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The BLB Revolution

The BLB Revolution

Line by line, column by column, Sara walked through the financial situation of each member of her savings group. She knew the numbers forward and backward—savings contributions, loan balances outstanding, interest rates, fee structures, and transaction history. She knew it all. And her group knew it all. The American entrepreneurs who joined me in visiting this Rwandan neighborhood took notes—this was the sort of fluency they wanted from their respective CFOs in their businesses. 

In that group and the many groups like it I’ve visited across the world, the “Big Ledger Book” (BLB) is a staple. As certain as a literal song and dance in group meetings is the oversized register that reconciles the information held by each individual of the group in their passbooks. 

Savings group in Rwanda; my apologies for the poor picture quality

The magic of the BLB is its transparency. There are no secrets within the group. Every member can see and validate what they see in the master spreadsheets enclosed in the BLB. Transparency begets trust. And this trust is what makes the whole thing work. But this old-fashioned magic finally has hit primetime.

When NBA Top Shot hit the scene earlier this year, I found its existence hard to believe. People are spending thousands (even millions!) of dollars to own digital highlight video clips? Soon, though, it wasn’t just strangers investing real money into Top Shot, but my own friends. And the more I learned, the more rational this decision seemed to be. I bought hundreds of dollars of baseball cards throughout my childhood. Buying, selling, and trading exclusive video clips is no crazier than buying, selling, and trading pictures printed on laminated cardstock. 

But beyond the intrigue of a Lebron James dunk highlight selling for $387,000 (and Charlie biting his brother’s finger selling for double that) was the framework underlying the whole system: distributed ledger technology. Anytime my smart friends attempt to explain cryptocurrencies and blockchain to me, I feel like Michael Scott when Oscar Martinez from accounting attempted to explain what a surplus is: Why don’t you explain this to me like I’m five? 

Here’s my amateur summary: These new financial instruments bring BLB transparency to the masses. Much like the master ledger enables savings groups to see the transaction history and balances of group members, blockchain does the same thing for a new wave of currencies and products. Deloitte summarizes that blockchain technology “offers a new way to trade, invest, and share information – including cash, property assets, or intellectual property – in a secure, transparent, and efficient way.” 

Blockchain explained (via Deloitte)

Though I remain a blockchain newb and have not yet purchased my first digital trading card, the trends and systems beneath these new financial instruments are hard to miss. Venmo makes most financial transactions public. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin appear to be much more than a passing fad. The digital shift of our financial systems will only accelerate. Heck, even our savings group BLBs are going virtual

The power of the transparency of distributed ledgers in savings groups is amplified by the depth of the relationships within these groups. How exactly will these dynamics play out as groups of strangers begin to experience these dynamics on a societal scale? Will increasing transparency lead to increasing trust? We’ll likely have answers to these questions sooner than we think. 

It’s a Wonderful Bank

It’s a Wonderful Bank

Remarkably, It’s a Wonderful Life is the only film that is both a holiday classic and a commentary of the banking industry. Over the last 14 years, I’ve described the mechanics of microfinance hundreds of times. And in these discussions, George Bailey’s name often comes up. Particularly one memorable scene. 

In his job as bank manager, George Bailey faces his first real challenge when his customers in the small town of Bedford Falls make a “run on the bank.” Crowding into the bank lobby at closing time on Friday, they’re all looking to withdraw their deposits, in fear the bank might go under. But Bailey Building and Loan doesn’t have the reserves to fund their withdrawals in-full.

“You’re thinking of the place all wrong, as if I have the money bank in a safe. The money’s not here,” George shares with his customers. “Your money’s in Joe’s house… and a hundred others. You’re lending them the money to build and then they’re going to pay it back to you the best they can.”

You can probably recall the scene. In a measured way, George calmly explains how banks work to this angsty group of customers. Banks receive deposits from some customers, Bailey describes, and then on-lends these funds for mortgages and loans to other customers, carefully managing their risk through an interdependent web of borrowers and depositors. But the economic commentary in the film extends far beyond just this scene. At its core, It’s a Wonderful Life examines banking at its very best and its very worst.

George Bailey did not intend to be a banker. He planned to travel the world and pursue a career of glamour and prestige far away from his hometown of Bedford Falls. But when his father dies, George forgoes these plans to protect the legacy of Bailey Building and Loan, a bank committed to serving the needs of even the most vulnerable Bedford Falls residents. Bailey saves the bank and leads it well, in spite of the bank run and an attempted hostile takeover by Henry Potter, a vulturous investor and slumlord, who wants to gobble up Bailey’s community bank and take advantage of its customers. 

Mr. Potter’s banking philosophy—that banks only thrive at the expense of their customers—is a philosophy excoriated throughout the Bible, most clearly in the law God gives to Moses. Shortly after outlining the Ten Commandments, God instructs Moses on how his people should conduct financial transactions with their most vulnerable community members. 

“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.” (Exodus 22:25)

Scripture condemns charging interest in an exploitative and extractive manner, particularly to the vulnerable, like the working-class residents living in Israel and in the fictional town of Bedford Falls. The Hebrew word used to describe usury is the same word used to describe the strike of a scorpion. But George Bailey’s philosophy is quite different. At his bank, he is honest and transparent with his customers and he takes risks in banking on the members of his community, enabling both the bank and its customers to thrive. Potter’s approach is just the opposite. Potter grows his wealth by holding down and victimizing his customers. 

In 1903, Maggie Walker founded St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia. The daughter of an enslaved mother, Walker became the first black woman in our country to run a bank. And, her vision for St. Luke was not dissimilar from what’s depicted by Bailey Building and Loan. St. Luke served all customers, but was focused on those traditional banks were most prone to overlook.

“Walker knew impoverished borrowers could be honest and diligent,” writes Jason Zweig in a feature in the Wall Street Journal

Like Bailey, she focused her bank’s efforts on helping her neighbors buy their own homes, achieving among the highest rates of homeownership in the country within the Black community. Walker’s banking philosophy extended even into the design of her bank branches.

“In the bank’s elegant interior, holding a brass pen in their hands, even the poorest customers could feel respected.” 

St. Luke Penny Saving Bank and Bailey Building and Loan were cut from the same banking cloth. These examples inspire our work at HOPE International, challenging us to serve men and women beyond the paved road, in communities and neighborhoods banks still overlook. We serve in these places not out of pity, but out of our belief in the ingenuity and creativity we find there. We believe these communities are overlooked not because of a lack of local capacity, but because of a lack of opportunity.

In a turning point in It’s a Wonderful Life, Bailey finds himself once again in the office of Mr. Potter. Because Mr. Potter stole $8,000 from Bailey Building and Loan, Bailey finds himself unable to pay his bills and at Mr. Potter’s mercy. Potter offers him no grace, but instead issues an ultimatum: Jail or bankruptcy. Bailey chooses neither, leaving uncertain about how he’s going to come up with the $8,000 he needs to keep his bank afloat. 

“Go to the riffraff you love so much and ask them for help,” Potter scolds Bailey, kicking him out of his office. 

In the final scene of the movie, Bailey returns home to find the riffraff he loves so much—his neighbors, customers, family, and friends—have provided the very help he needs. Altogether, they chip in enough money for Bailey to fend off Potter and keep the bank open.

The jubilant Christmas party erupting in Bailey’s home encapsulates what real banking and this season are all about: The rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the privileged and the overlooked, all mutually interdependent as we feast and celebrate together.

Merry Christmas. 

Accelerating Advent

Accelerating Advent

You don’t listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Or so I’ve said. 

But 2020 is no normal year. So this year, we’ve accelerated Advent. We’re breaking our normal rules and commencing the season of waiting and hoping for the arrival of Jesus. This has practical implications: Last weekend, I strung lights on the pine tree in our backyard and we dusted off our favorite seasonal Spotify playlists. 

But more than that, accelerating Advent is about embracing a new posture for the remaining six weeks of the year. We look forward to the coming glories of Christmas, but before, we enter this season with the somber reality of how very bleak things are in our own hearts and in the world around us.

As our favorite Advent theologian, Fleming Rutledge, writes, “Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or too glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness.” 

On a warm night in late April, Alli and I sat down on our patio after putting the kids to bed. I shared something aloud I had been feeling privately for a while. 

“I think I might be depressed.” 

This revelation did not surprise her. Over the course of the previous months, I had been distant, withdrawn, and emotionally flat. I was often lost in my own thoughts, my mind turning over the newest research or lockdown stories I had just read about. I devoured the news, often spending hours each day reading and assessing the latest outlook. 

The steady, everyday stress began to eat away at my hope. The what-ifs consumed my thoughts. I was demoralized and discouraged much of the time, even if I attempted to be cheery. The leadership journey can be deeply isolating amid hard times and I really felt this. I wanted to inspire hope for my team. I wanted to cast a compelling vision for HOPE’s donors. But I struggled to believe the very things I said. My self-diagnosis was not clinical, of course, but the shoe fit. While I’m in a far better place today, I know I’m not alone this year. 

Darkness is all around us. We see it in the deaths from the virus and the deaths of despair caused by the lockdowns. We see it in how politics dictate our national conversation, straining friendships and dominating our imaginations. We see it in how 2020 punishes the most vulnerable most severely. We see it in the surges of depression, suicide rates, drug addictions and overdoses, and catastrophic academic regression. Lord have mercy. It’s been a hard year. 

But, as Rutledge acknowledges, Advent only begins in the darkness. It does not end there. 

“The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come,” she writes. “In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.”

We step forward not with a naive hope, but in hope surrounded by the darkness. Jesus arrived in a world not so dissimilar to our own. A world wrought with poverty, racism, disease, and heartache. Right in the midst of a dark world, hope exploded into view in that nondescript town of Bethlehem. 

More than ever before, we need Advent. We need to remember darkness is not novel in 2020. We need to ache. And, we need the hope of celebration. The hope of new life. The joy of Jesus’ arrival amid all that pain. So for this year, we’re breaking our own rules and ushering in the season we need now more than ever.

We Launched a Backyard School

We Launched a Backyard School

I looked at Alli and asked if she was serious. She was and we are. Next week, we launch a school in our backyard–Wildside Academy–for our kids and nine kids from our neighborhood. 

Like parents across this country, school closures upended our 2020 plans. Denver Public Schools announced in-person instruction will not start till at least mid-October. With a highly social fourth-grader and a kindergartner excited for his first days in school, this news came as a blow. It’s challenging enough for our boys to put their shirts on right-side-out, let alone thrive in virtual school. We aren’t alone. A mom (who works nights) of one Wildside Academy student summarized her experience with virtual school by saying, “It’s been hell for us.” 

Reopening schools for in-person education includes risk. Already, we’re seeing just how complicated it is to resume school safely and pragmatically. But not reopening schools for in-person education also includes risk

“We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the CDC, on the risks of schools remaining closed. Recent CDC data showed 1 in 4 young adults had “seriously considered” suicide within the last 30 days. 

And, there is ample evidence from school reopenings across the globe and even within the United States that reopening schools is reasonably safe, particularly for young children. 

Still, many of our largest public school districts, including ours, opted for a virtual fall. Massive school districts like DPS are in an unenviable position. Amid our hotly politicized climate, a storm of opinions about the health and safety of children, parents, and teachers rain in from every direction. School administrators face a lose-lose proposition. 

Though virtual school will be inconvenient for us, our concern is ultimately not about the effect school closures will have on our children. Virtual school is least effective with our country’s most vulnerable children. With a master’s degree in education and close to a decade of experience educating children, Alli was ready and willing to step into the opportunity to bridge the gap for kids in our neighborhood.

Based on surveys from Los Angeles, Boston, and even South Dakota, we now know more than 20% of public school students are not even signing on to their virtual school platforms. This 20% dropout rate has had and will have a cataclysmic impact on the children least able to bounce back. Given the evidence available to us, we have asked far too much of our children. Our kids have given up too much, especially the most vulnerable children. 

So next week, we’re launching a backyard “micro-school” for our neighborhood. Over the last month, we’ve worked with our school administrators to identify the kids who most need an in-person environment. Nine students enrolled for Wildside Academy and will gather with our oldest sons in our backyard, three days each week, to learn, play, and adventure together. They won’t pay tuition to us, as they will remain enrolled in our local school, but the focus will be on allowing these kids to regain some sense of normalcy this fall. 

Our backyard: Home to Wildside Academy

Given this unique moment, we hope Wildside Academy spurs on others who are concerned about the impact school closures will have on our neighbors. Already, we’ve been overwhelmed with the ways our community has rallied around the students who will gather here. And, we’re excited to see what might happen in this backyard in the months to come. 

9/1 Update: The first week of backyard school is under our belts and we’re loving it! 

Rebuilding Dreams

Rebuilding Dreams

Graphs! Charts! Phases!

Never in all my life have I seen (or sent) so many. With the onslaught of pandemic analysis, we’re awash in models attempting to make sense of our world. Regions, organizations, and churches are employing tools to make it clear to their communities where they are and where they’re going, such as: Red → Yellow → Green. In Colorado, our three phases are: 

Phase 1) Stay at Home   →   Phase 2) Safer at Home   →   Phase 3) Protect our Neighbors

These tools help us interpret our current moment. As I’ve navigated the pandemic through the eyes of the one million families HOPE serves around the world, I’ve begun to see the situation through, you guessed it, three phases. 

Phase 1: The Precedented Crisis Emergency Relief

What feels abrupt and jarring to us in the United States unfortunately feels familiar in many places around the world. A shock of this scale has not hit my country in my lifetime. But crises like this are far more normal in places like Zimbabwe, Haiti, and Moldova. 

We surveyed members of HOPE’s savings groups about facing financial emergencies. In Malawi, 28% shared they lost about half (or more) of their wealth over the previous year due to crises like drought, food insecurity, and violence. I have no family members nor close friends (read: 0%) who lost half their wealth last year. Here, we expect certainty and predictability. For many, certainty and predictability seem impossible.

When countries went into lockdown, we collectively leaned into our safety nets. In crises, we all rely on some combination of family and friends, our savings accounts, government stimulus checks, and even deep pantries to sustain us while we hunkered down. 

The families HOPE serves are no different. Farmers in some cases harvested their safety nets— eating their cows and chickens, rather than selling their milk and eggs. Corner shop owners ate the inventory, using the flour and oil they intended to sell. 

In that same survey in Malawi last year, we asked HOPE savings group members about their readiness to respond to an emergency. 81% reported being able to meet a significant emergency need ($19), compared to just 37% of the broader Malawian population. Some have been able to do even more than sustain their own families. Amazingly, HOPE’s Rwandan savings groups have purchased and donated more than 2.3 tons of food to their most vulnerable neighbors. For the first time in our history, HOPE joined these savings groups by providing food relief to those most severely affected by the virus and lockdowns across the globe.

Those we serve were ready to both stay afloat and help their neighbors through this crisis. But for many, the cost of serving as a safety net to others meant wiping out their own fragile safety nets. 

Phase 2: Emerging from Lockdown Grace Periods 

As lockdowns begin to ease, economies churn back to life, and people return to work, new challenges confront entrepreneurs as they try and restart. With threadbare safety nets and slowly emerging customers, it’s not feasible to simply flip the livelihood switch back on. 

Many of the entrepreneurs we serve are unable to repay their business loans. To meet these entrepreneurs in this vulnerable place, we rewrote our rules entirely. HOPE’s microfinance institutions and partners extended wide-ranging loan rescheduling, grace periods, and flexibility so entrepreneurs like Jofrey can get back to work quickly.

Jofrey, a grocer and restauranteur we serve in Congo, said, “The confinement imposed to fight COVID-19 has been a tough and unexpected time, but I am grateful to God as my grill and grocery business were authorized to open three days a week… The grace period helped me a lot and I have been able to save while keeping in mind the repayments resumption.”

Saturnin Lembouono, entrepreneur, Congo

Phase 3: Rebuilding Dreams Kickstart Capital

We’re now seeing opportunities to invest big in the old and new dreams of bakers, barbers, and blacksmiths. Recovery lending is an essential service for communities lacking stimulus funding and the Paycheck Protection Program many can take advantage of in the United States. For asset and cash-depleted entrepreneurs, we’re rolling out new loan products with flexible terms and delayed repayment schedules to allow them to jumpstart their livelihoods

And we’re beginning to see the fruit of this approach. After reopening his business, Jofrey paid it forward. He decided to extend a grace period to some of his customers—taxi drivers who could not work during the lockdown—allowing them to buy food for their family on credit. For millions of entrepreneurs like Jofrey, rebuilding will require perseverance. But, we have witnessed this resilience before and are confident we will see it again.