If there’s one thing this Neknomination mania has reminded us, is that nothing deflects as well as a good old charity shout-out. Why spill lager on your favourite sweater when you can humbly display your brotherly love and tie it in neatly with your cleverly sculpted brand a la Nandos…

Charity and giving it all back is in fact now big business. Or a part of it – particularly once you’re successful. As you’ll no doubt be aware, Messrs Gates and Buffet effectively fight (and defeat) worldwide polio, TB, you name it, with prodigious slices of their personal fortunes. Admirable – but manageable given their circumstances.

So how do we as South Africans give back? Yes, the taxman taketh, and we agree that’s quite possibly more than enough most of the time since we’re never entirely sure where exactly he giveth. But is there not more we could do?

We chatted to Michael Furter, director of Newlands- based Consequence Private Wealth about what their business clients were doing to give back creatively:

It’s an interesting question given that we’ve more or less institutionalised corporate charity in this country via our BEE requirements. If you’re a corporate hoping in any way to do business with a government entity, you’ll need to be compliant at some level.

One of the compliance categories is Enterprise Development. You have to find a qualifying project and invest a percentage of your net profit into it. We think that’s worthy in our society but it’s quite tricky for most businesses to find the right projects. That’s why we’re very excited about the Cadiz Enterprise Development Fund.

It’s a no-brainer really; you simply invest into a fund they’ve created and they go out and find suitable businesses to invest into. Many of them have turned into success stories and the fund has made a good return above inflation.

Nice, well done Cadiz!.

It would make sense at this point to mention the new charity that 2oceansvibe is launching, but we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, other than to say that ONE of the foundations we will be supporting, was launched by a partner of ours. Green Futures, just outside Hermanus, was started by Michael and the team at Grootbos. They’ve set out to enrich the lives of people from the nearby townships and equip them with horticulture and life skills, sending them onward into a career in nature conservation. In this case we see the benefit of giving not just money, but the skills to MAKE money.

Something to think about.

If you like the sound of what Cadiz has to offer, click here for more.