Poverty Offsets – Local Commitment to Global Good

When a developer wants to build, in some areas she must offset her impact on the environment by planting trees. Companies that want to be carbon-neutral can purchase carbon offsets from other businesses. I propose a similar idea for public projects that are made possible by our incredible prosperity in the developed world – arts centers, sports stadiums, parks and sculptures. I call it a Poverty Offset.

In my home town of Dallas, we’ve created a fantastic cultural beacon for our Arts District: the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Renowned Dallas leader Bill Lively led the effort to raise $354 million over a nine-year period.  The Center houses four new performance venues and a public park, all designed by world-famous architects.  This amazing project is like a lens that has focused the city’s creativity, capital, leadership, culture, and expressive passion all in one dense area in downtown Dallas. The production is highly local and demonstrates what people can accomplish when they are able to harness their community resources.

I propose that we “offset” the local, resource-rich creation of such a facility with an equal attention and passion for the opposite side of the coin: the global resource-poor. As we amass such a powerful achivement of capital and creativity for Dallasites and the arts, let’s also amass an equal amount of capital and creativity for the poorest across our world.

I propose a Poverty Offset for the AT&T Performing Arts Center.  Let’s create a new nine-year plan – this time to invest $354 million of capital into sustainable social ventures worldwide that reduce poverty, create clean water solutions, reduce disease, drive renewable energy solutions, and enable education in those parts of the world that struggle most. Dallas has thriving social venture and arts communities that will be energized around such a grand project. The Center’s venues can contribute space and act as an event catalyst. The great philanthropists and fundraisers that made the Center possible can coordinate resources for this Poverty Offset as the next phase of giving. The entire city will be inspired as we know that the Center is now not just about arts and culture, but also about creating massive new opportunities for our world community.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that we raise $300+ million in charitable donations or “give money away.” I propose that we use this project to motivate, direct, and leverage that capital into sustainable social enterprises that address global-scale problems.  Done in the right way, all $354 million would return to its sources in Dallas. One approach is the Good Returns model. There are many others we can incorporate.

Bill Lively has moved on to another big project: he’s now President and CEO of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee. Cowboy Stadium cost over a billion dollars to create. What would a Poverty Offset for the Stadium and the Super Bowl look like?

If every stadium, arts center, arena, museum, and park focused equal attention on the resource-poor through a Poverty Offset, we would quickly create a trillion – yes with a T – dollar capital pool and see powerful, sweeping improvements in the lives of billions of people across the world – not through handouts, but through opportunities provided by sustainable social ventures.

My first career was as a classical pianist, so I have a deep love of music and art. I understand the importance of expressing our higher selves through arts, sports, and culture. But we must also express our higher selves by extending opportunity to those around us, so they too can have their own full expression of life.

Let us start here in Dallas with a Poverty Offset for the Performing Arts Center. Let’s get together and create a broad and clear strategy for this nine-year initiative and a way to measure our $354 million investment in the world’s neediest. Let’s rise to our highest selves, Dallas: use the great cultural gains we’ve made in the past decade as a launching point to become the world leader in global social philanthropy, the world’s clear example of how to scale social entrepreneurship to solve our greatest global challenges.

Salah Boukadoum
Citizen, Dallas