The Hoop Fund – Closing our doors

Dear friends,

We are writing to share with you some sad news about the Hoop Fund.

After two years of working to crowdfund producer microloans and promote fair trade products, we have decided to close our doors.

There are a number of reasons for shutting down the company, the biggest being that despite some very passionate supporters, we were never able to reach the volume of projects and user traffic necessary to sustain the Hoop. Recently many of our brand partners confirmed that microloan projects + product deals are very difficult to market and there’s a high-level of education required for purchase. We’ve also found it very time consuming to set-up enough projects with enough product margin to cover our costs.

This is a really difficult decision to make, we’ve worked hard to keep the Hoop going and are proud of what we have all been able to do together. Over 800 people came together to support producers in 8 countries, as well as an amazing group of companies doing great work all over the world. We had so many passionate supporters, we just wish we could have done so much more.

For everyone that made a microloan through the Hoop, we will be contacting you via email to get your preference on how you would like to be repaid. We’re also working with our brand partners to figure out a plan for the loans that are still currently doing work in the field.

Finally, I’ve also been asked to share a number of our lessons learned, so that other social enterprises might benefit from our experiences. We’ll be posting those lessons here on our blog, so stay tuned if you want to learn more.

Thank you again for all your work to support the Hoop.  We will be forever grateful for your work, leadership, and commitment to supporting ethical producers.

Sincerely,
Patrick Donohue

CEO, Co-Founder
The Hoop Fund