An Investment Option

People constitute our community's greatest asset by far. 

All kinds of people, including those many of us seldom remember or seriously consider.

Recently, I sat in a small group of social scientists concerned about poverty and overcoming it.  The group discussed various interventions to knock it down/out, strategies for measuring its depth and intensity and various approaches to data collection and interpretation.  One of the main concerns involved developing a "narrative" for educating the entire community about the prevalence of a social reality that saps our strength as a city and a region. 

As we talked, it hit me. 

We need new recognition skills.

Dallas must recognize the wealth, the beauty, the skills, the intelligence and the power resident in low-income communities--the very communities that on the one hand cause us to wring our hands in anxiety and on the other remain great unmined repositories of amazing social capital and survival strategies.

With accurate recognition of value, we should begin to expect adequate investment, and even some cases of "over investment" or remedial investment to make up for time lost in our social blindness and  heedless stupor. 

Consider children for a moment. 

Every dollar invested in the life and future of any child carries with it the promise of surprising return on investment (ROI). 

Maybe we need an IPO on the future of our children, if coupled with a sound and generous investment strategy in their lives. 

Failure to invest in the education of all of our children is short-sighted and negligent by definition. 

Failure to care for the wellness of our children sets a course for suicidal economic realties a generation or less from now.

Failure to create living wage jobs results in economic disincentives that discourage and dissuade commitment to creativity and hard work. 

Failure to draw our children into fully participating members of our democracy opens corridors leading to social unrest.

Those neighborhoods of Dallas, about which we concerned ourselves in my group meeting, need to be served by a robust investment strategy that results in progress, full-participation and generous portions of hope and opportunity. 

We can't wait any longer.  The time for delay passed us long ago.

This is our time, a time to invest while expecting amazing returns because the product and enterprise attracting our attention turn out to be our neighbors and their children, as well as us and ours.

We're all in this together expecting an amazing ROI! 

To trust "the poor"

We've wondered about this very direct approach for some time at CitySquare.

 Making the transition to the domestic, U. S. poverty context would likely present some new, unique challenges.

However, I continue to believe that there is an application to be found here for a place like Dallas. I base my opinion/hunch on my high regard for "the poor" and my trust that low-income persons can do a great deal for themselves.

What do you think?

What CitySquare needs from you. . .

Our numbers continue to explode!

 More and more wonderful men, women, children, families pass through our doors every day.

Frankly, the pace overwhelms our team more often than not.

Further, the waves of people seeking a better life wash over our day-to-day financial capacity producing practical challenges, especially related to cash flow.

Between 70 and 75% of our funding involves designations and restrictions that do not allow us to use these dollars to cover short term cash needs. Ironically, while our bank statements remain strong, our available cash comes and goes over the cycle of the year.
Here's what we need: long term, serious investors in the work of CitySquare. Investors who support our work financially without restrictions or the limitations of designations as to how these funds may be used.  In other words, we need general funds without restrictions.

Translation:  We need monthly donors who consider themselves "members" of the CitySquare family.

Like to accept this challenge?

Email me today at ljames@CitySquare.org or contact me on Twitter (@lmjread) and we'll enroll you in this special "investors'" group!

As this investors' fund grows, I'll report on its status here, as well as in other social media venues.

Seth Godin: Smart Bidness!

The smart CEO's guide to social justice

It seems as though profit-maximizing business people ought to be speaking up loudly and often for three changes in our culture, changes that while making life better also have a dramatically positive impact on their organizations.
Minimum Wage: Three things worth noting:

1. Most minimum wage jobs in the US can't easily be exported to lower wage places, because they're inherently local in nature.
2. The percentage of the final price of a good or service due to minimum wage inputs is pretty low.
3. Many businesses sell to consumers, and when they have more money, there's more demand for what they sell.

Given that for even the biggest organizations there are more potential customers than employees, the math of raising the minimum wage works in their favor. More confident and more stable markets mean more sales. Workers struggling to make ends meet are a tax on the economy.  (Consider the brilliant strategic move Henry Ford made in doubling the pay of thousands of his workers in 1914. The assembly line was so efficient that it created profits—but only when it was running, and high turnover made that difficult. By radically raising pay, Ford put pressure on all of his competitors (and on every industry that hired the sort of men he was hiring) at the same time that he created a gateway to the middle class, a middle class that could, of course, buy his cars, whether or not they happened to work for him). Also, consider this point of view...

Climate Change: The shift in our atmosphere causes countless taxes on organizations. Any business that struggled this winter due to storms understands that this a very real cost, a tax that goes nowhere useful and one that creates countless uncertainties. As sea levels rise, entire cities will be threatened, another tax that makes it less likely that people will be able to buy from you.

The climate upredictability tax is large, and it's going to get bigger, in erratic and unpredictable ways.
Decreasing carbon outputs and increasing energy efficiency are long-term investments in global wealth, wealth that translates into more revenue and more profit. 

Anti-corruption movements: The only players who benefit from corruption in government are the actors willing to race to the bottom--the most corrupt organizations. Everyone else is forced to play along, but is unlikely to win. As a result, for most of us, efforts to create transparency and fairness in transactions are another step toward efficient and profitable engagements.

Historically, when cultures clean up their acts, get more efficient and take care of their people, businesses thrive. It's not an accident, one causes the other. 

In all three cases, there's no political or left/right argument being made--instead, it's the basic economics of a stable business environment with a more secure, higher-income workforce where technological innovation leads to lower energy costs and higher efficiency. 

Death penalty should go. . .

Here is an interesting clip from a speech by Bob Ray Sanders delivered at this year's meeting of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP).  

We really should abolish capital punishment in Texas.

Way too costly--119 counties have never executed anyone, largely due to expense involved..

Way too risky--too many ways to arrive at unjust or erroneous verdicts.

Way to inhumane--how can I tolerate something that I could not personally do?.

Cash to the poorest

Novel ideas here, but not surprising results. When we lead with taking the people with the challenges seriously, we usally get remarkable outcomes as a return on our investment!

Read and tell me what your think.

Giving Money to the Homeless Might Actually Work

Nicola Twilley
Food Editor

A few months ago, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a UK-based nonprofit that does amazing work in the field of poverty and social exclusion, issued a surprising report that deserves a much wider readership.

The study evaluated the success of a radical new way of working with the long-term homeless. Instead of soup kitchens, shelters, and mobile health clinics, the charity Broadway simply selected 15 homeless people that their outreach workers had found the hardest to reach (one had been on the streets for an astonishing 45 years), asked them what it was they needed to change their lives—and then bought it for them.

One asked for sneakers and a prepaid cell phone, one needed cash to pay off a loan, one wanted a TV and a comfy chair (to make the move into hostel accommodation more attractive), and one requested a camper van. Each of them received the money to purchase exactly what they asked for, with the condition that they also had to choose a personal "broker" who would help them write a budget.

Two refused to engage with the pilot project altogether, but of the 13 who agreed to take part, 11 are now off the streets. Several have entered treatment for addiction and mental health issues, some have reconnected with their families, and all are exhibiting an enhanced ability to function independently in society (i.e. paying bills, signing up for welfare, and turning up for training courses, etc.). The participants' own comments give a clue as to why the intervention worked so well:

To read the entire essay click here.