Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the Hoop Fund?

The Hoop Fund is a high impact start-up company built by social entrepreneurs and changemakers in order to connect conscious consumers and microlenders to their supply chain, drive more traffic to great sustainable and ethical brands, and fund producer projects through microlending.

With the Hoop you become part of your own supply chain: the global cycle of investment, production, and consumption that puts coffee in our mugs and soccer balls at our feet. And in doing so, you also invest in the community enterprises behind some of the most important movements on the planet: Fair Trade, Farmer-Owned, Organic and more. These movements are striving to create healthier, more vibrant communities around the planet, and you can help them take off.

At the Hoop, we offer you an opportunity to connect to and invest in the makers as well as enjoy great sustainable and ethical products.

2. How does the Hoop Fund work?

Through the power of crowdfunding on the Hoop, subscribers can purchase sustainable and ethical products online as well as invest directly in the producers through microloans of $10-$100.

We work in collaboration with producers and brands to discover projects that grow or improve the producers' businesses: everything from seed banks, handheld looms, to harvest financing and more. Our brand's producer partners pick a project from their wish-lists, we choose a great end product from the brand, and we post the bundle (product and and project loan) on our platform to start fundraising.

You and your community of lenders fund the project and get a great deal on ethical products you can trust.

Once the loan amount has been filled, 100% is wired to producer bank accounts, the project begins and you receive your product from our brand partners.

You will receive intermittent repayments throughout the life of the loan, along with project and producer updates.

When the project is complete and repaid, you can use your money to fund another project, purchase their products, or take it out and do what you want with it.

Please read the Hoop's Terms of Use for more detail.

3. How do the bundles work?

The Hoop's bundles combine a deal on product that does good with a microloan to the people who make it.

Since Fair Trade and sustainable brands love customers who love their producers, we're able to negotiate great deals for people that make microloans through the Hoop.

Our bundles are a win all around. Customers build a portfolio of impact all over the world, while discovering great products to share and enjoy. Producers get new financing to improve and diversify their businesses, and sustainable brands get great new customers who love their mission.

4. How is the Hoop different from micro-lending platforms like Kiva?

Although we use micro-loans like other great platforms do, we focus on enabling consumers to get personally involved in the production of products they enjoy: bringing each of us closer to the farms, weaver groups, and community enterprises that are at the root of it all.

So while most micro-loans go to individual entrepreneurs, Hoop loans go to small and medium producer enterprises (SMEs), such as farmer co-operatives of rice, cacao, or quinoa, or small artisan businesses that create apparel or handcrafts. Some of these businesses will have several dozen, several hundred, or even several thousand worker-owners.

Finally, with the Hoop, you're investing in producers who make products you can enjoy yourself or share with your friends and family. You can actually taste the fruit of your shared efforts with producers!

5. What kind of projects can I fund on the Hoop?

The Hoop's projects are designed by the producer businesses and are focused on building business capacities, or on funding needed projects that serve the community as a whole.

On the project description you'll see links to the project's impacts: funding new equipment, increasing market access, enabling organic certification, training and more.

6. Do Hoop loans earn interest?

A Hoop loan is a new way to help grow community enterprises that both have great impact and make products that you love. The Hoop Fund doesn't pay interest to lenders, nor do we earn interest on the loans we send out to producers. So Hoop loans are not financial investments, and shouldn't be considered as such.

Depending on the field partners or financial institutions that are administering the loans on the ground, producers may pay interest rates (from 3-10%) for the loans. In general, administering a loan costs money for field partners, and self-sustainability of financial institutions that serve producers is critical too.

We require our field partners to fully disclose their interest rates, and we'll always be clear what interest rate if any is being charged to producers. We don't work with organizations that charge excessive interest rates, and seek out partners that also create significant social benefit.

7. Are Hoop loans tax deductible?

No, since the money comes back to you, loans are not tax deductible but you do get to use that money over again to do more good: a kind of generosity you can enjoy over and over.

8. Is the Hoop a for-profit company? How does the Hoop make money?

The Hoop is an impact-driven, for-profit company, part of the social enterprise community based at the Hub in San Francisco.

We're working hard to strengthen community enterprises and in the process unlock a huge wave of consumer demand for products that create significant benefit for the communities that make or supply them.

We make money as a promotional & loyalty platform: we earn a commission for helping our brand partners acquire new customers and by driving new sales of their products. We do not earn interest on loans we send to producers.

9. How is the Hoop different from other online marketplaces?

All of the products you will see on the Hoop platform are made by the producers to whom we are also lending. This gives you the opportunity to connect with the producers through both lending and purchasing, and to create long-term relationships between consumer and producer communities. In the future, the Hoop platform will facilitate additional interactive features for you and the producers, alike, to utilize.

10. Why should I make a loan?

This platform gives a site visitor a unique experience - the opportunity to create new types of relationships with the producers behind their favorite products, the opportunity to both invest and purchase products from the same producers, and a chance to understand the long-term impact of these actions on producer communities and even your own community. The Hoop envisions communities here (e.g. a classroom, a faith community or a student organization) sponsoring a loan project and beginning a meaningful cultural exchange and fruitful dialogue around social change.

We're working on ways to track your impact, so you can proudly display the work you've done for producers: the loans you've made, the products you've bought, and all the loans and products you helped recruit new friends to.

11. Gifting: Can I give a loan in someone else's name?

Yes, Hoop microloans make great gifts!

After you click fund on a project you're given the option to gift the loan to someone else. Just enter in the gift recipient's name and email address.

We'll setup an account for them if they don't already have one, and send you an email & certificate that you can forward on to your gift recipient.

12. Gifting: Can I buy a bundle in someone else's name?

Yes. On your checkout screen (before the shopping cart pops up), you'll see an option to "Give as a gift". Just enter in the gift recipient's name and email address.

We'll setup an account for them if they don't already have one, and send you an email & certificate that you can forward on to your gift recipient.

If the bundle includes a physical product, you can decide before you pay where you want your gifts shipped (to you or to your lucky loved one).

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