SUMMARY  

We cultivate a sense of worth that is separate from our role, results, and resources as a funder, through the lifelong process of surrendering to God our actual or potential wealth and influence. Rather than measure our value through a financial scorecard, we develop the bedrock assurance that our identity rests in our own redemption—having been “bought with a price.” Over time, as we invest out of a deep sense of our vocation, we aim to be freed from anxiety and hurry, to become more evidently joyful and dependent, and to leave a legacy of love. 

 

REDEMPTIVE OPPORTUNITIES

1. To counter the numbers-driven tendencies of the investing profession, we regularly collect and review stories of non-financial (personal, organizational) influence in our work. These may include deals and other initiatives that failed financially but generated other successes with individuals, or created pathways for redemptive impact in subsequent ventures. We also establish disciplines of balanced distance that discourage us from relentlessly checking our indicators of wealth and success, such as the IRR of ourselves or others in our field.

2. We pursue membership in a community where our vocation, level of wealth, and social position is of marginal importance to the other members, and where our lives as friends, spouses, parents, or church members are more visible. 

3. We practice simplicity, intentionally turning from whatever complicates our priorities and disorients our lives toward material things. We relish the simple pleasures available to us at little expense and we practice noticing God’s small, daily blessings.

4. As appropriate, we share the mistakes and misses of our funding, growing in the ability to be publicly comfortable with imperfection in our vocation. We regularly remind ourselves and our colleagues that we lack answers, are eager to learn, and are dependent on others for the fruit of our work. In humility, we invite feedback from across the entire spectrum of our work to gain insight into our blindspots and areas of needed growth. 

5. We generously share the wealth generated from our investments, including sharing in our wealth creation with team members, those who generously helped us, and others who might not normally be on the cap table—as well as with institutions with missions aligned with our own.

6. We pursue the baseline practices in the Praxis Rule of Life for Redemptive Entrepreneurs to shape our stewardship relationship to money—as well as to the other essential capacities of time, imagination, decision-making, power, and community, building countermeasures against many of our primary vocational risks.