Indigenous Stock Exchange
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Our Mission
Gerhardt Pearson receiving the 2003 B2B Social Innovation Award for the ISX |
Who We Think We Are and What We Strive to Achieve
The ISX supports Australian Indigenous social and commercial entrepreneurs. Our online and community trading floors are free places to market ideas and investment opportunities.
What We Want Right Away
The bottom-line objective of the ISX is to get more new Indigenous businesses funded and up and running.
What We'd Like to See in the Medium to Long Term
Our long-term mission is to create a strong culture of Indigenous entrepreneurship supported by high quality, patient capital and business mentoring. We ensure that as many business ready proposals as possible are put before investors and supporters through our online and community trading floors. We will continue to strive to assist Indigenous business Australia wherever we are needed.
What We Will Do with Your Support
Any support for the ISX goes direct to Indigenous entrepreneurs. The actual ISX runs on as little funding as possible and is driven by volunteers.
What are We Working on Now and Why Your Support is Really Critical
The quality of our online information is important so your help in maintaining this information is important. Please let us know at info@isx.org.au if you have any questions or queries. Though our trading floor we work to:
- Encourage Indigenous Australians who are actively interested in creating their own businesses;
- Support self learning by Indigenous entrepreneurs;
- Link Indigenous Australians to mentors and Indigenous business development groups;
- Create a process where Indigenous business entrepreneurs can move ahead one step at a time; and
- Create a national network of successful Indigenous community businesses and investors.
How We Work with the Community and Why They Love Us
The ISX has been very effective in identifying business proposals in communities where none were thought to exist. This is primarily because the ISX always works with the permission of elders of the community, supports and enables existing Indigenous organisations within the community, and communicates through trusted Indigenous community leaders. All community trading floors involve extensive community consultation starting from the elders and moving to the grass roots of the community.
Why We Do Community Trading Floors and the Full Scope on How We Got Into It
In our first five trading floors, the ISX identified micro and small business as important priorities for Indigenous communities. The trading floors included Ngunnawal (Canberra), Kuku Yalanji (Mossman, Qld), Yawuru (Broome), Yorta Yorta (Shepparton) and Ngarda (Roebourne) and proved to be an inspiration to the community as emerging business entrepreneurs shared their ideas and gained support from their community while also presenting to investors.
Origins
The ISX arose from a recognition that Indigenous positions within the Aboriginal Services Industry and in the public sector have been growing relatively well, but that Aboriginal people are under-represented in the private sector and small business. The ISX strategy was initiated in Canberra on May 21, 2003 on Ngunawal territory. The goal was to support the development of as many Indigenous businesses as we could. Our whole effort was framed by the urgent need for jobs for Indigenous young people especially in regional, remote and very remote Australia. The Kuku Yalanji Trading Floor was held in Mossman, North Queensland on August 20, 2003. This trading floor made us realise us that it was no easy task to get the Australian and world financial community to come to even relatively easy to reach regional areas. The budget for our first trading floor was about $A20,000. These were the first of our community trading floors. They enabled us to "learn by doing" and to think through the key issues of the ISX and to evolve our thinking about how we could best promote Indigenous social, cultural and commercial enterprises.
As we have developed the ISX has taken on a market place and trading atmosphere rather than simply a commercial investment forum. In the short time the ISX has been operating we know that the mainstream financial marketplace understands that in order to support Indigenous communities (that often do not have any investment or commercial models) we need to support all levels of activity and not just those who are most likely to succeed but nurture those could succeed. This has become a trademark of the ISX. We don't just want to support the elite investments, we want to create hope and encouragement at grass roots levels for all Indigenous ideas, enterprise and development and we connect those entrepreneurs which are not fully business-ready to the proper organizations that will get them ready. This is what our initial and future trading floors are all about.
ISX Compared
The ISX is unique in its operations. The ISX supports the development of social, cultural, financial, natural and financial capital within Indigenous communities. The ISX also operates at cost and all of proceeds go directly into developing the community. Currently, the ISX trading floor model involves volunteers raising sponsorship for each trading floor and contributing a substantial part of their labour and expenses as personal donations to the ISX. The strength of this option is that it ensures that the ISX is very lean, all funding, even wthe sums of money held to run a trading floor, goes to existing Indigenous community organisations.
Our operating principle is that all funds must run through Indigenous organisations. This principle of providing a low cost, direct means of linking capital with Indigenous business with all of the investment going into the businesses not the people behind, or the structure of the support mechanism, we believe is the best way to help more Indigenous businesses succeed.
For more email info@isx.org.au