Online Trading

It's almost like a game. I'm on Kapitall.com playing around with $100,000 dollars and investing in everything I would ever want to. This seems like a great way to get people involved in being active investors because it is fun! I am a big proponent of making the right things fun to do, I think that's what sustainability is ultimately all about. Here's a screenshot:

The little stacks of cards are the available portfolios that others have created. There is a ticker at the bottom, your portfolio value at the top left, and many other cool tools that help you make informed investment decisions.

I would love to adapt an investment trading platform like this as a local community investment tool. The businesses from the area could report some metrics about their revenue generation, employment, environmental performance, and social justice impact to a database that would feed into a graphic user interface. Users could then get on there to "buy" and trade businesses in their neighborhood and local community. Over time these citizen-investors could see how well their community was doing and how well their specific portfolio was doing when marked against their peers. The development of something like this would certainly be long and costly, but imagine how cool it could be...

Debt as a tool for community development

I have been particularly interested in the prospect of debt (or credit) as a tool for community development. While we tend to think of debt in terms of our credit cards, there are ways to structure debt in order to have the impact we collectively desire. The microfinance movement started by Mr. Yunus and his Grameen Bank is currently the most popular version of "debt for development" and for good reason. Grameen has had unprecedented success and growth in developing nations based on their social capital model that targets women and other groups that have little to no access to capital. This model has worked very well in villages and countries where people have little else to rely on but their immediate community, and is even being applied in the United States by groups such as the Washington Community Alliance for Self Help (WA CA$H). This is all exciting, but I have recently been attracted to a more democratized model.

The Calvert Foundation has pioneered a community investment model that seems to be working very well. The main point of attraction that I feel towards this investment option is that there is so much choice involved. People can obviously choose the amount they would like to invest, but beyond that there are options to select the region of the US that your money will be invested in and you can even set your own interest rate (from 0-3%). These dollars then go to non-profits, community development groups, and social enterprises working to alleviate poverty.

This democratization of investment is really inspiring to me because it allows for individuals to make choices about where their money has impact. Additionally, an investment with the Calvert Foundation seems very secure given their SRI industry clout and the diversification that they employ. Once I get some extra cash it will most definitely be invested in the Calvert Foundation.