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Community Sourced Capital
helping you fund the world you want to live in.
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FUND: Willapa Hills Cheese
Meet Willapa Hills Cheese Farmstead. They're using Community Sourced Capital to grow their booming cheese business!
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BLOG: Serious about local finance
93% of the dollars for our campaign with Willapa Hills Cheese are sourced from within 100 miles of the farm.
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FUND: Harmon Brewing Co.
Meet the community of Harmon Brewing and get ready for their next location, the new Hub "Pie on the Fly" at the Tacoma Narrows Airport. You in?
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BLOG: Supply Chain Love
Read why Squareholders like Kurt from Beecher's Cheese are supporting suppliers like CSC business Willapa Hills Cheese.
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ABOUT: The CSC team
Get to know a little more about us
Sustainable finance solutions for your local economy
For local business
CSC creates a new kind of capital for your business. Leverage your network to raise funds from your community and strengthen relationships with your customers.
Learn more
For local lenders
From local spending to local finance, you know how important it is to keep money where you live. With CSC, you have a new way to support the businesses you love.
Learn more
Campaigns// the first businesses using Community Sourced Capital
Eleven Winery
Eleven Winery on Bainbridge Island is raising funds to automate their bottling process this year.You can be a part of funding this project for Eleven by buying a Square.
$6,950 of $20,000 raised
57 Squareholders and counting
17 days to go
Harmon Brewing Co. and the Hub
Harmon Brewery Co. is expanding! This CSC loan will help outfit a new restaurant location called “Pie on the Fly” at the Tacoma Narrows Airport. You can be a part of funding this new location by buying a Square.
$6,550 of $20,000 raised
50 Squareholders and counting
14 days to go
Willapa Hills Cheese
Willapa Hills Cheese is growing! They’re raising funds for a loan to buy more cheese-making equipment to keep up with demand. You can be a part of funding the growth of this family dairy business.
$13,650 of $20,000 raised
65 Squareholders and counting
0 days to go (today’s the last day!)
A&R Solar
The guys at A&R Solar are expanding their business to accommodate the growing demand for renewable energy by moving to a larger office in Seattle’s SoDo district. Almost 200 people were part of the expansion financing!
$24,800 of $20,000 raised
183 Squareholders made this happen
0 days to go. We did it!
Starvation Alley Farms
Starvation Alley Farms is the first cranberry farm in Washington State to pursue organic certification. The Oakes family worked with Community Sourced Capital to raise $12,000 for a berry juicer to enhance their product line.
$12,000 of $12,000 raised
112 Squareholders made this happen
Playback Sports
Playback Sports sells gently used sporting goods in Tacoma, Washington. Owner Karlan Jessen worked with Community Sourced Capital to raise $3,000 for the new Tacoma Skyline Sock.
$3,000 of $3,000 raised
31 Squareholders made this happen
Borrow// how your business can use community sourced capital
CSC provides a simple way for community members to lend money to the local businesses where they find the most value.
Our unique take on crowdfunding aggregates many small loans and turns them into one big loan for a business.
We call those small loans Squares and the lenders Squareholders.
HOW IT WORKS
Businesses can borrow up to $50,000. A Square costs a member of your community $50 and represents money they are willing to share with you in the form of a zero-interest loan. Community members can buy up to five Squares each for your campaign.
Over time, you repay the value of the Squares based on a percentage of your revenue. After repayment, Squareholders can withdraw funds or get a Square in another project.
WHAT WE DO
We qualify businesses with at least one year of revenue in the books (we can’t work with start-ups yet) by looking at profit and loss statements and annual tax returns. In short, we ensure that a CSC loan is right for your business and your community.
Our platform aggregates Squareholder payments and manages quarterly payments from businesses back to Squareholders. We also provide a marketing tool for communicating with your Squareholders.
WHAT’S COOL
Loan payments are set as a percent of gross revenues or a specific revenue stream. During the payback, Squareholders have an incentive to help businesses grow because Square repayments come faster if revenues are higher.
This mutually beneficial relationship creates stronger ties between businesses and the growing population of community investors. CSC enables people to see the impact their money has on the local economy.
SOUND INTERESTING? LET’S TALK.
About us// the community behind the business
Why we started CSC
We’re financing the future of local economies by designing and deploying community-supported funding mechanisms for sustainable small businesses. Wow, that’s a mouthful.
Here’s the deal. Finance. It’s a big deal. In fact, we think it’s the biggest “deal” for creating a more sustainable economy.
That’s why we’re here. We’re creating financial systems that are good for businesses and their communities, and we’re making it possible for every citizen to participate in the process. And we aren’t asking anyone to make a donation to anything. Here’s the video version of our philosophy.
Where we’re taking it
We’re starting in the greater Seattle area because that’s where most of us live. Plus, it’s a cool town with lots of small businesses and sustainable finance folk.
Would you like to know more?
Team CSC
Casey Dilloway // President and director, CSC Seattle
I want to connect people and their money with our future. We can create a more sustainable world by putting our money in the right systems.
Rachel Maxwell // CEO and Director, CSC Seattle
I’m all about giving back to communities. We need to move capital in the direction of things we value. CSC helps everyone create real value with their money.
Brent Cochran // Director, CSC Roanoke
I create space for people to connect and community to exist. Finance is the best mechanism for creating and sustaining healthy vibrant communities.
Meryl McDonald // Director, CSC Denver
Finance is a huge leverage point to create sustainable change. With CSC, people can invest in each other to create beautiful, beautiful local economies.
Alex Mondau // VP, Business Development
Local economies are built around people. I'm here to bring the personal relationships back to small business finance.
Tyler Bench // Marketing Intern
I believe in the power of positive human connection, and I work hard to bring good people together. CSC creates a powerful network of community relationships through sustainable finance.
Our network of partners
Blog// updates from the sustainable finance frontier
Serious about local finance
We’re serious about this local finance thing. Americans love buying domestic products, they love spending money at local businesses, and it’s practically in our DNA to cheer on ambitious entrepreneurs chasing the American Dream. We started Community Sourced Capital to chase an American Dream of our own,
Supply Chain Love
What happens when you can’t get your favorite ingredient for your (locally!) famous food? Do business owners give up and not cook? Do they find another not quite as good but it’ll do ingredient? Or do they do something about it?!
Sacred Economics – Part One
I’m reading Charles Eisenstein’s book, Sacred Economics. I’m including his great video on this post, which presents his ideas. In his book, Eisenstein suggests that we humans are born with deep gratitude because life itself is a gift. He has a point, and I’d like to try applying it to [...]
Our first dive into Socially Responsible Investing
And when we say “our first dive”, we really mean “our first dive with you,” because we haven’t yet spoken about the role socially responsible investing plays in sustainable finance.
Breaking the binary paradigm
Our team has been learning from mentor and friend Carol Sanford over the past six months. If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that she’ll say something to flip our world upside down, and then follow it up with concepts, nuanced language and intention that reveals the full [...]
CSC on the radio
Rachel and Casey had the super cool opportunity to chat with Diane Horn from Seattle radio station KEXP on the “Mind Over Matters” segment. In the 30 minute interview, we discuss community finance and how our little company is trying to make a dent in the financial system.
Some things are too important not to share
Our message at Community Sourced Capital is usually about how to do good with your money– how to make it flow toward the things you value most. We don’t tell you how to stop doing bad things with your money.
Six months in, and we’re just getting started
Just six short months ago, our little company Community Sourced Capital was born with the purpose of changing the way society thinks about finance. It’s a unique challenge to change how we think about finance, especially if most of us aren’t thinking about it in the first place. That is, [...]
Small business helping small business: part one
Conventional wisdom might say that if you have a web/technology-based business-to-business service company, then the pathway to rapid growth and revenues is to target large Fortune 500 companies as clients. Seattle enjoys the presence of many of those Fortune 500s: Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Amazon, Zillow, and Expedia, just to name [...]
Harvesting Social Capital: a renewable resource
This week, we’re launching our third and most ambitious campaign to-date with A&R Solar, a Seattle-based renewable energy company. Having A&R approach us to help them raise money for their new office space is an honor. One of the highest compliments I’ve received in my young business career was from [...]