local self-reliance, for ensuring that everyone has enough to eat, a home, and satisfying work.

About Common Good Bank

Common Good Bank™ is designed to be the framework for a community-based democratic economic system that can also compete effectively within the current economic system. This design combines the spirit of a credit union with the power and growth potential of a stock savings bank.

Any geographic community can have its own democratically-guided virtual bank, simply as a cooperative depositor group within Common Good Bank. Deposits, investments, and profits will be tracked separately for each community. All profits from the community's investments will go to schools and other nonprofits as decided by the members.

The Work

• Promote the Common Good Bank concept
• Invite your friends, neighbors, and relatives to join as Founding Members
• Report progress and share ideas with other Organizers

What It Takes

• Enthusiasm about the Common Good Bank idea
• Courage
• Integrity
• Respect and friendliness
• Passionate commitment to social and economic justice
• Can work independently and as part of a team
• Can talk easily with anyone and say things simply and clearly
• Basic computer skills

Support

Common Good Finance and the other Organizers will supply:

• promotional materials (brochures, model posters, business cards, handout cards, press releases, emails, displays and videos)
• training on the Common Good Bank idea
• ongoing advice, encouragement and feedback

Pay

Common Good Bank Organizers will work as independent contractors. (That means no insurance benefits and different income tax forms.) Common Good Finance is prepared to pay $15 to $25 an hour, based on the contractor's success.

How to Become a Common Good Bank Organizer, Step By Step

1. You join as a Founding Member (see also the "Sweat Equity" variation, below).
2. You send an email to Amie Chaudoir, Personnel Director (jobs @ commongoodbank.com). You ask for publicity materials and tell us why you want to be a Common Good Bank Organizer. We send you two dozen handout cards, 3 brochures, and 3 Membership Agreement forms.
3. You (on your own, not as a Common Good Finance staff member) get two other people or organizations to join.
4. You attend a 90-minute webinar and send us a digital photo and a couple sentences on what you find compelling about the Common Good Bank idea.
5. We (almost always) hire you as an independent contractor. You sign a contract and send us your social security number, for tax reporting. We send you personalized Common Good Finance business cards and plenty of brochures and Membership Agreement forms. You go to it.
6. You begin recording your hours online and get $25 an hour, limited to at most 60% of the donations that you raise (the donation part of the Founding Member signups) — including the two donations you already raised.
7. You attend weekly phone meetings for additional training and support.

Note that your hourly rate will only be as high as $25 an hour if you are very efficient and successful at recruiting members. For most organizers, you will do best to approach people who can afford the Oak level or higher (a donation of $250+) and invite them specifically to consider that membership level. If you are highly efficient and successful, you will get $25 an hour. If you are less efficient, you will get 60% of what you raise in donations (at a lower hourly rate).

Sweat-Equity Variation

Here is a sweat-equity variation for low-income organizers (if you can't afford to join as a Founding Member at the Half a Brick level). All steps are the same as above, except numbers 1 and 6:

    1. You donate $25 (the donation part of your Half-a Brick membership).

    6. You begin recording your hours online and get $25 an hour, limited to at most 40% of the donations that you raise (the donation part of the Founding Member signups) — including the two donations you already raised. 20% of the donations you raise are held as a loan from you to Common Good Finance, to be repaid under the same terms as loans from other Founding Members. Once you have raised $5,625 in donations (the equivalent of about 23 Oak members), your percentage limit goes up to 60% and you make no further loans to Common Good Finance. You are then a Founding Member and Common Good Finance owes you a total of $1,125.