The founder of Sackcloth & Ashes is now focused on empowering local communities and solving problems through Social Capital.

When Bob Dalton’s mother unexpectedly lost her home as a single parent, he gained a firsthand understanding of homelessness — and, though he didn’t know it at the time, one of his life’s callings.

“When my mom ended up in that situation, it changed my understanding of it because she’s the hardest-working woman that I know,” says Dalton “She has two college degrees, she managed restaurants to raise my sister and me by herself. And so, for her to end up in that situation made me realize that not everybody chooses to become homeless, but some people just need a second chance. And I wanted to do something at that point. I started calling homeless shelters to ask what they needed, and they said blankets. And that’s when I came up with the concept of starting a blanket company. And for every blanket that we sell, we’ll donate a blanket to your local homeless shelter.”

Today, Dalton runs Sackcloth & Ashes, a company that donates a blanket to a homeless shelter for every blanket it sells. All of its blankets are made of 75–100% recycled materials through partnerships with Heritage Weaving Mills in Prieto, Italy. The company has donated more than 500,000 blankets so far.

Running Sackcloth & Ashes has shown Bob how capitalism can and should be used to solve social problems, not just make profits. He sees the company as an example of “conscious capitalism” that puts people and community first.

“There’s capitalism where you’re making business decisions at the expense of humanity, and there’s the capitalism where you’re making business decisions for the sake of humanity,” says Dalton. “Right now, we’re at a crossroads in capitalism and globalism to where we have the ability to make decisions at the expense of people or for the sake of people.”

As he sees it, many solutions driven by capitalism have a local element. “Homelessness is not an international or even a national issue — it is a local issue,” says Dalton. “And so, how can we empower people to make a difference down the street from where they live — is the evolution to the One for One model that I wanted to see and incorporate.”

Globalism has expanded in the last 200 years in connection with capitalism, Dalton points out. “It was only 200 years ago that people lived and functioned and communicated within a 20-mile radius from where they lived…” he says.

He now focuses on innovating new ways to empower local communities. “The rest of my career will be dedicated to: How can we innovate by bringing back communication, local banking, finance, local journalism?” says Dalton.

To that end, Dalton is developing a new localism manifesto and is co-founder of a new social network startup called Locl that will connect people on a local level.

“The more technology, the more businesses that we can start to help empower people on a local level — [that] is probably the biggest opportunities that we have right now for innovation…” says Dalton. “We are at the top of the pendulum with globalism, and the pendulum is about to swing back right now towards a counterbalance of localism and globalism.”

You can listen to Bob’s conversation with Chris Benguhe, founder and president of the Dave Alexander Center for Social Capital and publisher of the Social Capital Insider, by clicking on the link below.