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What does Vancity do in the community anyway?

A major project I've been working on for the past few months is spearheading the re-architecting and rewriting of all the content in the community area of vancity.com. It's been a massive project because, well, frankly we never expained the myriad ways we do good things in our community everyday. A little gap I think.

In other words, the very reason I wanted to work at Vancity, and the main thing that keeps me excited to come to work everyday was almost entirely absent from our website. It's a long story.

So, I'm so extraordinarily pleased to share with you our new MyCommunity area.



Inside you'll find out about our four pillars of community leadership (Acting on Climate Change, Facing Poverty, Growing the Social Economy and Being Accountable), what we do in our communities, why we do what we do, what financial products we have that help create positive change, how we help the not-for-profit sector in our local economy, what grants we give out and whole lot more. This project has been absolutely amazing, and I'm really excited about sharing it with you.

I'd love to hear what you all think, especially other CU folks.

Labels: banking, corporate responsibility, credit union, design, environment, microcredit, poverty, social economy, underbanked, vancity

posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2008

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Muhammad Yunus and the concept of social finance.

At Vancity, where I work, we recently created a division called Social Finance. This is where our Business Banking department now resides, as well as Commercial Mortgages and our amazing Community Business Banking team, where many of our most innovative and socially relevant products and services are generated.

Creating and naming this new division was an interesting risk, and as soon as I heard the name Social Finance, I thought to myself: Holy crap I can't believe I get to work here.

What's even more amazing is that our executives created this new name and division based on an understanding of what Social Finance could be, but without a nailed-down definition of what it means for us. That's the work of whoever gets the gig of SVP Social Finance.

Last night we at Vancity brought Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to town. He received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of British Columbia for his amazing work as Banker to the Poor at Grameen Bank, which he founded in his native Bangladesh specifically to help the poor. He spoke about the power of small amounts of money to transform people's lives, and the role private businesses can play in creating change in the lives of our poorest citizens. In the past he has endorsed Vancity's Microcredit Toolkit, and we recently announced that our own microfinance-driven term deposit would now be funding local initiatives.

He calls it Social Business, and it's the subject of his new book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. We call it Social Finance. It's something that has to be framed for many people, because we have it ingrained in us that there are two options in life: charity and profit.

But there is room for a strong middle ground. Businesses can have as their focus socially responsible goals as their main driver and still sell their products and services in a business-savvy way, repay their investors, pay their employees well and thrive in the business context, and drive their profits back into the work they do. Their work can be of tremendous social value and significance, and yet be no less business-like.

As we deal with issues of climate change and social equity, these kinds of business are cropping up. They could be used to solve the health care crisis in America. To clean up the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, reduce our carbon emissions, provide inexpensive and nourishing food for poor families to feed their children, vaccinate the third world.

The money invested could be reinvested and continue to solve our most pressing problems, rather than giving money away which has no lifespan beyond the initial donation.

Last night was an amazing time. I was so fortunate to be invited to a small private reception to meet Professor Yunus, and then go to hear him speak to several hundred people about his work serving the poorest people on the planet. His work is actually reducing poverty in Bangladesh by significant amounts. He has opened specialized services focused on beggars, and creating Social Finance opportunities such as Grameen Danone and Grameenphone, Bangladesh's largest mobile phone company owned in part by the 7.5 million co-operative owners of Grameen Bank.

A Vancity board member asked me at the reception why I had come down to hear Muhammad Yunus speak, and I replied that this kind of activity is the very reason I initially chose to do my banking at Vancity, and why I later decided to work there. Banking is really only marginally interesting to me, but using the platform of banking to solve social problems that we face in our communities is a powerful draw for me. Exploring that intersection where money and community come together is extremely powerful and much needed.

Last night Muhammad Yunus proved how true that is.

Labels: corporate responsibility, credit union, microcredit, politics, poverty, underbanked, vancity, yunus

posted on Saturday, March 15, 2008

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CommunityLend brings social lending one step closer in Canada.

Colin Henderson, who as The Bankwatch is one of my very favourite bloggers, is one step closer to making CommunityLend a reality.

CommunityLend is:

An online community where people can lend money directly to other people in a safe and secure way. It is an exciting and unique lending service for Canadians that will revolutionize the way lending works in Canada.

I asked Colin about his new venture and here's what he told me:

I look at the Canadian Banks' involvement in the US Sub Prime mortgage market, and the fact that over $2Bn has been lost there by Canadian Banks. That's an enormous loss. There is a need for greater transparency for people seeking a return on their money, and what they are investing in. Social lending not only eliminates those issues, but provides a better return for borrowers, and lenders.

Colin deserves a lot of credit for his outstanding blogging on the Sub Prime and ABCP situation, while many others have skirted around the issue or moved on. I have learned a lot from reading Colin's editorials on this situation, and have a lot of faith in his opinions and his ability to create alternatives to the lending and borrowing options Canadians have today.

According to Colin's blog "2007 was a long year, as we raised our funding, and organised the management team (of which he is Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder)." They're aiming for a Beta launch in early 2008, which means those of us north of the border can finally kick the tires on the services that several companies around the world have started, including Zopa, Prosper and Lending Club.

CommunityLend's website, very recently updated with information (for months now it's been a teaser with no real information) says that:

The unsecured consumer loan marketplace in Canada exceeds $100 Billion in volume every year and generates interest payments on those loans exceeding $15 Billion annually... Today in Canada, this very profitable industry is also a very closed industry, with only a handful of major companies involved... CommunityLend intends to democratize lending in Canada by opening up this billion dollar industry to other Lenders interested in participating. Share the wealth, we like to say!

They're also obviously going to have a big community component around people's borrowing goals. Knowing Colin, they're going to tackle all of this very, very smartly. I can't wait to try it out and see how it works.

Stay tuned...

Labels: bankwatch, communitylend, poverty, social lending, social media

posted on Friday, December 14, 2007

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Give One Get One - the $200 laptop.

I've been loosely following the $100 dollar laptop for a while now. And now there's a campaign where you buy one for yourself and one for a child in need in the developing world.

During Give One Get One, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

In reality, the $100 laptop is actually $200, but it delivers on most of what was envisioned. The NYTimes has a great review of the laptop.

Here's where you can find out more about the Give One Get One program, and sign up for your own laptop.

Labels: innovation, poverty, technology

posted on Sunday, November 25, 2007

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eBay in the Microfinance business.

A friend recently sent me an article in BusinessWeek about eBay's Microfinance engine. The article, EBay: The Place for Microfinance, speaks of eBay's 2006 acquisition of MicroPlace.com.

MicroPlace.com's mission is "to help alleviate global poverty by enabling everyday people to make investments in the world's working poor." Pretty impressive.

Pierre Omidyar, eBay's founder, is also an investor in Kiva.org, which is a similar site for investing small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

MicroPlace.com fits eBay's direction so nicely, and takes advantage of their infrastructure to do good in the world. Nice to see big players enabling Microfinance and bringing it to the masses. That's doing well by doing good.

Labels: corporate responsibility, kiva.org, microcredit, poverty, underbanked

posted on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

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Why I "do" credit unions.

Two seemingly unrelated things came together for me this week. One is that yesterday was my second anniversary of being at Vancity and my entry into the credit union movement. The other is reuniting with some of my favourite past colleagues via Facebook and catching up on where we're all at.

Explaining to people I used to work with in Los Angeles and Seattle why I'm working at a 'bank', which is a far cry from the brands I used to work on like Disney and Honda is not always an easy task. I left LA to find a lifestyle that was more aligned with my values, and that path inadvertently led me to credit unions.

Before Vancity, I worked at Telus, one of Canada's top telecommunications companies, and the main telephone provider in BC. I enjoyed working there until the strike in 2005, but I never thought of myself as part of the telecom industry. It was just a job.

But being at Vancity, I have found myself attracted to the philosophy and work of credit unions. If you want to create social change, much of that has to do with money, and that's where getting to the money via the banking industry is actually pretty exciting.

The link between my own engagement in the credit union movement became clearer when I saw a recent post on the always insightful OpenSourceCU. They were recently honoured as the first recipient of the Credit Union Global Spirit Award for translating philosophy into actions. This is a much-deserved accolade, based on their work helping credit unions reach their potential and engage the communities they serve in their mission.

It was awarded by Carol Schillios, whom I've never had the pleasure of meeting, but about whom I've heard so many amazing things.

The video on their page is the pivot point, the reason so many of us are passionate about credit unions. It is about the amazing work that Carol Schillios has done on behalf of credit unions with the world's poorest people.

I have included it below. Powerful, powerful stuff.

Labels: corporate responsibility, credit union, microcredit, opensourcecu, poverty, telus, underbanked, vancity

posted on Friday, September 21, 2007

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So far so good.

BarCampBankSeattle is off to a roaring start. I wasn't familiar with this Open Space model, but people started by proposing different sessions they were interested in and then started grouping and discussing. Some really impressive thought leaders here, and we're all mashing up, running ideas.

One session that kicked things off for me was "Credit Financing of International Relief & Development Projects" and we discussed some very interesting and innovative ways to get funding to needed projects in developing countries.

I'll blog the notes into more of a thoughtful post later. Powerful stuff.

Labels: banking, barcampbankseattle, blogging, corporate responsibility, credit union, innovation, microcredit, poverty, social personal finance, technology, underbanked, vancity, web 2.0

posted on Saturday, July 21, 2007

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Discovering kiva.org

In all the recent posts I've been reading about peer-to-peer lending, including the excellent reporting by Jim Bruene at NetBanker and Colin Henderson at The Bankwatch and CommunityLend, I hadn't come across Kiva.org.

I'm very excited about social personal finance and think it may well change the way people exchange money when they just need to borrow or invest a small to medium amount and don't want to bother with a bank or credit union.

But tonight my aunt showed me Kiva.org, and I got to admit I was a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't know what it was. It's an amazing concept where anyone can make microloans to people in the developing world who need small amounts of money to start an enterprise. According to their website:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

You can cash out when you're repaid or reinvest it into a new opportunity. I think this is genius. Did everyone else know about this and somehow I'm the last to the party? Hard to be shown up by my aunt after all...

I started tonight by investing $25. Kiva.org asks you for a 10% addition as a donation to keep them running. That's optional. You can pay by PayPal or credit card. When you're done you can easily send the info about the cause you donated to to your email list to spread the word. Nicely done.

Here's who I donated to: Massan Aziado of Togo. Fantastic and inspiring!

Labels: banking, bankwatch, communitylend, credit union, innovation, kiva.org, microcredit, netbanker, poverty, social personal finance, technology, web 2.0

posted on Saturday, June 23, 2007

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A follow up on my America Saves post

I was speaking to some people at Vancity about the issue of serving the underbanked and underserved, both of which are areas where we focus strongly. Two interesting things came back.

1> Someone in our Sustainability division (who shall remain nameless) came back with this nugget:

Money is like sex, you can have a lot of it or none of it and still have an unhealthy relationship to it.

2> Catherine Ludgate in our Community Business Banking division told me this story:

I was at a conference last week with a woman from Micro Business USA, and she was talking about the different mindsets of folks along the income spectrum. In her 30+ years of doing microlending and setting up savings programs, she said she has learned that poor and low income folk generally think of what they earn only in terms of their hourly pay (and certainly not about savings). An income cut above, the lower middle class earners think about their weekly earnings. Middle class earners think in terms of their monthly income, and upper middle class earners think in terms of annual income. The truly wealthy (however that is defined) think ahead in terms of three to five to ten year investments they will make.

Her argument was that changing how folks identified their value (hourly to weekly to monthly to annually to forward looking) is the first step in changing other behaviours, like the ability to save. And that change in thinking can lead to movement out of an income group, as the woman in the case study in the NY Times article moved.

I thought those were two good and valuable insights.

My original post is here.

Labels: banking, canada, corporate responsibility, poverty, underbanked, vancity, vancouver

posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007

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