Michael Sauvante, Chairman and Executive Director

Expertise: Chief Architect of the Sustainable Communities Framework

Michael has over 47 years experience in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds.

Within the for-profit world, Michael Sauvante brings over 30 years of experience in founding and running more than a half dozen companies, mostly in Silicon Valley, beginning in 1977. He is an expert in new venture creation, also within mature companies including pioneering work at HP Labs, and has long been a progressive thinker in the field of sustainability, corporate social and environmental behavior, and corporate responsibility. Michael also has a deep understanding of general corporate law, corporate securities law, banking, and tax law.

Following those 30+ years in the for profit world, Michael switch to the non-profit world. For the past 16+ years, Michael elected to take all that for-profit experience and redirect it to benefiting humanity and the world, by first forming an economic development think tank, called National Commonwealth Group Inc. (NCG), and then in 2023 forming a new entity called the Sustainable Communities Foundation (SCFndn) to deploy a comprehensive economic development program developed initially under NCG called the Sustainable Communities Framework (SCF). Michael is the chief architect of the SCF and is its principal advocate.

Recent Activities

Having architected the SCF, Michael recently determined that the country of Nigeria represented the ideal laboratory for demonstrating how the SCF can be used to broadly lift whole economies and address some of the most intractable problems facing humanity, such as food insecurity and extreme poverty. The initial stages of that program are described on the SCF Nigeria page.

As part of that Nigerian program, Michael and his colleagues formed a energy centric company in Nigeria called NrG Company Nigeria Ltd. (NrGCo) to deploy products being developed by the Wisconsin Battery Company (WinBat), another SCC project, co-developed stateside with Jeff Greene, the CEO and managing director of WinBat. WinBat is developing a new generation of eco-friendly batteries that will be manufactured and distributed both in the U.S. and likewise in Africa, via NrGCo.

Background to SCC and SCF

Beginning in 2008 Michael shifted over to the non-profit world and began conducting extensive research into economic development issues pertaining primarily to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and their critical role in the economic vitality of communities.  That research focused on getting money into the hands of SMEs through capital formation (investments) and credit facilitation (loans). It also focused on how current laws and structures often impede rather than facilitate those functions, and how disruptive new vehicles and approaches can provide the breakthroughs necessary to lift those businesses and their local communities. Some of that work was used by the White House to help contribute to the passage of the JOBS Act in 2012.

Likewise, Michael actively engaged in the banking industry, in particular in connection with public banking. That led to his role as an advisor to the Public Banking Institute and writing and speaking on the topic. In 2012 he was one of the keynote speakers at the Public Banking In America Conference, presenting his work titled “Foreclosures, Eminent Domain and Public Banking“. He also published a book on using eminent domain to rescue homeowners facing foreclosure titled “Eminent Domain: How to use eminent domain to stop foreclosures, rescue homeowners and save communities” found on Amazon. More recently that has led to a deep dive into credit unions, who for over a hundred years have existed to primarily “serve the underserved.”

Michael’s research into local economic development issues has resulted in his writing and publishing an extensive number of articles on banking, securities, currencies and related topics  found here, here and under his full bio linked below. This effort led to an in-depth exploration of the use of alternative currencies for economic development, resulting in his article Money–A Time for Change, exploring how such currencies can serve as the underlying mechanism to comprehensively bootstrap local economies, especially stressed economies.

From that knowledge he developed a system called the Sustainable Communities Framework (SCF) for harnessing those ideas into an integrated regional economic development program, introduced in this document. And as this document explains, the SCF program very closely maps to all the elements of the Green New Deal (GND), including job creation; small business growth and development; income and wealth disparities; climate change and other environmental issues; infrastructure, housing and energy issues; local farming and food; municipalities, schools, hospitals and other not-for-profit service organizations. The one key difference is that the SCF can be implemented locally now, without waiting for Congress and massive federal funding.

The SCF entails teaming with a number of other entities described under the section titled Implementation of the SCF. That program is designed to organize and implement the SCF program in a region. He and his colleagues at Sustainable Communities Foundation initially planned to launch a pilot project based on the SCF in Puerto Rico, introduced in this document. That effort attracted attention in other regions, but because of pandemic restrictions, we elected to redesign the system to make it available to all 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, as introduced here, and now in Nigeria as described above.

Along the way this effort has also attracted the attention of leadership with the Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR), at Middlesex University in London. Middlesex hosts a top tier business school, of which CEEDR is the leading research centre specializing in local economic development, small business financing and support policy, and social enterprise. CEEDR has awarded Michael an Honorary Research Fellowship in recognition of his pioneering work in the field of local economic development and business financing based on his decade+ research and work in this field. More recently he joined the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity as a Research Fellow.

Summary of Previous Activities

For Michael’s full bio and a comprehensive list of his other writings, visit scf.green/michael-sauvante.