Bulk purchase groups, patients undergoing treatment, self-employed friends, art collectives, community energy start-ups - for a new fridge, an old debt, a holiday or a rainy day, there are literally thousands of uses for a Kin group but here are a few examples to get you started:
- A Traditional Rotating Fund - communities all around the world use "self-help groups" with slightly different rules but the common idea is this: every week or month everyone in the group contributes to the common pot and every week or month one person takes the whole pot. This continues until everyone has received and put in the same amount. The allocation of the pot can be decided by lottery or negotiation. Rotating funds enable groups to save for amounts that can be difficult to reach individually.
Here are just a few names for rotating funds: didlum, menage, hagbad, ayuuto, pardna.
- Pardna (variation) - in a pardna, people in the community can contribute different amounts each month - called "hands" - and will receive the whole pot more or less often depending on how many hands they contribute. It works like this: each hand is like a raffle ticket, if you choose to contribute 5 hands / raffle tickets of £5, you will pay £25 every month (5x£5). The total number of tickets or hands is the number of rotations until every ticket / hand has received the total. So let's say there are 20 hands or tickets in a pardna group, that's £100 every rotation. Someone who pays £25 every month will receive the whole pot 5 times in this period - once per ticket - that's £500. They will have paid 20 times £25, that's £500.
Loose (high trust) - after working together for a longer time, some groups build enough trust and have good enough communication that they can become less regular and strict. The pot will accumulate over a longer time without anyone requesting it and people will be able to request more.
A community purchase - you may be working with your neighbours, friends or family to purchase something together or to support a common cause. Kin groups can be a way for you to manage contributions and keep track of your goal. Think of putting a new roof on the community centre or putting solar panels on the local car park and splitting the benefit!
Bulk purchase - you may want to use Kin to buy common items in bulk so you can all benefit from the savings. Great!
Solidarity fund - why not set up a fund for your community just in case someone needs it. If they do, they may contribute back and keep contributing to keep the fund growing. One day it could enable you as a community to purchase something together.
- Multiple uses - the focus is your community. Kin allows you to track how much everyone in your has contributed and received so you can pause one use to help someone who is having a hard time and then get right back to the first use. It's up to you!