good afternoon and welcome i'm so pleased to be here i sound a little like winston churchill so we're going to turn on the monitor of these television sets as we welcome you so you're going to need to find the remote control and you're going to have to turn the sound down on these television sets ok and once we do that i'm going to welcome you to finance friday which is part of the continuing series here at channel seventeen so that she knew me behind you or we can actually just manually do it so i'm going to just wait until we solve this particular problem and then we'll start again because it good afternoon and welcome we are here at finance fridays which is part of common good for months continuing series on helping nonprofits think about different ways to be sustainable and to really learn about the numbers and learn about different ways that we can do the work that we do in a financially healthy way so today we're going to be talking about social impact investing and also social benefit corporations which are part of the socially condamine nonprofit organizations are no longer just the only game in town when it comes to making good happen in our states in our country in our local communities and so we are they have been interested in following this question of social impact investing for the cat past couple of years and in the process we've made some friends who are working in this field and we thought we would share what we've been learning with you today of course you can give us a call at eight zero to eight six to three nine six six if you have any specific questions and also you can e mail your questions to morgan webster our director at common good bt dot org in the meantime we have with us today for guess we have simeon cheapen simeon is the director of social and community development for the vermont state employees credit union nonprofit business so we're going to learn a little bit about that transition and my old friend mark redmond who's the executive director of spectrum which also has its own social enterprise called detail works and we'll be hearing more about that thank you all for coming today  and it's great to have our viewing audience and we even have a television live television audience so thank you so much so why don't we just start with maybe a little bit of history about how social good has taken place in the united states because we we think that the nonprofit model is the only model that ever existed and this goes back a ways that's now you know i come at this you know from my place in the credit union which we look at you know coming out of a social justice movement  europe during the you know the forming of cooperative business in europe around the agricultural sector so i look at it kind of from a large perspective and i saw you know historical trends of you know rockefeller donating money after the fact of earning you know huge amounts of money in doing business or the robber barrons kind of thing then deploying capital out into the nonprofit space and seeing that that's been changing over the years towards a more participatory approach with more nonprofits going directly to the masses for donations fundraising exercises or more and more people getting involved at an individual level and i see at the same time you know the rise of local investing local food local awareness people seeing where their money goes actually makes a difference in their purchases and how that connects to social good in the community you know via c c you and also the community loan fund or an interesting places because we're both  places where people can invest their money and put their money into those organizations to make a return on their their deposits but also a place where we're turning around and then looking out in the community to say where is the best place for that money to be deployed and it's really interesting nexus piece because where we focus saying that where the course not the direction of everyone but as that change happens from a you know industry to nonprofit to more people and what wide braced approach thinking about how their money makes feel in their in their purchases i think that that's the large scale trajectory that i see so traditional financial institutions and traditionally they've invested in the private sector because they're looking for the highest rate of return  but the the values and the model for both the credit union and the loan fund is different that's what you're explaining and so you're not just looking for highest return you're looking for something socially important to be achieved is that right jake yeah absolutely  we certainly we make loans we're a lender and like any lender we want those loans to perform in that necessitates us being able to get the money back in redeploy and repair our investors when we need to repay them but alongside looking for just that financial return we're looking for we're looking through a another couple of lenses a mission lens we're looking to be able to deploy our capital to folks that typically wouldn't have access to capital from traditional financial institutions maybe businesses that are in an earlier stage or or just folks that traditionally wouldn't have access to a distressed communities businesses in organizations serving lower income vermonters we finance affordable housing developers the local community land trusts and housing developers like that we finance local businesses that are trying to create jobs not trying to actually creating jobs preserving and creating jobs in the vermont economy right here in vermont we're financing other non profits and community facilities that are providing all kinds of services whether it's health centers or arts organizations anything in the nonprofit sector that's providing services to lower income vermonters or vermonters at large and we're also financing early care and learning organizations childcare early care and education organizations of all shapes and sizes home based center  based large small all around the state so yeah we're looking to we're looking for that financial return because our business model demands it but we're applying a mission focus to it we're looking to serve the common good with the lending that we do as well and are the investors that you have different than typical investors and that they're they're not looking for his higher rate of return and they have a social mission i mean what's the profile of the person that invests to have you do this work it's a really interesting question and i think that it speaks a lot to the environment around investing at large today i think like simeon said you know you used to kind of make your money and then maybe you could carve off a little bit and do good with it  think that the idea of doing good with your money and doing well for yourself at the same time that synergy is something that's more modern and is happening on a larger level now and that investors are not having to sacrifice return financial return to be able to achieve some kind of community return however they would define whether that's wanting to keep your money active locally in the community here in vermont whether that's wanting to have some kind of positive environmental impact with your investing or you know wanting to have your money have a gender lens to it being able to invest in opportunities for women and girls being able to invest in opportunities in countries around the world or distressed communities elsewhere outside of vermont there are opportunities for every investor to be able to do all of those things both through the traditional conventional investment world through socially responsible investing impact investing but also through nontraditional opportunities like the loan fund where you can you can lend your money and be able to do good with it right here it's an interesting question about you know who i mean particularly came out of a place where a group of people got together to share wealth amongst themselves when they needed it right as opposed to having to go to somebody else or some go outside of their community to be able to get the credit that they needed and and that's just sort of continued in the credit union movement it's really about that that kind of one to one relationship however you know as those groups have grown of course it's been more and more financial services but the idea is  when you're you know the the who is with social impact investing can be a wide range of people and it's really about kind of the mindset that you bring to it you can be an investor who's got you know thousands of thousands of dollars of discretionary income to invest for any kind of or if it's if it's you need a certain return you can find a place that has a social impact mission to it if you need to if you need can take more risk you can find a place that has a different kind of return and risk profile to it all the way down to you know many of our own members who are  putting their money at vs easier because they see that that's part of the community that they're looking to support there's the development of you know things that we do with the credit union now which is a money market account where all of the money that goes into that account goes to only renewable energy projects within our membership so if you care about the environment or care about whether ization for low income folks or care about solar and in vermont you can put your money there have a guaranteed rate of return it's not huge but it's reasonable and it's good  and then see where that money's going at night you know i think one of the questions that many people had you know when you look at what happened last summer with the call to access pipeline people sort of continuing it's we coming to a what happens with their money when it's not actively being used by them and social impact investing to me the overarching umbrella within that is more consciousness about where you're putting your money and finding the ways that are appropriate for you to fight to get that risk and get the return you're looking for so long or what i was going to say you've done a lot of work in the international development realm and i'm wondering how you see this flow of capital coming from people that want to make things happen here into the international realm you mean people that want to invest vermonters i want to invest in internationally yeah i mean well first of all lot of amount of course have ties internationally that are they may be recently arrived and in fact that's where a lot of capital comes from in developing countries from folks that the diaspora so folks that have moved to the west to the u s sending money back to support their families and to support their families investing you know in their countries of origin and in fact my most recent position was in was working with syria in a lot of syrian americans who were using the money that they had you know made in america to to provide relief in syria during the conflict there so so one of the questions that we have is and you've started to mention it but how do you find projects to invest in and then i'm sort of interested in how do you find people to invest in the work that you're doing so you know you've mentioned housing you've mentioned energy you know to do the folks in your of business loans loans to nonprofits loans into the energy space that we make that are products and services that the credit union offers those are managed just like any other loan fund would or investment portfolio would buy the credit union and that's you know regulated looked at it's backed by the n c u a you know it's that kind of level of how we approach and look for those partnerships or places to invest the other side of things where we're kind of taking more risk when we're making investments into things like milk money which is the platform for local businesses to put up equity offers for other vermonters to invest directly into  vermont works investment management team which we've made some investment into which is a platform well what they're looking to raise a fifty million dollar fund to invest in growth stage businesses in vermont here to base to their their mission is to bend the curve and keep high quality jobs in vermont or if you look at yourself which is a platform we're working on to connect people with great ideas to be able to take them through the process of kind of creating a business plan around that great idea and getting the support that they need from others in the community those ones are more network approach we are you know active in our communities we're trying to talk to people as much as we can and we talk about our mission first we always lead with what it is that we're trying to do which is to improve the quality of life for members and for the vermonters who live who we live with and then from that values discussion figure out how how to move forward and see what's what's a problem with those investments you know we're not looking for a great return on them because we're balancing the social impact that it can have or you know that we hope it can have if it works out and the amount of money that we can put into it you know those investments are there sizable they're not you know we're not putting an inordinate amount of our members money at risk by making these sorts of us but that's how that's how that happens is really starting with the mission and vision first how do you measure social impact it's easy to measure capital you know you've increased your financial yield but how do you when you and then i'm interested in how you set up the project at the detailing project spectrum maybe tell us a little bit about that and why spectrum took it up and sure so we did strategic planning about three years ago and we work with homeless youth runaways youth of been incarcerated kids suffering from mental illness and addiction and we have a program that places them in jobs right in cafes pizza store restaurants were over and we have actually pretty good outcomes compared to other programs like that in the state but most of our kids don't succeed in the workplace you know they didn't grow up in families where was model how to show up on time how to dress at work how to speak to customers how to speak to a boss so they use either quit or get fired within ninety days that's led us to think about how can we do this differently what if we start a business w we start a social enterprise and where the boss and we hire these young people and we put somebody in stefanos how to work with this population most people are trying to run their restaurant their coffee shop whatever their bank they're not trained in how to do  through work but we are so we came up with that idea and that with the hopes again well with the outcome be more of our youth would actually stay in jobs and not get fired or quit within ninety days and actually learn soft skills and hard skills then it was like which business do you pick so we formed an advisory board put a lot of entrepreneurial types on that leadership champlain which is a group that comes out of the chamber of commerce they did a tremendous amount to help to help us pick the business pick the criteria and then develop a business plan so we landed on carty telling for a couple of reasons we did focus groups with kids sound like they want to do it number two there is a need most of the core detailing places in this county you have to wait a couple of weeks three months to get in there low cost to start up you can literally stuck to the equipment the soap less than five thousand dollars so if it wasn't going well we could get out of it with that without a big loss so anyway that's we start now we formed what's called an l three c corporation which is a vermont invention we looked at an l l c limited liability corporation with the three c which i think the technical title is low profit limited liability corporate so it's a separate corporation underneath spectrum and it can accept charitable donations because we hope that people would want to donate to start this so that's what we did and we picked carty telling we rented space we just moved in williston now and every morning at seven thirty a have four or five youth who were homeless probably living with us kids who have struggled in life they mean our drop in center we drive them up there they detail a couple of cars at noontime we bring him back the next crew kids are just had lunch we bring them up and we bring back so we've been at it soft opening in june heart opening in september so we've been at it for a while we've more than doubled our percentage of youth who were able to stay and work for ninety days or more so that's the first you know indices now what i want to see long term is we've gone to some of the auto dealerships on schober and road in the places they're like you teach these kids how to detail cars and how to show up on time called sick we'll hire them on a living wage so we're really again it's through early in the process now this is important in a lot of nonprofits think this i'm going to start this business whatever it is and it's going to generate all these profits and that's thing going to go poor into my whatever it is you're running shelter or you're probably you know forget it we did a lot of research on this went to denver to a national conference and it was kind of a rude awakening if you break even you'll be the rare nonprofit that i was going to ask you when you seventy thousand to us so we've gotten all kinds of there are foundations that focus strictly on this they've given to us the hospital gave us a contract for seventy of their vehicles the state gave us the contract for two of their vehicles howard senator this week the scheme is a contract to so that and then jump on it and all the facebook everything we're full up you know so we think by the end of year six we can actually be will lose x dollars in year one a little less and year to a little less in year three but will we ever generate enough profit that it would help fund the rest of spectrum no but if we can even breakeven will be grateful and but the real outcome to me is taking on people who really haven't had success in the workplace and helping them to develop the soft skills and hard skills so they can leave us and earn a living wage you know we're paying minimum wage now we want them to be in careers not everybody can go to college not every but he should go to college i'm in my opinion but everybody's going to need to learn some skill right so that they can they can survive in this economy and make a living wage you know were we going to respond well i was going to say i mean i was thinking about  right so we do skills development we train mechanics and and as a as a retail shop old folks home has always been a great place to get a summer job and to learn these great skills out of you know customer service skills mechanic skills which are really help you develop these problem solving skills you know they look at a bike they assess it they figure out what's wrong with you go through this whole step by step process right so it's been great the difference now that we're nonprofit is i can hire people that you know won't won't make me money right away right so as a as a as a sole proprietorship glenn ames had some is a great bike shop the big difference is that you know i'll hire young people or we have a mechanic that staff hire people that i have to spend money on working side by side with other mechanics because i don't as a nonprofit i don't have to be so concerned that every single employee is generating revenue i mean for a small business the profit margins are really narrow and like like you're saying you can expect to make a lot of you can expect some money on or you know on a small enterprise necessarily but what you can do right is create a place where young people or anyone can really develop these skills in a setting that is professional where the expectations are high and then but they may need hand holding as they develop those skills and so so i'm employing people who that like as a as a small bike shop i could never afford to employ if i wasn't also getting donations and grants the right kind of thing and why did why did the business move from being a sole proprietorship to a nonprofit in order to achieve these social goals or well so so as a bike shop egoyan was the sole proprietor glen ames and he always was very community like you always had social goals right he was always you know he made bikes affordable he always sold refurbish used by that that were reliable cars mechanics were refurbishing them he always again bike shops are a great place for high schoolers to get great job skills so he but he you know he had to he had to make a profit he had to you know he had to stay in business right so so the big difference so then when he wanted to sell the business he sold it to the  nonprofit which was a wizard also across the street bike recycle vermont and they were always a nonprofit and they were always you know selling by for like twenty five to fifty dollars to folks that had been these bikes had been donated and refurbished by volunteers and one mechanic so it was basically kind of running on a shoestring but so bike recycle bought old folks home as a way to cover you know  cost the operating costs of their social programs and glenn was very happy to to be able to sell it to a nonprofit because i mean again as a small business he was always very community minded but i think the big difference between when glendon did and now that it's a nonprofit is is who we who our customers are and who our employees are and our customers are now folks that you know can only afford a sturdy five or fifty dollar bike and their employees are sometimes mechanics that need to to spend time one on one with a professional mechanic and you know who who can't generate revenue coming in the door we get donations and grants and that kind of thing so we've actually in the years since i've been on we've we've raised enough funding to be able to really expand our programs in terms of the number of people we serve but also the quality of programming so we just are doing things like we're selling our accessories that costs we can you know mom can get her child on a bike see you know and all that costs you know folks that come in and they rely on their bikes for transportation now they can get racks and lights and helmets and locks which is what you really need to be able to commute on your bike all that it cost so we've really and we've started going out to communities with a mobile repair unit and we did that partnership with when we launched that last summer in partnership with spectrum so the spectrum use were trained in flat fixes and basic adjustments and they went to with one of our of them it was literally flat fixes right i mean that's what was keeping people off their bikes and so these kids with the spectrum kids after you know they worked with our professional mechanic but they can fix flats right and so they were doing that we got hundreds of bikes back on the road so  've been able to increase our services and a lot of that is because we've been doing some fund raising to complement you know the what we generate the revenue we generate from the retail shop so what i would say is the retail shop cut it covers our operating costs but the it with some revenue transfer but the majority is it with with shared resources right so we share mechanics we share inventory management systems we share point of sale you know  software we share you know all the like a county in you know so so it's because we're able to it's a lot of in kind more than the actual cash that's being transferred from the retail shop shop retail bike shop wouldn't fund most nonprofit they would only really it would only really create enough resources to fund the kind of nonprofit that we've got right so you've talked a lot about social impact is kind of the primary measure and i wonder are there projects you know three seasons you said is a vermont creation are there else three cs in vermont that are actually achieving a revenue gain that you invest in as investors do you see what i mean it was we're hearing a lot about how this this is big social impact but what about this balance of social impact and financial profit sure like are there successful examples in vermont was really interesting i mean just the discussion here about the various forms that a social impact business can take right whether or not it's part of a business that's actually a nonprofit structure or an l three c structure like the various forms that can happen and i thought about run businesses for social responsibility this is the number of highly successful businesses who have started with a social mission first who are having social impact but also have revenue goals so that's another kind of part of the spectrum of  different ways that business and social impact can be made and terms of all three cs that are that are active in a we've now that money is in all three c that we've invested in the know they're still in the growth stage and becoming profitable they haven't made that yet  i actually spent some time working for farmers to you which was a business that's aggregating from an agricultural products and selling it out of state in boston to a direct market you know with some grant funding with some investment you know a stacked capital approach to how that social impact right primarily it's you know how many people can we serve with chi quality financial services that can give them access to the capital they need to make their lives happen or give them a reasonable rate of return also how we measure the triple bottom line aspect of our business the environmental social and financial prosperity pieces is actually to see well how much of our assets at risk are specifically going to these aspects so how much of our assets at risk are going into environmental loans so for solar development or for weather as ation or for you know people in low income communities to get housing or the various pieces of them and what can we do to help direct more of our capital towards the social impact  that's it we look at the numbers but then we also look at how many you know the numbers of like how many dollars we have and how many are we able to how many people we have to see and on the philanthropic side you know it's more of a case by case we're looking at keat shelter financial literacy in the environment as kind of the focus is that we're trying to make impact on but each individual gift that we make you know is more about what's the nonprofit going to do with it and then can they achieve that with it and so that's that's where the impact on that the measurement on that side comes we're looking at what difference people are going to make with the dollars you're investing some not how many meals are going to serve what why was that important right and it's interesting you know both of those you were talking about you  know human capacity is the lack of a right and that's so important right whether or not it's somebody becoming financially literate on their own to be able to make good savings decisions or investment decisions or someone coming you know to work every day and learning how to talk to a boss or learn how to like show up those sorts of human development capacity building pieces are just are just huge but it also i mean that has an impact on economic development i mean it's kind of a virtuous cycle right because we have like two thousand plus jobs that go unfilled every month in the state of vermont or i mean that's the the what people are  in i feel like anything that we can do to help people get to work by getting them transferred to transportation that they can afford or training that helps them get a job that's got to be good for the cannot for the whole economy which generates more revenue to invest right i mean is that a investors look at it i mean is there kind of this vision of the greater like it's almost the more you do to help people get to work the better that is for businesses right absolutely absolutely so if we can help someone  and get into a car so they can get to work that makes a big difference if we can help create a platform where small businesses are able to get capital access to capital they need so that they can employ people that's huge too you know i mean part of the development with our environmental work right being able to have specific products that help the solar industry finance their projects is about also workforce development because we've we've been able to help these many different  installation businesses get more work because we're able to give their customers low cost financing so that they can actually go and develop those projects it is a virtuous cycle and it is that you can ecosystem approach the holistic approach that you know where we put our money when it's not in our pockets makes a big difference makes a big big difference so you can park your money in some you know investment portfolio that you don't touch you don't know anything about it you just kind of give it to your manager and they go it or you can say hey you know i want to have an sri fund a socially responsible investment fund because i care about that and then actually you know what i want to put some money in the community loan fund because i know that you know it's there's a risk there but you know they're really solid and you know they're investing in vermont or i want to put something in money market account of the s e c because i know that that's going to go towards these these outcomes or i want to you know go get my car detailed you know and do it through this because i know that the person is going to d well the i think that what we've done in the last couple of years has been really interesting is that while the loan fund is thirty years old and has lent one hundred two million dollars i think at this point over those thirty years we've always asked our investors to invest in the fund in general and that their investment was going to be protected by the entire portfolio of the the loan fund and i think that what's really special about the current climate in kind of investors right now are really have a lot of options to be able to define exactly what that means for them and if that means you know women and girls then there's an opportunity for them to do that and if that means sustainable agriculture there's an opportunity for them to do that and so one of the things that we've been doing in the last couple of years to speak to that need is for the first time having designated funds where an investor can really direct their capital as opposed to the loan fund in general we're allowing folks and helping folks direct their funds into a specific issue or impact area so that started in two thousand and fifteen with the next generation fund which was for impact investors to direct their money into our early care and learning work specifically and then in two thousand and sixteen with our food farms and force one which allowed folks to direct their money into sustainable agriculture and agriculture in general the working landscape in vermont and those funds have both been really interesting and you know just provided another opportunity in the spectrum of things that folks can do in vermont to really direct where their money is and really feel that connection i think that we all in we all know you can broad terms i think that it's not just investors but people certainly i would imagine the five of us sitting around the table and certainly everyone that's out there watching a webcast on impact investing look at the world around us right now and feel like we wish there was something we could do you wish that there was some opportunity that provided some kind of agency or gave us the power to do to make change to do something better and impact investing is definitely a tool a very real tool because it involves dollars and cents which is a very very real thing to be able to make a positive change in the world around us and you know designated specific fund that the loan fund allow you to do that and there are a lot of other opportunities as well but i think that you're seeing a class of investor that is not that is no longer just this little group of impact investors it's all of us we all have the opportunity to do it and there's vehicles for all of us no matter what our asset classes no matter how many dollars and cents you have or don't have there are opportunities for anyone watching this to to be able to do exactly what we're talking about and that's that's a change in that's a really heartening change in the way that money is moving around in the world so what do you folks think of social impact bonding the social impact bond is a really interesting thing for it's a little complicated it's a little complicated typically the state government and i am no expert so let me preface these remarks with that statement as i understand it the government instead of paying for just services to be reformed pays for the results the eventual results in the community change that programs are trying to have right alternately so it's a pretty complicated financial transaction where certain organizations finance future results and the state only is on the hook to pay if those results are achieved it's the a couple of them and by a couple i mean one perhaps around the country that are happening right now it's something that we've been exploring in vermont typically an organization like the vermont community loan fund the community development financial institution or c i which is used to moving money around in social ways plays some kind of role in the silicate ing the social impact bond one of the things that i think are really necessary that certainly all the examples are happening right now the social back beyond and some of the cautionary tales made involve a government that is very committed from the get go and really wants to see it happen and is really leading in a way and so that can sometimes  be the switch that needs to get flipped first i mean i like the concept because the concept is this so let's look at it if you invest x dollars upfront we won't be paying x plus y down the road so let's look at prison prison is one of the most expensive thing right yeah in vermont what is it fifty five thousand dollars per year for a mental like thousand for right we know that so if you take the mill means that we spend that and instead put the money up front and say early childhood education ok can we then say by investing those millions here we're now down the road we're going to save those millions there yet and so the government entity puts up the money but then it always involves like a bank or a financial institution you know the government and morgan stanley type you know the government entity eventually promises that they will pay but the money needs to be there for the services to move forward to pay for the services as they ha at that point you get a mix of philanthropy community development financial institutions like the loan fund and folks like that that are kind of essentially lending the money to the folks that are doing the work to get the work done so the results can then be demonstrated in this state will eventually be right or municipality county or individual impact investors might come in on that too right if they're part of a fund and they're doing it because of this so it's this balance of social good and investment because they need to see a return on that money might not be as large as they would if they're going to you know go into just the regular capital markets of course but they're investing with the understanding that if all that happens they're going to get paid back yet right and it's a long term game to write very patient capital at every phase of the game and that can be a real challenge and i think i think mark hit it on the head you know where the board you said it i think is that the leadership at the governmental level needs to be there because because if if the nonprofit community or the impact investing community is trying to make it happen but at the end of the day the state's not willing to preserve those funds right or or isn't really sure about it or doesn't quite understand the mechanism or is not quite clear on what the goal i mean not ready to invest to reserve those funds for that goal then the whole thing doesn't work right and that's what we found to be the case in vermont because you know we've spent a lot of time talking about this and the potential i mean think about how you might be able to clean up the lake with dollars like this you know there's there's big environmental projects that have been funded i think washington d c is one of the examples where it's happening and and you know the states in a situation where they have a certain amount of cash and you can correct me on this but they have a certain amount of capital that the treasurer's willing to set aside for indebtedness right and you say well let's set aside some of this for this project in the lake and she's going to say well no i have all these other things i have to do and so right you know so there are so many competing pressures on a state like for mot for the little capital that it does have that it's it might be harder to pull it off in a state like this even though you would think it might be easier to pull it off in the state you know it's hard to get the government to be the lead dog on the issue of like that and i think it's similar to with something that i think all of us in our own businesses or in our own personal lives are trying to balance which was the media need that we have versus the long term goals we're trying to have and how do we invest for the future and you know coming from a member oriented organization i can just say you know everybody can see it at a little way then the collective the collect we we all move forward so you know look for the smaller what the small ways that we can do it whether or not it's trying to start a different kind of business or going to a different model or you know investing in a community loan fund or having your finances run by a certain organization credit union or other you know  pretty you know great but you know just as there's competing competing priorities right right competing things like you need to serve the person who's right in front of you and the state has people they need to serve who are in need right now right and yet if you went to the legislature did today and said hey we would like to reserve x billions or millions of dollars for early or whatever they'd say we don't have it because we still have these prisoners we've got to run these mental health is that we need to do psychiatric you know so right where where can you get them i mean our social enterprise i'll be honest the only reason we're able to start we didn't have to take a loan out a major donation dropped in our lap you know and our board met and said let's use it for this you know so we were able to put this money up front on the gamble we hope it works at the down the road these kids are going to gain skills and have better jobs and not end up in the homeless system or the corrections system or whatever and you've already doubled you said the amount of yeah i mean early indications after a few months are quite good but it's a we don't want to claim victory and go home i think it's the same it will be the same story with the social impact bond or paper of success is that it's still a really young instrument and i think you've seen some good returns on some of them that are happening and some not great returns i think on balance the mechanism is so progressive and totally appropriate that right i think that it will twenty years down the line there'll be lots of examples of how these things worked and it will become more commonplace and is totally doable in a commonsense kind of political and doesn't like right one of the things he said earlier was that non profits you need to think carefully before doing something like this and i remember dolly fleming at mercy connections convening a group of people to say to look at what you've done it's been see if they want to do it so and i use her as an example because as you said they decided in the end not to do it up right but they had of really due diligence process and maybe you could talk a little bit about that so if a nonprofit wants to think about diversifying its revenue and achieving its impacts through a kind of for profit enterprise what are the steps well i think you have to do something that relates to your mission right now and it's going to have some impact on whatever client group you know that you're working with so that's a number one if you're going to start running something that's totally we're going to start a t v studio to compete you know like that's so far out of the army so i think that's number one don't do anything that's just like so far away from your wheel house that would be key and i think you have to have business on your board of directors or my were of the really look at this with a fine lens and say is this going to sustain itself or not or how much of a loss are you willing to take so we were fortunate to have leadership simply people from dealer dot com union street media who are on our advisory board to really look at this very carefully otherwise you can march ahead and have a mass so business plan you need a business it was so funny so many times you know some would say hire this person and i go meet with them and i can use or at least samuels you know very established business person she was like i was like i'll hire you to write the business plan  said i will do this project under one condition you don't pay me so they go right back to me that because she did a great great job and said to me you have to do this this and this you're going to research this so we came up with a really solid plan that i i mean i was able to go our board and say we're going to lose x hundred thousand dollars on this project over the next three years and they just didn't say oh ok they really want to know on a per use bases how much is this going to cost versus our other job you know they really really looked at it very closely in the in the unanimously approved it but i think non profits need you need those types of people in you but we have other people on board who are social workers or clinicians but you need people who have a financial mind in a business mind if you're going to go in this direction it's fascinating it's been really eye opening for me the cultural difference right i i mean so especially again a small business every single decision you have to look at the impact on the bottom line you know and how are you going to lose money on this or you how much if you're going to make money how exactly how much money you're going to make and yet coming from a nonprofit world like that's a that's a mental shift and and and again and you know sometimes i had to say well you know we're not going to make money however so here's the gap that we're going to have to raise the funds you know from donations and grants and because you know that's it's our mission to expand this programming but you know so it's that it's not just a business plan but it's also like the culture and every single decision has is driven by you're going to make money you're going to lose money you know and if that's fine grained in the organization which it's not in a lot of non profits and you need to bring it in right well you know i would think that that would be a core competency of any nonprofit anyway right hopefully yeah i mean and i think we you know we know that which is actually why w fridays because people are so mission driven and it's also why we've been so invested in results based accountability you know it's one thing to get up in the morning because you feel children need to be fed but it's an entirely another one to understand what the economics of feeding them and why it is important on a higher level that they have what they need to go through their day so there are these kind of different levels of evaluation and assessment that we as nonprofits need to get really york city and i look into how could they be around for that long i'm sure they had some savings or endowment and that's why because you just can't keep spending them in the end you have to make payroll in the end in the bank you know and you just got to be very very careful in our board you know we have business people like that or a board who are just not going to let us spend wildly so it's a cautionary tale that in a lot of non profits specimen for a month every lot in government funding you know we've gone from ninety eight percent government revenues to forty eight percent we have watched i was in a meeting yesterday with his another big chunk we may lose next year received one federal and state grant drop off the radar the other luckily we haven't had one death loss you know we had diversified earlier but the only thing that's been saving us is the private giving from places like the a c c u has gone one funding is going like this and the other one's gone like that yeah and i and i just to another thing that another point i think should be made is while you know businesses can be you know have a social mission and triple bottom line and  they're and that's critical that that businesses have you know i think you know if the environment in sport into them the kind of social equity is important to them but i think that there is always going to be a place for non profits and again you know i say that because again glen was very as a businessman he was very you know socially responsible mean he cared a lot about the community he wanted to make bike successful as a nonprofit we also want to make bikes accessible but we're really serving you know we're really able to serve customers that glenn could have never served as a for profit bike shop right  and we hire people that going could have never hired as a for profit bike shop so and we're only able to do that because of donations and because of philanthropy and you know we don't get any get some grants but but but so while it's so while i think it's great that businesses are so you know the triple bottom line and they're so committed to their community and the environment i think that's great but i do think again seeing both i think that there is always going to be a place for non profits oh yeah i'm not sure because we're nonprofit but i just think that you know there are some things that you are going to lose your money and you know and then it's a decision is it worth the cost is the worst that worth it comes you know where else are we that for the last three or four jobs they were unable to kind of make it work but you know if you have the right combination of supports or whatever then they can and then they launch so yeah i think it's hard to do that of stuff while turning a profit yeah i can completely agree i mean we're a not for profit we're not a nonprofit it is a not for profit but you know coming from the court of public private partnerships right this kind of idea that non profits need to exist because there are things that cannot be served in this current culture in a certain place that cannot be served by business outcomes they can only be served by generosity of spirit generosity of  or organizations giving for that and we're going to be there i think for a very long time right just in that sense however you know the relationships that can be developed between the nonprofit and the for profit world have seen is show such results you know beyond the giving back and forth but also creating opportunities for the business to serve those customers or those clients in a different way that maybe they couldn't have it or you know for  organization like ours with one hundred seventy people who are looking for opportunities to donate their time to raise money for for organization so if we have a partnership with a spectrum you know where we're giving philanthropic dollars to their fundraiser but we also send a team of employees who are like also fired up about the cause that creates us is a place where people want to work right you know it's just so so so that's a really great kind of way that the partnerships can happen and also enable and help like the you know not for profit for profit business can you know help our employees and help the community find that generosity of spirit and give place for it to happen in the that community development financial institutions are c d f eyes like the loan fund have been championing for a while now called opportunity zones that did somehow through advocacy it's not somehow but was a perhaps surprising inclusion in the tax bill which is going to designate certain distressed communities and populations around the country by geography i think in the end so by counties or census tracks perhaps where  investors impact investors social investors are going to be able to earn tax relief by dedicating their investments to those geographies probably through vehicles like a c f i or other nonprofit kind of financial organizations but yes it did get into the tax bill it's still in progress but it's looking like it it is going to bear fruit essentially the state governments are going to designate these geographies in which the investments can be made the governors offices around the country are working on that right now the state of vermont in governor scott's office are working on that right now and that will be the first step towards getting this thing launched it will take a year or two probably to roll out the regulations to treasury and exactly how mechanically it's all going to work but it's in that tax bill and like everything else that's going to be a part of the tax thing forward  we're excited about that it's a great opportunity to again realign our capital with our values and get money in to you know to create opportunities for folks that have been disenfranchised and left behind by our current financial system great that's great state of vermont as a whole there's a lot of exciting work that's being done both on the financial investment side but also on the nonprofit organizational side that we've learned about today and there's plenty more to learn about so stay tuned here i want to thanks to me  vermont and channel seventeen we're always glad to see you anytime