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Dr. Shojai: Hey it's Dr. Pedram Shojai, founder of Well.org.
We bring you the good guys and here's another one for you.
Ted Levinson is over at RSF Capital which is the Rudolf Steiner Foundation. I love their
work. They've been at it for a long time. What these guys do is they invest in socially
just causes, they invest in companies that are helping make a difference in our world.
As you know, Well.org is all about this and so we started following these stories and
tried to find out who's doing this good work. Check out RSF Capital I think you're going
to love the story. Ted: I'm Ted Levinson. I'm the Director of
London at RSF Social Finance. At RSF our goal is really to change the way
people think about money. We want to see people invest their moneys in ways that support local
communities, in ways that build trust. I think that there is a tendency for people to look
on a very micro level and I think that we need to step back and ask ourselves whether
the decisions we're making on an individual basis really are sustainable on a global basis
or on a macro basis. We need to take a longer view about the decisions
that we make and the impact that our financial decisions have. We are patient lender. Our
primary goal is to get paid back with maximum social impact. When you lend money to RSF
you're making a 90-day commitment. It's very similar to a CD that you might open at a bank.
People don't often think about this but when you open a Certificate of Deposit you're really
lending money to the bank. That's the same way that we operate and today we pay our investors
half of percent per year. A pretty modest amount but it's comparable with an actually
higher than what most banks pay today. Since 1984 we've always returned principal
in it and interests to our investors. We think that the $1000 minimum and a 90-day commitment
and a fair increase rate ... a competitive interest rate return ... we think that RSF
should be far bigger than it currently is going to attract far more investors than we
currently have because where else do you have the ability to know exactly where your money
is and the work that it's doing. All of our loans are secured by real estate,
by inventory, by accounts receivable, by equipment, or by personal guarantees. We're lending to
companies and non-profits that are truly trying to change the world and that always comes
with a lot of risks and a lot of hard work but we believe that by lending to those social
entrepreneurs that we think are the most dedicated and to ones that have smart plans and a track
record, an existing track record of success, plus the collateral that we have in almost
all of our loans, we feel that this is a secure investment. That's why I'm an investor.
Our purpose statement is to transform the way the world works with money and you can't
do that unless you engage more of the world. I think opening an account at RSF is a tremendous
way to participate in social enterprise and to be an impact investor.
We at RSF, we try to lead by example and we think that finance can be regenerative rather
than disruptive and extractive. I oftentimes read the newspaper and think that we would
have a far healthier financial system if more people had to face directly who their borrowers
were and directly who their investors were. That we know who are customers are whether
they are our borrowers or our investors. Society as a whole will be a lot healthier if we had
that same directness and that same transparency in all of the transactions that we do.
It's far easier to take advantage of somebody you've never met and I think that when you
see the effects of your decisions and you meet the people who are affected positively
or negatively by your decisions, I think that we all act in a far more humane way. We're
trying to bring that humanity to the world of finance which really doesn't have much
of reputation for humanity. Non-profit is a whole ... are usually very
small organizations but we're seeing more companies or non-profits like Wild Planet
that are exceeding $10 - $20 - $30 million in sales.
Ultimately, a social enterprise has baked into exactly what you're doing, social benefit.
I think it's wonderful that some companies choose to give away a percentage of their
income or a percentage of their profits, that doesn't make it a social enterprise. What
makes it a social enterprise is your actual business activity makes the world a better
place. One of our borrowers is called Guayaki, they
import yerba mate, decaffeinated plant from South America. It grows in Brazil, Paraguay,
and Argentina. Guayaki imports yerba mate that grows in the rain forest. They have developed
a whole value chain that encourages people to grow yerba mate in the rain forest rather
than chop it down and grow soy or raise cattle. Their goal is to grow their business so that
they can restore 200,000 acres of the rain forest. They're a profitable company too.
When people buy yerba mate tea that they sell or buy a can of Guayaki or a bottle of Guayaki
they're actually supporting people in South America that are restoring and preserving
a rain forest. That's what a social enterprise is. It isn't tied to how much money you give
away once you make it, it's how you make it in the first place.
Business has tremendous capacity to make or fix problems. I think the remarkable thing
is that there's so many people that would refuse to buy food that supported monoculture
and yet through their investments whether they know it or not they're probably supporting
monoculture. They're probably supporting sweatshops. They're probably supporting things that they
find morally reprehensible much of it simply because we don't have transparency. You don't
know where your money is when it's sitting at a bank.
But all of our borrowers, there are over 85 of them are listed on our website. We can
probably do the math and figure out where your investment is and how it's divided up
amongst those 85 of our borrowers. We think that that's just a healthier financial system
and one that's more based on trust and more based on relationships and will ultimately
be a safer investment. The future is very bright. I think that we
started almost 30 years ago doing this work and for most of those 30 years we were so
far ahead of society that we have limited business and now I feel like there's a great
wave of new enterprises coming to the market and we intend to continue to innovate but
I also see just a growing market of organizations that we'll be able to build tomorrow from
RSF. Speaker 3: We want to thank [inaudible 00:07:31]
focus on just technology. He designed new resource bank ů just designed ů