Following our brief two day “detour” to talk about branding, I want to get back to the discussion I ended with last week.
Recall that I was advocating for some kind of “authoritative information mechanism” that would help direct pro-life philanthropic capital to its highest and best use.
To visualize what that might look like, think of the current stock market.
I realize the example I’m about to give is a gross oversimplification of how the stock market actually works, but for the sake of our discussion, I just want to paint a very general simple picture to use for illustration purposes.
Generally speaking, investors buy or sell stocks of companies based on the reported operating results of those companies, as measured by financial profits.
When companies report strong operating results, they are rewarded by investors purchasing more of those companies’ stocks.
What about companies that report poor operating results?
Investors who hold stock of those poorly performing companies tend to pull their money out of those stocks by selling their shares.
In general, this back and forth of investors putting money into companies that perform well (winners), and pulling money out of companies that perform poorly (losers), will provide more capital for the winners to expand their operations, and will reduce capital available for losers to operate and/or expand operations.
If a company continues to perform poorly over the long term, then it is likely that operating capital available to it through the stock market will eventually dry up. Essentially, the company will be starved out of existence.
Capitalism in action.
A Thought Experiment
With that as background, imagine now that there exists a special “stock market” on which the stocks of all existing pro-life Pregnancy Help Centers across the country were listed.
Further, imagine that all pro-life philanthropists – from those who could give a little, to those who could give a lot – were aware of this special PHC stock market, had online access to it, and could choose which PHCs to invest in, and which PHCs to not invest in.
And finally, imagine that this special stock market was the only means that PHCs had to get access to operating capital.
Question: As a pro-life philanthropist, what criteria would you use to decide which PHCs to invest in?
Of course, you would have your own reasons for choosing which PHCs to support, but I’m willing to bet that one of your key criteria for deciding, and perhaps your only criteria, would be the number of lives those PHCs saved from abortion.
Now imagine if that was the number one criteria for all pro-life philanthropists, and that all PHCs had to report those lives saved numbers regularly – let’s say quarterly – and further, that the reported numbers were reliably accurate.
What do you think would happen?
My prediction is that the PHCs with the strongest performance would gain more philanthropic capital for expansion, and that under-performing PHCs would lose operating capital and eventually have to cease operations.
Does that process sound familiar?
Correct, just like the stock market.
Tomorrow, we will push the thought experiment a little further.
Regards,
Brett