Investing in Lives and the New Fundraising

Just this week a wave was created in the online world of social entrepreneurship (or #socent in Twitter-speak). Three aspiring, actually already relatively successful, social entrepreneurs launched a landmark campaign to attract investors to the potential of themselves as entrepreneurs, as opposed to their social innovation idea. This has caused a sensation throughout the Twitter-sphere, as well as resulting in a number of follow up conversations on the Social Edge blog (where one of the entrepreneurs is a featured blogger), Change.org's Social Entrepreneurship section by Nathaniel Whittemore and Stanford Social Innovation Review's blog, as well as a concerned viewpoint from Acumen Fund's Sasha Dichter's personal blog. The basic concept is that these entrepreneurs have offered shares in themselves at a value of $3000. Saul Garlick of ThinkImpact and Jon Gosier of AppAfrica are both offering 100 shares each (valued at $300,000 in total) in exchange for 3% of their annual income for life, while Kjerstin Erickson is offering 200 shares at a return of 6% of her future annual income, in exchange for $600,000 unrestricted capital to boost her current initiative, FORGE, and future initiatives. While this is an unprecedented fundraising opportunity for promising individuals who need financing to reach the next level of impact, there are a number of concerns akin to 'selling your soul' that arise when considering the figures, which begs the question, 'how much are they expecting to earn?' The idea of paying amounts of money to 'shareholders' seems contrary to the notion that the overwhelming percentage of the money generated in a social enterprise should be funneled back into the advancement of the organisation. But what other options to these, and other, talented and promising individuals have? Why is there no culture of making investments in people and their potential (without necessarily looking for a return) that is closer to Pip's benefactor in Great Expectations than a bank chasing you for loan repayments? Perhaps we need to encourage a bit of 'R & D' type investing in the space, where people could be funded to explore and experiment with new concepts, technologies or frameworks to further the development of the social innovation space. Are there patrons out there who would be willing to support individuals and their organisations because those people get them excited about the possibilities of the area, as opposed to expecting to quantify the number of people they have impacted? Perhaps with The Thrust Fund making waves and headway, it is only a matter of time.