Slow Money

Have you heard of Slow Money? Does it even make sense to you? Modern life is supposed to be fast paced, and business is supposed to be about getting deals done. If we even think of the speed of money, then we think back to introductory macro economics courses where the professor droned on and on about velocity of money, and faster was supposed to be better. The Slow Money movement has been around a while, and it has been building slowly. (How else?) It is a trend small business owners need to understand.

So what is Slow Money?
According to John Tozzi, in his post Big Ideas for 2010  on the Successful Entrepreneur Blog, Slow Money is an example of two emerging ideas:

1. New ways to finance social ventures
2. Local capital markets

Tozzi in an earlier article, Slow Money, Local Business, and Social Capital, described the slow money movement and observed:

The emerging model involves several trends we’ve been tracking for a while: crowd funding, community development capital, buy local movements, and for-profit social enterprise.

The idea behind Slow Money is that people ought to do business where they live and eat and work and play. In many ways, the movement is a reaction against growing globalization. In addition, people are beginning to question whether it was a good thing to replace family farms with giant industrial agriculture factories.

This is what the Slow Money Alliance has to say on their website.

Slow Money's mission is to build local and national networks, and develop new financial products and services, dedicated to:

• investing in small food enterprises and local food systems;
• connecting investors to their local economies; and,
• building the nurture capital industry

What might this all mean to you and your business?
The values that are the foundation of the Slow Money movement are embodied in the belief that people are part of a place. That belief is not at odds with the idea that individuals are part of a broader national or even global community, but it does question whether bigger is always better and whether the constant search for cheaper and faster is worth the tradeoffs in quality that sometimes occur. The many “shop local” movements springing up around the country are evidence of a desire for the things the Slow Money movement describes. So too are the twin movements to reclaim small town America and to create livable cities. Small villages and towns all over the United States died as large corporations displaced locally owned stores agribusiness took over family farms. It is up to small business to get back into the marketplace. In many places, as people rediscover small town or village life, some of these places are coming back to life. This is not just a rural or suburban movement. In cities, corner grocers and soda fountains and drugstores with lunch counters were displaced by giant chains. Today, however, locally owned stores are returning.

The reason that this is important for small business owners is that locally business is small business. The Slow Money movement is all about supporting small business and “connecting investors to their local economies.” You need to know all about Slow Money, because Slow Money is all about you.