While I’m Southern, I don’t claim any authority whatsoever about horses. My Kentucky interests lean more toward bourbon. But I can’t help but get excited when the three races that form the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont come around.

Like with many things, the geeks have gotten their hands on this sport, and for those who are inclined, the analysis is never-ending. There are other sports where the numbers reign supreme (think “Moneyball”), even as we must factor in those messy human elements of ego, anxiety and unexpected heroism. Horse racing has another element to drive would-be experts insane: the horses themselves.

That also makes reading up on predictions that much more fun. My favorite read is always Bloomberg’s David Papadopolous, who blends the human with the analytical. In a piece today, he lays out his picks for the Preakness. The set-up describing his long-time readership of the Daily Racing Form is wonderful: “Picking up the Form at Jimmy’s Smoke Shop — just beyond the Greyhound bus station, just before the dark alleyway — on a warm summer night in 1990 was the first step to my education in the game, much as it had been for my father decades earlier.”

What follows is a breakdown of the field, which is worth reading, for entertainment, or to educate a bet. And then he gets real, in an awesome, there’s-a-hedge-fund-manager-hidden-in-there kind of way.

“There’s still a fat gap between my 7-2 and their 6-1.
Every cent of that spread is potential alpha, every tick above 7-2 is a mistake by the gambling public that I will seek to exploit. I’ll bet Departing to win as well as in an exacta box with Orb (the “box” means that a first-second finish by those two in either order produces a winning ticket).”

It’s worth a read on a Preakness Friday.

-Jason Kelly

These arguments have a tendency to become somewhat irritating, with glib arguments that non-profits and charities would be more successful if “they were just run like businesses.” It’s a great idea, but how do you actually make that happen?

I’m reading a really interesting book by Georgia Levenson Keohane, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, called “Social Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century: Innovation Across the Nonprofit, Private and Public Sectors.” It’s a fascinating read, with lots of examples of what’s worked, and what hasn’t in an age where many are seeking to redefine what working toward social good actually means.

Keohane in one chapter zeroes in on “New Philanthropy and the Value of Evaluation.” She rightly points out that doing this effectively will not only make existing efforts more successful, but give would-be philanthropists a higher level of comfort around giving their money away.

Keohane gets to the heart of the issue by noting that measuring is not so easy when you’re talking about social good, and certainly harder than in business. “Companies are performing ‘well’ when they produce a good or service that consumers are willing to pay for. Profits are a reasonably accurate indicator of the value of that good or service…”

She turns to the world of investment and highlights a couple of familiar names to those in the business. George Roberts (the ‘R’ in KKR), started the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund more than two decades ago and was a pioneer in the notion of measuring “returns” from the fund’s work, just as he does in his commercial private-equity funds. REDF measures Social Return on Investment (SROI), an evolution of traditional ROI that’s pretty simply about how much money you gain versus how much you put in. The social piece takes into account other elements, making sense of something that’s seemingly difficult to quantify.

It uses a specific time frame (5 to 10 years, borrowing from the private equity playbook again), looks at how much it costs to support the project, then looks at the cost savings by figuring out how much, say, public assistance it prevented the government from spending.

It’s a very cool idea, the kind of thing that investors and business people can get behind in their own charitable activities. That sort of rigor also helps budding philanthropists assess the worth of charities looking to win their dollars. Keohan points out that many organizations have taken up this SROI model since REDF created it. Robin Hood — the celebrity-studded NYC charity that fights poverty — has its own version.

I’ll admit it. I love this stuff, because it takes giving into a more serious realm. And it’s how real money is thinking about philanthropy these days.

-Jason Kelly

That shameless plug aside, it did give me a chance to think about the modern Chicago. We chose to hold the summit there in part because it sits literally and figuratively in the middle of lots of crucial issues. Running through the list of its key corporations provides a scope of industries few cities can boast: United, McDonald’s, Boeing, Walgreen, Motorola, to name a few.

The city has a dynamic mayor — former congressman and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. In part through his efforts, the city proper is vibrant, with companies coming back from the suburbs. Notably, Google opted to relocate its newly acquired Motorola Mobility business into the downtown Merchandise Mart.

I thought a lot about Motorola during the trip, a company that was on my beat back in the day. I took over coverage just as the much-heralded Razr phone was debuting. That device and then-CEO Ed Zander were seen as much-needed saviors of a high-tech pioneer. (A magazine story I wrote back then started with one of my favorite opening scenes, featuring Nike’s Phil Knight and the late Geoffrey Frost, who’d worked at the shoe giant before taking the marketing helm at Motorola. That story is here.) Zander and Co. weren’t able to immediately replicate the Razr’s success and the company subsequently was broken up. How the Google-owned piece fares will be fascinating to watch.

Part of what Motorola and other local companies have going for it is a certain, well, Chicago-ness. The city has a way of doing things that distinguish it from its big-city brethren. Unlike New York, which starts and ends its days late, Chicago is up-and-at-’em in the morning, and restaurants are packed at 630 pm. And there’s the Midwestern friendliness that’s a lovely antidote to coastal attitude.

All this and more will be display in November. Art lovers, financial historians and Ferris Bueller fans alike will love the venue — the program will take place in the Chicago Stock Exchange Room at the Art Institute of Chicago.

-Jason Kelly

I have the good fortune of living adjacent to one of their most magnificent gifts — the Rockefeller State Park Preserve, located in sight of the Hudson River in Westchester County north of New York City. Spread over roughly 1,000 acres, its trails are a destination for runners and horseback riders. It’s hallowed ground, and I spend as many early mornings as I can wending my way through the park’s beauty. (Novelist and runner Ben Cheever wrote a lovely piece for Runner’s World about the park. While the story sadly doesn’t appear to be online, the photo spread is here, courtesy of the photographer).

With all the good chi Rockefeller State Park has given me, I was especially interested to see that the Rockefeller Foundation has of late turned to helping cities, specifically in preparing them to deal with disasters — those that are natural and those that are of our own doing.

Bloomberg’s Patrick Cole has a piece detailing the 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge, a grant program “to provide money, expertise and technical assistance to selected cities world-wide,” he writes.

For anyone in the tri-state area, or the Midwest, or New Orleans, or anywhere affected by tsunamis or earthquakes, this makes a huge amount of sense. What’s especially interesting is the Rockefellers’ recognition for *financial and economic* resiliency in the form of working stock markets and business continuity. Those took a big hit in the wake of Sandy last year. Going back further, New Orleans’ ability to jumpstart its tourism allowed the Big Easy to rebound in an unexpected way.

Notably, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said he’d apply to be a part of the new program, a nod to the fact that cities like his (and New York, and Tokyo, for that matter) aren’t done with these threats, despite having lived through major disasters in very recent memory.

This is a very cool idea. I’m glad the Rockefellers gave me lots of trees to run under near my little town. It makes me feel even better that they’re looking after cities I care about, too.

-Jason Kelly

Bloomberg’s Julie Johnsson has a fascinating story today about the irascible billionaire environmentalist’s unlikely partnership with Southern Company, the coal-loving power company to work on solar power.

It’s a marriage made in Atlanta networking heaven. Turner helped put the Southern city on the map by creating CNN and the TBS, an early so-called “superstation” with national reach. (Most important for me, he owned and loved the Atlanta Braves when no one else would, made them famous through the aforementioned TBS and entertained the handful of fans who actually showed up to the stadium in the 1980s with ostrich races). He’s of late become a rabid philanthropist, and loudly committed to issues around the environment.

So what the heck is doing getting into bed with Southern Company, the second-biggest utility and burner of many fossil fuels in its quest to power four Southeastern states? It’s about money and know-how, Turner lieutenant Taylor Glover says: ““We needed a partner like Southern because they brought a great understanding of the utility business, they brought a lot of the technical expertise that we didn’t have. They were credit-worthy,” Glover, CEO of Turner Enterprises and known throughout the Georgia capital as a legendary broker. “We brought reputation and land and desire. So it made for a good partnership.”

Glover, it seems, was the connective tissue for this deal, having known now-retired Southern Co. CEO David Ratliff for many years. He brought Ratliff and Turner together and while he says there was no “eureka moment,” the conversation led to Southern buying a solar facility in New Mexico. Turner and Southern have gone on to expand that portfolio in the Southwest (not part of Southern’s region).

While Southern’s customers haven’t rushed to adopt solar — nor has Southern encouraged them to — the march toward alternative sources seems inevitable, especially in sunny states.

Mike Morris, the chairman of Ohio’s American Electric Power Company, made a nice analogy to the impact of mobile devices last month in Las Vegas, according to the Bloomberg story.

“It would be silly for us to say that this will never happen, because cellphones happened,” he said. “So, you figure out how am I going to make money out of it?”

Southern and Ted Turner know a thing or two about that.

-Jason Kelly