Money Stories
Introduction
Before groups can meaningfully share power over resources, they must first understand the often-unspoken stories they carry about money itself. These stories shape how we interpret risk, responsibility, urgency, fairness, and worth. They influence whether we default toward control or collaboration, protection or possibility.
In participatory investing and other community-rooted finance approaches, money is not neutral. Financial decision-making is a root determinant of health, and the meanings we assign to money directly affect whose knowledge is trusted, whose needs are prioritized, and how flexible or rigid systems become when conditions change. This reflection invites participants to examine how their personal and institutional money stories were formed, how they show up in collective decision-making, and how they may reinforce patterns of scarcity or abundance in shared work.
The following prompts can be explored as individual journal prompts or facilitation tools for groups initiating work on shared governance of resources.
Relationships with money are rarely taught explicitly. Rather, most of our experiences with money are absorbed through family dynamics, institutional rules, crisis moments, and cultural narratives about success, failure, and security. This reflection is an opportunity to surface those influences and notice how they continue to shape our current individual and professional choices.
Reflect on the following prompts individually. If you are a trainer or facilitator for a group, invite groups to pair share or discuss in small groups after individual reflection.
To help explore how conditions shape decisions, risk tolerance, and innovation related to resourcing community health initiatives.
Asked for $10M
Received $1M
Group B
Asked for $10M
Received $100M
As participants complete the scenario exercise, invite the group to notice how resource conditions influence behavior, and facilitate or inhibit experimentation with structures that support shared risk, learning, and long-term stewardship. Invite the group to consider how establishing conditions that foster risk-taking and trust-building can be critical for the success of initiatlves aiming to shift power toward community-led resourcing decisions. When tension arises around risk, timelines, or control, returning to the underlying money stories can open space for dialogue, repair, and more durable collaboration.
