Doug and John have a conversation around their shared experience of caring for a place.  

Doug is the Founder & Executive Chairman of Monon Capital where he co-creates with others around ideas and opportunities for innovation and imaginative/redemptive entrepreneurship through venture investments, a thought & conversation studio, and a venture lab.

He serves as a director, trustee, or advisor of several institutions and companies including Warner Pacific University, EDGE Mentoring, Telemachus, Fields Park Trust, Sagamore Institute, T&H Investments, Discovering Broadway, Windrider Institute, Sinapis, Chatham Ventures, and Lost Valley Ranch.

• 2:02 North End Project
  • “And it’s interesting to think about it in terms of development, but it spurred a thought that we had about what could we do that would really be a blessing to the community.”
• 6:20 Needs before returns
  • “You started with a need and it wasn’t a return. I mean, what does it mean to start with needs and not returns?”
• 10:05 Investment strategy
  • “Well, in the broadest sense, one of the things that I was particularly after, we were particularly after was enabling charitable based capital, particularly donor advised funds to be put to work. And I read a statistic not that long ago now, but the average donor advised fund returns 4.2%. And if you think about not what you give out of it, that’s one thing, but there’s a corpus often. And the question is, is that corpus being managed in an active way to be useful in your local community?”
• 13:40 Gifting investors
  • “…we wanted to create an experience that allowed people to see the reality of what was happening and that this would continue, but that as an investor, you’re not just an investor. If I could be so bold, I would call the investors as kind of investor residents.”
• 15:02 Tennant vs Business resident
  • “We don’t have tenants as you would normally think about it in the commercial space. We have what we’ve called business residents.”
• 20:16 Community hope
  • “The difference in relational and transactional is such a big thing. And it’s important that, you and I talked about something that really struck me and it’s how some communities lose hope. I mean, and they get to the place that there’s hopelessness and it’s so unpleasant being there that their town has got so much deferred maintenance and so little care and love, and they’ve tried so many bake sales and so many historic commission, that they’ve tried all these things and it just doesn’t seem to work. That is a start. And I thought it was interesting we said it finally. They only see it as a liability instead of an asset.”
• 26:50 Brainstorming, Planning, Promise
  • “…it’s been such a healing thing because in provisional, I can say anything. I can dream anything. And when we get to plan, we say we want to do this. We don’t have all the numbers. We are not sure how in the world we’re going to do. Honestly, we need fishes and loaves and miracles, but we want to do it.”
• 28:10 Venture lab
  • “Part of my world within Monon Capital, we have one of the elements is a venture lab, and it really is the place where we dream and think about interesting problems. So, one of which is North End and the structure we used is Field Spark Trust, and it’s a supporting organization of NCF who’s been a terrific partner in helping us work through the complexities of all the things you have to do if you’re going to begin to blend charitable and private capital together and all that.”
• 32:25 Diffused hospitality, scattered/horizontal hotels
  • “And what we believe is the future of restoring broken downtowns that are dead is a diffuse hospitality, overnight stay, iconic food and beverage and celebratory events. If you can build that, and the reason we think this is because it’s one way that the existing world of finance understands how to roll operational incomes up into real estate projects.”
• 38:26 Divine beauty
  • “So, it speaks to something in them that say, there has to be something more to this than what I’m simply experiencing. So, we create beauty. We’re doing this, and you can see my background. One of the things that I have as a fundamental premise is that I intentionally put myself in the pathway of beauty everyday.”
• 43:38 Love, creativity, faith
  • “I’ll give you a couple examples here that I really don’t care for the phrase, “human resources”. I think human is a fabulous noun and I think it’s a terrible adjective. Because what it does is it equates people with financial resources, natural resources, all kinds of inanimate objects. They have value and they should be cared for.”

• North End – website
• Doug Wilson – about