I-INSPIRE is an acronym for Integrated Network to Stimulate Philanthropy and Investment in a Renewed Economy.
Perhaps the best phrase to describe this proposed initiative is a “social enterprise, cloud banking and venture philanthropy system. How’s that for a mouthful? Most importantly it is an idea whose time as come and whose need is urgent. It has the potential to transform the nature of money, banking and philanthropy. Therein it has the potential to create millions of new jobs and revitalize our economy by redirecting resources to address our societies most intractable problems. It will accomplish this by empowering millions institutions upon which we rely for our education, sustenance, and inspiration and provide for the vital, longer term needs of a sustainable society.
With all the attention that has been focused on the dangers of climate change and inequities of a financial system based upon “big banks that are too big to fail,” there has been minimal attention devoted to ideas that involve changing the system that created the problems. If one excavates through the layers of this system, one eventually comes to the source of the ultimate power in our society: the power to create money. This is the power from which other forms of power are derived. Banks create money through a financial alchemy known as the fractional reserve system. Whenever banks extend credit they create money through accounting entries.
Imagine for a moment, if some of this money creation power that now vested with commercial banks were to be redistributed to schools, universities, foundations, nonprofits, churches, community groups, clean tech, green businesses and social enterprises. Imagine for a moment a parallel “Social Reserve Banking System” composed of “social banks” all connected to “the cloud” that were empowered to “create money” in the same way that commercial banks today create money in the existing Federal Reserve System. This will transform the fields of philanthropy and social enterprise by introducing the power of financial leverage into the DNA of their funding processes.
