a collaborative network supporting alternative means of exchange

About Us



BACE, briefly

Bay Area Community Exchange (BACE) is a collaborative network that supports the development of alternative means of exchange in the San Francisco Bay Area. We provide research and development support, incubation of alternative exchange projects, and education to the Bay Area community about economic issues. Through our work with currency projects, we will create an economy that is more sustainable, just, and embedded in healthy community connections.

Our Fiscal Sponsor

BACE has nonprofit status through our fiscal sponsor, the International Society for Ecology and Culture, which promotes locally-based alternatives to the global consumer culture. The International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) is a non-profit organization concerned with the protection of both biological and cultural diversity and emphasizing education for action – moving beyond single issues to look at the more fundamental influences that shape our lives.

What We Do

We support the following activities and projects:

  • General project support for new currency projects
  • Public presentations about currencies and the economy
  • Social events and conferences to connect the movement
  • Online educational library about currencies
  • Discussion listservs to develop currencies

Recent Activities

Past Accomplishments

  • Hosted public screening of film Money Fix and discussion forum on alternative currencies to over 100 attendees in Berkeley
  • Hosted two presentations on complementary currencies by international expert Miguel Hirota
  • Developed “Intro to Community Currencies” powerpoint presentation and presented to two classes
  • Set up BACE wiki and website with comprehensive online library on currencies
  • Set up BACE listservs to facilitate dialogues on currency theory, design, and implementation
  • Hosted strategic planning meeting out of which came the Timebank
  • Developed Timebank and held first launch party and orientation
  • Gave crucial feedback on several Bay Area currency projects, including Oakland ACORN and SCC Bank
  • Held regular meetings 2-3x/month as forums to discuss currency design and development of projects
  • Held 2 BACE social mixers
  • Represented at the Festival of Grassroots Economics (most popular table), with model currency for use at Festival
  • Started planning of first currency conference -Conducted several radio interviews on currencies
  • Received 501(c)3 status as a fiscally sponsored organization through the International Society for Ecology and Culture

Selected BACE Team Members

Mira Luna is the coordinator for BACE, leads the BACE time bank project, and is on the Steering Committee. She holds an MA in Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community with an emphasis in Activism and Social Change and a BA in Environmental Studies. Mira has worked for over 12 years as an environmental and social justice activist on issues such as sustainable and urban agriculture, sweatshops, nuclear waste, toxics, the precautionary principle and GE foods. She has worked at many nonprofits, as a state level legislative policy analyst, consultant to environmental agencies, and as faculty and program coordinator at New College. She also helps coordinate JASecon and the Really Really Free Market and works with the US Solidarity Economy Network.

Anthony Di Franco serves on the steering committee of BACE and organizes the BACE presentations and discussions on the BACE food currency project. He studied information theory and the theory of complex adaptive systems at Yale university, then went on to work at several tech startups on various projects including the quantitative modeling of networks and natural language text. He has been passionate about the potential of community-based economic systems for over ten years, and this led him to work on building a model of the stabilizing effects of Bernard Lietaer’s proposed Terra currency on the global macroeconomy in 2007 with Lietaer’s working group of complexity theorists. He keeps an eye open to topics in the theory of networks and wealth condensation relevant to community-based economic systems, as well as to those in the intersection of complex adaptive systems, artificial intelligence, and strategy in adversarial settings.

Rick Simon is from Miami, Fla. and has been a passionate advocate for what he calls “cooperative economics” for more than 20 years. That passion led him to follow through on a long time dream to move to the SF bay area. He now volunteers with NoBAWC (Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives), is one of the founders of JASecon (host of the “grassroots economy festival”), and is an organizer for the BACE Timebank. His new dream is to bring together the different pieces of the”grassroots economy” to make a better world possible. Rick is also on the Steering Committee.

Amy Johnson holds a BA in Communications from LaSalle University and is pursuing a Masters in public policy. Her involvement with social justice activism began through independent media projects in Philadelphia. She coordinated outreach efforts and events for a media literacy organization and an independent television station. After moving to the Bay Area, she became interested in alternative economics and projects that challenge conventional monetary ideology. Her current focus is on helping to coordinate the Timebank project that grew out of BACE and getting it off the ground. She is part of the BACE Steering Committee.

Marc Armstrong is a UCLA MBA alum and business development professional in the software industry. Mr. Armstrong’s background includes a series of sales, business development, and operations management and executive positions, first with IBM Finance, and then with SAP Technical Development partners headquartered in Europe that were looking to develop the U.S. ERP and SCM markets. Recent projects include designing the software platform for a local currency payment system, as well as hard currencies for the City of Sonoma.

Ken Lynch founded Reciprocity with a vision of strengthening community bonds using payment, reputation, and social software technologies. He is passionate about making the world a better place, and is currently focusing his decade of software industry experience and deep monetary understanding on developing Reciprocity’s Platform Recipro as a reward/recognition system for use in the sustainable industry. Ken graduated from MIT in 1998 in Computer Science, with Computer Science Masters thesis completed at Sloan School of Management. Ken is a member of the BACE Steering Committee.