Taking Down and Building Up: Open Bookkeeping’s Impact Philosophy

Why I want to take down capitalism and build new systems:

I believe capitalism to be an economic system that, by its very nature, creates economic divides resulting in harm, violence and injustice for both people and the planet. I also see and experience capitalism as a system of domination that disproportionately extracts and exploits resources from people and the planet. Any shift away from our current economic system must be rooted in a framework of collective empowerment, liberation, healing and health for both people and the planet. I bring these beliefs and experiences into my organizing against capitalism, against exploitative and extractive systems, against violence, harm and dehumanization. I work in solidarity with those collectively and collaboratively creating healthier economies and a healthier planet.

Yes, I want to bring capitalism down and dismantle current systems of oppression. I also want to build and create what I want to see in the world, something that we can move towards. We cannot run away from capitalism in an unorganized frenzy. For if we do, those most vulnerable will be left behind, trampled and exploited, yet again. We must be diligent and proactive in building bridges that lead to what we want to see in the world, making sure to support our most vulnerable and most oppressed selves to get there and lead the way. We must have an escape plan.

Three distinct sectors speak to me as a place of hope for alternative economies, for healthy communities, selves and ecosystems. I see worker-coops and community-supported businesses as answering the “what” question of creating alternative structures; they counter the current exploitation model of businesses by creating democratic ownership and management structures as well as a direct tie to community needs and values. However, it is also important to acknowledge that oppressive systems can be carried into these structures. Thus, including social justice organizations answers the question of “how” we will be building alternative economies

Focus on worker-coops, community-supported businesses and social justice organizations:

Cooperatives can take many shapes and forms, from agriculture coops to member coops, producer coops to worker coops. While all coops have some sort of paradigm shift inherent in their structure, I want to focus on supporting worker-coops specifically. Worker-coops are game-changers because of their democratic governance and direct ownership of the business. Worker-coops defy capitalism because of the removal of a boss and a subsequent empowerment of worker-owners. The very structure of worker-coops mandates a paradigm shift from top-down authority to horizontal collaboration. Because all workers are owners, profits are actually seen as surplus and are invested back into the business and/or divided amongst worker-owners as decided democratically by the worker-owners. There are many unique challenges facing worker-coops based on both the lack of hierarchical structure and the investment abilities of each member-owner.

Community-supported businesses are financially supported by their communities: friends, family, geographically or culturally communities. Community-supported agriculture farms (CSAs) are the most familiar and popular forms of community-supported businesses. What draws me to community-supported businesses are their lack of dependency on traditional bank loans/investments; potential ability to buck the interest system; creative use of community resources and inherent ability to create value for their community. Community supported businesses use a membership-based model in which customers actually buy “shares” (of food, of meals, of yoga classes, of time in a print studio) of the business. This method is as a pre-buy revenue generator that acts as both a short-term loan for the business and as a sign of creating needed value in the community. Community-supported businesses are important to communities who either cannot capital from traditional methods.

Social Justice Organizations are the third entity that I feel are important to support in building alternative economies. Capitalism is inherently dependent on a divide-and-conquer mentality. Issues of racism, classism, transphobia, ableism, etc. are all used to support and maintain the current economic and power systems that exist. To support only businesses and organizations with alternative structures means that those structures would carry with them the same issues of oppression and violence inherent in capitalism today. It is important to me to support grassroots community organizing that is rooted in social justice principles in order to actualize and achieve collective liberation. This looks like supporting the leadership of historically marginalized communities, understanding the ways that historically marginalized communities have been systemically treated differently – often through violence, genocide and lack of access to resources – and creating systems that actively work against current systems of oppression and towards empowerment and equity. To support worker-coops without bringing in a racial or economic justice lens would mean leaving out people of color and poor people from being able to transition to healthier economies. If worker-coops and community-supported businesses are examples of what we are transitioning to, grassroots social justice organizations important to maintain a vision of how we are going to transition. And, because the leadership and membership of these organizations has often been marginalized and/or lacked access to resources and power, it is imperative to support their viability and stability.

feeling humbled by all the love & support. (ie vermont resilience lab thinks i’m kinda smart)

so it turns out that i am not the only one that cares about what i’m writing.

just last week i ran into two folks – one i’ve known for almost 15 years and one more recent in my life – that were like “hey thanks for writing stuff on your blog. keep it up! i really like what you have to say.”

which for me is essentially a giant sparkly sequined high-five from the universe and a sign that i am not just blah-blah-blah-ing into the ether. i mean, it’s a blog, so i am just blah-ing into the ether.

(side note: there is a bumper-sticker in the world that says “nobody cares about your blog.” i want it! it’s true. nobody cares. most days i don’t even care about my own blog. i just think it’s funny, and true, is all.)

ok, so also, all i want to do is post this link to AN INTERVIEW WITH ME from Vermont Resilience Lab (yes, another bloggity blog blog). because, apparently Amy Kirschner thinks i’m smart enough to (a) interview me and then (b) post it on the internet!

so that’s all. check it out. i have some smart and not so smart things to say.

 

oh, and also, if you need to get inspired about your life, have someone interview you! it was an amazing experience to tell some stranger about everything i’m doing and remember that i’m doing a lot of really amazing stuff and that i pretty much love my life. and hopefully you do too. and, it helps that VRL is also doing a lot of exciting stuff. so maybe it was a mutual remembering of all the amazing things we are all doing.

 

translating between business and community organizing worlds

So this is the second of papers I wrote for my entrepreneurship class. This one was actually pretty fun, as I got to actually think about applying a lot of the things we’ve learned to my actual experiences and closer communities of social justice organizers. While this was framed for a business school class, I would actually reframe the whole essay to be about how Business and Organizing can both learn from on another on an equal playing field.

Let me know your thoughts. And as always, thanks for coming with me on this ridiculous ride of making sense of business school and what the hell it is I’m doing there!

The Importance of Translating the Language of Entrepreneurship  for Social Justice Community Organizing

 

Entrepreneurs have much to offer the world of sustainability not only because of the work they do, but also because of how they do it. The practical skills used by successful entrepreneurs can be translated for sustainability by focusing on the ways that social justice community organizers use the same skills in the work they do.

Entrepreneurship and social justice organizing are often seen as polarized worlds with very different ways of operating. Many people understand entrepreneurship as focused on creating profit while social justice organizing is focused on creating social change and equality. If instead of focusing on a narrow view of their endgame we look at the practical skills inherent to the success of both entrepreneurs and organizers, we would find that they have much in common. What is often lacking is a translation of these practical skills between worlds so that they can each grow and learn from each other

 

Defining Entrepreneurship & Social Justice Organizing
Entrepreneurship – in a grand sense – is about creative vision, practical follow through and perseverance. Successful entrepreneurs are able to take a beautiful and original idea and turn it into a viable project through determination and the ability to learn from their mistakes. What makes an entrepreneur so hard to define – and also successful- is their ability to juggle all three of these balls at once. They are not the passion-less worker that is excellent at performing tasks with no greater sense of how their work changes the world. Nor are they the grand visionary that has no idea how to turn their ideas into tangible products. Entrepreneurs are the culmination of all three pieces – creative vision, practical follow through and constant learning.

Similarly, social justice organizing is hard to define, yet encompasses the principles of equity, transparency, accountability and participation. Social justice organizing seeks to create systems – and often change existing ones – that are meeting the needs of all living things, human and non-human alike, in a way that includes their experiences and voices in decision making processes. Social justice organizing is an important piece of sustainability as it moves essential social and environmental issues forward. If sustainability is, as John Ehrenfeld defines it, “the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever,”[1] organizers are those that take that possibility and make it real. They change policy, create cultural and institutional paradigm shifts through a focus on building social movements and collective power.

The commonalities between entrepreneurs and social justice organizing lie at the heart of what each does: take an idea, vision or hope for the world and turn it into something tangible and real through a lot of hard work, perseverance and the ability to move through and learn from failure.

 

8 Practical Entrepreneurial Skills Translated for Organizers
Many of the practical skills needed to take the grand vision of Ehrenfeld and sustainability-minded leaders are already well established in the world of entrepreneurship. Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start[2], has a list of 10 steps entrepreneurs should take to be successful. Many of these steps are actually practical skills that can easily be translated to the world of social justice organizing. Building off of his list, I have come up with my own list of entrepreneurial skills that can be translated for social justice organizers to succeed in their work.

Practical Skill #1: Creating a Unique Value Proposition
Creating Unique Value Propositions (or UVPs) require entrepreneurs to communicate how what they offer the world meets a specific need in a way no one else is. For organizers, the UVP can be translated into creating a campaign. A successful campaign requires buy-in from the community much the same way a successful business requires buy-in from customers and offers a solution or a framework for understanding large, systemic problems.

Practical Skill #2: Financial Viability
Every good entrepreneur must be able to create a financially viable business model and understand financial forecasting so that the business brings in money in a way that keeps the bank account afloat. Similarly, organizers must create fundraising strategies and budgets to keep their organizations afloat. Just as business owners must create revenue streams that are realistic and practical, organizers must have a plan in place on who they are getting money from, how much, and when.

Practical Skill #3: Building to Scale
Building to scale refers to the ways in which a business must grow in order to have the impact it desires. If a company, such as Honest Tea, is looking to have a national impact, then it will need to be a large national company with a strong presence; on the other hand, if The Gleanery is looking to affect the local food system of Southern Vermont, it need not worry about growing into a chain restaurant. For community organizers, a local campaign around changing zoning laws to prevent Wal-mart from moving in will have a different scale than an international boycott of South African goods to end apartheid.

Practical Skill #4: Keep the optimism front and center
As Seth and Barry learned in creating Honest Tea, sometimes you need a little bit of good news within a whirlwind of putting out fires. Being optimistic doesn’t mean ignoring what needs improvement; rather, it means drawing strength to move forward from the small successes in order to conquer the large mountains ahead. For organizers, this often means reframing their work in order to claim the small victories to keep momentum going. Both entrepreneurs and organizers have long, arduous roads ahead that require optimism that success is possible.

Practical Skill#5: Bootstrapping
Entrepreneurs call creating and running a business with few resources bootstrapping and is seen as a necessary skill to keep the company financially afloat when the inevitable hiccup or emergency situation strikes. Organizers call this grassroots organizing when they create and run an organization with little money, few resources and a lot of volunteer efforts.

Practical Skill #6: Pitching
Entrepreneurs must be skilled at the art of the pitch: explaining their business to anyone, anywhere in a clear and concise manner. It means being able to present in a boardroom to investors, in an elevator to your elderly neighbor and to your kids’ teachers what you do and why it is important. Organizers can use this skill to create media sound bytes to get their message across in a consistent manner for newspaper interviews, door knocking efforts, and grassroots media coverage.

Practical Skill #7: Create a strong management team
Successful entrepreneurs should know how to do everything to run their business so that they can make sure their staff and management team are doing things right. It is critical for them to know how and when to delegate tasks, as well as how to develop those with leadership capabilities into a strong management team. Social justice organizers must also focus on leadership development by turning volunteers into team leaders and organizers so that the work is spread out and there is more community involvement in the work.

Practical Skill #8: Stay true to your values and mission
While this skill does not need to be translated from entrepreneurs to organizers, it is vital to the success of a business or a campaign. Guy Kawasaki calls it “Making meaning, not money.” Organizers use the phrase “It’s not just what you do, but how you do it.” Both entrepreneurs and organizers are looking to solve problems – sometimes of different magnitude or origin, sometimes of similar magnitude or origin – and can easily get lost in quick fixes, selling out, or causing more harm with a single-minded, end-game focus. Staying true to one’s values and mission is essential to creating positive impact throughout the process of succeeding at what they set out to do.

 

Conclusion
If entrepreneurs are focused on selling goods and services that solve problems, organizers are selling ideas and actions that result in a more just world. Where entrepreneurs are making widgets or offering consulting advice, organizers are providing platforms for community education around the harms of the prison system and creating campaigns to end those harms. Entrepreneurs have much to offer the world of organizing in terms of practical skills needed to succeed. However, the ways in which entrepreneurs and organizers talk about these skills can further an unnecessary divide between the two worlds, rather than bringing them closer to together. By translating the language, the immense amount of literature and thought on entrepreneurship can be used to support the work of organizers focused on creating a more sustainable world.

[1] Ehrenfeld, John. Sustainability By Design. Yale University Press: 2009.

[2] Kawasaki, Guy. The Art of the Start. Portfolio Hardcover: 2004.

creating change: why i don’t care about entrepreneurship

I am not sure how many  business school students would open a paper on entrepreneurship with an Audre Lorde quote. And I really hope I did not offend her in any way by using her brilliance. The topic of the paper was a very open-ended What is Entrepreneurship? And to be honest, I had a hard time getting inspired or excited about the question. So I kinda pulled a dick move and wrote about why I don’t really care what entrepreneurship is (even though I am totally seen as an entrepreneur by the business world) unless it’s steeped in a desire for deep systemic social change.

Take a read!

 

Making Change:
Why I am not Interested in Being an Entrepreneur

And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile and feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration of those assumptions underlying our lives.
– Audre Lorde[1]

 

Create. Make. Do.

Entrepreneurship is first and foremost about action. It is about taking an idea and creating something with it: an organization, jobs, money, value. It is a broad term with an even broader set of definitions. However, it is a word that means very little to me, personally, if it is not about creating deep systemic change.

I decided to go to business school because I wanted to create change. For over a decade, I identified as an anti-capitalist: I find the current economic system intrinsically flawed and deeply believe we can create healthier economic and social systems for all living things. For over a decade, I relied on words that defined my beliefs to define me. But there was an integral piece missing from my life: What was I going to do about the current state of things? What actions was I taking to create healthy, viable alternatives? How was I working towards deep systemic change?

Despite starting a for-profit business and two community-based organizations in the last three years, I have never identified as an entrepreneur. By any standard definition, I would be an entrepreneur. However, that standard definition is exactly why the term does not resonate with me. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, an entrepreneur is a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money.[2] The implication of such a mainstream definition is that the end-goal of entrepreneurship is making money. And while that may be true for many people, it is not true for me.

I did not start a bookkeeping business, a social justice center and a queer community organization to make money. I started them to make change. Deep personal and systemic change. Open Bookkeeping is about supporting the financial viability of alternative business models, The Root Social Justice Center is a hub for justice-based social change and HomoPromo is a way to build visibility and community amongst rural queers. While these ventures are entrepreneurial in spirit, they stray from mainstream definitions of entrepreneurship in their end goals.

Perhaps they fit into the emerging framework of the sustainable business world. Guy Kawasaki, author and founder of Garage Technology Ventures, touts the mantra “Make meaning, not money.”[3] He believes that if you set out to make meaning, you will inevitably make money; however, the opposite may not always be true. Jeffrey Timmons, professor and business guru, defines entrepreneurship as “a way of thinking, reasoning, and acting that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach, and leadership balanced for the purpose of value creation and capture”.[4] And then there is author Daniel Isenberg, who focuses on perceiving, creating and capturing extraordinary value. These men all stray from a mainstream focus on creating money to a focus on creating value. They are on to something, something different from the mainstream understanding of entrepreneurship.

I would be lying if I felt their definitions or frameworks of entrepreneurship compelled me to identify as an entrepreneur. I agree with all three of them on the importance of value and meaning, of creating something bigger than oneself. Yet all three of them incorporate making money into their notions of entrepreneurial success. I don’t see anything wrong with that and I do think that an entrepreneur needs to factor in financial stability into any endeavor or project. However, I have no desire to identify with a word that is not first and foremost about creating change.

Some people look to the Donald Trumps, Bill Gates, John Mackeys, Sam Waltons and Martha Stewarts of the world for inspiration and understanding of what it is to be an entrepreneur.[5] They are classic examples of individuals who have made a name and money for themselves. They have all created something or several somethings that took hold and changed millions of people’s lives.

Other people look to the Gary Hirschbergs, Jeffrey Hollenders and Muhammed Yunus, the social and environmental entrepreneurs of our time.[6] They are the innovators that have managed to create national and international businesses and organizations with the goal of doing something good for the world, while more often than not also turning quite a profit. While entrepreneurs may be in it for creating value, not money, it is hard to disentangle them from a culture that has yet to identify entrepreneurial role models who are outside of the profit-driven culture we currently live in.

I, unsurprisingly, have my own list of role models. I look to the Vandana Shivas, Ella Bakers, Audre Lordes, Dean Spades and Miss Majors. They are not entrepreneurs; they are change makers. They are famous not for turning huge profits, or scaling up to be national and international businesses. They do not employee hundreds of thousands of people. They create change through their actions, their writing, their relationships, their beliefs and their existence in the world. Sometimes, they make a living through their writing, their organizations, and their workshops. Always, they are focused on making change.

While I am interested in the world of entrepreneurship, I am passionate about social and environmental justice. I am passionate about creating deep systemic change that makes capitalism obsolete. Call me an activist, an idealist, a change-agent, a visionary, an organizer, an anti-capitalist. But until the term entrepreneur is first and foremost about creating systemic change, it is not something I call myself.

 

_____________
[1] Audre Lorde. “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” Sister Outsider. Crossing Press Berkley. 1984.

[2] Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. www.merriam-webster.com 7/3/14.

[3] Kawasaki, Guy. The Art of the Start. Portfolio Hardcover: 2004.

[4] Timmons, Jeffrey. New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21^st Century. Irwin/McGraw Hill, 1999.

[5] Lavinksy, Dave. Educating the Great Entrepreneurs. Growthink.com http://www.growthink.com/content/educating-great-entrepreneurs#.U7cW4o1dXzQ. 7/3/14.

[6] Social Venture Network. http://svn.org/meet-our-members/svn-hall-of-fame-honorees. 7/3/14.

“philanthrocapitalism”: still sounds like capitalism…

In my social enterprise class, we have been reading about “philanthrocapitalism” and “strategic philanthropy.” Which, in my opinion, is a new name for the reality of the top-down funding and decision making power dynamics that already exist in the non-profit sector. 

As you’ve probably grasped by now, I am a huge fan of collaboration, cooperation, bottom-up, grassroots solutions. Thus leading to me actually yelling at authors who believe funders need to create a more competitive and market-based non-profit sector.

Yes, because capitalism sure didn’t cause this mess we’re in, so let’s just expand its impact even more to the non-profit sector.
Let’s create what some are calling “social capital markets.”
I couldn’t want to throw up more. 

So here is my verbatim response (aka diatribe, monologue, whatever) to our posting for class this week. 

Q: Do you think policy makers and/or social enterprise groups should adopt one or more of the measurement tools discussed this  week?

Enraged, yet tame, response: I think social enterprise groups should be held to the same measurement tools as for-profit businesses. They should be tracking their environmental and social impact in much the same way for-profit businesses are. In terms of measuring for sustainability, we are all in this together and there should not be a divide between for-profit, non-profit and social enterprise measurement tools.

That being said, I am deeply disturbed by the trend towards “philanthrocapitalism” and “strategic philanthropy.” I strongly disagree with the idea that foundations should be setting the agenda by creating, as Holley & Carr describe, grant processes  “built around the establishment of clear, rigorous, and objectively verifiable performance metrics.” Philanthropists are, by assumed definition, the wealthy owning class elite who are very rarely creating solutions to social problems; they are not the ones living in poverty and therefore should not be setting the agenda for how to eradicate poverty, hunger, environmental racism, etc. By having non-profit organizations do the bidding of these investors, “philanthrocapitalism” and “strategic philanthropy” are simply reinforcing the power dynamics and social stratification that is the root cause of many of today’s social and environmental issues. In other words, they don’t need to be given more power over those they are funding, they need to work more collaboratively and trustingly with those doing the on-the-ground work. 

Moreover, Edwards describes in “Just Another Emperor…” a trend in “philanthrocapitalism” to bring in market factors to the non-profit and hybrid sectors, specifically competition. By measuring organizations’ social and environmental impact, they will be competing with each other for funding and there will be an increased desire to maximize investor dollars, the theory goes.

First of all, this is already happening. Anyone who can claim that non-profits are not competitive over funding has never applied for grants. And with foundations legally bound to give away only 5% of their wealth, it’s hard to argue that these philanthropists aren’t maintaining their wealth through capitalism’s philanthropy loophole.

Secondly, bringing in market competition means a whole lot of things; and competitive markets thrive on this simple shared principle: cheap labor. Creating a more competitive return on funders money would most likely mean slashing the already bare-bones infrastructure, overhead and administrative costs that keep these organizations running. And this market competition of reduced costs and cheap labor  is what got us into the mess of relying on non-profits providing social services in the first place.

If businesses and organizations were paying beyond living wages to begin with (along with not dumping toxic chemicals at all, especially not in people of color communities, investing in the communities they work in by sourcing locally, paying their corporate taxes to fund thriving public sector programs.), some of the needs of non-profits would be lessened.

[That’s a pretty big “if”…]

In other words, what we don’t need is more competition in the non-profit (or hybrid) sectors determined by the desires of the wealthy elite. [Some of us might just call that capitalism.]

What we do need is more collaborative and cooperative systemic change that is coming from the ground up…

how do we disrupt cycles of poverty through town planning?

Have I mentioned I am taking a law class? It feels a little bit like double jeopardy and double-hard to take a law class in business school. Except my professors are awesome and our readings are relatively amazing and interesting.

Last week we did a unit on Land Use and Planning. Which is utterly fascinating to me. Especially moving from suburbia to a major city to rural-as-possible to small town Vermont.

We watched these really awesome and interesting videos about projects in New Hampshire that focused on town planning as a source of economic development. Here’s the link to them, they total about 30 minutes if you’ve got the time.

The gist of the videos is how to use town planning, zoning, etc as a way to create and attract a thriving downtown and economic vitality in small towns (in New England).  Brattleboro, the town I have lived in for the past 3 years, has a really cute downtown. It was claimed as one of the top 20 small towns in the US and one of the top Walkable Places to Live by some schmancy magazine. And I don’t agree. It’s totally cute and has a great downtown and it’s part of why I live here. It is not very different from the town I grew up in, Madison, NJ, which is white, wealthy NYC suburb, population 16k, with a downtown that is often used to film movies and commercials with a “cute quintessential Main St.”

The main question I have coming out of this unit and also secretly a big piece of why I went to MBA school to begin with, is that town planning and redevelopment takes money. Kinda the whole you gotta spend money to make money mentality. It takes a lot of taxpayer dollars to expand a whole sidewalk network and put in bike-paths and create a town green where there wasn’t one before. It takes a lot of money to retrofit the old mill building into affordable housing units. All of these pieces are part of the recipe for developing a strong local economy and vibrant downtown.

Oh, right, my question.

How does this work in low-income communities and how do cycles of poverty exist on larger, town and geographic-wide scales? The cute adorable town I’ve had the privilege to live in have money. Some more than others, for sure. Nonetheless, there is some amount of money already there. So I wonder how low-income and poor communities’ strategies for revitalization looks different with different access to wealth. And also, how do cycles of poverty that are often talked about on individual/family levels work on town and regional levels? And most importantly, how are those cycles being disrupted?

I feel like I have some historical knowledge (keyword some) of what internal and external factors create economic downturns. Old mills being shutdown, such as in Bellow Falls, VT. A major company that provides jobs moving out of state or the country. The Cross-Bronx Expressway and other eminent domain projects that tear up urban black and brown neighborhoods.  Just to name a few.

And maybe this is stuff that is new to my white, middle-class eyes. And by maybe, I guess I mean yes it definitely is a part of my curiosity and interest. So what are examples of ways that low-income rural communities (across racial demographics) are able to disrupt these geographical based cycles of poverty?

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Ok kids. I’ve been having a hard time keeping up with school, busy tax season, and doing anything with this blog. I am committed, so I’m gonna try a new tactic here.

In most of my classes we have to do these online forum posts. So, I figured, instead of writing a forum post and then explaining it and giving it tons of context and rewriting everything, I’m going to (a) do a more direct cut and paste and (b) put the question out to y’all so that (c) you can also respond and give some insights into topics that are important to folks beyond those of us enrolled in an MBA program.

So this week in my Law class, the following question was posed:

What form of property ownership would be most conducive to making a community sustainable?

Here is my response:

We just showed the film “Born In Flames” tonight. It’s a film from the 80s that takes place after a fictitious socialist revolution in the US and focuses on a collective of radical lesbian feminists who create a Women’s Army of sorts. I am thinking about some pieces from that film, the Singer article and the question about sustainability. What I keep coming back to is the importance of ideals and utopias as goals, as things to fight for and strive towards.

I say that because when I first saw the question, I was thrown back to my more anarchist days of declaring no ownership of property. Because, in my understanding and opinion, that is the root of social ills like a police state, wealth disparities and slavery. It is the root, some have argued, of conquering the earth, of owning her resources instead of appreciating and borrowing them.

Luckily the question is not followed by “And what laws would need to change to create that?” Because I don’t know what it looks like, exactly. It is a complete mental and cultural (paradigm?) shift from where we are. Which doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It just means, to me, that we do not know what the road towards that goal looks like until we start walking it.

So….. what do you think? What form of property ownership is conducive to creating sustainable communities?

is transparency the key?

Last week, in my post about Organizations of the Future, I talked about Sustainably Managed Organizations & how I am surprisingly excited about them.

I still have my fair share of questions: mostly around who in the organization gets to have the fun and innovative benefits of shared work schedules, non-cubicle office spaces, project-oriented work, etc?  For sure, I came into this very skeptical of all of these great changes happening in corporate offices while the line workers and factory workers and service workers were left out of the mix.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Yes, apparently, I was wrong.

Big companies are trying to bring all levels of workers into these new changes because they create a more effective workforce and therefore a more effective company. So it makes sense that while it’s easier to see and implement in corporate offices, it’s really on the front lines where it’s going to have the biggest net effect for the business.

So score some points for some big corporations. Keyword some. And it does bring up a certain question around the importance of motives or outcomes. (Short answer, both are important.) From where I come from in the world of organizing, outcomes/actions stem from motives. You can pretty easily get someone to change their actions, but unless you can change their attitude and beliefs around what they are doing, chances are they will revert back. So with these companies, are they making changes because their attitudes and beliefs are shifting around how they should be treating their employees and what sort of value they are providing? Or are they making changes because their financial bottom-line is being affected and that’s what they care about?

And really, who can tell or judge?

Which brings me to transparency. One of the ways some big business folks are saying that consumers and community members and employees and other stakeholders (folks who are affected by – and therefore invested in – the actions of a company but are not simply financially invested such as shareholders) can better understand a company’s motives for change – or for not-change – is through radical transparency.

I was just reading about my favorite corporate crush: Patagonia. And how they took the idea of corporate responsibility and sustainability reporting to a whole new level by trying to be radically transparent. Currently, one of the most commonly used forms of reporting on sustainability initiatives – environmental, social and governance aspects of a business – is through the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).  In my humble, judgmental and cynical opinion, GRI is somewhat bringing to the attention the idea that corporations need to be reporting on more than just their financial statements. However, their reports give companies grades based on whether or not they filled out certain sections, not what actions they are taking to be more responsible businesses. So, naturally, I fell in love with Patagonia, again, when I read that the CEO called the process “absolute bullshit.” Because it pretty much is.  Maybe I will elaborate on GRI and reporting stuff in another post, but for now it’s safe to say I think they are self-congratulatory and ways for big businesses to create smokescreens for their lack of action on certain touchstone issues.

So is anyone doing good things? Well yeah, a little bit. And mostly, I just wanted to point out that some businesses are trying to figure out what they can do to be more transparent. There have been two pretty big “aha” moments around corporate transparency:

1. Being transparent around your pitfalls invites critiques and activists into the conversation to help create solutions to the problems, rather than sidestep the issue until it blows up even more.
2. It’s all about communication. Companies have to figure out how to communicate honestly and unapologetically about their actions, where they are and where they want to be.

All of this is pretty much to say that I don’t know, maybe there is some hope in big business. It sure would be nice. The CEO of Seventh Generation – whose book I’m reading for class – puts it quite succinctly: business has to be better than doing less bad; it has to do net good. And right now, I’m just not convinced that big business is capable of doing good on a grand scale. Not the way it is today. But maybe these changes today will help move through some of the fog of how to get to where we want. Maybe they are baby steps and will help shed light on otherwise unforeseen territory and ways of doing business. I sure hope so.

small steps towards cooperative finances

Ok, so I’ve been slacking a little bit this last week on the blog. And that’s fine. A little forgiveness and self-compassion hasn’t hurt me yet.

Partially, it’s because I have been thinking more and more about cooperative communities. Cooperative businesses. Cooperative living. Thinking about what it means when we all win. And it feels so good to think about that. It feels like possibility, like overjoyed with hope. It feels like being held, like the opposite of being alone. It feels like the next step.

Coop Carnival at Food For Thought Books. Oct 19, 2013.

October is National Coop Month. I don’t know who decides these things, but I’m gonna go with it. I spent most of the day on Saturday tabling at the Coop Carnival at Food For Thought Books in Amherst, MA. It was a celebration of Cooperative Businesses & Community. There was a smattering of industries from worker-owned collective farms & grocery stores & copy shops to solar installers, cooperative loan businesses and bike-powered trash/recycling/compost collectors. I was there repping my coop-friendly bookkeeping business and collective office space.

For my Human Resources class I was reading about Rewards Systems. What traditionally might be called Pay Structures. There are a lot of interesting pieces in talking about the future of Pay & Rewards. A lot of talk about increasing intrinsic rewards so that people motivate themselves to perform better at work. Which I am all about. And an acknowledgement that folks’ basic financial needs ought to be met so that they can be more stable in their home and work lives. Some really basic stuff that it’s great to read about in business school.

And then there were some surprisingly exciting bits. Like the tech company in California, which has this collectively, minded bonus system. Through an anonymous online tool, everyone in the company is given the same year-end bonus with one catch: you have to give it to someone else. You can give it to as many someone else’s as you want. It is a very interesting concept of giving the financial and rewarding power of the business to the employees. Of course there are probably some unfortunate office politics that go along with this plan. However, the basic notion that employees are intelligent, responsible and capable of knowing who is doing good work around them is just so baseline genius that I’m a little bit stunned.

Another interesting tid-bit of information had to do with creating new rewards systems for Sustainably Managed Organizations. A huge piece of the way these “forward-thinking” organizations work is through ad-hoc group and team project work. They argue for doing away with job descriptions, titles and other hierarchically outdated modes of operation to give way to organizational structure that is able to quickly respond to changes in the market. (A semi-separate topic that is equally fascinating to me in terms of its implications for non-hierarchical business structures.) In terms of pay, it follows that if you are going to be engaging in primarily group work, you should be rewarding the entire group. Again, something so goddamn simple and obvious that I have yet to see in most work places.

Without group pay structures, a company is giving two opposing messages: work together and get along but then compete for recognition and pay differences. By acknowledging the mixed messaging, companies/bosses/employers can go a little bit deeper and ensure there is single, focused message coming through loud and clear: team and group work is important, efficient and innovative and we want to create healthy teamwork environments that rewards and recognizes the work you do as a team. It’s kind of like taking that old sports saying and applying it to pay structures: there’s no I in TEAM.

There’s a ton of tiny examples about how the “future of business” is working on creating systems that draw out people’s strengths and acknowledge the vast variety of skills it takes to run a business. Skills that one CEO probably doesn’t have all wrapped up neatly into a single human. While business as usual is slow as shit with actually making systemic changes, it does give me a little bit of hope that there are some commonalities emerging between “businesses of the future” (as the corporate hotshots see it) and the already existing cooperative- & collective-based communities.

So I don’t know exactly if this is the Way Of The Future. Or if some businesses are doing interesting things around pay. I do know that I like cooperatives & collectives. I like financial models that support groups, not individuals. And I like figuring out how we create stepping stones from moving away from and individualistic, either (me)/or (you) mindset when it comes to all things. And being a money nerd, I especially like when we move toward a both/and understanding of money. We can both get paid and get our needs met! And probably, we’ll all end up liking and loving each other just that much more when we are supporting each other in our endeavors.

the myth of sustainable investment

There is a good chance someone out there is going to disagree with everything I’m about to say. In fact, I know it’s true because I’m reading a whole book for my Corporate Finance class about how investing in sustainable businesses is going to solve a lot of our problems.

Except for what I think is one of the most foundational problems we face today: growing wealth disparities. There are so many reasons why we need to focus on addressing issues of economic justice. I never really understood the phrase “you can eat your cake and icing too.” I really think of it more as “I can eat my cake and so can you!” At least that’s how I envision a sustainable world: where we can all share and have similar access to resources in order to make decisions about our own lives.

One of the major new learnings that I’ve stumbled across in the past year that to me clearly indicates a need for some major economic systemic shake up is the reality that the wealthiest folks in the world consume an absurd amount of resources as compared to the poorest folks in the world.

Here are some shocking UN facts & figures (If you have non-UN resources about these sorts of things, please please please share them with me.):

Inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures – the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%.

More specifically, the richest fifth:

• Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4%.
• Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5%
• Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5%.
• Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1%.
• Own 87% of the world’s vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%.”

— Human Development Report 1998 Overview, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

Perhaps you are thinking: Cool, great, fuck the rich. And maybe what does this have to do with sustainable investing? Could you please stay on topic for once.

My answers are yes, a lot and it’s all connected so stay with me.

Sustainable investing, in my understanding, is a way for folks with wealth to invest and support the operations (and usually growth; see this post about economic growth) of big businesses that are doing good (often defined as neutral) things for people and the environment while still turning a hefty profit and excellent returns to their shareholders.

On the one hand I’m all, “Yay, support businesses even pretending to talk about this stuff. That is a concrete change we can make now. Stepping stones to a radically different economic structure.”

But really, I’m mostly all, “That’s a really awesome way to not address some fundamental issues of global sustainability. Like class divides and global wealth inequities. I want a sustainability revolution that has access points for folks across class and wealth divides.”

This is what I wrote about it for class:

I still see investment – and especially sustainable investment – as a way for wealthy folks with a conscience to give themselves a big pat on the back without looking at the ways their own individual & institutional privileges are based on the backs of those with less. We can do a lot to change *how* people acquire their wealth. But to me, the question still remains how much wealth is enough & how do we go about changing that?

Sustainable investment is an awesome strategy to maintain class divides, keep the wealth where it has remained and once again think that capitalism has its positive potential, it just needs to be greened up a bit. It totally follows that if you believe in green capitalism, sustainable investments are the way to go. I say, it’s still capitalism.

I just can’t get behind any conversation or solution that sees (any form of) capitalism as an end goal. I’m all for talking about and strategizing about stepping stones towards a more just and equitable world. As long as we’re talking about the same long-term vision. (Look, I even wrote out some concise thoughts here.) From what I’ve seen thus far, the sustainable investment industry is not talking long term systemic change.

Sustainability – in my understanding – is based on a notion of flourishing for all. Investment is a strategy and tool accessible by the rich for the rich to stay rich. Nothing sustainable in that.