Good morning everyone so honored to be able to have this opportunity to share with you this way
Fifty trillion dollars
Fifty trillion is going to pass hands in the next three decades in the United States and Canada alone
That's probably a hundred trillion globally
That is a tremendous opportunity to take care of problems that we have innocently created over a number of decades
Our job in this room is to help lead the way for that
My family are German and and Russian Jewish immigrants who ended up in the south of the United States
my father
was the son of an immigrant and
Like the American Dream story, they worked themselves up with movie theaters and shopping malls and became affluent
My mother is an artistic photographer
Who?
questions everything and
Is iconoclastic and?
Was a great other influence on me so I come out of that I was lucky
The South wasn't the simplest place to grow up in in the 50s and 60s as a Jewish kid Jim Crow was still strong
Things were things were tensed there and I came up through the 60s
the influences of that period
Caused me to think a lot about capitalism and about how the world got to be the way that it is
It was clear that there was injustice and things were there was just there are a lot of things to ask questions about
So I made a decision early on that I wanted to do something different than just go into the machinery of making money I
wanted to do it a little bit differently and the first step was to reject it, but the other thing I
inherited was a genetic kidney disease and
In my 20s I was told that I could die very soon
Or I could live a long time and there was nothing I could do about it
That really
kicked me into gear and I went out to try to search for the meaning and purpose of my life and think back from my
Deathbed and what did I want to have accomplished?
That journey led me into all kinds of interesting experiences, I wrote a book which will be available here called the clean money revolution
Reinventing power purpose and capitalism, which shares some of the personal journey
I went on talks about this movement and what I've seen for the last 35 years of how it's grown and
Then finally talks about the moral and ethical
Imperative that we face as those who?
Control an awful lot of resources and influence and what we need to do over these next couple of decades
So that we can have more decades than that I was born when there were less than 3 billion people on the planet
Seven-point-six today going to tend for some of you
You know I don't need to go through a list of the challenges that we face, but we all know that human ingenuity
through hopefully good intention has also gone beyond the limits of what can be sustained and
We have a very imbalanced
set of resources on the planet as you all know it's shifting ever faster to those who need at least and
Away from those who need it most
We need to change that
so the offered some of the things I got involved with early on was a place called hollyhock upon Cortez Island that does an
education retreat center works on inner skills brings together entrepreneurs and other kinds of societal leaders to
Do better be better and help each other. It's a generosity
Cultivating sit circumstance I
Inherited a bit of money my first inheritance was
$50,000 I decided to I thought it came from dirty money. That was my attitude at the time I
got
25,000 of it as a loan to a family small family farm in New Hampshire that wanted to prove that family farms still mattered that
Was stony field yogurt they called me and said we can't do nonprofit anymore this thing is going to grow too fast
Will you invest in the business?
Total luck, but I did say yes
The second was I put twenty five thousand into hollyhock which was an investment in the educational institute that I felt most
Aligned with I've been involved there for 37 years now the Stonyfield investment
Led me to doing more as I as I got a bit a bit bigger inheritance. I'll just say this right now
I'm a I'm a upper single digit net worth now and and I think I have enough and
That theme about enough is really important to me, so I got involved in doing more small investments
I joined this threshold foundation than the Social Venture Network, and those led me to a
kaleidoscopic
unfolding world that ends up today with this meeting and there may be dozens of
Gatherings going on just in this country this minute talking about these kinds of subjects. That's amazing
from there
I met a woman extraordinary woman named Carol Newell who inherited a lot more money than me and
Believed that the majority of it should get deployed for public and social goods now
because of the urgency and I was invited to
strategize and implement
the deployment of
70 million dollars in British Columbia in for profits in charitable and activist sectors in
politics and in inner skills and leadership development and those networking activities
that was extraordinary and
Carol remains a wealthy woman and we deployed a lot and the creativity that is possible with money is
Under tapped still we are barely using what needs to happen it can happen
We called that an activist family office
From there we through our investments some of them had been successful again
We were in the right place at the right time with seventh-generation and Salt Spring coffee and horizon
Distributors and Happy Planet Gees and a lot of companies that were emerging in an under attended sector called organic foods and green products
there's lots of money to be made in impact investing does not have to be concessionary and
It should also go through the full range of opportunities the way you can use money from giving which is a zero
percent return on your money to making lots of money
Everything in between needs to be done
So we decided that there was a demand for a product
That would assemble people's money
and we created something called renewal funds company mission venture capital focused on organics and
Environmental technologies, and we raised first one fund then a next and we'll do another one next year
And that's been very exciting and awesome and the 200 investors that we have we consider our biggest impact
because we're influencing them their families their advisors and their friends and
All of you that are in fund businesses you're doing that too, and thank you for doing it
So renewal funds now is 98 million, and we'll we'll try to almost double that next year then the book
I so I got the chance to write a book and share some of this. I'll just leave that at that
I've also been a senior advisor to RSF social finance and now currently in co-leading something called the integrated capital Fellows Program
The integrated capital Fellows is based on the premise that there are more and more of us deciding
God enough got more than enough want to deploy it. Where do I find people to help staff this and do it?
Think about it if you're going to do across every kind of investing with money. We're trained in a much more linear way
We know how to do investment. We know how to do philanthropy
But there this is back to there's so much more that can be done
And so we I and and RSF are seeing more and more people ready to go further
We need to create a wave of operatives who have that diverse complex thinking and
also the values who can deploy capital because we have to deploy a lot of
Capital over these next few decades if we're gonna have a chance or a safe
Clean just world in the future
So that's what I've done. I and now I want to talk a bit more about
well, actually I want to take a moment here to ask you to talk to someone next to you for 90 seconds each and
Talk about what you think about enough with money just share that
You don't mind I?
Hope that was insightful please do that for the rest of your life, talk to your families about it as well
There is a crisis and there's a crisis that has many layers to it
Human ingenuity plus capital can solve almost all of it
It's got to happen we have to accelerate we can't wait any longer
We're getting the benefit most of the people in the room here are getting the benefit of current fairly grotesque political
Circumstances that are even pushing further money onto us now this week the stock market's having a little bit of a of a blip
And now we're used to having whatever we had you know at the top, and we go through all of that stuff
It creates fear and all kinds of insecurities and things
But consider now
Allocating more of your capital and of your influence and of your work towards this grand
Solution that needs to happen we can do better in every sector
There's enough smarts to do it and
This is also the biggest month making opportunity in history
reinventing the entire economy
from top to bottom
Will generate massive jobs?
it will generate more distributed wealth and
It will you just think about transforming the energy industry the automobile industry
the food sector the built
environment you go on and on and
If you think about what it takes from where we're at to where we're going to get to and how much capital will be
involved with that and how much money there is to be made if you need that incent if there's plenty of it I
highly recommend philanthropic and other activities and to actually consider
hitting your deathbed with just the amount you want to leave to your heirs and
To charities and to other people, but just consider that the game of dying with most
Is not going to be looked at in history that well. I don't think
Regardless, I just urge you to consider it
we need to feminize the
economy we need to
inclusion eyes it and
We need it
to happen fast
Consider your deathbed
What was the meaning and purpose? What did you accomplish?
We each one of us
Bloodline or not. I have no bloodline, but I have lots of
Descendants I feel lots of things to influence and support
We are the ancestors of what's coming
Those people coming will look back on this time with great curiosity
What did we do in the face of facts and science, what did we do? What are we doing?
Perhaps
Life created this moment so that a great awakening could occur. I hope so and
Thank you all for being part of it
You questions david wilcock reach scale I came from Boston to ask this question
So
We have a bunch of buzzwords
There's buzzwords that are associated with the SDGs like integrated and cross-sector
There's buzzwords that are associated with impact investing there's buzzword buzzwords that are associated with social enterprise
But when you look behind the buzzwords what you discover is they they're not
Actually accurately describing the situation the SDGs aren't integrated, and they don't work cross-sector
the
Blended finance is basically remedial blended finance with guarantees and first loss and no other
models that can be promulgated and scaled a
Huge part of the money you're talking about is sitting in what we're supposed to be interest-bearing accounts that are now
Almost non. Interest-bearing accounts, and it's way more than the amount of money. That's looking to be deployed in impact investing
So are you familiar with or what would you recommend or how should we organize?
To deploy that whole new set of capital that virtually no one's working on
that doesn't have any of the kind of attention that you see here around the investment component and
And is there ways to address that situation that integrate government social enterprise?
Policy etc due to limits on time. I'm going to go big-picture on that one I
Industries don't change overnight it takes a few minutes, or a few hours
And it takes consumers, and it takes leaders to create products and show the way
And it takes all of us to keep the pressure on
the financial industry is going to move slowly and
Until it moves fast
but we're making progress on every on every front the demand for better products has far exceed a far exceeded the
actual products
and the
Clarity, and you might say cleanness and integrity of those products is
Scrambling, there's a lot of scrambling going on right now
I would say think about the scrambling that's going on among men who may have had
Boundary issues in their life right now as they just sit and watch what's going on
Well the financial industry is a similar
character ology really and
And so I just would say all of us here
This is this is one room one group of people all of us go talk to our wealth managers. Talk to our families
Find the best look for the better keep the pressure on
We're mid stage if at best of this change, but it will happen fast
Anyone else have a
Impossible question for me I
Appreciate your message, and I've looked at your book. I saw you
It's so cap. I just I mean an elephant in the room for me
Even if as we talk about wealth and enough and impact investing is
integrating those with wealth and those who need wealth
So I just have to even speak to the fact that we've divided the building into three floors based on privilege
Because that's what it feels like so how do we then integrate and learn from each other?
rather than continue to live in a very male segregated model
With those who can being and holding very separate from those who might need to or need to learn
well the first thing I would say is each of us in our own life have to shift our behavior to
learn and
Take action in the venues and places that we can we can influence the bigger societal question
I think is similar to the last one which is
education pressure
showing the way positive
Reinforcement is what's going to be necessary
I know that it's a very different world and this is a very different room than even ten years ago
So progress is being made
How does it happen faster? I think keep educating and agitating and showing the way and
My sense is as a as old guys that I've seen a tremendous move does it happen fast enough
What are the consequences of it?
Taking longer. They're not good. That's another of
the serious challenges that we face and
As I said in my you know the comment trying to summarize the feminization of the economy
Is a simplistic way to?
Say that this and the inclusive ization of the economy
Those those are huge things that we have got to pull off for myself. It's one by one
Try to go to venues where I can learn more about that. Thank you for that question and
Getting it in the room before the day starts
Thanks, Joel for those of us in the room who raised money. Could you just talk about the challenge of?
Risk and reward and how people continue to use previous
contacts at risk and reward to impact investments, and how it's kind of just throwing impact on the end of a
Construct that they've created from their past experiences sure well to be clear renewal
Funds wasn't was invented created, and you know it set in motion
10 12 years ago and at that time it felt fairly edgy to just go out and prove that you could make money and
Align with values mission and purpose so that effectively you could say we're part of that maximize return
in
some new sectors
With my personal activities I go much further than that
I'm
as
I'm a sprinkle investor. I try to get the smallest piece
I possibly can of all kinds of companies that I think are doing something meaningful, and that's just that's my personal strategy
How we're going to shift from a?
repackaging
To actual serious change is rooms like this
Entrepreneurs, hopefully like you and me and others many others that are in this room
Who just keep taking it further change does not happen easily especially across the planet of 7 billion people and across financial
Institutions and structures and systems that have that are very entrenched
So I one thing I'd like to urge this is like progressives in politics that
End up fighting each other more than they fight to win, which is there's a there's a bigger thing here?
And we've got to make room for a lot of different models if you feel you need to call out somebody then you do it
but
Just be sure that what each of us is doing is as pushing the bar as far as we can and then push it further
Do I have more oh you want oh
All right, so do you consider yourself a philanthropist I
Consider myself a social change
activists inside money Business and Finance
So philanthropy is part of part of my
Activity but it really is about the full suite of things that you can do you have a couple minutes
I do one more little exercise okay
I'd like you to find maybe you can turn the other direction this time if that works
think about
What kind of commitment you are considering or may make
towards how to move yourself
Another step towards what you believe?
Doesn't have to be what I believe but towards what you believe is needed
with money and
global crisis so have fun doing that for
Use those questions and other ones in your family with your friends keep asking them
reflection
Think about what we can do and how we can be the best that we can
Thank you so much Lenny so cap
impact hub
Seattle it's
Incredible to feel the energy in here and see this room packed with people who care or it at least are curious
Go forth and prosper in your good deeds. Thank you all
