Women & Money: Reinventing Our Relationship to $$$

[Nina S]

How are we thinking about money?
What innovations have occurred to you?
What new ideas are you seeing out there?

As our economic house of cards is tumbling, how are we reconfiguring our relationship to money, both women and men?

How is restoring the 'feminine' principle, across our society, effecting changes in how we relate to money?

If money is like water, value neutral, how do we shift how it's used and understood?

How can we imagine, since money often reflects our societal relationship to power, our use and flows of money changing?

[J.T. Hessert]

Thanks for the clarification/ response Jennie, you definitly added significantly to the disscussion.

My impression is that you have created government (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government): " the organization, that is the governing authority of a political unit": you have empowered a group of senior individuals within NGO member organizations via financial incentive to become involved in a decision making process that is aimed at addressing shared needs/ goals of the member organizations and the broader regional community of the midwest, the community which they all hope to serve.

I thought that "coordinated grant-making" directed with the intent of orchestrating a shift in the midwest energy system to effect change could be considered part of the systems thinking application; if it is not a common practice to coordinate grant-making / provide incentive for the regional NGO's to come together @ a common table to pool their resources / improve collective strategy prior to the Garfield initiated REAMP project arriving on the scene.

You confirmed what I thought was one of Rick's presentation points with regard to "foundations need to be partners with our advocate colleagues, not dictators of the purse." ... Yet I am not sure if you are separating foundations specifically from NGO's ... or are suggesting that diverse NGO's who aim to address a shared issue (midwest energy) need to transparently co-operate over shared objectives to varnish their appeal to funders and not duplicate each others efforts wastefully... or both; everyone cooperate toward aim of social impact?

I think this (cooperation) makes sense as an objective and I want to agree with you in principle:

My problem with the strategy behind the argument as it is presented (or as I am interpeting it) is that (if you extend it beyond the leadership provided by the Garfield foundation) to a prospective timeframe 5,10,20, 50 years in the future... it seems like the system you are establishing is relying on the integrity of individual people that orginally came to positions of power within the REAMP system (I am defining power as influence over collective decision making) as a product of their professional leadership status within the NGO they work for, which can be a product of many qualifications: education, work ethic, intelligence, funding donation to NGO etc. And these leaders are the people who are essentially driven to create a clean energy economy right?

The leaders are senior members of both foundations/ NGO's / ?Clean Energy Corporations? -- another question is: are there any for-profit/ utility organizations representated in the REAMP model and how are they represented? On the website it specified incorporated NGO's exclusively: If a wind energy corporation is not sitting on the board of the steering comittee are they supporting individual NGO's within the network and thus influencing the shared decision making process to their favor at the expense of A) in the short term their business competitors B) in the long term perhaps society: If the model is not transparent re funding of all NGOs within the member network it seems overly vulernable to influence from competing clean energy corporations etc. in the future, the same way our current federal government has demonstrated vulnerability to influence from fossil fuel industry, which was orginally a boom for the economy.

I am not sure where I am going with this beyond questions: I am not suggesting you give up funding REAMP! (hopefully you wouldnt listen to me even if I was...) ... It just seems like there are some very signifcant advantages to the idea of organizing regional NGO's to attack shared needs/ goals like you have done with midwest energy, but their are also some serious negative consequences that could evolve from this alignment... I still think it is fair to describe the partner individuals / member organizations as a financially empowered civil-society government structure that directs NGO activity with the aim of influencing regional/ national/ global economy, culture and politics as they relate to the energy sector.

I was in my mind comparing your model to the much smaller REAP (http://www.alaskarenewableenergy.org/) organization in Alaska. I was just talking to some people I work with and they were telling me of the origins/ funding etc.

You also wrote "In terms of the impact in the philanthropic sector, we are still trying to figure out how to share our experience effectively so that other can learn, and perhaps adopt." ... I have no answer; but if you accept my analogy of your creation in the midwest as a privately financed government-like organizational structure that aligns regional civil-society non profits.. it is interesting to mentally explore the possibility of developing something like this on the national level ... with specific geographic regional groups like RE-AMP or REAP that work with their regional natural resources to generate jobs, energy etc. rather than looking for national or even global leadership to secure these things... interesting.
peace

[J.T. Hessert]

this is a confusing post: in most instances when I keep refering to NGOs (non-governmental org) I was thinking of grant seeking non-profits rather than foundations that give grants; specifically in the paragraph that begins with the words "You confirmed".

[Afriendof B]

Money isn't like water. Water is real and vital to our survival. We don't need to believe in it for it to work or have value. Money only works if we believe in it. Our problems have come from following a path of believing in something that isn't real and has no value. We have created great "wealth and power" based nothing. Starhawk's book Dreaming the Dark talks a lot about the difference between "male" power-power over things and others, and "female" power - power with things and others. If our economy were based on real things we would be more drawn to the inclusive forms of "female" power than the exclusive "male" forms.

[J.T. Hessert]

That is a good point afriendofb. I was mentally thinking of money as 'measurement of value' more so than hard currency. You can measure the water content in most living things, money is used to measure the value of most things. With our current system -- which could use improvement -- both are vital though. I think there is a limit to "things" that have value on the planet... and I am not sure if I buy into the idea that suggesting that a tool for measuring value is dispensable or only something we need because of our faith in it. I don't think localization efforts are developed enough yet to provide any real relief / solution to mainstream consumers (at least where I live). When I wrote that first post I was thinking more of how both can act as vehicles for change -- figuratively and literally -- water can transport ideas culture to culture, disease culture to culture, money can do the same thing; look at the materialism that goes with globalization, or how an oil spill effects a huge ecosystem.

[Afriendof B]

I agree that money as a measure of value is a useful thing. It is also much easier to exchange for things you need than a fifty pound bag of potatoes would be (they don't fit in the wallet so well.) Money is a powerful tool and could be used to great good in the world. However, changing the way we envision the yardstick used to measure value, and applying it in new ways will not be enough to fix a system that is destine for failure. It is rather like reupholstering the deck chairs on the Titanic and changing the seating chart after it hit the iceberg. it might make us feel like we are doing something to make things better for people, but the ship is still going to sink. Local economies are nonexistent right now. Launching a few lifeboats in that direction might be a good idea.

I think, in this time of economic uncertainty, devoting considerable effort to creating novel local systems for meeting the basic needs (food water energy) of local people with local resources and taking the trade in basic necessities out of the global "economic" system, would be a good use of our money and our talents and would go a long way to restructuring the current power structures holding sway in the world today.

[J.T. Hessert]

REAMP changed the midwest energy system due to a speculation by a foundation. They invested money (a measurement of value) in an idea of growth and change. Water behaves the same way in the natural world; it can be used to rearrange and align established systems, can produce growth oppurtunities etc. Both money and water are tools for creation. Money is more vital than water for the majority.

[J.T. Hessert]

I wrote that last comment before I saw your post afriendofb. I agree with your comments in the last paragraph. My problem with the REAMP structure as an example of creating a novel local system is: that the midwest citizens have no control over their future leadership as REAMP established it; it is an unelected, affluent elite. It is almost like a third political party organization whose focus is clean energy economy. In the short term that will do lots of good, in the long term I have my questions.

[J.T. Hessert]

And I really don't think REAMP or Jennie or Rick can suggest that money was not the key, or downplay its importance. The funds were the catalyst. It would really have to be PROVED in another geographical region that the "systems thinking" / process of aligning regional NGOS over shared needs/ goals can be effective independent of injecting funds into the system of the midwest NGO network with the goal of leveraging a shift within the midwest energy system. I would be interested to hear back from the list of NGO directors within the member directory with regard to the importance they would place on the funding stream to enable them to work together productively.

I am not sure how REAMP will succeed at ultimately redistributing wealth/ oppurtunity, on one obvious level it seems to galvanize socio-economic inequality: That is why I question the sustainability of the model as a solution to midwest energy and how it interrelates to culture, economy, politics.

[Calliope Inguz]

Recently I saw something on the web about currencies that depreciate in value over time. If you hold onto your money, every once in a while you have to pay a small % "tax" on the value. The point is that if currencies "rot" just like everything else in a natural system, then the emphasis is placed on moving your money, not hoarding it. And by taking the incentive to hoard out of money it truly becomes a medium of exchange instead of a mechanism for extracting value or wielding power.

Apparently many such currencies sprang up in the US at the start of the Depression, but were quickly outlawed. Very sorry I can't remember where I saw this, but maybe someone else knows.