Pushing Grove Bucks

I presented Grove Bucks at the BID marketing meeting on Tuesday, for the Coconut Grove Merchants Group. We would like the BID to fund the bucks, as they do with many events. The Bucks are basically an event, without having to deal with putting on an event!

In the past, the BID has funded coupons, tickets and other things for other groups, and this will benefit the whole Grove, actually the whole BID area. Since they are funding the Bucks, it would make sense to just have businesses within the BID area participate, that does not include all of Coconut Grove, just basically the Central Business District.

Anyway, I presented and explained how the Bucks will benefit the whole Grove in that if it is a continuing thing, it will be a gimmick that would put us on the map worldwide -- imagine newspaper and news stories of that little village in Florida that prints it's own money! Priceless. More than the cost of the whole project.

The way it works is that businesses accept the Bucks and then turn them in to a central bank for actual cash. They come in increments of $2, or $5 or even $10. It costs the same to print four bills at a time, no matter how many or what the increment is. So the costs are set. We would give the Bucks away through contests and other methods, even as prizes on the radio, which would entail a free ad for the Grove every time a DJ announces the contest for Grove Bucks -- ie, "Be the 10th caller and win 50 Grove Bucks. What are Grove Bucks? Coconut Grove has it's own money!" And there is a free radio ad.

Now for the great part. We were concerned about counterfeit bills. Who would stop someone form making color photo copies, but we came up with a printing method that is secure, it is a special paper that is used for other things like prescriptions. It cannot be photocopied. If someone tries to copy the bill a large "DUPLICATE" prints on the page. This and a code for certain bills will help stop counterfeiting.

The BID committee asked us to map out how much we would need and what events they would be used for. We'll be back.