Gift Hub

BoP Impact Investment Opportunity for Qualified Social Investors

Strike a Spark and Save Lives!

After studying Bottom of Pyramid Consumers I have come up with a business plan to provide them for just one dollar with flint and steel to kindle a cooking fire from twigs they collect in vacant lots. We can manufacture the Product for 1 penny, my cut is 30 cents, 30 goes to distribution, and the remainder,  minus a wholesaler fee and commisison to registered reps, goes to the Impact Investors, as a Return on Investment. The Social Return is Priceless. Thousands of lives can be saved, as winter comes on. Many of those who will otherwise starve or freeze are children. I estimate the cash on cash return is higher than payday loans, title loans, or microfinance in the third world, where debt collection generally involves repossessing poultry, cows, or rudimentary tools, at considerable cost through unreliable intermediaries for an uncertain Total Return. Market failure? No! What we have in Poverty is the failure of Entrepreneurial Imagination. Where some see misery and a disgrace, I see opportunity. If our customers make it through the winter, we can upsell them to matches next spring.

This is not an offer. For a prospectus please contact your own qualified investment professional. Wealth Bondage makes no guarantee of investment performance or any particular social impact, positive or negative. The net effect of entropy is generally negative over time, and may ultimately swamp whatever positive emerges from the Steel and Flint Inititiative. As with any Impact Investment please consult a priest or life coach before committing your moral identity to the performance of this, or any, social gesture. Please recognize that Impact Investing, social impact, social return on investment, and other such words and phrases are terms of art in a rapidly evolving rhetorical context, and should be construed loosely, and to the advantage of those who use them. For the current meaning of these rapidly changing terms please consult Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, Professor of Applied Theater at Wealth Bondage School of Fine Arts. Be aware that Doctor Jeff Trexler is not associated with this post, nor is Jed Emerson, Lucy Bernholz, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Clinton Global Initiative, or any poet Laureate living or dead. It is not the intention of The Author Function, or his persona, "Phil," to provoke laughter with regard to serious matters. The reader is asked to maintain a solemn and respectful face, as if in the presence of wealth. We all have illusions that sustain us. Please be considerate of the illusions of others, as you would want yours to be respected in like circumstances.  

Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity - Mario Marino

A great website, book, videos, and supporting materials from Mario Marino. For a man of reason, his humility dedication, selflessness and passion carries the day. He remembers where is he from (mother cleaned offices, father was a blue collar worker.) He also remembers how he was so successful (business discipline.) He wants nonprofits to be accountable not to "the damn funders" but to the constituency the nonprofit serves, as measured by benchmarks that provide meaningful indications of progress. What Mario makes clear is that these meaningful indicators should be developed by the organization, internally, and should reflect what really counts as winning, in the eyes of those closest to the work. Mario is not, as he says, commenting on the game from the skybox. He is a coach, teaching core skills to nonprofit managers, for the benefit of the community served. The skills he teaches are skills he has mastered and lived. His point about money is that it is scarce, and should be used to maximal effect.

Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy - White Paper

One of the most interesting and informative studies of high net worth philanthropy that I have ever read. It was done by Forbes and Credit Suisse who got 150 of the world's wealthiest philanthropists to visit New York to discuss their giving. What is this telling us about the importance of philanthropy to high net worth clients? Credit Suisse gets it, apparently. I am staggered, though, by how often even in talking to high level execs at the direct competitors to Credit Suisse I have to "make the case" for philanthropic planning services.

Download the study here.  

Dr. Trexler on Social Enterprise (A Cultural Primer for Philistines)

Guest Post from Jeff Trexler, that is Dr. Trexler, to you.

If only exams on CSR raised more questions such as this! One of things that I found most striking in my time among academics specializing in CSR and social enterprise is the extent to which the field conflates analysis with advocacy. In many respects it is a callback to the early years of social science in the 19th century, with professors and practitioners joining together creating an ostensibly new model of charity, often in tandem with new business wealth.

What’s interesting about this tripartite support for the triple bottom line is that its very existence provides an important clue as to the nature of ethical business. The reason why professors and universities tend to be in the tank for social entrepreneurship is that social enterprise primarily serves to define identity. Through social enterprise, professors can transcend ivory tower irrelevance to define themselves as people who help create meaningful change. Universities, on the other hand, have come to love social enterprise because of its value as a means of recruiting students and attracting financial support.

This ties in directly to the emergence of capitalist realism as the defining style of contemporary do-goodery. In the academic context, social enterprise & CSR serve as much as a marketing tool as they do for a commercial business. Consider the all too ubiquitous paeans to the commitment of the rising generation of young people to social business. Hop into the historical wayback machine and you’ll see that it was ever thus - social consciousness has been a common trait among young adult practically from the emergence of Western modernity at late medieval European universities.

The persistence of the social-consciousness meme throughout recurrences of this generational cadre points to its compelling appeal to young people who are looking to define themselves as having personal meaning and agency in the face of a looming lifetime defined by the subsumption of self into marriage and work. By not instructing kids in the challenges and ambiguities of social business, universities become the pied piper of the unformed soul, leading kids out of the village with a song of hope only to let them drop off the cliff without ongoing support.

A similar dynamic is operative in the use of social enterprise as a development tactic, whether by universities, nonprofits or social ventures.  Telling successful businessfolk & companies that they can fund a blended value program has both prospective and retrospective benefits: not only can they find meaning in charity or use it for marketing, but the program frames the pre-gift life in business as a social good. In short, the social enterprise initiative becomes a full extension of the self.

The conditions in this environment make the emergence of capitalist realism all but inevitable. Individuals, commercial companies and nonprofits are entrepreneurial changemakers striding boldly into the future — to question this movement is to question who they are. In this respect social enterprise and CSR serve an identity-creating function similar to that of clothes. We wear blended value much the same way one wears designer fashion or a trademark black sweater and jeans. It is how we present ourselves, and for some, maintaining the integrity of that personal image trumps any attempt to rip apart the seams.

About Jeff Trexler

His Linked In profile is here. Essentially, he is a liberal art genius with a law degree, an interest in Russian literature and law, a taste for comic books, expertise in the law of fashion, and deep expertise in social business. He and I have been corresponding on Social Venture Theater with an eye to staging an intervention by Solemn Fools. Unfortunately, those we interpellate as Fools (which we mean as compliment and a high calling) seem to take offense. They are Young MBAs! Social Entrepreneurs. And truth be told they will soon manage us all. But first of course they must measure us. If they are serious about it, you can't blame them. If they lose concentration for even a moment, they might drop their tape measure, and in bending over to pick it up, expose their backsides. Dr. Trexler is how tall? Let us measure him for his cape. Or his chains, as a prisoner of the Philistines. Those with a tape measure may have to stand tippy toe on a footstool. This man in a Giant. If only he would turn his hand to making money, he might do some good. As it is, what is a freak without a tent?

B Social B Good B Gullible

Yes, by starting or investing in a Social Business you can achieve the following benefits:

• Earn enough to pay off your college and biz schools loans over the next 40 years
• Earn enough to have an apartment, or house
• Earn enough to have children and educate them
• Be a good person
• Be cool
• Measure and manage others and be measured and managed as you have been since birth

Sad, beyond telling that this is apparently how the ideals of Millennials are being co-opted into business as nearly usual. Tell me there is more to impact investing than this. Well, there is the bubble too, for the financial services people, funds to sell on fee or commissions. The bubble too for consultants. Might it not be true, though, that sometimes virtue demands sacrifice? Yet, I get it. The loans need to be repaid, and no Pierre Omidayar or Grameen Bank will cut you an interest rate break or give you what bankers call "grace." To critique Wealth Bondage as a system goes nowhere except to the Dumpster, as no one knows better than I. So let us adopt the manic tone we heard before the dot.com bubble and blow the bubble harder and harder until it bursts. What have we but bubbles (real estate, then internet, then housing, then green jobs, then Solyndra) and the emerging reality that none of this is sustainable with or without a B Corp or two. B the Change.

Sartor Resartus, or the Tailor Retailored (On the Rhetoricians of Social Ventures)

I can imagine an exam given at Harvard or Stanford in the philosophy, political science, sociology, or English department, or in Theater, that would take as its topic any number of passages from the literature on CSR, Social Enterprise, Impact Investing, Double Bottom Line Ventures, and the like. The exam would ask the student to  characterize the intended audience, and the speaker's persona, and would end by asking about the ethics, sociology, politics as well as the economics of such discourse and its reception. What is it about our current scene in America that we produce and consume so much stone-cold-poetry, in the language of business, on behalf of a well managed social economy starring these particular characters? "Capitalist Realsm," is what an educated friend calls it. He is not the Thomas Carlyle Professor of The Law and Ethics of Business Fashion, but does have a similar role in a legitimate industry. Perhaps he will comment below, or via his blog.

It All Goes Back in the Box

Senior Pastor John Ortberg in a 33 minutes sermon from 2007 at Menlo Park, CA, Presbyterian Church - we all suffer from the worldy disease he diagnoses, whether or not we share his particular faith tradition. (The faith tradition we do have in common is the disases from which we collectively suffer - materialism and the metrics that support it.)

African Billionaire Pays Off Politicians who Do not Take Bribes

I am not sure any philanthropist in the US has enough money for this.

Make the Most of Your Political Contributions

Via Arabella Advisors, a philanthropic consulting firm whose motto is, Greater Good.

Money talks—especially during election season. Including political giving in your philanthropic strategy can be a 
valuable way to amplify your voice and impact the issues you care about most. Here are six best practices for 
making the most of your political contributions, along with a chart to help you navigate your options. 

As they say every balanced philanthropic portfolio should include at least one politician or party. 

Rationalizing the Market in Political Influence

Optimizing Free Speech in The Social Economy

After Citizens United, free speech means big money. A large contribution can be considered a suggestion by the funder, but in my experience Hyperagents, like my boss and generous patron, she who rules us all, prefer that their suggestions, when accompanied by money, be taken as commands, or purchase order. A major problem today, though, is that politicians take bigger and bigger gifts from funders, in a kind of influence auction, but then do not always do what the largest buyer has suggested. In a rational influence market, politicians will be required to refund all monies they received but did not act upon appropriately, in the eyes of the funder. Influence money will come with a money back guarantee of outputs, if not outcomes. To further rationalize the market, Wealth Bondage, the owner and sole adjudicator of the social economy, will track and evaluate politicians, to better assist funders in making rational choices. In the offing are influence impact mutual funds and a class action suit to rectify wrongs to funders.

Political Influence Dashboard

• At what price does the politician trade?
• Does the pol prefer cash, securities, check, or money order?
• Does a board seat promised in the future produce policy results for the funder today?
• Does the board member prefer red or white wine? Boys, men, women, or girls?
• Is the gift best made in person or through intermediaries?
• Would the pol prefer the gift be made to the politician, a spouse, child, or foundation?
• What is the track record of the pol (Social Return on Investment) on following through on promises to funders?
• Which politicians represent the best value?

Political Impact Free Speech is Money Fund

• An actively managed portfolio of politicians by issue area, location, and risk/return ratio.

Wealth Bondage versus The American People

• WB has opened a class action suit aggregating funders who bought political influence but whose wishes have been ignored.
• We hope soon to overturn Citizens United, deeming money to be mere free speech, and replace it with the simple law of contracts. Money does more than talk. It rules. A funder should get what a funder has purchased.