Nonprofit Capital Markets

On my wish list for "topics for PCMI to rassle with" over the next few years is the idea of new forms of capital markets for nonprofits. My enthusiasm is based only on slight reading and slight familiarity with the capital structures of some for-profit corporations (leftovers from an old paralegal career), but this blog post in the Stanford Social Innovation review awoke the topic for me. Columns or blog posts based on the world of the future often cause my eyes to glaze over (and trigger a memory-loop of Conan O'Brien's old "In the year 2000" sketch), but yes, I do want google finance's experiment with nonprofits to get bigger. See also this Slate article, which specifically calls on Pew to take the lead in this initiative. or even this Slate article. Sounds like I need to call Douglas K. Smith.