MEGATRENDS 2010: THE RISE OF CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM

By Patricia Aburdene

Excerpt from Chapter 7:

Profiles in Commitment: Wainwright Bank

Well, it sounded great to me. I was sold on the financial and moral superiority of SRI. Why not go all the way and find a community bank?

Turns out, I didn’t have to find one at all. On my way to Behemoth Bank in Kendall Square, which I am now divorcing, I walk right past one of the finest community banks ever, the Wainwright Bank, with ten branches in the Boston area.

More than 40 percent of Wainwright’s commercial loan portfolio—a total of $400 million in loan commitments—supports a Who’s Who of Boston area nonprofits: the Pine Street Inn, New England’s largest homeless shelter; the Greater Boston Food Bank, which feeds 465,000 people a month; Rosie’s Place, the first drop-in and emergency shelter for women in the U.S.

I knew none of this.

I’ve peeked into Wainwright dozens of times and never thought it had a thing to do with socially responsible investing or that Wainwright has won tons of SRI awards. Wainwright is, for example, one of:

• SustainableBusiness.com’s top 20 sustainable businesses—in the world, not just the U.S.,

• Social Investment Forum’s (SIF) “Top 10 Green Banking Firms,”

• SIF’s “Top 11 Best Lenders to Women.”

Why don’t they plaster these kudos on the window?

Once I got the picture, I happily gave them my business. I was a bit surprised that Wainwright’s interest rates beat my old bank’s.

But my psychic returns are even higher.

• The 12th largest bank in the state, Wainwright financed more than $11 million in AIDS housing, half of the area’s total, to places like Wish House, a Dorchester, Massachusetts, home for formerly homeless women and children living with AIDS.
   

• Wainwright bankrolled $75 million worth of affordable housing, including a $500,000 loan to rehab Victory House, a transitional housing program for 25 homeless and low income men with substance abuse problems.
   

• Wainwright loaned $1.8 million to the Family Center, a mental health facility whose clients are struggling with poverty, racism and violence. Each year the Center helps more than 2,000 families; 54 percent of clients earn less than $20,000 and 44 percent are people of color.

Wainwright’s DNA is so deeply encoded with the commitment to social justice, you almost forget it’s a bank, with more than $760 million in assets, that offers commercial loans, home mortgages, lines of credit and private banking. It might also slip your mind that Wainwright makes money, a lot of money and at an impressive rate: Net income in 2004 hit $6.4 million, up from $4.7 million in 2003. Earnings per share rose from 55 cents in 2001 to 94 cents in 2004.

And guess what? Community investing is the best-performing sector of Wainwright’s lending portfolio. The default rate? About zero percent.

Click here for excerpts from Chapter 2:
Dawn of Conscious Capitalism
Starbucks - It's All About the Beans
Money and Morals

Other excerpts:
Megatrends 2010 Intro 1
Megatrends 2010 Intro 1
The Biggest Market You Never Heard Of
Dawn of Conscious Capitalism
Do It Yourself
The Power of Spirituality -- From Personal to Organizational
The Spiritual Power of Corporate Brands
Starbucks - It's All About the Beans
Money and Morals
The Biggest Market You Never Heard Of

In Megatrends, Megatrends 2000, and Megatrends for Women, authors John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene captured the minds and imaginations of the public by predicting how our lives would be transformed as we moved from an industrial to an information economy. Now Megatrends 2010 inspires us as individuals and organizations to claim our best selves with Patricia Aburdene’s reports of positive changes in the business world occurring in the wake of corporate scandals, recession, and record deficits. Visit her at http://www.patriciaaburdene.com/