A financial community is a not-for-profit credit union, with a social purpose of growing local businesses and neighborhoods – and a long-term aim of bringing about a threefold society.

Our financial community circulates our own money and helps finance local enterprises and needed projects.

In the future, we will allow productive assets to be registered. A productive asset is anything – such as equipment, a means of production, or land – that can be used in conjunction with human labor and intelligence to produce goods and services.

Registration of an asset is a formal process that splits the ownership among two parties: 1) the private manager, and 2) the financial community. The private manager has the exclusive right to use the asset, while the financial community has the right to transfer. So a registered asset is essentially the private property of the manager, and yet the manager does not have the right to sell, gift, or otherwise transfer the asset to anyone else. The asset is removed from the free market and, under certain fair conditions, the financial community can designate a different private manager.

The registration process involves giving the asset a fair book value – which is an estimate of the share of the value of the goods and services produced by the asset that accrues to the owner, considered over the lifetime of the asset. The manager of the registered asset is permitted to borrow threefold dollars from the financial community, up to the maxmimum set by this book value.

Example: Mr. Doncaster owns a pizza delivery van, which is a productive asset used for his restaurant business. He registers this van with the financial community, who assesses it as having a book value of ß10,000 threefold dollars. With this registered asset acting as collateral, Mr. Doncaster can borrow up to this amount – and must pay a reasonable monthly fee on whatever amount of money he borrows.

Just like with a line of credit, Mr. Doncaster can repay the loan, or can borrow more – up to the maximum set by the book value – at any time. The monthly fee depends on the amount he borrows.

When a client exchanges US dollars (USD) for threefold dollars (US3), that person automatically possesses the right to exchange from US3 back again to USD.

However, this right to exchange can be sold to the financial community for a 1% premium, paid to the client in US dollars. Upon paying this premium, the financial community now possesses the right to exchange this amount of US3 back to USD, and the client no longer has this right.

Later, another client may purchase this right to exchange US3 to USD from the financial community. The fee to acquire the right to exchange is again 1% – this time paid by the client to the financial community.

Example 1: Kate goes to the financial community and exchanges $100 USD for ß100 US3. She decides to sell the right to exchange for a 1% premium, or $1 USD. This amount is paid to her by the financial community. Later, if Kate – or anyone else – wishes to exchange ß100 US3 back for $100 USD, they would first have to pay a fee of 1% – or $1 USD – to the financial community in order to acquire the right to exchange.

Example 2: Charlie goes to the financial community and exchanges $100 USD for ß100 US3. Because Charlie is a member, he decides to retain the right to exchange. This means he does not receive any premium, but also does not have to pay a fee to exchange ß100 US3 back to $100 USD at any time in the future.

A threefold dollar (US3) is a unit of local, alternative money. It is not legal tender and is accepted only voluntarily. No one is forced to accept threefold dollars.

Threefold dollars are not US dollars (USD) – which is the official money of the United States federal government. By contrast, threefold dollars are a privately issued, local community currency that has nothing to do with any government.

The abbreviation “US3” indicates only that threefold dollars are used within the US currency region, and are considered to be on par with US dollars. So one threefold dollar has an equal value to one US dollar in terms of purchasing power, and for tax reporting purposes.

Furthermore, the dollar sign ($) used for US dollars is not used for threefold dollars. Instead, the sharp-s symbol (ß) is used for threefold dollars – a symbol that can be obtained on most keyboards by pressing Alt-S or Option-S. So ten threefold dollars may be written simply as ß10 or ß10.00.

A threefold society is a social idea first proposed by Rudolf Steiner during and after World War I. The basic idea is to separate our current unitary society into three independent and autonomous members: economic, state (government), and culture.

For more, visit our Social Purpose page.

Wikipedia: Social Threefolding

Video: What is Social Threefolding and Why Do We Need It Now?

Video: The Dawn of Social Threefolding