April was national Financial Literacy Month so perhaps now you’re motivated to pay closer attention to your personal investing strategy. But what about your political investing strategy?
Do you take a strategic approach when it comes to your political and charitable contributions? Do you apply the same kinds of principles as you do with your personal investing?
If you’re like most people, you answered “no.” Even though individuals give billions of dollars in political and charitable contributions each year, they rarely pay enough attention to how much they are giving and whether it’s being used effectively. Nor do they apply the kinds of sound investing principles—like diversification, due diligence, and return on investment—that they use with their personal financial investments.
The New Progressive Coalition LLC (NPC) is working to change that by helping individuals target their charitable and political money and time more effectively. You can read their recent feature in the Innovation section of Business Week.
Here Catalina Ruiz-Healy, NPC’s Investor Services Director, answers some frequently asked questions about how NPC helps individuals invest more strategically in political change.
Q: What’s the difference between the way individuals approach their personal investing versus how they approach their political investing?
A: It’s amazing how differently people treat their personal financial investments versus their charitable and political investments. Most people take a long-term view towards their financial planning and recognize that it’s going to take many years to build a nest egg they can rely on in retirement. They also understand that successful investing is about doing the right research, diversifying your portfolio, assessing return on investment, and finding the right advisors to help you make decisions.
But most people don’t take the same approach when it comes to investing in politics. They often don’t know how much money they are giving to organizations and candidates, let alone whether it’s being used effectively. When you ask people about their political giving, they mention attending fundraisers, responding to email or snail mail appeals, or giving to a cause because a friend asked them—but they rarely talk about targeting their money in a thoughtful or strategic way.
PREVIOUS PAGE
