By forming OpenAI as a nonprofit, the founders–which included Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn–hoped to avoid what happens to nearly all venture-backed companies: the insatiable profit motive soon overwhelms any stated concerns for social good.
When Capital Good Fund launched the DoubleGreen Solar loan, in Fall 2021, the Federal Funds Rate (FFR) was near-zero, and we priced the product accordingly: by charging borrowers an APR of 3.099% – 4.99%, we could provide a return of […]
Unfortunately, many of us, especially activists and other change agents, understand far too little about what works and doesn’t, why some protests fizzle out and others lead to transformational change.
In an increasingly privatized world, it’s worth remembering that some of our most cherished and trusted institutions–NPR, PBS, the USPS, libraries, the Social Security Administration, credit unions–are nonprofit, not-for-profit, quasi-governmental, or governmental entities. And this is true even as trust […]
In 2008 I was a graduate student with almost no understanding of the financial system–I couldn’t even explain the difference between an interest rate and an APR!–working to launch what would become Capital Good Fund: a nonprofit lender. One day […]
The Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) is one of those once-in-a-lifetime, transformational pieces of legislation that’s so far-reaching and chock-full of potential, it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around it. Indeed, when it passed in August the mood in the climate […]
Anyone interested in maximizing social good must wrestle with an essential question: given a limited amount of money to contribute to various causes, what is the most effective allocation of those dollars? For whether one is able to donate $100 […]
As I begin this essay, the Senate is on the verge of passing historic legislation to tackle the climate crisis, reduce prescription-drug prices, raise taxes on big corporations, and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, among other things. (Update: the legislation […]
While what happens on Twitter–the memes, the controversies–may not resonate with or represent the experiences of the general electorate, many of the trends are illustrative of, and often exacerbate, fundamental challenges to our democracy. Consider so-called Hot Takes, which are […]
As the goal to limit warming to 1.5C slips out of reach, Capital Good Fund seeks $25 million to kickstart a 5-year plan to deploy $1 billion in green loans to 40,000 underserved homeowners