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Living in San Francisco, I often take for granted the access I have to locally-grown produce through the myriad of farmer’s markets and local food retailers we have here in our city.  When facilitating a grant to a recent grantee, Wholesome Wave, I was reminded just how widespread the lack of access to healthy and nutritious food is across our country, particularly in low-income communities.

Wholesome Wave, located in Bridgeport, CT, exists to foster strong linkages between local and regional agriculture and under-served communities with a mission to improve access and affordability of fresh, healthy, locally-grown produce and a vision to develop a more vibrant and equitable food system.   It is dedicated to supporting small and midsize farms and has programming in 26 states and the District of Columbia.  At the core of its operations are partnerships with more than 50 community-embedded organizations that allow Wholesome Wave to implement its programs, including the Double Value Coupon Program, the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program, and the Health Food Commerce Initiative.    It is estimated that through these community-based partnerships, Wholesome Wave’s programs impact over 2,300 farms.

The grant from RSF was to specifically support the Double Value Coupon Program (DVCP), an innovative program that increases the value of federal nutrition benefits, including benefits provided to people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program).  When a DVCP program participant shops at a participating farm-to-retail venue, they receive an incentive that matches the amount spent in federal nutrition benefits towards the purchase of locally grown fruit and vegetables.   Not only does this generate economic stimulus by keeping federal nutrition benefit funds within local and regional communities, it also increases the viability of small and midsize farms by creating new revenue streams.  The DVCP program was launched in 2008 and has expanded to over 200 markets in 23 states.  In 2010, it is estimated that Wholesome Wave’s national network of farmers markets, farm stands and CSA programs increased farmers’ revenue by about $1 million through a combination of federal food benefit redemptions and DVCP incentives.

photo courtesy of Wholesome Wave

During the months of March and April, RSF’s donor advisors recommended 75 grants from their Donor Advised Funds for a total disbursement amount of $1,676,917!  Donor Advised Funds are a unique charitable giving vehicle offered by RSF that allow donors to make tax-deductible contributions to RSF and then recommend grants from their fund to qualified nonprofit organizations of their choice.  A donor can be an individual, group, family, corporation, trust, or a foundation, and they benefit from access to RSF’s innovative Impact Investment Portfolios.  Unlike other Donor Advised Fund investment programs, a donor’s contribution is invested directly in enterprises and funds with core social and environmental missions to ensure greater mission-alignment and the deepest impact possible.

Education & the Arts

ABC No Rio
American Committee for the Weizmann Institute
Arriba Juntos
Artemisia
Aspen Waldorf Foundation, Inc.
BAIF Research Development Foundation
Center for Contextual Studies
Charter Foundation
Christian Community – New York City
Community Foundation of Tompkins County
Community School for Creative Education
Consorcio Internacional Arte y Escuela- ConArte
Cooperative Development Institute
CREA Comunidades de Emprendedores Sociales, A.C.
Cross-Cultural Thresholds
Dancers’ Group
Eurythmy Spring Valley
Freunde der Erziehungskunst
Friends of Jefferson Public Library
Global Citizen Year
GreatNonProfits
IDEAS Comunitarias
International Funders for Indigenous People
Interspecies Communication
iOnPoverty
La Arenera
Naropa University
Noraz Poets
Pacific Zen Institute
Philanthropy Workshop West
Rudolf Steiner School, NY
San Francisco Mime Troupe
Santa Rosa Symphony
Sebastopol Center for the Arts
ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation
Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs
Sonoma County Synagogue Center
Tara Institute of the Performing Arts
Threshold Foundation
Villanova University
Washington Waldorf School
Women’s Initiative for Self Employment

 Ecological Stewardship

 Ashden
Biosphere Foundation
Collective Heritage Institute
Conservation Strategy Fund
Marion Institute
Tebtebba Foundation
The Gaia Foundation

 Food & Agriculture

 Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association
Center for Mind Body Medicine
Coros Institute
Foundation for National Progress
Heifer International
Maine Farm Bureau Disaster Relief Fund
Michael Fields Agricultural
Smallholders Foundation
Spikenard Farm
Washington Hancock Community Agency
Wholesome Wave

 Social Finance

 Buckminster Fuller Institute
Impact Assets

 Other

 Doctors Without Borders
Foundation for the Advancement of Midwifery
Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen
J/P Haitian Relief Organization
Marin City Community Development Corporation
National Lawyers Guild Foundation
National MS Society
Rudolf Steiner Fellowship

Catherine Covington is Senior Program Associate, Philanthropic Services at RSF Social Finance

I remember singing “Home, Home on the Range” in an endless loop when I was young and wandering through the woods, probably a vestige of hearing Gene Autry crooning. The song’s portrayal of roaming buffalo, deer and antelope playing struck an imaginative chord—it was something about the free spirit, the rare occurrence of a discouraging word and the forever-cloudless sky that felt so right. It certainly suited my privileged youth. I not only bought the myth, I got it for a song! I must have been too young to notice that for all the manifest destiny of the open west—the only buffalo or antelope I ever saw were at the zoo—the economic and political manifestation of that destiny had nearly destroyed the First People and succeeded in partitioning the American landscape into fenced real estate, privately and governmentally owned. This was nature with its integrated system disintegrated, turned into commodities to be appraised, bought and sold according to the unnatural law of the marketplace. I now realize the song, the state song of Kansas, was propaganda even when it was first written in 1876. Its fantasy and jingle-like quality produced in me (and I assume in others) a lulling facade for the powerful, moneyed, and privileged who made the rules, who claimed, fenced, subdivided, and ravaged the land of America for its own gain.

Post partitioning, the wild animals that had roamed, grazed, and preyed on the range, were no longer free. So it was for the indigenous peoples who knew how to live within the reciprocal processes and principles they discerned from nature and had hunted buffalo respectfully for their mutual subsistence. They saw the military’s strategy in killing off the buffalo, but I am sure could not fathom the power of opportunistic market-driven frenzy that slaughtered upwards of six million animals, many of them just left to rot when the bottom fell out of the market for hides and meat. This seems to be in retrospect a foreshadowing of the evolution of mortgage lending, the real estate market, and now the scourge of foreclosures.

Nature is a continually evolving flow of interrelationships to which each aspect of nature contributes its particularity. In this flow, nature is like a sufficiency economy free of any market forces, one in which the currency is the vitality of growth and decay, aging and renewal, of altruistic service to other aspects.

In contrast, the paradigm of economic life operating as a marketplace, where everything can be commoditized and sold at a price, is a deeply flawed one. It assumes an endless supply of natural resources; and, it is deeply rooted in the view of ownership in which the rights of the individual trump those of the community. This paradigm is sustained by three activities: fostering the myth of economic self-interest, placing profit above ecological consequence, and accumulating capital as a primary driver toward political and cultural power. In this context money is removed from its primary function of accountancy, as a measure of the flow of value, to that of a commodity to be bought, sold and speculated with, and disconnected from any direct economic impact.

The age of free-range capital is over; not only have people, animals, and natural resources fallen to the great partitioning, but so has capital. How else can so much be under the control of so few? And we cannot really separate ourselves from the reigning paradigm unless we can find a way to create a new ethical and altruistic basis or framework from which to operate. This will require personal transformation along with the transformation of communities and the economic systems that sustain them, both locally and regionally. A first step, and this is a personal practice, is to realize just how much each of us benefits from and contributes to the commodification of modern life. If our life revolves around the marketplace of commodities, even ones we feel good about, then we have missed the entire point of our purpose for being on earth, which flows out of exercising dominion rather than domination and understanding our gifts and resources so that in serving others we may be served.

If we want to de-partition capital and return it to a measured flow that supports life and community, then the right of ownership of capital needs to transition to a practice of stewardship of capital, one that recognizes that the source of capital resides in both nature and human nature—work on the earth and the application of intelligence to that work. If we fail to invest in the renewal of both the earth and culture, then we will fail to redeem the real value of capital, and we will be left with nothing but virtual value. A living and livable system is one that recognizes and thrives on reciprocity and interdependence, as the First People knew and practiced. If we can move our economic life in this redemptive direction, a sense of levity, of uplift, may surface as counter-force to the apparent gravity of our financial transactions and the challenge of living in the material world.

I think back to my youth and the times spent mostly humming (I only knew one verse and the chorus) “Home, Home on the Range.” I did not really grasp that the song is a  paean to a vanquished people and land. The world looked and felt different when I was young. It’s not just my age. Money has changed. Commerce has changed. How power works has changed. And it no longer works to not ask the hard questions: Whose rules? Whose agenda? Whose manifest? Whose destiny? And, then, build real interdependent community from there.

John Bloom is Senior Director, Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.

©2012

Footprints of an Angel will encourage self-reflection and provide many great laughs as well as astonishing realizations. The book is available through steinerbooks.org and amazon.com.

“When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.”
- Minnie Aumonier

Shining Rivers Waldorf School located in St. Louis, Missouri, was awarded a RSF Seed Fund grant last spring to support its biodynamic garden program.  We receive many applications for school gardens, but we found this project particularly unique in its purpose. This garden is intended to not only educate and engage students, but also to demonstrate that it can be self-sustained through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

Shining Rivers had historically maintained a large vegetable garden space at the school, and with the hiring of a Garden’s Keeper with 10 years of urban farming experience at the end of 2010, the school’s goal of kicking off a CSA program became attainable.  Not only did the school receive support from the RSF Seed Fund, it also received parent and faculty donations, and support from Slow Food St. Louis and the Webster Groves Women’s Garden Association.  I recently corresponded with Ann Wiedemann, the school’s director, and she reported that while they knew the community was excited about the program, they had no idea that the 10 available CSA shares would sell out in less than 2 hours!

While the children are not specifically responsible for aspects of the CSA program, they are exposed to the entire process from planning, planting, caring, harvesting and prepping the CSA shares, and the Garden’s Keeper is responsible for coordinating curriculum with the classroom teachers.  The school is currently expanding its garden space and starting the second year of the CSA program, with plans to develop a guide to starting school CSA projects.  In June, the garden will be part of the St. Louis Sustainable Backyard Tour!

Shining Rivers was founded in 1992 and is a developing school member of the Association for Waldorf Schools of North America, currently serving 85 children through grade 6.  To find out more about the school, please visit their website.

To learn more about the RSF Seed Fund and how you can help support new and inspirational projects like this one, click here.  Also stay tuned in the coming weeks for the announcement of our 2012 Seed Fund Grantees!

Catherine Covington is Senior Program Associate, Philanthropic Services at RSF Social Finance.

Reimagine Money is a monthly investigation into the power of money to support social enterprises that are changing the fields of Education & the Arts, Food & Agriculture, and Ecological Stewardship.  In this series, you’ll hear from impact investing practitioners, social enterprise executives, social finance thought leaders and more, discussing their work and ideas.

We hope you enjoy these recordings! Let us know what you think. We will keep posting podcasts here on our website; you can also get the latest by subscribing to Reimagine Money in iTunes. 

The program was launched in 2009 as a collaboration between GrowFood.org and Washington State University Extension to provide new farmers bilingual (English/Spanish) education, land, infrastructure, capital, and marketing support. Viva Farms operates a 33 acre farm where aspiring farmers can establish their operations.

Land in the Skagit Valley is rated among the top 2% in the world for agricultural use. Each acre, wisely farmed, can feed as many as one hundred people. Yet only 108,500 of the county’s 1.1 million total acres are farmed today, by an aging population of farmers. The average age of a farmer is approximately 57 years old.

As the region’s farms and farmers vanish, the demand for fresh, local food continues to grow. Eager to meet this growing demand for good, local food are new varieties of farmers. Many are immigrants with extensive agricultural experience and young people from non-farming backgrounds who are pursuing farm careers as a means to embody their values. Viva Farms is dedicated to supporting this new generation.

“Viva Farms is incubating the next generation of sustainable farmers and increasing access to locally grown organic produce,” says Mike Gabriel, RSF Lending Manager. “They are helping reshape our food system to be more diverse, resilient, and supportive of local economies.”

RSF’s loan will help Viva Farms purchase a tractor and other critical farming equipment which will be rented by these farmers to improve farm efficiency and productivity. Produce from these farmers is then sold through Viva Farm’s wholesale and retail distribution business.

“We’re excited to be working with a lender who is aligned with our mission of launching a new generation of farmers. RSF Social Finance provides us the capital we need to grow without compromising our values,” says Ethan Schaffer, Viva Farms Executive Director.

RSF Social Finance is the lender of choice for values-driven social enterprise in the areas of Food & Agriculture, Education & the Arts, and Ecological Stewardship. Borrowers not only receive financing to meet their capital needs through a close relationship with RSF, each becomes part of a larger community working to transform the way the world works with money. RSF is proud to support Viva Farms and the positive social and environmental impacts they generate.

About Viva Farms

photo courtesy of Viva Farms

Viva Farms was launched in June 2009 to support a new generation of farmers. The Viva Farms Incubator Program provides new farmers with affordable access to education, training and technical assistance, capital and credit, and land and markets. Viva Farms operates a 33 acre farm which is subleased to program participants as they launch their businesses. Viva Farms also provides follow-up support including access to capital for these new farmers as they grow their operations. The program is based in Washington’s fertile Skagit Valley. To learn more, visit www.vivafarms.org.

Marada and Leah Cook were raised with their three other siblings on a 380-acre family farm in remote Aroostook County in northern Maine. In 1994, at the end of the family’s first year of farming, their 2.5 acres of potatoes yielded far more than a family of 7 could ever hope (or want) to consume. With no local markets in the immediate area, their parents, Jim and Kate Cook, took the seats out of the 15-seater family van, affectionately named “Big Red,” and went out in the greater community to generate interest in the fruits of their first harvest.  The response was overwhelming and a business was born: Crown O’ Maine Organic Cooperative. The family began driving products from six different family farms to Southern Maine and Boston and developing a market for fresh local foods.

Crown O' Maine delivering fresh local food

Maine’s small family farms have struggled for decades due to insufficient financing options, a small and geographically dispersed population, and eroding farm infrastructure. Crown O’ Maine is tackling some of these challenges by addressing two critical needs of the local farmers: distribution and marketing.

When Jim Cook passed away in 2008, Marada and Leah took over Crown O’ Maine.  All of Jim’s hard work in building a market, ensuring quality products, and increasing the number of suppliers left the company well-positioned to address the increasing demand for local, fresh, and organic produce. Their father started with six local farms servicing a few buyers. They have since relocated to central Maine and, as the leading marketer and distributor of fruits and vegetables, now work with over 150 local, small-scale family farms to bring healthy, fresh food to communities throughout Maine and several other New England locations. Crown O’ Maine acts as the transportation system (they pick-up directly from farmers), marketers (they represent each farm and are not co-branded under one label), and distributors (they handle sales to 62 independent retailers, 2 Whole Foods stores, 40 restaurants, 38 buying clubs, 7 institutions, 5 farm stands, and 8 CSA Farms).

When asked how they stay competitive, Marada said that while the big agriculture companies have personnel, trucks, efficiency, sales, and reliable distribution, they lack a real connection to the food, farmers, or land. That’s a truly sad statement but not off the mark. In contrast, Crown O’ Maine has an alliance with every farmer in their network. Rarely pushing farmers on price, they assist with organizing cooperative purchasing for farm inputs; educate non-organic farmers on the advantages of transitioning their farms; and help farmers get products market-ready for distribution to retailers. Crown O’ Maine connects farmers with local markets, and consumers with their local farmers.

Crown O’Maine works with over 60 small scale vegetable farmers, many organically certified farms.  They support dozens of value-added food producers, such as Heiwa Tofu, who produces tofu from Maine grown organic soybeans, and Spring Break, who produces maple syrup and raw honey.  Their commitment to sustainable livestock production supports 10 pasture-based beef, poultry, lamb, and goat producers.  Though Maine is a tough climate for many types of fruit, Crown O’Maine buys from two raspberry farms, three strawberry farms, 4 blueberry producers, and two apple  orchards that have preserved Maine varieties for over nine generations.

Local and fresh food can be expensive, partly because of the premium charged by additional distributors and retailers. One way Crown O’ Maine is holding down the cost of food distribution is through their buying clubs. The clubs allow community members to purchase as a group to access wholesale pricing. This requires more from the consumers–they must organize drop locations, handle internal accounting, and distribute the food among club members. But, Crown O’ Maine helps with this as well by offering a step-by-step buying club toolkit.

We at RSF believe that building a strong local economy starts with a healthy, local food system. We’re honored to have Crown O’ Maine as a borrower. We’d be delighted to see their model replicated a thousand times over and to see more companies adopt their values: always follow the path of what works for the consumer, the farmer, and the local economy. To us this is exemplary of an associative economy through which all the parties needs are met in the spirit of cooperation.

Melinda Cheel is Manager of Partnerships & Communications at RSF Social Finance

Consider the following statistics: in 2010 the Girl Scouts of America generated $760 million in cookie sales. That same year Wal-Mart topped the list of philanthropic companies by donating $288 million to charities. As impressive as these results are, non-profits with earned income streams and for-profits with a charitable bent aren’t enough to solve the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems. At RSF, we see that social enterprise, organizations that are created to use the power of business to directly improve society and our environment, have the potential of scale and replicability to address these equally large challenges. The only persistent obstacle to their expansion is a lack of capital.

Social enterprises struggle to attract capital because their structure and business models do not meet the expectations of traditional investors, lenders, and donors. Conventional startups attract investment by focusing on growing markets and creating barriers to entry. Prospective borrowers obtain debt financing by demonstrating outsized margins and growing shareholder equity while most non-profits garner philanthropic support by exhibiting stability and effectively delivering on mission.

Contrast these characteristics with social enterprises and the financing challenge becomes apparent. Within RSF’s Social Investment Fund there are good examples of borrowers maximizing social value which oftentimes conflicts with a conventional financing profile. Consider Common Market Philadelphia (CMP), a non-profit that aggregates and delivers local produce from over forty small-scale farmers to some of the biggest institutional buyers in the city, including the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia public school system. Rather than creating barriers to entry, co-founders Haile Johnston and Tatiana Garcia-Grandos’ strategy calls for sharing their model with others who seek to create healthy, regional food systems.

This commitment to wide social impact above profitability is a defining feature of social enterprises and one which makes it especially difficult to attract conventional investment. Layer in Common Market’s aggressive growth strategy—in 2008, its first year, CMP had sales of $105,000; in 2011 it is was $1.05M; in 2012 it is forecasted to be $1.9M— and you can see why notoriously risk-adverse foundations might shy away from Common Market’s model as well. This is where social finance plays its defining role— supporting those game-changing social innovations that don’t meet the standard expectations of conventional finance. We take the two-dimensional risk/reward continuum and add a third axis for impact.

RSF borrower RecycleForce is a classic example of a social enterprise locked out of traditional financing. The Indiana-based organization recycles electronic waste while exclusively employing ex-felons in a six month program immediately following their release from prison. With a steady job and intensive support, graduates of RecycleForce become reintegrated into society and the program achieves a 25% recidivism rate, half the 57% county average. A human resources strategy based on hiring some of society’s most dangerous and least qualified individuals, training them for six months, then sending them on to permanent employment elsewhere is a questionable way to make a profit, and a brilliant way to make permanent, transformative change. RecycleForce’s growth and that of its imitators (Isidore Electronics Recycling, for example) hinges upon social finance – investors and lenders who value maximum social impact and sustainability more than they value a high return. Our loan to RecycleForce financed a major piece of recycling equipment, affectionately referred to as The Beast. The Beast dismantles trash in a way that allows RecycleForce to increase efficiency and more effectively collect precious metals such as silver, palladium, copper, and aluminum. RecycleForce projects that this investment will permit them to hire an additional 80 employees over the next two years.

Guayaki Mate is harvested by hand, by workers who are paid a living wage.

Another RSF borrower, Guayakí, is a California-based beverage company founded with the mission of preserving South America’s rainforests. Through its sale of yerba mate (a caffeinated drink brewed like tea) in the U.S., Guayakí is providing a sustainable livelihood to hundreds of Brazilians, Paraguayans, and Argentines who would otherwise face intense economic pressure to destroy their rainforest lands to raise cattle or grow soy. Like all true social enterprises, Guayakí’s growth directly increases its impact. Rainforest preservation is no longer tied exclusively to the generosity of donors or the policies of government. This powerful and systemic shift, however, comes at a cost that challenges the notion that businesses must be profit-maximizing entities. Guayakí’s decisions about what it pays for yerba mate, who it buys from, and how far in advance it commits to contracts are informed first and foremost by its social mission. Decisions that cause logistical puzzles, cash flow strains and gross margin challenges are outweighed by the tangible benefits Guayakí is delivering to the rainforest and its inhabitants. Businesses that willingly sign-up for the dual challenges of deep social change and financial sustainability deserve similarly aligned capital. RSF’s line of credit to Guayakí relieves some of the financial strain faced by a company trying to compete against cola companies AND make the world a better place.

Common Market Philadelphia, RecycleForce, and Guayakí are each tackling issues of daunting scale. Until there’s a Common Market equivalent in every major American city we will not have achieved a healthy food system. RecycleForce has served 400 ex-felons, but every year 650,000 more Americans are released from prison and an estimated 2/3 will likely be rearrested. And Guayakí’s sales have led to the preservation of 31,008 acres of rainforest, yet 35 million more are lost every year to timber harvesting, cattle ranching, and monocrop farming. The growing and maturing field of social enterprise requires an equally robust field of social finance if it is to reach its full potential.

RSF is a social enterprise – transforming the way the world works with money though its lending, investing and giving programs. Our model works because we have attracted a community of investors, donor advisors, borrowers, and employees who recognize that a balance sheet, a return on investment, and a pay stub neither capture nor represent the full measure of value. As a staff we do not work so much for what we earn, but rather for what we yearn for in the world. The real value is found in moving money for basic public benefit.

At RSF we ask the question, “Can money heal?” We answer in the affirmative because we recognize that great solutions to big problems often require a dose of patient capital to reach fruition. In the U.S., financial markets have had a growing influence on society – employing a greater share of us than ever before, providing more liquidity than ever before, and creating and destroying more wealth than ever before. It is this very dominance of finance which makes me hopeful for the future of social finance. Rudolf Steiner wrote that “for a healthy national economy, it is important not merely that credit should further the spirit of enterprise as such, but that the right methods and institutions should exist to enable the spirit of enterprise to work in a socially useful way.” RSF is one such institution.

Ted Levinson is Director of Lending at RSF Social Finance