E2M for businesses

If you want to strengthen your business and help create a sustainable economic system that nurtures small businesses, entrepreneurs, employees, communities, and the environment, please join us.

As an entrepreneur, you’re driven to make your business successful. As a citizen, you care about the success of your community and laying the foundation for a bright future.

Whether your business has a long-standing charitable giving program or you’re considering for the first time how your business can give back to your community, you want the resources you contribute to do as much good as possible. You also need your community giving to be recognized by potential customers who may become loyal patrons that help keep your business strong.

E2M—an Economic Model for Millennium 2000—offers a new strategy for using your philanthropic dollars to create unprecedented improvements in your community and maximize long-term community support for your business.

How does E2M work? E2M enables regional communities to create significant amounts of citizen-controlled wealth by partnering with businesses that donate a portion of their sales and/or equity to local E2M Regional Economic Councils (E2M-REC). As a community reinvestment fund, the E2M-REC invests these funds with a new vision to create a sustainable economic system and a healthy society where everyone has access to living-wage jobs, affordable housing, healthcare, education, and time for family, community life, and spiritual renewal.

How can my contributions through E2M create unprecedented community improvement? Many of the most serious problems facing our communities and our planet are products of a single root cause—our current economic system is driven by an investment goal of maximizing profits and growth for relatively few investors. This goal may make sense from an individual’s perspective, but from any broader perspective, it is, and has been, a recipe for disaster. It drives over-consumption of natural resources when unnecessary products are made and marketed simply to grow sales and profits; it destabilizes employment as corporations are forced to relocate or outsource in search of lower production and labor costs; it concentrates wealth and opportunities in the hands of a relative few; and it encourages unsustainable financial speculation as well as unprecedented levels of household debt—the major causes of the current economic crisis and future instability. These are only a few examples.

In order to achieve a sustainable economic system, society, and planet, we need a new investment goal—the goal of adequate profit and sustainable growth for the good of all. E2M enables communities to use the tool of capitalism to create significant citizen-controlled wealth and invest it with this new goal to usher in an age of community capitalism where communities are more powerful than large corporations and the planet and its people are more valued than profits.

As an investor, the E2M-REC will provide very low interest loans and venture funds to community-conscious small businesses and start-ups; stable, low-cost commercial rentals; one percent interest home mortgages to create affordable housing; and funds for social and environmental initiatives that improve our quality of life. Because it addresses the root cause of so many problems, E2M can, with your support, help create the society we all need and desire.



The E2M Economic Community

Click here to view a diagram of the E2M Economic Community in a new window or tab.

The E2M Regional Economic Council (E2M-REC) is a non-profit organization that holds the community’s wealth and uses it to benefit the community. Its board has 24 members who serve 3 year terms after being nominated by the community and elected by the current board. The E2M-REC’s initial board is approved by E2M.org, the chartering organization for new E2M-RECs. As a philanthropic investment organization, the E2M-REC invests 75% of its monies locally, 20% nationally, and 5% internationally to help spawn other E2M Economic Communities.

E2M affiliated businesses are businesses of all kinds—corporations, sole proprietorships, partnerships, cooperatives, and others—that have chosen to participate in E2M in one of three different ways:

  • an E2M Certified business is one that shares at least 0.5% of its sales and a minimum 5% of its business equity with the community through the E2M-REC, and sets aside 5% or more of profits and business equity to be shared with or purchased by its employees;
  • an E2M Sponsor is a business that shares at least 0.5% of its sales with the community through the E2M-REC;
  • an E2M Supporting company is a business that shares with the community at least 0.5% of the sales from a particular product or service that the business offers.

The Community: Community members—the general public—can make E2M businesses successful by purchasing their products and services. With over nine trillion dollars in purchasing power, US consumers can make any number of companies successful. When E2M businesses are successful, they generate income for the E2M-REC. And when the E2M-REC has income, it can begin to transform the community.


Benefits for businesses

How can sharing with the community through E2M maximize community support for my business? E2M works by creating a mutually-beneficial relationship between a network of consumers and E2M affiliated businesses—those that contribute a portion of their sales and/or equity to the local E2M Regional Economic Council (E2M-REC). By joining E2M, your business can attract the coordinated purchasing power of the E2M consumer network, a growing group of individuals who understand the power of ‘buying E2M’ and have pledged to support E2M affiliated businesses whenever possible.

For consumers, buying E2M is a no-brainer because a defined percentage of their everyday purchases go to create the sustainable economy, society and environment we all hope for. The more people buy from E2M affiliated businesses, the more wealth is created and reinvested to promote community well-being, which further demonstrates the positive impact of ‘buying E2M’ and gives all E2M businesses a base of loyal, long-term consumer support.

What if I want to continue giving to a specific organization or cause? The owners and employees of E2M affiliated businesses get to choose how up to half of their total contributions to the E2M-REC are spent. If your business already gives to a specific organization or cause, you can continue that tradition as part of your overall giving as an E2M business.

Are there other benefits to becoming E2M affiliated? Yes! Here are some of the other ways E2M affiliation can benefit your business:

  1. An increased sense of purpose and employee commitment: Because owners, managers, and employees of your business can decide how up to half of your contribution to the E2M-REC is spent, you may all share a greater sense of purpose and connection in your daily work. As the local E2M economic system’s impact grows, you can also take satisfaction in being part of an historic movement.
  2. Financing: As the E2M-REC’s investment fund increases, E2M businesses will be eligible for equity investments with favorable terms and loans at interest rates as low as one percent per annum.
  3. A supportive business network: You will be part of a network of like minded businesses that offers comradery, mentoring, and links to business resources. Plans are in the works for an E2Mnet website that will allow loyal E2M customers, dedicated vendors, and entrepreneur friendly lenders to do business with each other online.

By giving through E2M, you can maximize community support for your business and have the satisfaction of knowing that your donations are making the greatest impact possible by establishing an economic system that serves the best interests of small businesses, communities, and the planet.

To learn more about getting involved in the E2M movement, contact us:

E2M Regional Economic Council of Western Massachusetts
PO Box 188
Easthampton, MA 01027

T: 413-527-7440
F: 413-527-7973
E: rec@e2m.org