How Corporations Can Reduce Global Poverty

My career of several decades as a senior executive in the IT industry with GE, Honeywell and others provided me with a solid business perspective of the economy. My six years as President & CEO of Unity, a global spiritual organization, gave me the great gift of spiritual growth and a strong spiritual view of the economy. This integral combination led me to how spirituality plays into the economy, not just the economy that professors and politicians exhort, but the economy that every family in America and elsewhere discuss at the evening dinner table after long days of work. While spirituality is a tent pole in the lives of most people, it is the most under utilized resource in this most modern and still powerful economy in the world. It is akin to us sitting on an ocean of oil without ever thinking about drilling for it, even as the structure of everything around us seems to be falling apart.

I know the importance of embracing our spiritual and business resources in terms of improving the efficiency of our economy and the happiness of everyone involved.

Corporations around our world are a massive resource for improving our global humanity at all levels: peace, education, affluence (water, food, clothing, housing, healthcare, etc.), community and communications and ecology. While many businesses large and small do contribute greatly in terms of their products and services, too often these do not reach those who cannot afford them.

Remember that two-thirds of the world's population lives on less than $2 U.S. per day, and remember that corporations also have a monetary resource that can directly contribute to improving the daily lives of these people.

If the 10,000 largest corporations in the world were to contribute 1% of their annual net profits directly to global humanitarian causes, this would provide approximately $32 billion per year ... without having to pass the funds through inefficient governmental handling. Imagine what this sum might be if all corporations and businesses were to participate!

While this idea might bend the minds of some boards of directors, shareholders, owners, and other stakeholders in businesses around the world, the good done for those who vitally need this resource is immense. And, as we deeply know in the truth of spiritual laws, the return to those who give is multiplied and magnified, always.

So, let all businesses in an elevated, collective consciousness give a small fraction of their monetary resources to support human causes for the human spirit.

- Tom Zender