About The Toronto Dollar

Local Currencies

In order to better control the flow of money through their communities, some cities have developed local currencies. Local currencies limit consumers' choices to things produced locally, ensuring that the profits of these purchases stay within the community. For example, this is how the Toronto Dollar works:
It's Saturday morning and Lydia wants to do her weekly grocery shopping early in the day. She hops on the streetcar and heads down to the St. Lawrence Market. Before visiting any of the vendors, Lydia stops at the Toronto Dollar Information booth and buys 10 Toronto Dollars in exchange for 10 Canadian Dollars.
Lydia moves on to a produce stand and buys fresh broccoli, eggplant, and zucchini as well as apples, raspberries, and peaches. She pays 10 Toronto Dollars to Farmer Eva in exchange.
Later in the day Eva uses the Toronto Dollar as partial payment to Amma who has helped her for the day.
Amma takes the money and on her next trip to the downtown Goodwill (another participating business) and spends it on clothing.
The Goodwill store uses the Toronto Dollar to hire a cleaner to clean the rugs in their store.
The rug cleaner uses it to pay her employee.
The cycle continues until one day Mariama ends up with 10 Toronto Dollars. Mariama is short on cash that day and doesn't need any of the services provided by the participating businesses. She decides to trade in her Toronto Dollars back at the Toronto Dollar Information Booth.
In exchange, she receives only 9 Canadian Dollars (even though she had 10 Toronto Dollars, bought for 10 Canadian Dollars).
So what happened to that other dollar? When someone buys a Toronto Dollar, 90 cents of the dollar they use to buy it goes into a reserve fund that people like Mariama can access when trading in their Toronto Dollars. The other 10 cents goes into the Toronto Dollar Community Projects Fund. Because people 'lose' money by ending the cycle, the system encourages people to keep their Toronto Dollars circulating within their community. And the funds generated contribute to the Spirit at Work program (funded by the Community Projects Fund) which distributes Toronto Dollar gift certificates to local community agencies. In turn, these agencies give the Dollars to volunteers in recognition of the important contribution they make to the community. When volunteers exchange their Dollars at local businesses in exchange for things they need, the cycle starts over again.