From all sorts of perspectives, the short chapters in this book suggest approaches that governments, organisations, both private and voluntary, and individuals might take to ensure that money is used as effectively as possible to achieve social objectives. There are also suggestions for how our monetary and economic systems might be developed to facilitate this. Here I summarise some of the approaches suggested.

Changes to our financial and economic systems

• • A more transparent system would allow buying and selling to be acts of social responsibility rather than acts of self-interest. This could include making social and environmental costs explicit in pricing through introducing appropriate taxes (Jonathan Dale), or creating a price system that makes the use of natural resources explicit (Pierre Calame).

• • At the whole economy level, replace gross national product (GNP) with an index of economic welfare to make social and environmental gain as important as financial gain (Jonathan Dale).

• • By providing the information and motivation that allow ‘fullvalue’ investment decisions to be made, the total blended value of economic gain, social gain and environmental gain would be maximised (Jed Emerson).

• • Assemble better information to back up corporate social responsibility claims so that consumers know where to invest (Tony Stoller).

• • The law should be changed to create stakeholder companies rather than shareholder companies (Jonathan Dale). Firms should return value to all stakeholders, not just shareholders (Jed Emerson).

• • Expand the concept of fair trade to include not only benefit to the consumer and producer, but also take account of costs to society and the environment. At a more macro level, make trade relations fairer in this sense by ending agricultural subsidies in developed countries (Jonathan Dale).

• • Begin a national debate on relative pay and rewards in order to provide the climate for slowing the relative income growth of the rich and increasing the relative growth of the poor (Polly Toynbee, Moraene Roberts). Introduce sectoral wage councils to set sectoral minimum wages above the national minimum wage that are as high as possible (Polly Toynbee).

• Government action

• • Create a giving culture by going beyond current attempts to make charitable giving more attractive in tax terms.