Shaun Winter makes great hot sauce right here in Portland and he needs a small loan so his business, Hot Winter, can continue to source organic peppers from local organic farmers and sell his hot sauce in more stores.  Shaun is a local farm entrepreneur, boot-strapping his business, and working hard to provide business for local organic farmers and put healthy, locally-made hot sauce on our store shelves.  He needs our support and for as little as $50, we can help him secure the loan he needs to push his business forward.

I talked with Shaun last week at ComCap Oregon, a conference in Portland where participants spent two days discussing community sourced capital.   If you’ve never heard of community sourced capital, the concept is simple, yet powerful: local people invest money in locally-owned businesses in order to help our local economies thrive.  In Shaun’s case, he isn’t just selling locally-made hot sauce, he’s buying the organic ingredients from local farmers.  That’s how strong local economies are created: money spent here, stays here.

Shaun’s doing his part to support our local economy and he needs us to crack open our wallets and loan him $50.  He put together a special loan from Craft3, but he needs to raise $5,000 on his own before they will release the funds.  He only has four more days and he still needs to raise $1,050 to reach his $5,000 goal.  I’m loaning him money and I hope you will too.  Building a strong local economy is great for all of us.