Indigenous Stock Exchange
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Our Mission
Gerhardt Pearson receiving the 2003 B2B Social Innovation Award for the ISX |
What is the role of the ISX?
The role `of the ISX is to create a knowledge and capital base for the Australian Indigenous private sector that complements traditional cultural, economic and social structures and values. In supporting the development of an Australian Indigenous knowledge and capital base the ISX will create a well-spring for any Indigenous person, community or enterprise to be strongly competitive, productive and prosperous within the mainstream world economy.
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 foster strong and growing investments in Indigenous businesses and social and cultural enterprises. Between 2004 and 2009 over 5,000 Indigenous people, enterprises and communities nationwide have used the ISX to post information and to track down investors, supporters and mentors. Our website is becoming an established institution and self managing network, monthly traffic is very strong with between 200,000 and 300,000 hits on average.
What We'd Like to See in the Medium to Long Term
Our long-term mission is to actively support a strong culture of Indigenous entrepreneurship through high quality, patient capital investment. We ensure that as many business proposals as possible are put before investors and supporters through our online and community trading floors. We do not discriminate against those who are putting up their ideas for the first time but we encourage first time business people to work on their ideas over time and to continue to refine them by re-listing and improving their proposals. We strive to assist Indigenous business Australia wherever we are needed. In 2009 we are focusing on how corporations can use the deductible gift recipient status of many Aboriginal organisations to make immediate, strong and lasting contributions to Australian Indigenous economic development.
Our view is that there is not enough rigour in the way that the private and government sectors support Indigenous social, economic and cultural development. Too often the process involves either a crass commercial return on investment methodology, a warm fuzzy feeling or political opportunism. We firmly believe that indicators like social, environmental and cultural return on investment indices are essential. We encourage all Indigenous entrepreneurs to make an effort to calculate the conventional as well as social, environmental and cultural return on investment that would accrue from an investment in their enterprise. We do not believe there is one methodology that fits all, but simply encourage Indigenous enterprises to provide a quaduple bottom line: 1) Monetary Profit 2) Environmental Profit 3)Social Profit and 4) Cultural Profit. In the future even conventional financial markets will use these indices to measure what a good investment is. At the same time, we recognise this process will take some years to develop and that new listings on the ISX which feature a quadruple bottom line are pioneers as well as outstanding achievements of Indigenous Australia.
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
In 2008/2009 one of our major focuses has been on creating listings for Indigenous businesses in East Arnhem Land. We are also actively working on strategies that corporations can follow to maximise their direct contributions to Indigenous businesses and enterprises through the deductible gift recipient process. BAMA, the ISX's parent company, is a public benevolent institution and so we want to fast track injections of equity and support to Indigenous businesses that are making a difference in the economic, social and cultural world.
We hope you will help us to maintain the quality of our online information. 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
We recognise that an Indigenous Stock Exchange is not going to be the same as a conventional Western financial market place. In Indigenous communities there are many things - bought and sold in the Western world - that will never be up for sale. But we do want to attract external investments into Indigenous economic, social and cultural activity that are profitable for all. So our purpose is to explore the possibilities carefully.
The ISX has been very effective in identifying business proposals in communities where none were thought to exist. Our primary task is to work to support entrepreneurs that usually fly under the radar screens of governments or even conventional business networks.
As distinct from the conventional financial markets we also work to support commercial, social and cultural enterprise - in other words entities that provide monetary, social and cultural profits.
The ISX always works with the permission and in partnership with the elders of the community, supports and enables existing Indigenous organisations within the community, and communicates through trusted Indigenous community leaders. All our work involves long lead periods of many years, and 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. In 2009 we are focusing on profiling East Arnhem Land Aboriginal enterprises. We find it useful to work on regions and language areas as a means of concentrating our limited resources and energy. But the idea of the online trading floor is to provide a permanent and ongoing means of communication to investors and supporters.
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