 This is the hour. Where are you living? What are you doing? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. Do not look outside yourself for the leader. There is a river so great and swift that some will fear they're being torn apart and suffer greatly. The river has its destination. Let go from the shore. Push into the middle. See who is in there with you and celebrate. So in addition to all of you in there with me in this work, two of my beloved colleagues and friends, Kristen Hall and Joel Solomon, I'll give you a longer introduction to them. And then I'm going to turn it over to you to hear a little bit about why what drew you to this session and then go back to them and then have a conversation. So but first how did I come to this work? I was born into what's an unusual relationship in the general public with money as an inheritor of a fortune made over a hundred years ago by my great-grandfather. It wasn't big enough to support me for the rest of my life, but it was big enough for me to start asking questions about the connection of money and meaning as a young adult. And I luckily found a community who was involved in grappling with the questions, the threshold foundation community. It's a national network of social change philanthropists. And out of that grew this work that I'm now engaged in with the investor philanthropist Carol Newell of Vancouver. I've been convening conferences under the name Play Big for seven years. And Play Big is a convening that's designed for people who have tens of millions of dollars extra and are looking to illuminate the path forward for them toward what we call whole portfolio activation to mission. We partner now with RSF Social Finance, Tides and Tides Canada. And through that work I've heard lots of stories over these seven years. I know that people want to align their money with their values, but they often don't know how to, as the prayer I opened with says, push away from the banks of the river. So Play Big is about peers helping peers. It's about subverting the dominant paradigm about money. And it's about the liberation of money and the liberation of people. One little quote I'll tell you, I was talking recently to a woman who had attended our Play Big last spring. And she said, I was never, she's steward of tens of millions of dollars. She said, I was never interested in investment until I came to Play Big and realized that meaning could be a part of it. So, and as Catherine Fulton said this morning in her opening remarks, we're at a time between times and we need pioneers. And I have two pioneers with me, Joel Solomon and Kristen Hall. And they gave me permission this morning to tell a little bit about their stories. In fact, I'm going to go sit with them, because then I can feel into it. So I met Joel through Threshold Foundation decades ago and for 20 years, he and his business partner have been putting $60 million to work in all the creative ways they could think of. With a regional focus, their mission was to support a sustainable economy in the region of British Columbia. And Joel has the unusual ability to be in the implementing mechanics and at the same time hold the value of relationships and meaning. And he's really good at going back and forth. So I'm excited to hear how he'll talk to you guys. In the meantime, more recently, I met Kristen, she came to Play Big, and she just about five years ago got it that she could have the opportunity to put $20 million, transform the portfolio of her family foundation. And for some reason, her character, she didn't hesitate. She was just like, well, why can't we do that? And actually this morning, they told they referred to Root Capital and how they were interested now in gender investment, gender lens investing. Why was that? Because Kristen asked the question. So that's the beginning of her introduction. So let's see, what else? So I'm going to start with a question for you guys and then find out why these people came to this session. How would you say, and Joel, I'll start with you, that invocation that I started with, how would you say that your work with whole portfolio activation is a response to that invitation? Well, obviously, some starts with my family and growing up in the South as a Jew in the South of a civically involved and relatively progressive family in the 60s, 50s and 60s. I got exposed to things that activated my sense of justice and fairness. And my father was a very successful businessman and he built shopping malls. And I had a lot of questions about what it meant to pave paradise and put up parking lots and things like that. And the 60s, if any of you weren't there, was a time of questioning everything for at least those who got infected by it. And that included me. And I thought a lot about my own lineage and how my family had immigrated to a new country and why and the context that I found myself in and civil rights issues were very up at the time. And there was a moment sitting home watching television of the 1968 Democratic Convention with the police riots going on outside and the whole world watching in which something happened to me at that moment of realizing that I didn't have to accept things as they were and that there was a way to do something about it. So fast forward a little bit. After getting involved in threshold foundation and getting exposed to a community of support of people who at least shared values that might be unconventional but there was a critical mass of that sharing values to support each other. And so I got exposed to all kinds of different methods of thinking about money and philanthropy and how to live life. I met Carol Newell and had the opportunity to incredible privilege to come and see if we could invent a way to work with a large amount of capital. She felt that the majority of her wealth should be dedicated to long term sustainability and social change. And we went and did a retreat for several days. One of the people that we invited is Drummond Pike who's sitting up here in the front who had been the founder of Tides Foundation. So people like Drummond and lots of others who were pioneers and ahead of us were stimulating and supporting us to think in new ways. And it was around it was just after 1992 and we were celebrating the great discovery of Christopher Columbus of North America. And so considering what that meant and what Euro Asian immigration and colonialism had meant to this continent and just leave that as shorthand caused me to decide and for Carol to decide that it was important to do what we could now. Those of us living at the peak of human ingenuity and technological advance, industrial advance. But where was wisdom and where were the values of being land based peoples ultimately? And how could we work in the modern context while carrying deep values? And so that began a pathway of looking at money and all of its aspects. And just on a kind of common sense, maybe moralistic basis, how could we reclaim every way that money that we had responsibility for how we shop, where we shop, who we buy from, how our products are made, what are the externalities or the impacts of the creation of those on people on the planet and on the biosphere of the planet. And so we made a commitment together to look at the entire portfolio of Carol's money. I did this myself as well. And how could we awaken and activate its potential towards positive good? Was it in a credit union? Was it in a bank? Do we do stock market? If we do, what kind of screens do we put on it? And the field was just emerging, it was in an earlier stage of emerging at that time. And we saw that there was an opportunity to work in our region and find good ideas coming to networks like this, and then go invest in them in a small scale way where we lived. And I have lots more to say about it, but I think I've taken enough time on that answer. And Kristen, how would you say that your work is a response to that call? So similarly, I think it starts with my personal story and I was working as a bilingual teacher in Oakland for many years, while also working with my family's company. And when it came time to sell that company, we for the first time had much more money than we ever needed. And so I was already doing this work that was pretty significant and meaningful to me. And then all of a sudden had this extra. And for a while, I pushed it away, I didn't really want to be associated with it. And then through going to the Threshold Foundation and then learning through Play Big, I found out that this actually could be more of a tool for the work that I was already doing and that I just needed to learn how to activate it towards some of my core issues, which are social justice and environmental sustainability. And so that's what I did. And I kind of set out and I think part of the poem or the prayer that you said really spoke to me is really being grounded in my surroundings, really keeping my foot on the ground about what is going on around me. Also, particularly with our earth, the rivers and the trees and all of those things and keeping that as part of my investing work has been pretty important to me. And then who do you want to be with about the river? I think surrounding myself with the support in the community that I want to do this work with has been so invigorating, inspiring, I've learned so much so far and I'm just beginning this work. So I think all of it speaks to me on some level. Well, and I would say also the part about don't look outside yourself for leader, because I've seen you really step into leadership and both Joel and Kristen, I think value having their work be transparent because and of course Play Big is about that too. How do we find our way forward but by, you know, in order to be it, we have to see it. So I'd love to hear from a few of you about what drew you to this session just so we can make sure that we respond as Bjorn there with the mic. Just love to hear a little popcorn about what interests you about this content so that we can make sure to respond. Anybody want to just share what brought you to this session? There's one over there. Good morning. My name is James Perry from Pannapur. We're a foundation in the UK who are deploying our assets into impact investments. I'm really interested in the question of return and whether or not you think it's possible to make a deployment of 100% of your assets without experiencing attrition on capital. Others who want to share what drew them to this session over there on the aisle. Thanks Bjorn. Josh Arno, Arno family fund. Interested in the answer to the same question. Very interested in all of these issues but the investing world aligning the mission and the values with the actual investments given the mainstream approach that dominates seems like almost insurmountable hurdle. So I'm interested in how you actually the mechanics of what you're doing, how you're doing it, what the return profiles are, what the portfolio actually looks like. How long did it take you to achieve moving the wholesale transformation of the portfolio? Does that take ten years? Does it take six months? Et cetera. Thank you. Josh. Anybody else before we one more over there? Yeah, right? I'm Sean Paul, people on planet holdings and Kristen's example. I'm interested in the MRI, PRI and grants. How are you putting that together? Is it all aligned or are they separate? And certainly Joel's experience, whether it's the US legal structure, what's the vision and strategy to use those different tools and strategies for investing? Great. Well, that feeds right into my next question which is and if you can integrate some answers to those questions in that, well, how did you do this whole portfolio activation? Do you want to start this time, Kristen? I'm sure. Happy to start. So when I'm working through these processes and how I'm going to talk to people about them, I draw things out. So I'll share with you a couple of things I've drawn out. It's the teacher in her. It is. It's the classroom. I've left the classroom, but I've brought it with me. The first time I attended a play big session, I actually spoke with Drummond and Joel and I said, okay, sign me up. I'm in. I get it. I want to do this. What can I do and how much does it cost? And I wanted a menu. I wanted them to say, you know, if you put in $3 million here, you can, you know, clothe, you know, 17 million children buy this many school books, have this many solar homes. Like I wanted kind of an idea. I wanted to know how to change the Congress. And could I my money do that? Like I wanted specifics. And they both looked at me. And they said, well, no, Kristen, that's not how you do it. And that's not what it's about. And you come up and you and and anyway, so just to say that there is no menu and you really get to decide and you really get to do what you're drawn to and called to. At the same time, I am hoping to help change the field so that it gets more. I think specific so people that want to get in at a menu level can just check off their boxes and can sign up. So that's kind of my my thought at this time. And then the other one that feels important right now is the how did I get started? And this is continually my process, but I kind of think about the money as far as my values. And I have this bullseye here and where what I'd love to do is see all of my assets, my energies, my monies, my actions in the world aligned with my core values. So if we decided that's what my core values were, gender equity, racial equity, social justice, environmental sustainability, however you define your values, and then just figuring out where are you? And where is your money? Where is your time? Where are your efforts? And so I just start looking at this. And as we talked about this morning, it involved opening up a lot of envelopes. I think a lot of us don't really look at our financial statements and we're not really sure what that means. But I so opening the envelopes, really figuring out where is your money, that's the first step. And that's what I did. And inevitably you'll find out, oh, that's not actually so bad. I don't mind where this one is. But this is way far outside of my target area. So I want to work on moving that first. So I put a lot of things into community banks. And I actually pulled things right out of the public markets. I wasn't happy with where my money was there. So I put things in community banks that were doing financial literacies, all sorts of classes for new immigrants in my area of Oakland. And I was excited about that. I've used one Pacific Bank. I also have been really thrilled with RSF. They've been really helpful about being a place that I could park money for a while. And so anyway, using those kinds of vehicles, then gradually moving money to other kinds of deals as they come up. Great. We're taking on a super complicated thing, which is a financial system that's been well designed and well built or deeply constructed over some years. And all of us have got a risk and return ratio need, individuals, institutions, families. So there's personal work or reflective work that needs to be done, whether you're an institution or individual, about what that really means to you. And where do you want to be on it? You can go maximum financial return with no attention to the consequences of that to other people. So that's one end of the spectrum. Another end is I'm going to give all my money away to people that I think will do good things with it. And you could call that minus 100% return versus maximum return, though you often get tax breaks, so it's not quite minus 100. There's a huge zone in between. And how far into that zone does one go is a deeper, perhaps spiritual question, psychological question, practical question, how much of this money is needed by whom. And so you have to respect all ends of the spectrum. And we heard today that there's a massive movement of billions of dollars coming this way. And some of that will be, some of us will think it's not really changing much. And then some of the people that have responsibility for billions of dollars are going to look at those of us who might be more risk taking pioneers and say, well, you can do that because you're special. And we can't really do that. We're taking care of people's pensions and retirement funds. I'm a big tent on this. I don't think change to this complex and entrenched of a system comes easily. So there's a need for pioneers. And there's a need for pioneers in any kind of change. So, you know, we live over in the more pioneer zone because we can. And we need people who can to make that choice as much as they can. So if you have a family foundation, it depends on how many trustees and how many family members and how who your financial advisors are and how locked down your assets are, you give away some money undoubtedly. You do some kind things with money undoubtedly. Well, do you want to make a difference in how the world works with how money works in the world the way RSF social finance themes their work? Or are you looking for how I can do something that is more constructive, pays attention to some of the externalities and still makes a return rate that I feel is respectable for what I need to do. I could point out that return rates and reliability of return rates are unmasking themselves a bit right now. It's not so clear who has the ability to consistently pull off what return rates. We know there's a lot of gaming that goes on in return rate analysis and what date did it start and how are you counting it. But we've all got our philosophical and our pragmatic aspect of where we fit in that in that spectrum. So we're here talking as pioneers who want to encourage others to take the risks that they can take so that things can be invented and tested and experimented with and then bigger, smarter players may come in and commoditize it more effectively and then that will be success. We need both radical action to demonstrate what can be an incremental change reformist change of capitalism so that it's kinder and gentler and thinks about the long term future and thinks about everyone a bit more than just the individual. And Joel, I know one of the ways that you talk about your work with Carol and renewal is that you knew you couldn't transform the world yourselves, but you could create stories and stories would be told and they would ripple out. Do you want to share a story or two that embodies what you were trying to do or have, you know, okay, well just say I'm incredibly gratified as someone who's gray enough now to have been doing this for some decades that what was I think of it like organic food in the fifties. This is organic money and there's probably 50 years to go before there's an industry that like organic food takes up still under 10% of the North American food dollar but yet is a robust sector that makes money for people and you can go into it and do scale if you want to or you can go further down into grassroots and you can do that. So our first thought was food was the best place for us to start and why because everybody uses it and because it has so many ramifications how food is grown how workers end up being affected by how food is grown what happens to rivers what happens to the where do those chemicals go and do they end up in the cancer rate or not and can that be proven or not. So our first our first approach was we want to use our for-profit dollars, our charitable dollars, our convening power, our ability to support leaders and to create capacity to develop the entrepreneurs who might lead this field the same way this morning we saw there's an explosion right now of incubators and accelerators going on that's very exciting because an industry is being created. So around food we said we didn't really think we didn't figure out how we could invest in farms we didn't want to be involved in in foreclosing on someone's farm that just that that wasn't good for us but we could be involved in manufacturing, distribution, retailing and activism around issues of organics and we could create help create community and and bring resources to people that were giving their lives to this. So the first thing I did I had known a guy from earlier years when I lived up in the British Columbia Islands who had started a natural foods and organic store early early early and and and by the time I got into the business with Carol he had opened a store in Vancouver and was about to open his second store which was a huge thing that there was going to be an organic food store to have two locations. This is early 90s and so in Vancouver that's that's how it was. Well they had started construction on their new store without having all the capital put together they just went on passion and belief. At Ernst and Young who was the who were the accounting firm for Carol Newell came to us with a deal that turned out to be Russell Precious and Capers food stores who was the hippie that I knew 15 years earlier who used to drive all the way across British Columbia to the Okanagan the fruit growing region of BC by organic peaches and come back and sell them on the side of the road out of his truck on these little islands and now here he was showing up with a multi-million dollar organic food store that was that so relationship based understanding believing in the integrity of the person and their true beliefs some financial credibility coming from Ernst and Young who was willing to pass this thing along and I had a mandate to get some money out the door into things that mattered in food systems. Well I go meet with them it turns out they're there they all can't pay the construction bills and the mandate was pretty risk tolerant so we made a commitment to Capers. It was successful it later got sold to Wild Oats which got so I mean good to alfalfa's which got sold to Wild Oats which got sold to Whole Foods and you can have your viewpoints about all of that politics and that's now the next thing we can all work on if we care about it but at the time just seeing that that that organic food and local food which was their commitment could be available to consumers in Vancouver meant a cascade effect of many businesses and many farmers and many you know the whole industry would be supported because retail is kind of the end the end of the chain and because I took a lot of time on that story I'll just leave that one. Great we'll get to hear more. So we made we made good money on that deal. The return rate we tripled our money fairly shortly. Wow so Kristen one of the things I know that you're doing now in your role it's sort of you've merged your educator and your whole portfolio activist selves and so you're talking to a lot of different people who are trying to you know work their way towards doing working with the money in a different way. Given the questions that come to you or the obstacles that you perceive do you have a story from your work that is an answer to that. In other words you met with your own obstacles and you I'd just like to hear one of your stories that is inspiring to others who may be feeling some intimidation. Sure sure. I think our dominant paradigm is our biggest obstacle. I think that things have been done a certain way. We know this you know about our financial institutions and the way people have done investing the way people have thought about money and what interest are you making. So I think that's my biggest obstacle is trying to be a little bit different and move in those waters with a different lens or way of being. So when people say how much are you making I really try to think about one. Well let me back up just to say I'm almost even having a problem with the word impact investing these days and just wanting it to be more about conscious investing and so that we're really aware. We're bringing our presence our heart to what we're doing. We can problematize maybe over lunch what impact means and who's receiving the impact and you know all of that. But then as far as doing the actual work bringing that lens or way of being to our dominant paradigm has been tricky and I think it takes a little bit of resilience because when I want to know what I'm getting back as we all do in an investment. I'm not going to measure that just on dollar sign. I want to know again you know have I been able to move the dial as far as how many people get you know wind power solar power how many people have more access to this kind of schooling or that. So I'm asking all sorts of questions and I want it to be a multi-dimensional thing and so getting people to come along with me there has been more difficult. Some of the things though are not that difficult at all and it's just asking the questions and just bringing your values to the table has been easy. So for example the root capital that we that was spoken about this morning. We were brought a deal that was a mid-level not the microfinance but for people that already had businesses in the developing world and this was going to help them get you know 10 more sewing machines or a plant or roofs over there you know and I'm great this is great this market didn't seem to be tapped the return was you know fine looking at that and we just said well how many women will receive this and benefit from this and they didn't know the answer but it wasn't too many conversations later or too many questions where we said hey this is what we really want we want a fund for women and they were willing to work with us and then built that product that's now available and what's kind of fantastic is that other foundations individuals are getting involved in the women's initiative through root capital but also it just happened to be at the time when the Gates Foundation was looking to study women entrepreneurs and so they're doing that now this year and I think that may lend a stamp of approval that will make it even that much better so and it just started with a conversation saying I'm interested in knowing about how this is affecting women and so I have several of those that just asking the question is this green is it organic who does it serve who will be employed here it's expanding the due diligence process with your values basically is what I hear in that and we've you know I've talked to so many different people and it feels like so often people think they are not expert enough and that's part of what you were talking about Joel of the system and that oh there's a language there and it's science and as Joel likes to call it the priesthood has kept it opaque so love to turn it over to you all at this moment with Bjorn at the microphone and there's a question in the back so if you will do a few questions for the panel here yep in the back great I'm Rosalie Kate's hi Joel thank both of you for your heartfelt remarks there's you they're good remarks and they've been made in such a lovely way so thank you my question is maybe kind of boring because it's in the old paradigm but it's so neat to hear about the kind of one off equity deals you know into a business and you know those are just they get your juices running but when you think of your whole portfolio that's what attracted me to your topic what's the asset allocation how much are those really cool really fun things and then do you have a bunch of boring stuff that's doing other things I have to pull this one out so Christian sounds like you've got a response to that one for starters so how is your pie working for you what has it done for you lately and how delicious is it so I have also I grew up in a not only it was a school teacher for many years but I had a father who's a mathematician and you know started businesses that we were then involved with so I've grown up with pie charts in my head about asset allocations and moving it this much we have to get into foreign markets you know you know this much debt this much real estate and I'm really shifting that now I think that the crash or the recent you know ways the market has gone you know 2007 2008 I think has us all questioning where our assets are and so I'm really looking for solid investments and my thinking about this is changing a lot as my learning curve is huge first I wanted to be completely out of public markets because it didn't match my values and I wasn't sure that's where I wanted things to be now I'm looking at re-entering but using my values and I'm working with Amy Domini to build a portfolio of solutions oriented companies and so that's kind of my next step about doing this but as far as 20 percent 50 percent 36 percent it's all very rich and delicious is what I can say well I can talk about this in a lot of different ways what one would be to say what what do we do with Carol Newell's portfolio and first there's an assessment of what needed what did she feel and with support from advisors she needed to protect to be sure that she would have through her lifetime what she wanted and needed and then on the other side how much social change high risk things would we do and how much would be charity and how much would be business and then within each of those but particularly on the business side how much is small seed capital going into highly innovative things that you might have only used your charitable money for and how much would we invest in things that could prove a reasonable return rate so that somebody else might do this and that led to the formation of renewal partners which which was our investment fund that was we called it professional angel money we this biggest we biggest kind of deal was usually 250,000 and a lot of them are much smaller than that that led to a decade later going into the fund management business and we've now created renewal to that renewal to fund which is a 35 million dollar fund that that brought has brought in money from 16 charitable foundations and a lot of dozens and dozens of families in Canada the US and Europe and we have we have put forth a 15 percent annualized return rate and we think we're doing we think we're on track for that it's early we're just a couple of years into it we'll see on the other hand in our portfolio we think about I also do a work as an entrepreneur in residence at RSF social finance and RSF has a product which is available to people with a thousand dollars that is a 90-day deposit or hold in which the money is then loaned out to lots of organic food companies Waldorf schools other educational and green businesses that are considered part of the transformation but they have a good sized reserve and they've never lost anyone's money over 25 years and we're earning a three quarters of a percent on a 90-day note so there are a lot of instruments now out there that cover the full spectrum and you have to Rosalie just sit down like it each individual each entity has to figure out its risk return ratio and does it does it have a reason I mean I want to ask it that way does it have a reason to want to grow does it need to grow okay if the answer to that is yes then you're going to lean you still can just choose where to put your cash what kind of institution you can still choose where to where to do CDs and short-term money and you can do there's not you can invest in land conservancy that's relatively stable you can do affordable housing that can be relatively stable and so it's just a matter for each portfolio I urge look at your underlying values and your meaning and purpose in life what's what's really the goal and once the that kind of work is done then you meet your requirements of income and return and you hope you succeed at it so what I hear from both of you then is you liberated yourselves from a conventional way of looking at sectors and you know the pie chart but but I will say that with the part of Carol's money that needed to be long-term and stable or growing to a degree we went to a money manager and said here's how many tens of millions of dollars we want you to take care of and we basically said we're gonna you know we we want to hear your portfolio theory as it were and we have a bigger portfolio theory but for this portion of money we're gonna trust you we want it to be screened stock what's that we don't know that's we can't do that and and it turned out in Canada at the time no one had gone through studying the entire stock market to even put standards on so that you could judge companies in that way best of sector worst of least worst of sector so we tracked down a guy named Michael Jancy who we heard was doing this work and he was out of money and halfway through the Toronto stock exchange so he could at least have basic research on each company and so we ended up investing in becoming his financial partner to help him build that industry in in Canada he remains one of the only independence in the world Treados and some other folks in Europe have invested it's now Jancy Sustainalytics that's global but one of the last independence in in researching the stock stock exchange and we also took our money managers down to the U.S. it happened to be at the time people Joy Sabusha at Rockefeller to say this is credible money manager to money manager it can be done it's here's where it's happening and they had to be one of the first in Canada and they wouldn't tell customers about it in the beginning because they didn't they thought it would hurt their credibility and then gradually one customer one client after another and now they're one of the leading SRI investment houses that is a big obstacle I've observed a lot has to do with people coming they say oh but I really like my advisor and they don't really know and I want to be loyal so there is that and then Kristen you've modeled with the advisors the asking the questions and making them work for you the client to find you what you need right and sometimes bringing the advisor along has been a strategy I'm still kind of in that mix of I think wanting to do this wanting to get advice and yet is the I the right advice is definitely there but it may not be in the traditional money houses where we would traditionally go for that advice other questions from the house in the third row than the first row so thank you so much I like your comments at the beginning about all the opportunities across the whole spectrum of risk but one of the worries I have a little bit about the impact investment field I think expanding all the different opportunities and the different risk and return ratios is a wonderful thing but at the very I don't know whether to say at the very left side let's say the minus a hundred dollars side maybe some tax benefit side I worry a little bit because I think that there's a very small group of individuals that can really free up the totally no return I don't always think that it's not a business approach I think you often get a huge what I think can get enormous social impact from philanthropy as well especially if there's a business approach I mean to give it to give an example we're planning on launching a challenge fund I had a pair of network that has 43 financial institutions which have committed to scaling up small business finance for entrepreneurs and we're trying now to really when we work to strengthen them to service this market we really want to gender focus as philanthropy as philanthropy so the kind of funding that we would raise for it wherever we raise it from is never going to give anybody a return but it should have tremendous impact in those institutions will be sustainable making money huge development impact once the concept is proven and I just think that there's so much excitement with earning returns that even that it's maybe shrinking the pool of grant money that's actually available for philanthropy to build on the plenary speaker this morning so expanding is great but I worry about the shrinking as well and I'd love to know your view on that well I think of charitable dollars as a tax structure it's it's it's just a structure if you're willing to take a tax break and you consider that's justifiable then take a business deduction it and and take risk on the business side as well is how I look at it so I'm all for more philanthropy and more philanthropy getting into venture philanthropy as long as it doesn't so over quantify and metric eyes the charitable sector that it kills off policy change and deeper systemic change kinds of funding that needs to happen if all we're doing is doing our business innovation through charity well better that than nothing and and and I and I couldn't agree with you more that it is the affluent who can do this that happens to be a lot of people and a huge amount of money we somehow created a society where it's okay to have infinite money and it's okay to kill off tax system and and beat back government and let the commons be dealt with by the private sector worth thinking about Tansen Kristen what I was so impressed by with your from your story is that you did a one hundred percent impact portfolio in one year and it's a whatever you want to call it and it's a work in progress Joel I just want to acknowledge you as one of the icons in the field in your story and everybody may not know how brilliant Marion is at coaching people I didn't hear that she said you're brilliant you're brilliant oh I brilliant excellent comment at coaching people at getting where they want to go drumming you've both told some interesting stories about your successes tell me a story each of you about a failure and what you learn from I'm experiencing my first failure and I've been telling people so far well I'm too new to know what failure is I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing until I have one and then I'll course correct and we were invested in a solar company in Anderson California and the management wasn't the team that we thought and it didn't go as well as we thought and it turned out that we were going to lose our entire investment unless we doubled down so that was a big discussion we decided okay we're going to double down we're going to do this we thought we'd encourage other investors to come on board and if that wasn't the case anyway several months we've been working on this all summer I now own a solar plant in northern California and and so I can't call it a failure yet but I'm telling you I know almost nothing little to nothing about running a solar plant so I work we're getting close to the failure and at the same time I'm learning so much and the process is so been I think it's part of my journey right now so but talk to me in a few months either PG&E is we're going to get this contract and all of these amazing people are going to get this solar at a really reduced cost and it'll be thrilling and we're employing all these people so there's lots of wins so far and and the jury is out and I'll let you know you go into direct investing to quote a good friend David Berg the one thing you know about business plans is they won't happen that way and I'd say the biggest financial well there I just thought of a bigger one we got caught in the real estate crunch in 2007 but that's not the better story is about we wanted to go into independent media great theory media is getting you know corporatized and we're not getting real information so we invested in small magazines because that's what we could do at our scale so not only did we lose money on most of all of those but we eventually in order to we got into the local holistic living magazine in Vancouver because it was an opportunity to have some media and to be able to put forth stories about all the things we're talking about here but the financial model wasn't good enough it gradually got rolled into an attempt to roll up these kinds of magazines across the continent and a million dollars later that business basically failed and the conclusion and what I learned well number one kind of a meaningless learning which is some things work and some things don't you take your check you when you decided to be to take risk you take risk but a better learning was all the internet I have to add on a little bit the saying what you were saying made me think about that I definitely think about you know is this the right amount of money to put towards this thing and if I get this out of it this out of it or nothing out of it how will I feel at the end so I kind of take myself through an attunement process about the investing but the reason I wanted to share that is because I think that I started this work as a grant maker and with my 5% of the foundation and we were just giving money away that we were never going to see again and so now that I've realized we have this 95% of the endowment that are also tools as far as MRI and PRI and all of those things and asking all of these due diligence questions that we weren't necessarily asking on the grant making I'm just thinking that once foundations in particular get involved in this kind of conscious investing I think it's going to really make an impact on how we do our grant making because for me at least I'm noticing the shift about well is that the right tool is this grant the right tool could it be better used as a PRI is there some kind of a business that is doing this same thing will it be more effective or outside of the foundation world do I really need to make a political contribution because none of this is going to happen with my C3 dollars so the failures I'm not even to call them failures my experiences are definitely affecting my learning path as I move through this and I one of the things I'm hearing as both of you tell your stories is what we're trying to do with play big and at socap really is talk about this continuum and you use the word tool and Joel calling philanthropy just a tax structure because so often people go philanthropy over there investment over there and what I've learned so much originally from your work Joel is what are the different creative ways that will best address which problem and to erase the bright line and it's blended value and also that you get to decide for yourself I mean that is another thing about being a pioneer and about the dominant paradigm is not believing in it and are you a social change agent you better pay attention to politics are you a money manager that wants to meet this field and do it effectively those are both viable and noble occupations and I was just thinking on a personal note and then I'm going to turn it over to you too for some closing I have a closing question but this great grandfather of mine that made quadrillions of dollars in the early nineteen hundreds affected my life in a huge way and then my father was an Episcopal activist bishop who thought that I told him I was going to the social venture network and he said what's that and I said well it's business people who are wanting to do good and by doing business and he went oh yeah right I mean he just did denied entirely the possibility because he had turned his back and so I see karmically my integration of you know these two strands as embodied by the work that you are doing and what we're trying to provide an environment for the growth of with play big so my final question for each of you is as you move forward what is your what are you what is your next thing that you're trying to do what is your next sort of as this field evolves what are you leaning towards you're hoping to manifest okay I'll go so I feel like I'm kind of at a one point no I've kind of achieved that level and that I'm moving quickly to two point no and then maybe four point version in the next few years and so my instincts were at first to get completely out of public markets and in 2008 that was a great decision so that actually gave me more money to be conscious about and learn with and so I think that well one thing also I started with fixed income and that was a great way for me to learn about one asset class kind of and all the different kind of ways that that happened and now I'm expanding out of that into these other things so I think as my thinking goes forward I'm now thinking more about the public markets and really wanting to make this accessible to many many people so I'm looking at different investments that would make the investment level say twenty five dollars solar mosaic is one of those opportunities and I'm looking at another that's called ethical electric which will I think make it make this field I guess flatter so that more people can get involved so that's thank you I think Don's leading your session on that later this week excellent so yeah I'm looking for all of those opportunities and expanding those so that's what I'm excited about Joel well I was born to privilege and I got more privileged by being invited to work with Carol Newell and I've now had a direct hand in placing over a hundred million dollars in one way or another and my role at this point as I'm earning my elder ship is to do to devote the rest of my life to do everything I can to leverage billions of dollars and maybe trillions maybe we have to talk trillions these days to make a dent but to lever to to help influence billions of dollars to move to more conscious behavior and more responsibility for for the commons we we may not have a choice we may be able to carry on this conversation about do I go conservative and do I not or climate change and global poverty may catch up with us and the intersection of those two may really create a situation that we are not really thinking about right now very effectively so I and I happen to be a believer that the chances are not great that we're going to carry on this current comfortable lifestyle that a small percentage of us on the planet have and continue accelerating our wealth accumulation however I I I don't know not smart enough to know but I'm going to spend the rest of my time working with the RSFs and play bigs and offering advice and support and creating models continuing to create models renewal to will raise another fund and and we we need in Canada to prove that that can be done so there's credibility and serious financial advisors will get into these fields so I'm going to be involved in models and support the organizations that are taking risks and being pioneers and the people thank you both so much thanks to so cap for providing the environment for this I will also say you know we've talked about play big a bunch I have a little flyer if anyone's interested in learning more about that and thanks to all of you for joining us