The Rockefeller Foundation has contributed $500,000 to studying the feasibility of a “social stock exchange” in the United Kingdom, reports The Financial Times.

The market would allow investors to trade shares in projects that seek to preserve the environment, such as clean technology, and that promote health care, aid for the poor, or other social goals.

Such a market could begin next year if a demand exists, the newspaper reports. Rockefeller’s managing director, Antony Bugg-Levine, said, “There is a new class of rich people unhappy with the old binary system of making money with one hand and giving it away with the other.”

He said the foundation chose to test the idea in Britain because it felt the government was supportive of efforts to promote businesses with social missions.

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