Vision | Mission | Design Principles | Key Features | Influences | Technical Details | Strategy (To Save The World From Corporate Domination)

Key Features

1. Depositor-Owned. The bank is organized as a stock savings bank, owned primarily by its depositors.
2. Common Good Mission. The bank's core operating principle is love. That is, it's unalterable overarching mission is to advance the common good of its customers, the wider community and the world, especially by empowering those most in need.
3. No Unearned Income to Individuals. Financial return to investors is limited to no more than the true inflation rate of the dollar (currently calculated as prime minus 1.5%). No employee, director, or contractor of the bank or its organizers is paid more than reasonable compensation for work related to the bank, nor is any such individual paid at more than ten times the hourly rate of the lowest paid employee of the bank.
4. Net Profits Go to the Wide Community. Half of the money that goes to the community goes outside the bank's primary service area, half of that half goes outside the country.
5. Merchant Rebates. Merchants have the option to offer a rebate on sales to the bank's depositors; half the rebate goes to the depositor, half to the community.
6. Local Control. Community Divisions of the bank control investment priorities and community contributions independently. Each Community Division maintains its own separate community fund, for merchant tithes and bank profits generated in that community.
7. Complementary Currency. Depositors have the option to participate in a non-inflationary local currency credit system that saves them money and benefits local nonprofit organizations.
8. Transparency. All the bank's operations are reported openly and are subject to productive public comment, except as required by law or where necessary to protect personal information.
9. Participatory Democracy. Depositors (individuals only) guide the bank's lending policies and community contributions using liquid democracy (direct vote with default transitive proxies).

• Without #1, we would grow very slowly and return very little profit to the community.
• Without #2, #3 and #4, we would drift toward enriching the already rich, worsening economic injustice.
• Without #5, financial benefits to the community and alignment of self-interest with community interest would be much much smaller, especially in the first years, making the bank a hard sell, uninspiring to other communities.
• Without #6, we would miss the benefits of diversity and Power With, continuing instead the violence, injustice and ineffectiveness of Power Over.
• Without #7, we would be supporting the injustices of the current system and would die with the dollar.
• Without #8, we would lose credibility and would eventually become corrupt and self-serving.
• Without #9, we would soon get subverted by special interests (through advertising and campaign contributions).

Our other innovations are attractive and helpful, but less critical:

• Combined nonprofit/for-profit board
• Hybrid savings/checking/CD/stock account
• Customer participation in loans
• Local debit/credit card
• Leaning toward self-service
• Lowering mortgage payments by sharing ownership of the asset

To see how common good banks could lead to the world of our dreams, click here.

If you have assets of a million dollars or more, please fill out our Investor Qualification Survey to get involved.