The Commonwealth Organization

The Commonwealth Organization has its origin in 1985 in a concept I called the Meta-profit organization to be created by social entrepreneurs. The intent then, as it is now, is to move the focus of business and community beyond profit as the end in mind and put forward more noble ends. This led to the publication of the first Commonwealth Paper in 1995, called The Commonwealth Organization: A New Form to Heal the Ailing Soul of the World. A condensed version of the monograph was published in The Soul of Business by New Leaders Press in 1995. Travel forward to 2012…this version is a slightly edited, but not a re-write, of the full monograph from 1995 except for one element. The one re-write, “The Commonwealth Financial Statement,” has become the “Balance Sheet for the Commons” and is a much more evolved presentation of the five sources of capital and the corresponding accountability.