Episode 67 - Putting Money Into Places with Ross Baird
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Ross Baird co-founded Village Capital in 2009 with the goal of investing in entrepreneurs building successful businesses, and also making a difference in their communities.
After making some initial investments in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he realized something: local businesses built by local capital have a great effect on local communities.
Today, he’s the Founder and CEO of Blueprint Local where he’s working to create the best way for people to thoughtfully invest in their communities. On today’s episode, he’s going to teach us a new word—topophilia—and why that concept motivates his work.
Episode Transcript
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Ross Baird: Topophilia is the Greek word for patriotism, and if you think of Greece, you have the city state like Athens means something. Sparta means something very different. It's the warrior city like love of place. Patriotism is love of your specific place for specific reasons. And so if you think of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, all wonderful cities, all very different. But if you live in Boulder, you live there for a specific reason. And if you live in Colorado Springs, there specific reason. And they're very different cultures and neither is better or worse. They're just they're very different. And what Governor Hickenlooper said is like we have so many places in Colorado that have such a good sense of themselves that people are just very into getting involved in their place because they love it and they come here for a reason. And if you are a place with a sense of yourself, you're going to have a dynamic entrepreneurial culture.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Investor podcast. I'm here, as always, are mostly with one of my very best friends in the world, business partner, ministry partner, life partner, Luke Roush in the house from Durham, North Carolina. Today, I see
Luke Roush: it is going to be on. Going to be on.
Henry Kaestner: It's great to have you. So we've got a special guest. Speaking of Durham, North Carolina, I got to know Ross's brother Henry when he was a student at Duke and I was a Sunday school teacher for Duke students, which is ironic. Many of you will know some of my story that I'm a huge road Carolina Tar Heels fan. But God loves Duke students, too. And I get to know Henry and also a little bit Henry's twin brother, but they have an older brother, Rothbard, that has blazed the trail and has been super intentional about his faith in the marketplace for a long time. And I know at least Henry's follow in your footsteps is he is a manager at Cloud Factory, which is this awesome, awesome organization. We've had Marc Sears on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast in the past, but I've been looking for this podcast, Luke, because of Ross's intentionality of modeling out a different way of local community investment, bringing in real estate, bringing a community. He's done it all over. But there are a couple of cities where he's done it that have really made an impression on me. And one of them is New Orleans. And then the other one is Baltimore, because I grew up in Baltimore and that's a big deal for me. So, Ross, welcome to the program. Luke and I are really happy to have you on.
Ross Baird: Thank you. Henry and Luke and Justin. The work you do, all of you do, and the ministry you are really practicing every day here is remarkable. And I'm a longtime listener. First-Time Caller, I would say great to be on the bike.
Henry Kaestner: That's awesome. All right. That's a great encouragement. I've told more and more people recently that when they say nice things about our podcast, because, you know, I have some amount of insecurity about it because I've been told that I have a face made for radio, but I've also been told that I have a voice made for print journalism. And so whenever anybody says something nice about podcasts, it just encourages me. So thank you for that. One of the things, as a frequent listener to the podcast, you'll know, is that we always like to get started by asking somebody their background, who you are, where you come from, maybe a little bit about your faith journey. But what brought you right up to Village Capital?
Ross Baird: Yeah. So I guess starting at your question and working backwards to Village Capital is an organization I co-founded over a decade ago, really seeking to invest in entrepreneurs that are building great businesses, building successful businesses, but also having an intentional impact on the communities where they are and going. The first investment we made was in a couple of entrepreneurs in New Orleans. As you mentioned, Henry, post-Katrina, where there was an amazing all of the big companies had left New Orleans after Katrina and there were all these forecasts the city was dead. People will never come back. But there was this amazing community of entrepreneurs doing their best to rebuild the city from education to food to different types of industries. And what brought me to New Orleans as an anchor of this company I was starting going through the journey really was shaped by my faith and really was shaped by people who walked and guided me and walked along with me. A mentor of mine at university, I went to University of Virginia. So we have Duke and Carolina and basketball
Henry Kaestner: number in football for like 20 years.
Luke Roush: A rare opportunity, Henry, for you and I to tag team and just beat up on a guest together. Yes, it's a shared a rare shared
Henry Kaestner: history very few times that we had that opportunity. And so let's not let's not miss it. Yeah.
Ross Baird: Keep it coming. You can make fun of me at the pace of play in Virginia. Basketball you have.
Henry Kaestner: Well, yes, so there's that. But you do have the national championship. We're going to leave out the fact that you had lost to my hometown, you MBC Retriever's. But that's clearly not important. But if you listen to the podcast before you know that I love the sport of lacrosse and there is a reigning national champion in lacrosse and unfortunately, it's not Carolina.
Ross Baird: That's right. But we'll take it. So I was at the University Virginia, and one of my mentors is a woman. She was a religious studies professor named Nicole, heard very deeply committed Christian. She'd done her PhD work on Saint Katharine Drexel. And I was very interested in education policy and kind of education is the theme. And Saint Katharine Drexel had gone all across the country and set up these Catholic schools serving the poor and cities like Philadelphia and New Orleans. And after Katrina hit, this was 2005, right after the storm, Nicole had had a very strong relationship still with these nuns who ran essentially schools for poor black kids in New Orleans. And she contacted these nuns that she had built these lifelong relationships with and said, well, how can we help? And there were three schools. There were St. Augustine, Saint Xavier and St. Mary's and St. Xavier Prep is right off Magazine Street. It was on high ground and it didn't flooded St. Augustine and St. Mary's had. And the nun who ran the school's sister, Eileen, said, we are. Trying to do whatever we can to keep the doors open because not every kid is left and they need to go to school and they literally need to, Nicole organized students from UVA to go down. And we slept in the gym of Xavier Prep, which didn't have power or hot water. And we did what we could. We cleaned out teachers homes. We worked on moving student records from trying and trying to get these schools back open. And I really was amazed and inspired by these nuns working to keep the school open and the teachers going back. Just the resiliency of everybody flashing forward a few years later. I have always been an entrepreneur, always been working on different ideas. And as I think about my journey, I think we're really shaped by the people who come before us and the people who are examples to us. There is a guy who was a mentor of mine from church growing up. He saw around him might be listing name is Bob Patiala. He was a very successful real estate entrepreneur in Atlanta, and he got very into angel investing in startup investing, particularly in mission driven companies. And I started an education idea coming out of college at UVA. And I originally went and asked Bob for a grant to support my company, I think setting up as a nonprofit. But we had actually gotten a couple of contracts for sponsorship and we had some revenue coming in. And we need a little bit of money. And Bob, because you don't need a grant, you need a loan. And I said that's like you need a bridge loan. I would do that. I guess that sounds great, Bob. I'll take it. What's a Bridgland? And Bob said, let me take you waste when you have cash coming in, but you don't have it today and someone makes a loan to you, you can pay them back. The Bob, explain to me the relationship. If I'm your grant maker, then you'll just come back to me anytime you need money. But if I'm your investor, then we're partners, then we're in it together. And that was a real insight of and this is something you talk about on the Faith Driven Investor, Faith Driven Entrepreneur community all the time. The spiritual relationship of an investment relationship is two way. It's a very different power. Dynamic partnership. I have money. You are someone who wants my money. You will do what I say because I'm the person with money. And so Bob really showed me why investing just was a valuable and resonant thing to begin with. And Nicole had introduced me this amazing community in New Orleans. And so make a long story short with Bob, I started what became village capital, which was one of the first impact investment funds, investing in entrepreneurs that had a core mission driving the company. And we were really looking for people who were overlooked and undervalued and off the beaten track. And so what I did, I called up Sister Eileen and went down to New Orleans and spent a few days down there with Sister Eileen, who still ran the school. And we met a number of New Orleans. And I think the insight of why start in New Orleans? And I think we're going to talk about this podcast of investing locally. If you build a great business in New York City, you're one of a million people who are making money in New York City. If you build a great business in New Orleans, there's a greater civic and public and community good. And just seeing how people building, whether it's a charter school or an agricultural company or something, how people in New Orleans were committed to the greater project of rebuilding New Orleans in addition to their own business success was I mean, it was a moment in time that was incredibly inspiring. So that's a long answer to your question. That's I guess that's
Henry Kaestner: a great answer. I mean, you've got your origination story in there and a lot comes out. There's the part about mentors. So I've heard about connecting with Bob a couple of times and I know how formative he's been in a lot of people's stories. I didn't know that he had been formative in years. I think that's super cool. I want to get back in to and just explore this a little bit more, because you're right, we tend to be drawn to financial capitals. I live in Silicon Valley. People tend to think that companies that are started in Silicon Valley, at least in some sectors like tech enabled consumer goods and general technology, are better here. And yet there's something different about investing in your backyard. And there's even a name for that. And I tell you, this University of Delaware grad, I'm always grateful for a new word to be added to my vocabulary. I've got a long way to go, but top Ophelia. What is top aphelion mean and why does it animate so much of your work?
Ross Baird: So I studied Greek in college mainly for a number of different motivations. One is I wanted to read the New Testament and the original, which was. Wow.
Henry Kaestner: So my so my story on Greek is that I had to say the Greek alphabet three times before the match burned my finger. So we had different experiences learning the Greek language.
Ross Baird: I am Greek life and a number of ways, but so village capital we.
Henry Kaestner: But seriously, I'm sorry I'm running all over you on this, but that's fascinating. As a college student, you wanted to take Greek so that you could read God's word in its original language. I mean, that's not bad.
Ross Baird: And the interesting stories in the ancient Pallot, I mean, I think we live with truths that are enduring. And so, you know, if you can read Plato and Socrates and Jesus in the original written tongue, that's pretty enduring wisdom. And so the idea of these stories, insurance that have persisted for a long time and understanding what human rights are, is just that resonates with me a lot. So I took Latin in high school and loved it for a lot of the same reasons. And being able to study Greek, to be able to read Homer and Plato and the New Testament was really meaningful. I didn't think we would get into that. But you asked to Ophelia. So long story short, I got to become obsessed with the word to Ophelia, which is now maybe my favorite word, because it's a village capital. We built a portfolio of one hundred different enterprises, ninety five percent of which are outside of New York, Boston, San Francisco. We have a broad range of entrepreneurs. About 40 percent of our CEOs are women. About 30 percent are people of color. We have we have some amazing, amazing people in this portfolio. And I was in Colorado a few years ago and I was fortunate enough to have breakfast with John Hickenlooper, who was then the governor and now the US senator and Colorado. That year there had just been a study that came out that said Colorado had four of the ten most dynamic entrepreneurial cities in the country. And I said, Governor, what is it about Colorado? And he goes, I can tell you in one word, top Ophelia is, you know, it took a few years and I wasn't like, oh, yes, I studied. I was like, no, tell tell me.
Henry Kaestner: And it was just a moment of real mischief. Did you know it? But you didn't want to say it.
Ross Baird: I did know it. Friend of mine named Erik in high school one time told me, like Ross, you're such a know it all. Like you try and finish everyone sentences and stories and it's really annoying. Even if you knew the answer, just keep your mouth shut and let people tell their stories. And I mean, I don't always like that is a good lesson. So, you know, I was into my high school friend and let him finish his story, which was great. And he said to Ophelia is the Greek word for patriotism. And if you think of Greece, you have the city state like Athens means something. Sparta means something very different. It's the warrior city. And like love of place, patriotism is love of your specific place for specific reasons. And so if you think of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, all wonderful cities, all very different. But if you live in Boulder, you live there for a specific reason. If you live in Colorado Springs, are there specific reason? And they're very different cultures and neither is better or worse. They're just they're very different. And what Governor Hickenlooper said is like we have so many places in Colorado that have such a good sense of themselves that people are just very into getting involved in their place because they love it and they come here for a reason. And if you are a place with a sense of yourself, you're going to have a dynamic entrepreneurial culture. And that one word tip, Ophelia summed up probably ten years of observations from New Orleans in two thousand nine. If you move to New Orleans in two thousand nine, you're going there for a reason. If you've lived in New Orleans for fifty years, you have history and tradition and things that matter. And so I think to Ophelia, for all of us, the place we live, the city we live, and how our family gets involved, the church we go to. I mean, my wife and I got married at a church in Atlanta as a church plant called Chiros. That is still, you know, we don't live in Atlanta. It was still one of the most vibrant communities. I mean, when you're in a place that has to feel it, you know, you just do.
Luke Roush: Well, the other thing but that just raises for me is this idea that as people are more mobile, there's more and more self selection into different places in different communities and different environments. And there's both opportunity in that. There's also risk in that. Right, because you can find yourself in an echo chamber because you self select into a community that's naturally more comfortable. And so it's interesting. I want to get just tactical for a moment. And just if you wouldn't mind sharing on to meaningful ways that you've discovered better invest in communities. So common threads that tend to correlate with more impact, maybe even more effective value creation financially. What are some common threads there?
Ross Baird: One thing that I think about all the time when we think about investing locally, I think in in the entrepreneurial world, in the San Francisco Silicon Valley, where people are so obsessed with scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, how do you invest in Greenville, South Carolina, or Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a quote on quote, scalable way. And if you look at Jesus's understanding of power, when he sends out the disciples, he thinks about scale in a very different way. Jesus never leaves about a 30 mile radius in his entire life, because I think part of the lesson that I draw from that is active engagement and ministry is, by its nature, not scalable. And Jesus is fighting against the Roman Empire in a very profound philosophical way, where Jesus is asked to be the king that controls everything. And that's the understanding of power through the eyes of the Roman Empire. And he says no. Instead, I am going to have a number of disciples and we're going to be in a community together and we are going to minister to each other. But we are going to send you to Thessalonika or wherever you're going, and you're going to have your own 30 mile radius where you're going to do your ministry. And that is what it looks like. And so I mentioned people like Sister Eileen in New Orleans or Bob Patillo in Atlanta, or he was on the podcast recently, my very dear friend and co-founder of Blue Print Local Brice Butler. Brice Butler is a great influence on me and a very close friend. Bryce has been a huge influence on my thinking of community investment with and he talked about this on the podcast. But his investment in one street corner and one neighborhood has had both really good financial outcomes and really strong ripple effects into projects we're working on in places like Baltimore. It's like, oh, we did this in Louisville. Here's what we do in Baltimore. So the way the way to think about starting is if you are an investor allocating capital and you say, I care about Durham, I want to invest in Durham, figure out who is on the ground doing the work already, who has a very well thought out point of view and its values aligned with you. Or if you say I'm from Baltimore and I haven't been back to Baltimore and think about who is on the ground locally, because I think the most effective people that we invest in and with have been doing the work for years, if not decades, and will be doing the work for years, if not decades.
Luke Roush: Yeah, yeah. Well, we've seen this too. And just, you know, communities here in the US and also communities internationally, people who are really committed to present steady direction, long period of time tend to have the biggest impact because they really understand sort of the local context. So as you think about kind of wading in in that manner, how do you think about identifying who the right partners are? Kind of on the ground? We're huge fans of Bryce. His knowledge of Louisville is a great example of just kind of understanding the local context. How do you how do you find that you do that as you work in different parts of the country?
Ross Baird: I think the embrace of this on a prior podcast, I think the idea of one pocket investing or one pocket thinking is a critical precondition. And when I was raising those capital's first fund early on, I pitched a very successful Atlanta entrepreneur who actually was very strong Christian, very moral guy, very big philanthropist on investing and mission driven companies to get a young man. I got two pockets with one. I make as much money as I can with my other. And his wife were extremely generous. He is with the other. We give it all the way. And so he goes, boy, which pocket are you asking me for here? And turns out I tried to explain what I meant and he didn't get it. And it was just that was not my most success. He had a couple of those conversations. Yeah. Yeah. That was not my most successful new relationship conversation, but it did. The two pocket. One pocket has resonated with me. I mean, we for example, so we are doing a project in Richmond where we're backing a local group who are from there. They've been there for thirty years. They've acquired an entire city block in a historically distressed black neighborhood. They've organized project four years. It's going to open this summer. There will be mixed income workforce, affordable housing. Richmond's fastest growing startup is relocating its headquarters, the neighborhood, which will be great for economic development. And then there's a ground floor. There will be a food hall for local food entrepreneurs, nine men and women from the neighborhood who have always wanted to start a restaurant or a food truck. They'll have space to do it. The financial engineering to do a food hall for local entrepreneurs, a headquarters for a great local company, and affordable housing is way more complicated. Even more complicated than if we just wanted to build a nice cookie cutter apartments that didn't have any kind of affordability or community, but the person leading the project is from their lives. They're so deeply committed making. And for him, all of these things flow together. To have a healthy community, you need to have a mix of rents. If the place is going to be worth living, it's much better to have the local guy making barbecue than Dunkin Donuts or some kind of commodity. And I think when you get into business and impact, there is a false sense of trade off that if you are more intentional about your values and what you want to show up with your leaving something on the table, I think if you're more intentional about your values, what you're going to do is better. And I think this is why investing locally is so important in the abstract. You don't see it, but when you put money into something locally, you have to live with the outcome every day for good or for bad. And a lot of the problems with our economy is people are short term thinkers and don't see long term externalities and the long term externalities of a really bad project, if it's in your neighborhood, like you're going to feel that much more, you're going to work harder to make it an awesome and redemptive project, because living with it every day will be a joy. Yes.
Luke Roush: Yeah. Well, I'm from Richmond, so I love the fact that you're doing something there is in Churchill or what part of the
Ross Baird: Manchester south side of the river. So, yeah. And that's be not a lot of investment has gone there, but it's a very cool project
Henry Kaestner: and it's like this emphasis a lot on local investments. And it's amazing that you've got a project going on in Baltimore where I'm from, and Richmond where it looks from. It makes me think about for whatever reason over the last half hour as we've been talking, it makes me think about first to Jerusalem, then to some area and then to the ends of the earth. And so there's some sense of locality like right behind, you know, this comes out of Jerusalem. So first here, then summer. And there's a progression that includes this kind of a both in both local and then overseas. But there's a sequence there. And I think that that's really key. Also touch on something that Louis and I both have seen in our investment careers, which is the importance of local capital. Now, there's a little bit different application here because you're doing things in America. Look, of course, has much more experience overseas. He started the sovereigns in cofounding Sovereign's Capital. He moved his family over to Indonesia. And one of the things that we found that was most successful was being able to invest with local partners. And without that, we would have been completely sunk. But with it, we've been able to have extraordinary returns to the fund, which we're very grateful for. But if I was going to go back to something other than divine providence as to why that has been successful, it's finding local partners, local skin in the game, if you will. So you are not living in Richmond, you're not living in Baltimore, you're not living in Louisville or New Orleans. US a little bit about that. For somebody listening to the podcast saying, how do I go about that? I think I get that intellectually. But how do you do it?
Ross Baird: Yeah, I mean, I think a huge part of investing is translation. And so the name blueprint is very intentional. We do not show up. I'll give you an example. We've made an investment in Houston, which is workforce affordable housing, right by the Texas Medical Center, Texas Medical Center, a huge driver, biggest economic success story going on in Houston. The average employee think of a nurse or a frontline staffer has more than an hour commute. It's not affordable for the young people who work there to live nearby there. So workforce housing right next door to Texas Medical Center, huge economic development priority for Houston. You go to Baltimore, there's plenty of affordable housing. There's a lot of Baltimore. The first investment we made was in the redevelopment of Penn Station, the Amtrak station, which is one hundred years old, historic landmark connected to DC, connected to New York, and connectivity to the economy and commercial activity is a much bigger priority in Baltimore. That's kind of going pretty well in Houston. And so we didn't show up to Baltimore or Houston and say, hey, everybody, we read a book about Baltimore. Here's our idea for how to help Baltimore. We did a lot of sitting and listening and waiting for projects. And in both the cases in the Houston project and the Baltimore project, there are local people from there who have been working on those projects for a while, who led and where the investment capital behind it. The biggest challenge that the entrepreneur or the developer or the visionary in Louisville or Fort Collins, however, has often is translating what they're doing to the capital markets. And I think a good investor is a translator of value. So if you are investing in mission driven businesses in Indonesia, the average person with money in the US would be like, why would you ever do that? How will I make money? Whereas if you've been on the ground in Indonesia and village capital, about half of our portfolio is in emerging markets. I've been to Indonesia in many places like it for many years. It's obvious on the ground that there's a ton of value, so. Translating value from where the capital markets are to where Main Street, literally or figuratively, is, is hugely broken, I think being a good investor means doing that. And so what we do and I think to give you a how does someone get started? I guess the question to ask is, what are your goals? Are your goals hyper local? If you live in Greenville, South Carolina, and you want to make an immediate difference on Greenville, figuring out who in Greenville is working on a compelling, mission driven project to bring a premium, because there's an interesting project called The Chapel by a guy named Matt McFeely, who you should have on the podcast. He's a wonderful guy. He's building affordable housing event, space, commercial corridor in a distressed neighborhood in Greenville. Even if you don't have a million dollars to invest in Matt's project, maybe you could, as part of building an intentional community, locate your business or your nonprofit with the communities trying to build. Maybe you could send him referrals of people who could go there. There are ways that you can tangibly help with projects. That's one way to I think the other than to say Henry is taking a step back outside of what you do in your day to day life, finding random people and figuring out how to help them look at what your money is already doing in the world and see if it reflects your values. So I would bet, for instance, the average resident of Greenville, South Carolina, spends more than 30 percent of their income on housing. It's one of the most unaffordable cities in the country, per capita income. And also I know this from trying to invest in Greenville. There's a lack of investment capital interested in Greenville, even though it's a thriving city, mainly because the real estate funds of Wall Street view Greenville as a third tier kind of podunk southern town. And why would we ever invest there? Now, I would bet that the pension funds of the teachers who live in Greenville are invested in Wall Street firms that are investing in loft apartments in Brooklyn, in Miami. And so the people of Greenville, whether or not you're rich, your money is in some ways making the problem worse because it's being run through Wall Street without a values lens. So looking at if you're wealthy, good for you. You have a lot of say over where your money goes, even if you're not wealthy, asking questions around what is your money doing in the world and what are the problems you see in your community and how can you make different decisions with your money no matter the size of your pocketbook? Those are really important questions to ask.
Luke Roush: So I just want to double click on that, because I think it's such a good point about the dislocation between Greenville pensioners and their capital going to New York and then somehow just kind of never finding a way back to kind of round trip back into the community where they operate and maybe just speak. Is that part of kind of one pocket versus two pocket kind of gospel of abundance versus scarcity like?
Ross Baird: Oh, yeah, I think I think about this all the time. I mean, I think about 30 to 40 years ago, this started happening. But Wall Street figuratively went to places like Greenville and Durham and Tulsa and said, we know how to run money. You keep doing your thing, send us your money and we'll send you seven percent a year and don't ask any questions. And then those firms started doing things like buying and merging the major employers of Tulsa and Greenville and laying people off. I mean, you could say if Ford or GM, six ships, seven thousand jobs overseas, that's great for Ford and GM stockholders who might live in Dearborn, Michigan. But if you're a Dearborn, Michigan, would you rather have seven thousand more jobs in your community or would you rather have 12 cents rise in your stock holdings, which has a lot less? So this detachment and I think this goes back to real spiritual questions around power and agency, this detachment of your own money and your own agency and who's making decisions has been has been harmfully destructive, I think, for well, in
Luke Roush: somewhat amazingly, you know, in part borne out of a desire to protect consumers. A lot of the Consumer Financial Protection Act actually eliminates the ability for people to invest within their own community because it all has to go into publicly held stocks, which then pushes you in that direction. So it's actually over the last 20 or 30 years, I think it's become more difficult for the mass affluent or even to sort of the mass of humanity to be able to direct their capital into their own community.
Ross Baird: Yeah, I mean, it's really it's really interesting that Indiegogo, the crowdfunding site, the founder, tells this story all the time about how the Statue of Liberty was actually originally crowd funded by citizens of New York. I mean, this great American icon, there was a movement in New York to say, we want to say we're welcoming. We want to you know, this is the first thing people see when they come to America. And the people of New York passed the hat and put in a couple of dollars and built the Statue of Liberty. And so if you are a pensioner or a schoolteacher or a twenty two year old recent college graduate. And you have some vision of what you want to invest in in Greenville or New York. It's extremely difficult.
Henry Kaestner: I thought it was the French, I thought the French, out of their benevolence and open heart and love for all things American, just gave it to us.
Ross Baird: Well, there was some compensation for it.
Henry Kaestner: Oh, we pay them. Yeah. Oh, that story's getting twisted. I'm not going to eat French fries anymore. OK, I want to ask you a question that we're starting to ask all the guests that are coming on this show now, sometimes live on air and sometimes not. But it's something that's a big topic for both Luke and I and the team here, which is the biblical message of generosity. And in my story, I had my born again again moment when I came to understand how giving might really change my life by bringing me into the work that God was doing in the world. Talk to us a little bit about the way that you give and how you think about it, because I know you've thought this out and it's consistent with how you invest. But how do you and your wife think about giving?
Ross Baird: First of all, the benefit of Google is I just Googled the Statue of Liberty story so our listeners have the right facts. The French gave us the statue. The crowdfunding was for the pedestal and oh, which was extremely expensive because it's a big statue. So we didn't sorry. The people of New York built a pedestal for the statue.
Henry Kaestner: It's a very nice pedestal. It's the best pedestal I've ever seen. So that is interesting. So I can still eat my French fries.
Ross Baird: You can sell your French fries and feel good about local investing when you see. Good job. So how do we get I mean, I think that the invention of the spreadsheet is one of the most seriously harmful things that has ever happened, because I think there are spiritual and non-financial benefits or harms to everything that we do. And I think that to say I give X and it does. Well, I think one thing that my wife and I have started doing in the last few years is turned our giving into a conversation and a practice within our marriage. We actually have a tradition of doing our annual giving in like a date night on New Year's Eve. But we talk through what do we value, what do we care about? Last night of the year, a couple of years ago, our kid was up late. We didn't get around to 11, 11. So start earlier in the night if you're going to do this. But, you know, we thought over the last year about all the pain is happy in the world and how grateful we are for our family. And also all of us living across the US have spent a lot more time closer to home in our family. And so as part of our giving, we thought, what are things happening close to home for our family members that we value and they value? And if we make a donation to that, it will be a way to honor my brother, my sister, and also speak to our values of being in your community is something that's fundamentally productive. So, for example, my sister lives in Austin, Texas. We gave to the Austin Food Bank because Austin's a city with a lot of growth and a lot of inequality and a lot of food security. My brother Henry, who you mentioned, lives in Durham, and he was involved in starting a bail fund that's been a hugely important driver of criminal justice reform in North Carolina, started a nonprofit bail fund and we gave to the nonprofit bail fund in honor of Hindry. And I think, you know, the conversations around why are we doing this and not that. One of our biggest donations was the city of Alexandria, Virginia, where we live. This nonprofit just built a really, really nice, very large homeless shelter about ten blocks from our house. And we walk and drive by it all the time. And we didn't know anything about it, but we for not ever having visited, we gave them a large sum of money for us because being able to contribute to something down the street that was extremely meaningful meant meant a lot.
Luke Roush: That's wonderful. I love the idea of what that demonstrates to your family also is that you're plugged in to what matters to them. And it's a great way to demonstrate that, you know, how you're getting. We always like to close out each episode just by hearing a little bit of what God is teaching you right now. So what have you found in God's word that has stuck with you recently?
Ross Baird: I think more than a year into the pandemic, I think I am just hearing from friends. Family for everyone is just so exhausted. And it is everyone's in kind of a malaise and it's a really challenging time. About a month ago, our very, very beloved family dog died and it was just like the worst thing to happen in a really difficult year. Her name was Greg. She was the best dog that will ever live. And I think I was way more broken up about it than I anticipated. I mean, I like crying like a baby. And she was seven and she had aggressive cancer. It was really, really, really sad. And I was talking with one of my best friends from grad school who his father died unexpectedly in the last month. And he was very close to his father and obviously very broken up about it. And I didn't even I wasn't even like, yeah, that's nothing. My dog, just that I was like, I hear you're suffering and I understand a lot and I pray for you every morning. And I was like, it is no comparison, but I'm really sad about my dog, too. And he said something that he's a very religious guy. And he said, all of life is suffering. And it actually, you know, I actually feel like I can process what I'm going through with you because you're suffering with something, too. And that matters a lot. And the verse that resonates with me. This is Second Corinthians one three. Praise be to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. There are probably very few people who have had an amazing and stress free year. I think that we are all suffering in big and little ways with a really massive disruption to our lives. But I think God is speaking to me a lot about kind of processing my own suffering and figuring out how to find comfort with. The Lord and also I am feeling called to try and identify suffering and others probably more proactively than I would just because of what's going on. And I think the idea of this in some ways goes back to the local theme. I mean, we're meant to worship in community. We're meant to suffer in community. We're meant to rejoice in community. One of the most deadly effects of the covid pandemic, I think, has been chronic loneliness. So it God is really speaking to me to to identify and call out what I am struggling with and what I need comfort with and also what other people in my life might be struggling with. It might be comfort with, too. And it's been an amazing spiritual conversation.