wisewords
Merging Social Investing and Philanthropy
A Conversation with Author Woody Tasch
by Linda Sechrist
I
n Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money, author Woody
from the ground up. His principles of responsible invest- ing connect investors to the places where they live and to global markets run amok.
What do you mean by the term “slow money?”
with the slow food movement, initially begun as a response to the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in Rome, Italy. Now, this grassroots social movement, with some 85,000 members, promotes a way of living and eating that strength- ens the connections between the food we eat and the health of our communities, our bioregion and our planet.
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cial movement. The initial goal is to attract the attention of one million or more Americans who are willing to invest a small fraction of their investment dollars in small-scale agriculture. This supports the health of the individual and ultimately, leads to a more robust community.
built around preservation and restoration, rather than extrac- tion and consumption?
So, by contrast, how would you dst money?
Fast money refers to investment dollars that have become so that it is impossible to say whether the world economy is going through a correction in the markets triggered by the sub- prime mortgage crisis, or whether we are teetering on the edge of something much deeper and more challenging.
of befuddlement arises when the relationships among capital, community and bioregion are broken. If we continue to invest in ways that uproot companies, putting them in the hands of a broad, shallow pool of absentee shareholders whose primary - tion of our social and natural capital will continue.
not working?
Organized from “markets down,” rather than from “the ground nurture the long-term health of a community and bioregion. These limits are nowhere more apparent than in the food sec- use of capital have resulted in cheap, chemical-laden food; transport miles; widespread degradation of soil fertility; deplet- ed and eutrophied aquifers [where nutrient and algae overload snuff out oxygen and helpful organisms]; a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico; and an obesity epidemic that exists side-by- side with persistent hunger in this country.
services to bring money back down to earth. We are current- enterprises, appropriate-scale organic farming and local food systems.
In addition, we seek to catalyze the emergence of the aimed to support soil fertility, carrying capacity, sense of place, cultural and ecological diversity and nonviolence— all of which connects investors to their local economies. Present examples include credit unions, co-ops, community supported agriculture and community development venture capital funds like Community Development Financial, which is already in place.
At the heart of our organization are two questions. What if we put soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations that serve people and place as much as they serve industry sectors and markets? What if we could design capital markets
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the root of the problem. If the goal is to make more money through our investments as fast as possible, so that we have more money to give away for cleaning up existing problems, then we are on the wrong track. Cleaning up problems with philanthropic money may have seemed to make sense in the 20th century, but it is no longer conscionable or appropriate for the 21st century. We need more realistic expectations for smart investments that can sustain and preserve the planet’s wealth for generations to come. We have to ask ourselves this: Do we want communities
whose main streets include local merchants whom we know, or do we want them made up of multinational companies, owned by people we think we know, that produce products under conditions of which we are not aware?
network dedicated to sustainability, and the president of the new NGO Slow Money. For more information about Woody Tasch and Slow Money, visit SlowMoneyAlliance.org.
www.na-sd.com
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