The following is a short commentary from a thought-leader in fields such as impact investing and philanthropy.

The following musings come from Benjamin Bingham CFP, founder and CEO of 3Sisters Sustainable Management. He is the author of Making Money Matter/Impact Investing to Change the World (www.makingmoneymatterbook.com). We have published a number of articles from him over recent months. See this article about him here. The editors of this news service don't necessarily endorse views of guest contributors, but we are grateful to add such insights to debate. Email the editor at tom.burroughes@wealthbriefing.com and jackie.bennion@clearviewpublishing.com

The irony and the urgency that motivated me to write another book on impact investing is that by 2030, if more wealth is not turned to solving local and global problems, they may scale up to a point where humanity itself will become immaterial. Can we feel this: Humanity gone? This is hard to feel as a possibility and unfortunately it is becoming easier with each military explosion, each tsunami, each drought, each Main Street flood, each earthquake or deadly fire. Feeling it is foundational as long as it does not weigh us down with depression and acquiescence. Working to turn the tide requires optimism, intelligence, and a new level of commitment.

My first book on money (www.makingmoneymatterbook.com) is my personal journey, dancing around and through an evolving understanding of wealth, beginning in my twenties as a clueless inheritor of a small amount from the Tiffany Fortune, which if invested well could have grown into enough to retire early by now. Instead, investing in the unknown future seemed illogical when putting a roof on the barn that was in disrepair or drilling a well seemed more practical, though I never used them. 

As a co-founder of Triform Camphill Community at 28, I learned to raise money from foundations and philanthropists, and from 40-50 I learned to raise money from government technology grants, foundations and socially awake investors to cure diseases and solve other technology issues in the healthcare space. In all these years I came to realize, that like foundations, most wealthy families invested or gave away only 5 per cent of their investable dollars each year, while 95 per cent was handed to experts who knew little or nothing about their values and had no concern for the planet or society. That part of their wealth remained frozen in materiality with no intangible value.

In 2000, I decided to find out how to change that paradigm: to demonstrate that 100 per cent of family and foundation assets could be invested in alignment with the character and purpose of the entity investing. This has changed drastically for many families and some foundations in the last 20 years, and now I am hoping to open this concept to pension funds as well, since their fiduciary duty is to support the pensioners’ future, and, put simply, the trustees should be held accountable for investing in the degradation of the environment and exploitation of the society their workers will inhabit in their retirement. Slowly there is a dawning awareness that the impact of investments on nature and society exposes all of us to tremendous hidden costs or benefits. This “external rate of return” or ERR needs to be measured and accounted for, and in time those companies and projects that benefit the environment and society will, and already are, becoming more highly valued by investors because these are the companies from whom we want to buy, not the bad actors…

Humanity is both at risk of losing everything and equipped to thrive. To thrive we need a clear theory of change and I will share one approach with strategies for managing money to make changes occur in an intelligent and appropriate way. We built this model at 3Sisters Sustainable Management, a 2019 Best for the World B-Corporation, because we believe that money is both the culprit that can take the blame for a dysfunctional world and the potential champion for a healthy future if managed well.
 
Though humans have become vulnerable to extinction, or at least to the end of humanity as we have known it, new thinking shows that we don’t need to be stuck with the way things are going, and things won’t change unless we change: we could fix every problem on Earth and still be unhappy in a meaningless world driven by greed and fear. For long-term sustainability each inspired member of humanity may need to find a new relationship with themself, with others and with the whole story or context for life. If there is to be any hope for society, we need unnatural ways to work on ourselves consciously. 

In Making Money Matter, each chapter ends with an essay on one of the 13 Virtues Benjamin Franklin worked on one at a time each week for his whole adult life. This was his way to have a virtue front of mind during the day and each night to help focus his review of the day in the light of that virtue. This unnatural practice must have had something to do with his unnatural ability to make a difference.

Whether a person is religious or spiritually inclined or simply intent on improving the world, there are many new and traditional practices that can be beneficial for anyone with a will to change. Some of these disciplines will be woven into the investment themes while expanding practical essays from Making Money Matter industry by industry. As we focus on what is a better way to be human, we might save money from its bad wrap and possibly preserve or recover our best human characteristics.  

The art of conversation is likely the most needed discipline for us all to develop in the years ahead. It may appear to be supercilious to say the obvious fact is that we live in an increasingly polarized world. Conversation circles were at the core of Benjamin Franklin’s effective discipline to enhance awareness and invoke change. His father, the candlemaker, invited Boston craftsmen to sit around the table to discuss local and global affairs over supper. Benjamin Franklin’s Leather Aprons gatherings of craftsmen in Philadelphia eventually grew through network science into global scientific circles for collaborative observation and problem solving. 

If we can’t speak humanly to one another and listen to what is really wanted from a higher perspective, then no fix-it will hold. We are doomed to fail. Deep conversations can lead to new visions and inspirations that will work. This is nothing new, but I want to put it front and center because it is easily forgotten in a world of tweets and sound bites.