Hello everyone!
My name is Daniel Little and I am running a startup nonprofit called involveMINT.io. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, our mission is to craft a regional network of resources contributed by #SpendPartners to help ease the financial burden of community-based initiatives and projects.
We create this network through a webApp that hosts a local-currency (called "TimeCredits") that active citizens can earn for their contributions to local organizations and community projects. These active citizens can then spend these credits in exchange for latent products and services. (This model is similar to http://www.wearetempo.org/)
We've separated latent resources in to three categories: underutilized skills, idling services, and excess waste. Underutilized skills are any individual talent not being utilized for specialized jobs and professions. Idling resources are any services that can be utilized in fiat markets, but have “down-time” or instances where the resources are not being used at capacity. Finally the last category excess waste are physical items that result from excesses, overproduction, poor resource management, or market externalities.
So far we've been working with local businesses that donate latent resources to the network. However, we are finding these local (and presumably small) businesses are having difficulty finding contributions that they contribute to our spend network. We want to keep these contributions local to give the network regional identity through the unique products and services these businesses have to offer. But their margins are very slim, so participation, and the resulting efficacy of the resources they can offer are very limited.
Given the difficulty working with local businesses, I am wondering if there are other ways to identify and map assets according the aforementioned categories, and if there are a category of assets that I may have not been thinking of. Does anyone have experience with asset mapping who might be able to provide guidance and/or tools to assist?
Your help is very greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Dan
