Creeping corruption afflicts charities too

I've blogged before about my two opinions about organisations, which I deem axiomatic:

• Every organisation, be it a church, trade union, university, government or whatever, will always seek to overplay its hand.


• Every organisation will, sooner or later, forget its founding ideals and its stated objectives, and devote its energies to self-perpetuation.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the list in the first axiom can be taken to include charities, which appear to be just as subject to creeping corruption as all the others. There's little point in trying to find why this happens, but there is a great deal to be gained, in my opinion, by remedying the problem.

Social Policy Bonds would lead to the creation of a new sort of organisation: ones whose composition and structure will adapt to changing circumstances. The bonds would encourage the achievement of social goals that will take longer to achieve than the current, relatively short, time horizons of people or bodies in the current system. Under a Social Policy Bond regime, the members of the coalition of bondholders targeting, say, better health, would gain by buying bonds, doing what they can to improve the nation's health, then selling their bonds at an increased value. They need not stay invested in the bonds for the lifetime of that bond. At every point in time between the flotation of the bond and its redemption, the bondholders would form the body that can advance goal-achievement most efficiently. Bondholders need not be directly involved in achieving the goal; they might be investment companies, whose role will be to allocate funds according to what they think will be the most efficient people or projects that will help bring about the next step toward achievement of the targeted goal, simultaneously raising the value of their bonds. The identity of any and all bondholders would change over time, if that turns out to be the best way of achieving our objective quickly. Blockchain technology could facilitate any shifts in the membership of the coalition of bondholders.

The important point is that every activity of every bondholder would be devoted to achieving our goal. Their self-interest would be exactly congruent with those of society - in stark contrast to what happens now under even the best of our current systems of government.