Sustainability
Clean Money

The Clean Money Revolution: Billionaires of Love by Joel Solomon

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The Clean Money Revolution: Billionaires of Love by Joel Solomon, author and Chair of Renewal Funds

These Times

A profound political disruption has raised the stakes for clean money. It’s a watershed moment for progressive business and investing, and a major bump in the pathway from the old economy to a new one. We must double down to ensure a just, resilient future civilization.

Our Name is on Our Money

How does it represent our values and vision? How do we invest or spend it? What does it reveal about our ethics and morals? How much blood is on it? Do we own slaves? Poison babies? Start wars?

Is it really ok to have our names on that?

Assess Yourself



In my upcoming book The Clean Money Revolution, I urge investors to make rigorous personal assessments. Foremost is: “How much is enough?”

Making money is great for those who can. It drives a robust economy, but also deserves soul-searching considerations.

Identify how much money you need to own. Then focus your ingenuity on how much good you can do. The gold standard of the future is responsible use of ego and ambition. You can make money, and be responsible.

Ask questions. Demand better, cleaner products.

Align every dollar with your values and purpose. Plenty of money can be made on reinventing the economy to be cleaner, greener, and fairer. From energy, to buildings, transportation, clean water, food and soil, opportunities abound.

When We Have Enough

Infinitely “more” is a too common, perhaps corrupt, default answer. It’s lazy and irresponsible. If “more” is our sole goal, then we can rationalize every manner of making money, and defining success, strictly through the highest financial return.

We can neglect the ethics of owning money, who and what is damaged. We forget to answer why we need excess money, how we will use it, and for what. We give ourselves a pass card on the impact our money has on people and planet.

“More” makes sense when you struggle to feed your family.

But is there a prize for making huge piles of excess money? Like many substances, it can be toxic when overly concentrated and held too closely. When it flows with wisdom and intention, it can create vast ripples of good.

What about leaving the world more livable, healthy, and just?

Your Deathbed

Think back from your deathbed. What legacy do you want to leave? Isn’t it about MORE than money?

Transitioning to clean money is inspiring, satisfying, life-enhancing. It begins with moral clarity, then identification of values, meaning, and purpose. It creates a satisfying legacy. How much is that worth?

Your Money Biography

What do you most love? What moves your spirit? What will you leave to the future?

Money is extracted energy of planet and people. The Clean Money Revolution is about, we with the privilege, using that energy for the good of the whole, for the long term.

We are Ancestors of the Future

Our greatest fortune is to serve those unseen generations. Be a billionaire of good deeds, a billionaire of love.

Article by Joel Solomon. Joel’s new book The Clean Money Revolution: Reinvesting Power, Purpose, and Capitalism, co-authored with Tyee Bridge, will be released by New Society Publishers in May 2017. Pre-sales available on Amazon at- https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Money-Revolution-Reinventing-Capitalism/dp/0865718393

Joel Solomon Chairs Renewal Funds, a $98 million mission venture capital firm in Vancouver, Canada. His lifetime of investing in over 100 early stage companies has delivered above market returns and positive change. During the late 80’s in Nashville’s declining urban core, he co-founded Village Real Estate, Core Development, and Bongo Java Cafes. As Senior Advisor to RSF Social Finance in San Francisco, he co-leads Integrated Capital Fellows to empower a new wave of social change investing. Solomon is a founding member of the Social Venture Network, Business for Social Responsibility, Tides Canada, and is Board Chair of Hollyhock. He blogs at www.JoelSolomon.org