Slow Money, by Woody Tasch

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents the path for bringing money back down to earth—philosophically, strategically, and pragmatically—and with an entrepreneurial spirit that is informed by decades of work by the thousands of CEOs, investors, grantmakers, food producers, and consumers who are seeding the restorative economy.

This is the path toward a financial system that serves people and place as much at it serves industry sectors and markets. To discover this path and to begin to walk down it: That is the mission of Slow Money. This mission emerges from Woody Tasch’s decades of work as a venture capitalist, foundation treasurer, and entrepreneur, whose explorations shed new light on a truer, more beautiful, more prudent kind of fiduciary responsibility—a fiduciary responsibility that is not stuck in the industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but which reflects the economic, social, and environmental realities of the twenty-first century.

These explorations take us from the jokes of his father to the insights of his son, from the boardrooms of foundations and start-up companies to the farm fields of Vermont, from gopher holes in New Mexico to the possibilities of an alternative stock exchange, from Carlo Petrini to Muhammad Yunus, from Thoreau to Soros.

Could there ever be an alternative stock exchange dedicated to slow, small, and local? Could a million American families get their food from CSAs? What if you had to invest 50 percent of your assets within 50 miles of where you live?

Such questions—at the heart of slow money—represent the first steps on our path to a new economy.

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents an essential new strategy for investing in local food systems and introduces a group of fiduciary activists who are exploring what should come after industrial finance and industrial agriculture. Theirs is a vision for investing that puts soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations and serves people and place as much at it serves industry sectors and markets.

Leading the charge is Woody Tasch—whose decades of work as a venture capitalist, foundation treasurer, and entrepreneur now shed new light on a truer, more beautiful, more prudent kind of fiduciary responsibility. He offers an alternative vision to the dusty old industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when dollars, and the businesses they financed, lost their connection to place; slow money, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in the new economic, social, and environmental realities of the 21st century.

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money is a call to action for designing capital markets built around not extraction and consumption but preservation and restoration.

Is it a movement or is it an investment strategy? Yes.

About the Author

Woody Tasch is president of the newly formed NGO Slow Money and Chairman Emeritus of Investor's Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations, and family offices that, since 1992, has facilitated the flow of $130 million to 200 early-stage companies and venture funds dedicated to sustainability. He lives in northern New Mexico. For information about Slow Money please visit www.slowmoney.org.

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