Gift Hub

Planting Empowerment

Founded by four former Peace Corps volunteers, Planting Empowerment is a social venture,

pioneering a new reforestation model in Panama’s marginalized Darien region. Addressing the need to improve the quality of life among the inhabitants of the “forgotten province”, as well as confront the increasing environmental degradation in the area, PE partners with rural Indigenous and Hispanic communities to plant and manage sustainable timber plantations. We accomplish this by securing long-term leases on these peoples’ impacted land and offsetting their income from unchecked logging.

Trimalchio in Paradise Valley, Montana

Ethicurean reports that along with MacArthur grant winners, Ameya Preserve, a gated community of conscience where nature meets culture in Paradise Valley, Montana, will also feature a gourmet chef, Alice Waters, and "resident farmers," whether slaves, peasants, sharecroppers, or actors, we don't know. Alice will be leading a culinary school, apparently. Perhaps she can reprise Trimalchio's Banquet. 

Wealth Bondage Philanthropy

Lucy Bernholz recaps the newest philanthropy buzzwords, but she misses one, or is too embarrassed to type it,  the one that everyone knows, the one that is whispered in the ladies room, at Council on Foundations, or out behind the Dumpster at Philanthropy Roundtable, the phrase that no one dares say in polite company, lest the whole world come crashing down: "Wealth Bondage." It means what the other buzz words mean. 

Open Philanthropy
Aligned Philanthropy
Hyperlocal Philanthropy
Mircofranchising

Wealth Bondage  says the same thing but much more succinctly. There is no 'outside' of wealth bondage;  it is all a capital market, the whole country is a capital market, Lucy, and we might as well celebrate it. We have no other metaphor, no other symbol. The World We Want Creating Social Capital Markets. It is all one book, all one field, all one celebration of  Wealth Bondage. But the less said the better. Wealth Bondage is the dirty secret of Philanthropy. We will not escape our slavery to Wealth Bondage, our dependency on Wealth Bondage, our addiction to Wealth Bondage, until we have the courage to say, "I love Wealth Bondage and I don't care who knows it," and then run off stage all aflutter. It is about time, Lucy, that we came out of the closet about it: You love Markets, I do too.  Everyone loves Wealth Bondage, they are just afraid to admit it.  OK, I feel better. At least it is off my conscience. 

Morals Coaching: What's In It For Me?

To set the record straight, no, Dr. Chadwallah, I am not looking for a job with Porter Novelli: Many Minds Singular Results(tm) on their Crisis & Issues Team. Nor, for that matter, despite your scurrilous innuendos, Dr., am I running some kind of shake down operation here. I disdain filthy lucre! My purse may be empty, but my reputation is my treasure house full to bursting with gold not of this world. You would do well to honor my noble trade and forgo these slurs upon an honorable man who has devoted his entire adult life to serving others. My goal is to advance philanthropy by providing Morals Tutorials and Values-Based Planning for wealthy, public-spirited people, for the good of all.  To the extent Porter Novelli might want to put me in charge of their Corporate Foundation, say, we might have the basis for an arrangement, as long as I could still Coach Mr. Dokken and his peers pro bono publico on the side as my way off giving back to society. From Good to Great, in Pursuit of Excellence - even the best get better with proper instruction and some external discipline. I am driven to see The Wealthy of the World be the best they can be morally speaking. Each wealthy client is precious to me as a human being, and frail human soul, whose salvation hangs in the balance like a spider suspended by the hand of an angry God over a burning pit by a single thread. Money has never been that big a motivator for me, though I accept gifts graciously on a pay it forward basis so that I might continue my work in the Mission Fields where I am called to serve Persons of Wealth. I would never ask for money from a Morals Tutorial Client until we had achieved measurable results, which can take years, even with a cooperative client who candidly confesses his improvement opportunities upfront.  First, comes Benchmarks. Painful but necessary. Nobody ever said Moral Improvement comes easy. If it was easy everyone would do it. But the journey of a million miles starts with a single step. Moral improvement is tough, but when things get tough, the tough get going.  Engaging an experienced Morals Tutor such as myself is often a good move. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Let's get it off on the right foot by making a clean breast of it all. Right here. Right now. 

Inhance Investment Management

At Inhance Investment Management,

we help Canadian investors build wealth through enhanced investment returns. We do this by taking the science and art of investment management to a whole new level. Before investing, we listen to company management; research economic trends, and crunch the numbers just like any one else. But we also take another important step, incorporating environmental, social and governance criteria into our analysis of each investment opportunity. We look at how companies behave, and invest only in those that have compelling growth prospects today, and the progressive and sustainable business practices needed to keep growing in the future.

Note that Carol Newell and Joel Solomon at Renewal Partners are angel investors.  Elsewhere  Carol leverages her example at Play Big.  Renewal also funds Social Venture Institute at Hollyhock which is itself funded as another social investment, or gift.  Quite an example Joel and Carol set.

No End in Sight

A social venture with a double bottom line?

Magnolia Pictures is the theatrical and home entertainment distribution arm of Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment, specializing in a unique and eclectic slate of films. Formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, Magnolia's releases have included the Academy Award nominated documentaries ENRON: SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS, the groundbreaking BUBBLE by Steven Soderbergh, and numerous other successes: ONG BAK, DISTRICT B13, PULSE, KEANE, THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN, WOMAN THOU ART LOOSED, READ MY LIPS, LATE MARRIAGE, and the 2006 Oscar Nominated Shorts.

Their No End in Sight is now playing.

"Class Envy" in Montana - The Ameya Preserve Saga

Remember the dust up over Ameya Preserve? Well the controversy keeps escalating. Here is the social entrepreneur, Wade Dokken, lashing back at citizens and bloggers who question his upscale development in Montana.

A letter from the local paper responds.

My original post drew on a press release emailed me by a PR firm working for Dokken. My sense of the project was that it was in the tradition of The Great Gatsby.  I saw it as a wonderful American Fable of wealth, luxury, high society, good taste and bad taste.  Since they are inviting Geniuses to Ameya to sweeten the deal for the Rising Aristocrats,  I offered to come as a resident Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, or at least a World Class Fool, if the money is right, that is.  Offer still stands. It is for lack of a Fool that many wealthy people historically have come a cropper through hubris.  Even in America such things can happen. All the money spent on PR firms in many cases would be better spent on Moral Instructors in Motley. But, then, I have a vested interest in saying so.  It may be that Wade already has all the Fools he needs on retainer.

UPDATE: The writer of the letter to the editor quoted above, Charlotte McGuinn Freeman, has a blog and links back to our post.  Her blog is suitably entitled, Living Small: Thoughts on Literature, Food, Faith, and subversive faith of living small.

Yanqui Social Venturers Profit from Misery

Martin Rizzi who lives and works with campesino artisans in Mexico writes at Omidyar.net:

why should i care about the fancy neeedlework of rich people? i could care less how they get and spend the money they have. however today the "social entrepeneurs" and "new philanthropists" and "fair trade merchants" take up the marketing space that rightfully should belong to the artisans who could really make use of the access. By collaring the "social enterprise", "new philantropy" and "free trade" brand names, money-interests assume a profitable interest in the misery of poor people, by justifying  activities (and taking tax deductions) that are designed and intended not for the other's good, but one's own profit.

More from Martin here on the way eBay creates downward pressure on prices for artisans in the third world.

 

Micro Franchising

Microfranchising.blogspot.com edited by David Stoker.

Microfranchising is a development tool that seeks to apply the proven marketing and operational concepts of traditional franchising to small businesses in the developing world. The primary feature of a microfranchise is its ability to be streamlined and replicated. The businesses are designed for microentrepreuers and usually target development issues such as health, sanitation, and energy.

See also Kirk Mogelby, MicroFranchises as a Solution to Global Poverty, 87 pages in pdf.

Social Entrepreneurs - Definitions of

The School for Social Entrepreneurs discusses the definition of Social Entrepreneur provided by Martin and Osberg in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and discussed in an earlier Gifthub post. If a Social Entrepreneur makes the world better, or more just, for a targeted group, through disruptive change, leading to a new equilibrium, was Rousseau a Social Entrepreneur? Robespierre? Tom Paine? George Washington? Harriett Beecher Stowe? General Sherman? Lenin? How about Dante? Gallileo? Machiavelli? Confucius? Can a great social entrepreneur, like a great writer, go unheralded, and die forgotten, without achieving a real world effect? Or, is success part of the definition? So that we call a failed social entrepreneur, a "loser" and leave it at that? I would think that social entrepreneurship to be a useful concept would need to have better boundaries, and clearer contrasting terms, not just be a fuzzy honorific, or puffery. I would think at the very least a social entrepreneur by definition must be under the impression or delusion that markets are the best avenue to a better world. A social entrepreneur is one who looks to business as a high calling, or sees business methods as the preferred means to high and noble ends. That definition would then set social entrepreneurs apart from heroic figures in the arts, sciences, war craft, diplomacy, law, religion, philosophy, and other walks of life that may in fact have far greater effect than entrepreneurs per se can or should.

When did shopkeers and entrepreneurial upstarts first become moral heroes? How about Moll Flanders?  Or, Macheath? Today, we find it commonplace to look up to entrepreneurs in all their cultural narrowness, presumption, and vulgarity. There was a time when to admit you consorted with an entrepreneur (then called a "Projector" or a "Virtuoso"; see the Novak tome linked here) brought dishonor on a person of good breeding and good taste. An entrepreneur would not have been admitted to any drawing room in the time of good Queen Anne. Now, it is the cultured people, the carriers on of intellectual, artistic, ethical, and spiritual traditions, who are in the Dumpster, as the bumptious MBAs laud one another as world historical figures, seers, world changers. How sad if it be so.  They sure don't write like they are in touch with the World Spirit.  For the Social Entrepreneurs among us, here is a link to the word bumptious, so you won't have to look it up. The definition could have your picture on it.