Values-aligned investing, mission investing, and PRIs

Communty Foundation Field Guide to Impact Investing

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Mission Investors Exchange

Community foundations serve people who share a common interest—improving the quality of life in their local areas. Given their place-based focus and commitment to activate resources to meet their missions, more and more community foundations are adding impact investments to their toolbox. Unlike grants, impact investments intend to generate both targeted social or environmental benefit and a financial return. To… Read More

The New Family Philanthropy: Investing for social and environmental change

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Lisa Hagerman

The impact investing marketplace is gaining traction—investment vehicles now span asset classes, infrastructural improvements are enhancing transparency and investor confidence, and social enterprise is maturing with a new generation of entrepreneurs. On the investor side, industry growth is being driven by large institutional investors such as public sector pension funds, banks, and private foundations. Today, we are also seeing a growing movement by families who seek to realize their core values, and effect societal change, through their family assets… Read More

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Program-Related Investments Portfolio

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Arabella Advisors

From the Executive Summary: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Program-Related Investments (PRIs) have generated modest financial returns for the Foundation, contributed to investees’ financial sus- tainability and generated positive social returns on a variety of fronts. Individual invest- ments have helped organizations promote asset ownership, extend access to products and services on more equitable terms and in new ways to previously excluded… Read More

Impact Investing and Family Philanthropy: a One-Two Punch

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Julia Balandina Jaquier

Interest in impact investing among wealth holders, their foundations, and family offices continues to grow. As a means for providing capital to for-profit ventures with a social mission, impact investing is increasingly viewed as an effective solution for combining the philanthropic aspirations of wealthy families with their financial objectives… Read More

The nonprofit starvation cycle

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Ann Goggins Gregory, Don Howard

A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for general operating support for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs. … Read More