[P2P-F] Fw: The Case for Spending Down a Charitable Foundation

Wed Sep 19 12:58:06 CEST 2012

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: John Fullerton <jfullerton at capitalinstitute.org>
To: Robert Searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk> 
Sent: Tuesday, 18 September 2012, 22:30
Subject: The Case for Spending Down a Charitable Foundation

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The Case for Spending Down a Charitable Foundation 
“Have things become so critical – both in terms of the scale of the challenges we face but also the possibility of change – that this radical step [of spending down our assets over the next ten to fifteen years] is a good move?”

This is the question recently put to the advisor of a foundation deeply concerned about the environment, which he in turn shared with a few of us immersed in the sustainability crisis. It’s a question of great importance and great urgency.

Before getting to a “yes” or “no” response (mine will be a qualified “yes”), it’s important to say up front that I fully understand that tackling the environmental crisis is not the explicit mission of every foundation. Nevertheless, I believe there is a compelling case to be made, now more than ever, for more foundations to focus on the environment, and for foundations targeting the environment to effectively go “all in” with great urgency. 
Read more at the Future of Finance.    
Cleveland Foundation a Winner of HUD Community Development Award 
The Cleveland Foundation has been named one of 10 winners of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s new Secretary’s Award for Community Foundations. The award recognizes community foundations for exemplary work with public partners in housing and community development. In announcing the award, Antonio R. Riley, HUD’s Midwest Regional Administrator, cited the Cleveland Foundation’s work in creating “lasting and positive change,” with the launch of the Evergreen
Cooperatives in 2008.

The subject of our second Field Guide to Investing in a Regenerative Economy study, the Evergreen Cooperatives initiative is a group of worker-owned, anchor-institution-based cooperative companies, based on “green” principles, in Cleveland’s inner city. Read the Evergreen Field Guide study here. 

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Gus Speth’s America the Possible 
I read Gus Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and the Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (2008), before I met the man. I recall it ending on something of a down note, with an acknowledgment that the environmental movement had in many ways failed to fulfill its mission and a sense of "over to you next generation." Fortunately, however, and to my great personal enrichment, Gus did not quit.

Like most environmentalists who came of age following the publication ofSilent Spring, Gus no doubt underestimated the forces working against the interests of the planet, mostly the unintended consequences of an economic system whose destructive side effects we did not comprehend, or did not want to acknowledge. Gus' brave and bold new book, America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, confronts head-on the enormity of the challenge facing America. It is the unfolding of a powerful vision—grounded in a scientific
understanding of the planet’s life support systems—for retaking our democracy and restoring an economy in service of people, by one of the true sages of the New Economy movement.   What We're Reading

The Brookings Institution has just published a paper, “State Clean Energy Finance Banks,” that explores the creation of dedicated state clean energy banks. The goal of these entities will be to create a source of low-cost finance to improve clean energy’s competitive edge, while reducing the dependence of the sector on uncertain federal grants and government subsidies. 

State Clean Energy Finance Banks 

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Comment of the Week 
“I have written before that corporations own public policy and, in fact, government itself. This is no more apparent than in our complete failure ... to set ourselves on a responsible trajectory toward a sustainable energy economy.

...But there is an even greater threat to democracy. Even without corporations owning our government, the problem of our passing on ecological and fiscal debt to the next and future generations - without their consent - is as repulsive as child abuse, as unethical as theft, and as anti-democratic as totalitarianism.”

- Gerry Todd, Corporations Are Not People 

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Quote of the Week 
“We're stealing the future, selling it, and calling it GDP. Our choice is to steal it or heal it.” 
- Paul Hawken’s keynote address at the TechConKona conference on the Big Island of Hawaii 

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