Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving #3: Wealth Stock

When you think about gearing up your giving you might be primarily focused on the money you are planning to give away. However, money is far from the only form of capital you can use to give in a meaningful way.
So letʼs take an inventory of your wealth stock on a more holistic basis. Wealthworks, a project of the Aspen
Institute has a helpful schema of eight forms of capital that go into building up the wealth of any given
locality. This is a useful list when applied in the context of your philanthropy.

Eight Forms of Capital to Consider In Your Giving

What is the stock of capital, in these various forms that you can draw on in pursuit of your philanthropic
aims? Ask yourself, on scale of 1-10 how important is each of these types of capital to achieving the outcomes you are seeking in terms of impact and fulfillment? Likewise, on a scale of 1-10 how confident are you that your current stock of each form of capital is sufficient to take action effectively in pursuit of these outcomes?

• Individual capital (time, physical health, autonomy to act, personal skills and mindset)
• Intellectual capital (ideas, knowledge, theory of change)
• Social capital (level of support & engagement from others through networks, relationships etc.)
• Cultural capital (proximity and patterns of perspective that provide insight and guidance on the way
  forward, including shared systems of beliefs and world views)
• Natural capital (assets in the natural environment that can be leveraged to contribute to the solution)
• Built capital (physical infrastructure needed to carry out the giving program)
• Political capital (alignment and level of support from key political actors)
• Financial capital (money to make it all happen)
  
  

Download the worksheet and continue your reflection

Check out the video and  download the worksheet that accompanies this post. 

Are there any important forms of capital to which you currently have insufficient access? What action is
needed to bring a greater stock of these resources to bear on the challenge? Are there some non-financial
assets you have in abundance which you could leverage more powerfully in service of your philanthropic
goals?  And stay tuned for the next segment in this series, where we'll look at the motivations that underlay your giving with Design Fundamental #4: Why.