The new Giving Returns

I had what is sometimes called an AHA moment last Friday talking/tweeting with Jeff Slobotski (@jjsnyc on twitter). It goes something like this:

Giving Returns could become an online community for people interested in collaborating on Social Entrepereneurial Ventures aka Creative Capitalism aka Social Ventures aka Cause Marketing or what I call Community Capitalism - businesses that integrate a giving component in their plan. But, it would be more than just a blog - a social network and profit center with profits going back to the investment in Community Capitalist projects.

The online community would allow for people to share ideas about their business and the community aspect to it. It would be completely open source so those that shared would get feedback and ideas from anyone interested. The collaboration would lead to improved ideas and utltimately could help with implementation and execution.

Giving Returns could request that any idea/business that benefitted from the community would give back to Giving Returns. One idea is that Giving Returns could become an angel fund of sorts for Community Capitalists to go to for seed capital on their ideas. Giving Returns would then take a piece of the equity in hopes of creating larger returns eventually to the fund for future investment.

Giving Returns would be a grass roots social network made up of individuals that cared about Community Capitalism and wanted to make a difference.

Questions - what type of site should it be ... blog, wiki, Ning, other?
How would we get the word out to quickly and simply?
Should it be non-profit or for-profit?
Should we promote and sell community capitalist products/services - www.tomshoes.com?
Any other feedback or thoughts?

I hope we can get some momentum around this new ideas with @jjsnyc, @dustyd, and @secos taking the lead so we can get something new out to the public soon!