Omidyar Network has announced the launch of a new focus area within its Reimagining Capitalism program: Corporations, Capital Markets, and the Common Good.

The philanthropy will invest at least $10 million over three years in support of efforts to implement new models and policies designed to reshape the rules that govern markets so investors, corporate decision makers, and businesses are incentivized to contribute to the common good, and stakeholders are empowered to hold companies accountable for their impact on society. Initial efforts will focus on three areas: reorienting corporate governance to balance the interests of workers, customers, and communities and better measure companies' positive and negative social and environmental impacts; curbing pressures from equity capital markets that reinforce short-termism and benefit speculative actors at the expense of stakeholders and society; and bolstering efforts by institutional investors to demand stronger corporate accountability and performance on stakeholder, societal, and environmental issues.

Initial grant recipients include B Lab, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Americans for Financial Reform, the Shareholder Commons, United4Respect, and the Value Reporting Foundation.

"Our current model of capitalism is failing," said Chris Jurgens, a director in the Reimagining Capitalism program, who will lead the Corporations, Capital Markets, and the Common Good focus area. "We need to shift toward an economic system in which markets incentivize businesses to contribute to the common good, and simultaneously curb the pressures that drive negative outcomes for people and planet. That's exactly what we, and our grantees, are focused on doing."

"As an organization founded by the creator of eBay, we absolutely believe that business can be a force for good. But too often, markets do not deliver the outcomes we want because the rules that govern them reward decisions that generate financial returns for shareholders without regard to their impact on society," said Omidyar Network CEO Mike Kubzansky. "Through Corporations, Capital Markets, and the Common Good, we seek to change the current economic paradigm by changing the fundamental rules of how markets and businesses operate."

(Photo credit: Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility)