Charitable Giving & The Perpetual Bond

In our view, we give to charitable organizations and causes that interest us because we can and because we want to.  Governments, and often times just the government of the day, don’t necessarily share that view and the history of charitable giving is a contentious one, sometimes attracting tax and other times not (please see, for example, The Economist, June 9, 2012) and sometimes attracting confiscation and even imprisonment.

“Giving” is an act of passion or compassion that is also an act of consumption akin to any other purchase that we might make of ordinary consumer goods or, in this context, investments in a preferred cause that may have societal implications that we cannot, in good faith, anticipate, and, as we have often noted, an investment in anything is just and only the purchase of risk and we ought to know the price of it.

Our solution to the risk management of giving in the context of societal innovation and enterprise is The Greater Society Perpetual Bond™ (GSPB) that we have described in one of these Letters (please see The Greater Society Perpetual Bond, July 2012) and which solves a number of tax-related and other problems related to giving large while, at the same time, protecting or proscribing the capital in uncertain times for perpetuity depending on the wishes of the donor.

But what about “small” donations? Should we, or can we, just “give” $100 or $1,000 – depending on the size of our “wallets” at the time – to a “good cause” and therefore make the purchase that we are inclined to make for a better or greater or kinder society without offending others or, worse, offending the government of the day which may claim to have a monopoly on “good works” of which ours is not deemed to be one of them, temporarily or permanently?

Crowd Sourcing “The Greater Society Perpetual Bond”™

The RiskWerk Company has decided to sponsor The Greater Society Perpetual Bond™ (the “Bond” or GSPB) as a registered charity and non-profit organization whose only purpose is to accept “small” donations that may be accumulated into a Perpetual Bond of some significant size and to distribute the ongoing income from the Bond to the charitable organizations and causes that you vote for with your money – $1 is one vote, $100 is one hundred votes, and so forth – every six months.

But there’s more.  Your votes are appreciated in proportion to the portfolio gains so that what was, for example, 100 votes in the early days, counts for 115 votes six months later if our returns are, for example, of the order of 15% which we have reason to expect even in just six months regardless of the market (please see these Letters, NASDAQ 100 – (B)(N) There And Done That, June 2012).

And the process continues, in perpetuity, so to speak, so that the worth and value of the original or early or any donations continues to grow in both value and voting power indefinitely for all practical purposes. The Bond is a gift that simply keeps on giving and automatically adjusts to the demonstrated societal interests of the times.

The RiskWerk Company will manage the portfolio and the results and ongoing decisions will be shared in these Letters.  We will manage the money as a Perpetual Bond in the companies of the NASDAQ 100 and at the end of six months, we will distribute the earned dividends and capital gains, net of taxes and management expenses if any, but not the capital, to the charitable organizations that have  been specified by the donors on the basis of $1 donation is equivalent to one vote in the distribution and the cut off (if necessary) will be the deemed minimum useful amount, such as a donation $1,000, ranked by the votes pro rata until all of the period earnings are distributed.

Money Votes

Contributing is easy and easily documented. Simply send your donation by e-transfer to our email address RiskWerk@gmail.com and please remember to tell us where you would like the earnings to go. Hopefully, there will be a multiplier effect and we will discover that there are many others who think as you do.

Disclaimer

Investing in the bond and stock markets has become a highly regulated and litigious industry but despite that, there remains only one effective rule and that is caveat emptor or “buyer beware”.

Nothing that we say should be construed by any person as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, hold or avoid the common stock or bonds of any public company at any time for any purpose. That is the law and we fully support and respect that law and regulation in every jurisdiction without exception and without qualification to the best of our knowledge and ability.

We can only tell you what we do and why we do it or have done it and we know nothing at all about the future or the future of stock prices of any company nor why they are what they are, now.

The author retains all copyrights to his works in this blog and on this website. The Perpetual Bond®™ is a registered trademark and patented technology of The RiskWerk Company and RiskWerk Limited (“Company”) . The Canada Pension Bond®™ and The Medina Bond®™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Company as are the words and phrases “Alpha-smart”, “100% Capital Safety”, “100% Liquidity”,  ”price of risk”, “risk price”, and the symbols “(B)”, “(N)” and N*.