The key question is:

will you make the distinction between shares for dividends and shares for loans with interest payments?

According to Dr. Yunus, social business investors may NOT take dividends out of the profits of a company.

In his terms, a ‘social business’ is a FOR-PROFIT company, implying NON-LOSS and NON-DIVIDEND!

That means profit for the company and interest for investors.

Looking forward to your feedback,
Sabine

Applause for Rockefeller’s $500,000 to Study Social Stock Market

March 22, 2008 |

In today’s Financial Times it has been announced that the well-known US-based Rockefeller Foundation has pledged $500,000 to conduct a feasibility study of the concept of a social stock exchange (SSE) in the UK. Details of the grantees are not available in the article, but we suspect that SSE pioneers Pradeep Jethi and Mark Campanale are among those whose efforts will benefit from the grant. We applaud this news and see it as an overwhelmingly positive development for the social sector here in the UK and potentially around the world, given Rockefeller’s reach and respectability.

Longtime readers of this blog may wonder why we are so positive on this grant given our previously stated opposition to the development of an SSE. First, the sector needs and deserves publicity. Anything which highlights the need to further deepen the social capital market is fully welcome. That the grant comes from an organisation as prestigious as Rockefeller lends this further weight.

I cannot say what might be accomplished with £0.5 million, nor would I be unable to imagine other potentially better uses for the cash, but given the meagre resources of the sector to date, this is a truly welcome boost. It will be very useful to secure the information which comes out of the study, and one assumes it will be made widely available.

Observers should also note that the gap between the protagonists of the SSE and its antagonists is miniscule in comparison with the “shared territory”. It is important that those seeking to exploit these differences do not cause us to overlook the vast amount of common ground.

Moreoever, it is essential that an SSE be looked at as potantially one of many aspects of the social capital market–and we all agree this needs development. Various efforts underway here in the UK and around the world are all likely to form part of the solution we require. We have commented in the past on numerous other activities taking place in this regard.

Lastly, it may very well be that my view on the SSE is incorrect, in which case we should be glad for the dogged efforts of Jethi, Campanale, and Jamie Hartzell, CEO of the Ethical Property Company, who has been another tireless campaigner for an SSE. My being wrong is a situation which certainly has many historical precedents!

Yes, the Green Stock Exchange is in the beta stage, and will be the first social stock exchange in North America.

Anyone knows people at the Rockerfeller Foundation or Rodney Schwartz or people at the Skoll Foundation please contact us at the Green Stock Exchange; we would like to gain their support.

The ‘Zeitgeist’ is definitely with us!

Have a look at the “Green Stock Exchange” that is already in beta: http://www.greensx.com

Well done, Lilly, once again!!!

S