Imagine Green Future; Project Overview

"To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone."
~Buckminster Fuller, (His Vision)

Over time, this project will make purpose and profit become inextricably linked. This will have many positive outcomes given where we are currently. It will also generate new challenges that we must manage from a spiritually inclusive, creative and sustainable perspective.

Bill Milner,

Social Entrepreneur
Delray Beach, FL
imaginegreenfuture@yahoo.com

Green Future; A Synergistic Approach to the Triple Bottom Line (*TBL)
A project to build community and more participatory political and economic systems and a green consumer base using a synergy of people, commerce and social objectives by building a business with social justice and green metrics as bottom line.
http://imaginegreenfuture.blogspot.com/


The project that I propose has two components;

An unrivaled marketing opportunity that will allow interested parties to associate themselves with a broadly beneficial project that has the potential to increase civic participation, transform large swaths of our community, enrich and empower the lives of our most vulnerable citizens and create a consumer base thirsty for green technology and increased means to afford it. This opportunity is for businesses that care about more than just the bottom-line and see the financial health of their business as being inextricably tied to the quality of life of the entire community and particularly to that of our weakest citizens. Using the power of Network Effects to build Communities of Practice around an inclusive green effort, provides an elegant and innovative way to a brighter future.

A vehicle to raise capital, pay staff and build capacity driven by that marketing opportunity and managed as a joint venture by local officials, business and the community. The capital raised will fund a wide variety of critical community needs including endow a venture capital fund to spawn new start-ups. The infrastructure itself will be entirely run by citizens; citizens with business skills, citizens with genuine green cred, citizens with authentic influence in urban areas, citizens who may be political officials, but can see beyond the inertia of politics and government.

This will be a privately managed, citizen-led endeavor with a minimum of government involvement and as little political involvement as humanly possible. What I really want to do, is to create a infrastructure that will allow us to learn to work together beyond the boundaries and consequences of our history. Something that will allow all of us to wipe the slate clean, and move forward together, with minimum hassle and maximum fun.

The marketing opportunity arises out of the fact that we will be mounting a novel and innovative project utilizing a great deal of self-help from the local community, a project of community uplift, individual initiative and collective effort. This is a project that by its very nature will generate a plethora of news stories throughout the duration of the project. This endeavor will be self-funding. The revenue generated will fund an umbrella organization that will spawn support systems, auxiliary units and partnerships with the private and non-profit sector.

An unrivaled opportunity for increased business in an era of declining revenue. The revenue will be drawn from a Social Venture Capital Fund (SVCF) funded by the collective efforts of the participants in our project. In the case of redeveloping one of the properties in our target area, all interested parties; contractors, building supply companies, landscapers, etc. would collaborate with us by enrolling their company and/or their employees in our core commercial service. The team members that serviced that account, would bring back to HQ the applications, their portion, $300 or less depending upon circumstances. The remainder is put into the SVCF. As the property is developed, all the collaborator’s are allowed to bid upon the various stages of the work and are paid from the SVCF. All work is evaluated for quality and other green metrics as we develop them. We can, of course, leverage these funds with foundation and government funds as well, given the social nature of our work.

The potential home-owner's story will be on a website along with a thermometer, and people beyond the area will be able to purchase the service and support the project as well as they track our fundraising and home-raising progress. If they want to support our green project but do not desire to use the service, they can offer to give the plan to one of the families in our target area. It includes a service called Legal Shield that will give piece of mind to parents and families in the community.

In the case of a school, one of our school specialists marketing teams will meet with school staff (including auxiliary and substitutes), parents, and interested community members from the neighborhood surrounding the school. The team will explain the value of the service, how proceeds from the service will be used to generate income for the participants and capital for a SVCF and devise a marketing plan to target parents of students with an interest in supporting the school. One of our teams will run the appointment, a stay-at-home parent or idle sub if during daytime, a teacher, secretary, or asst. principal, if after schools hours. As in the case above, the team members that serviced that account, would bring back to HQ the applications, their portion, $300 or less, depending upon circumstances. The remainder is put into the SVCF.

The SVCF will be divided up as follows; 1/4 to the classroom of the contributor’s child; 1/4 to other areas of the school; 1/4 to the surrounding neighborhood and 1/8 beyond the boundaries of the school to an even less well off neighborhood’s SVCF, and 1/8 beyond the shores of America. This type of overarching network of funding will insure inclusiveness and accountability and will encourage a more vibrant and stable local economy by providing liquidity in areas of need using green metrics and rigorous standards and high expectations for participants. As we increase consumer confidence and aggregate demand in the local economy, the general business climate will improve and bottom lines and balance sheets will begin to firm up again.

Our individual risk? $26 month ($10, onetime application fee). No government regulation, no taxes, no bureaucracy, no politics, no cries of heartless, green-washing businesses.