March 1986. I was driving on the Montague side of River Road. The dormant farm fields reflected my feeling of having great potential with little yet to show for it. I couldn’t make ends meet with my piano rebuilding business.
Why wasn’t I savvy enough to grow my business? I blamed myself for my lack of success. I considered my musician friends, the piano movers, other technicians, and other friends with very small (micro) businesses. They were all struggling. It wasn’t just me. We all faced the lack of financial resources to support the growth of small businesses.
But an idea was born out of this crisis in my life. I would create a loan fund to finance very small businesses. It was so obvious. All I needed was some knowledge of money, organization, and connections, and everything would fall into place. So on this day in 1986, I was driving around trying to figure out how to do it.
There were times of despair. I was scared. If this loan fund didn’t work, I didn’t know what I would do. What I learned is that if you’re on the right path, circumstances provide opportunities, often in totally unexpected ways. We had many, many opportunities. The challenge was focusing on what needed to be done without letting fears that it wouldn’t work distract us.
The first step in founding the loan fund, Common Capital, was reaching out to others. It was as basic as explaining the idea and asking “Do you know someone who can connect me to the political, financial and business worlds? Over the next six months the most unlikely group of men and women came together, mostly white, wildly different in our politics, incomes, and backgrounds. We all shared a fierce commitment to bring the fund to fruition. We made all kinds of mistakes and almost went out of business twice as we developed the skills to finance small businesses.
We succeeded because opportunities kept rolling in. We were at the right place at the right time. Banks were merging and needed to make community investments to secure merger approval. Microenterprise lending was promoted under President Bill Clinton; Federal programs were created. Socially responsible investing became a good-to-do thing.
At first, I just thought we were unbelievably lucky. But I could see that something more was going on. We were connecting to both the local and larger community, like roots spreading out through the earth. We secured support from local businesses, community members, local banks, national grant makers, and state and federal agencies. It took years, but the underlying principle of acting cooperatively led to the formation of Common Capital, which today has made millions of dollars in loans to hundreds of small businesses.
Today, we are facing an existential challenge. Action is needed as our well-being is threatened by the constant efforts of the Trump administration to undermine our health care, environment, education, national security, civil rights, our economy. We are resisting on many fronts and spreading the word about the impact of their destructive behavior. Our resistance is growing even as their craziness intensifies.
Throughout history, there have been repeated instances when small groups, often led by a charismatic figure, steal, rape, and exploit the rest of society. Its ubiquity can lead us to conclude that it is just human nature. But I believe it is a learned behavior. And if it is learned, it can be unlearned. We can learn to act in ways that benefit rather than exploit people.
Our task today is to protect our community. It begins in backyards, kitchens, town halls, and on the streets. From there, unseen opportunities arise. We are seeing collaborative activities and projects sprouting up everywhere. Our existing social structures are assuming new forms and roles. Libraries have changed from repositories of books to epicenters of information and community connection. Upstream preventive health and social programs are taking a foothold and showing success. Protest movements are becoming gathering places for greater collaboration.
How do you bring about positive changes in one place when they are needed everywhere at the same time? I don’t really know. But I think we are coming to realize that the natural world is based on a web of living interconnections that benefit all. Maybe if humans work towards acting collaboratively, we too will benefit, and doors will open in unexpected ways to present solutions.
Perhaps it is an idealistic fantasy to believe we can take the monkey off our backs and become a society where everyone is included and cared for. Or perhaps, as with the founding of Common Capital, when people gather with a purpose, opportunities unexpectedly present themselves.
Christopher “Kiffer” Sikes lives in Northfield and is the founder of Common Capital, a local nonprofit financial institution.