Community Up

Dear Colleagues

The more one reads the newspapers and watches TV, the more it becomes clear that a community up approach to society's problems is needed rather than the domineering top down approach that seems to function almost exclusively by furthering more and more a destructive concentration of economic power.

There have been problems with concentration of economic power since the early days of the industrial revolution, and it can be argued that the problem was recognized throughout all of human history. But the science of how to maximize top performance has been perfected in business schools and popularised with initiatives such as EVA analysis (Economic Value Adding) to maximize stockholder value.

But "at what cost?" was never asked in a formal manner ... because externalities are ignored in corporate accountancy.

This is the justification for Tr-Ac-Net's development of a Community Impact Accountancy (CIA) system. In this system the rigor of accountancy remains, but the principles are not limited to the corporate organizational entity but applied to the community at large. The goal is for the community to have economic added value ... and for organizations involved to facilitating this to be profitable and sustainable.

With this CIA framework it now becomes possible for "community up" to work and be subject to a system of accountancy that facilitates its funding and its accountability.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess