Yesterday I went to visit a new nonprofit that is quite unique. It is called One California Foundation and they own a bank. There are only a few like it in the country and I can see it being a major force in the future for helping people become self sufficient. The bank is a regular bank where you can get loans and start a checking account, and the foundation arm focuses on educating people on financial literacy and how to do online banking. They want to help people understand how much money they are throwing away by going to the check cashing places.

They also have a program that shows smalls how to create an online store. They have a great website (www.oaklandunwrapped.org) that makes this process really easy and businesses only get charged a small transaction fee. This is a new project with only 15 businesses using the service, but they hope to increase this number 100 by December. They also hope to offer this service to other cities. It promotes local small business and entrepreneurship. I love it!