There’s a lot of hand-wringing in the investment world today about the meaning of sustainable investing. Most asset managers have some sort of ESG initiative underway but they struggle to define it and why they’re doing it. Advisors want to offer it to clients but are often unsure how to talk about it. End investors […]
GreenMoney Journal
GreenMoneyJournal.com - encourages and promotes the awareness of sustainable business, investing and consumer resources. @CliffGMJ
Visit the Invest With Values - Resource Directory to discover resources, information and organizations that will help you align your money and values.
How Positive “Impact Bonds” Build on Strong Foundations
Praxis Mutual Fund shareholders expect us to invest with their values in mind. The Praxis Impact Bond Fund turned 25 this year and through the first half of the fund’s tenure we diligently focused on screening out holdings contrary to those shared values. In 2006, our eyes were opened by a public bond offering that […]
A Seed to Stalk Future: Financing America’s Grain Economy
The idea of “nose-to-tail” dining, shorthand for using as much of an animal as possible, has no field-grown counterpart. What about the grains that make up so much of our agricultural production and diet? Where is our “seed to stalk?” Crafting a Sustainable Grain Cycle In Maine, a collective of innovative businesses is making sure […]
GreenMoney’s Videos Issue on Sustainable Business, Impact Investing and Environmental Sustainability
GreenMoney’s annual all-Videos issue (May 19) is now online. Check out the lineup of selected short videos on Sustainable Business, Impact Investing and Environmental Sustainability. All here – https://GreenMoney.com The Videos include: • Connecting the Road of the Future: The Ray Anderson Hwy Georgia is a top state for business with its unparalleled accessibility and infrastructure. Through […]
Women and Sustainable Investing: Driving Assets and Benefitting From a Gender-Lens Approach
Women are Increasingly Driving Asset Growth Women are and will continue to be critical to the ability to move forward investments in sustainability-focused products and strategies. According to a Morgan Stanley study, 84 percent of women expressed interest in sustainable investing, compared to 67 percent of men. Similarly, research from Moxie Future found that 83 […]
Women in the Field of Finance
This will be my fifth year contributing to this GreenMoney issue dedicated to Women and Investing. In the past I have discussed studies showing that women are good, that is, above average, investors; I have discussed my discomfort with making gender the only lens through which people make investment decisions, but I have not yet […]
The Year Wall Street Got Sustainable Investing
The latest insights from Amy Domini On October 23, 2018 the Financial Times published an article stating that Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, had announced that “sustainable investing will be a core component for how everyone invests in the future.” He further explained that sustainable investing did not lead to […]
ESG Investing Outlook for 2019
Incorporating Environmental, Social and Governance factors Amidst all of the important improvements in ESG data, all of the thoughtful research reports, and all innovative new investment options, another, deeper trend has taken root. As we turn towards 2019, we see increasing evidence that systems thinking is becoming more prevalent and influential throughout corporations and the […]
Decarbonize, Decentralize and Democratize: Investing in a More Just Energy Future
By Jess Brooks, Chief Development Officer, Sunwealth SOURCE: GreenMoney Journal DESCRIPTION: The existing extractive energy economy isn’t working. Our dependence on coal, oil and gas contributes to global warming, the physical destruction of communities and pollution-related health issues which impact all of us – and disproportionately affect low-income people and communities of color. It’s not […]
50 Farms and No Regrets
Iroquois Valley Farms Organic Farmland REIT Iroquois Valley Farms has reached a milestone: This spring we added the 50th farm to our portfolio. Our farmland REIT — honored as a “Best for the World” company from B Labs — provides secure land tenure for 35 farm families working nearly 9,000 acres of farmland. More families […]
Engage the Chain: An Investor Guide to Engaging the Food Sector on Sustainability Risks
In April, Greenpeace released video footage showing that a palm oil supplier for major food companies, the Hayel Saeed Anam Group was destroying large swaths of rainforest in Indonesia, despite concerted efforts by industry stakeholders to stop forest destruction in palm oil supply chains. The repercussions for Hayel Saeed Anam Group are still unfolding, but recent […]
Should Your Investment Strategy Incorporate a Climate Risk Discount?
Consider these three recent developments: California emerged from drought in April 2017, fewer companies reported impacts associated with water scarcity, and the average freshwater intensity of companies in the MSCI ACWI Index dropped by 15 percent between 2015 and 2016. While these are positive short term signals for investors concerned with water scarcity, 2017 was […]
Providing Millennials with the Financial Planning They Need
There are two common but differing opinions about millennials floating around society. The first is that our generation is lazy, and we feel “entitled.” The second is that we are going to change the world because we don’t settle for following in the set paths that have been established before us. As a millennial that […]
Millennials and Money: We are Not as Different as You Think
The financial services industry is a bit obsessed with trying to understand the next generation of investors – the notorious millennials. And for good reason – millennials represent the largest generation in history with a spending power of $1.5 trillion and growing[1]. Many millennials are well into their wealth accumulation phase and have already begun […]
Local Investing for Impact: A New Tool for Place-Focused Foundations
After decades of working at the intersection of community development, philanthropy and community economic development, we see a significant shift in how philanthropic assets are being used to build vibrant, prosperous communities. More and more place-focused foundations are seeking to complement their grant-making with local investments to create greater impact in their own communities. There’s […]
Investing Close to Home
with the Homewise Community Investment Fund By Laura Altomare, CFRM, Director of Communications and Development, Homewise Since our founding in 1986, we’ve helped over 14,000 households become more financially educated, 3,600 become homeowners, 2,100 make energy-efficient home improvements and emergency repairs, 600 refinance to more affordable mortgages, and we have built over 600 high-quality affordable […]
Community Impact Investing
From affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization, to small business development Community Capital Management, Inc. (CCM) is a registered investment advisor, headquartered in Weston, Florida, with offices in Boston, Massachusetts and Charlotte, North Carolina. The firm manages just over $2.4 billion, $2.1 billion of which is in the CRA Qualified Investment Fund (CRA Fund). “CRA” stands […]
The ImpactAssets Handbook for Investors
Practical guide to impact investing lays out how individual investors, family offices, financial advisors and foundations can generate social and environmental value through capital investing. With greater demand than ever for investments that provide social and environmental benefits as well as financial returns, ImpactAssets announced in December the release of The ImpactAssets Handbook for Investors: Generating […]
SRI Is Growing up Right Before Our Very Eyes
What was once considered the limited domain of environmental and social activists has grown to become an established force in the capital markets that should be ignored at your own risk. The space is expanding and evolving at an accelerating rate, and this trend shows no signs of turning. Over the past few years, we […]
My 2018 Outlook by Amy Domini, Founder, Domini Impact Investments
As simplistic as it is, I believe that when attempting to predict the market action for the year ahead, it is necessary to first review the secular environment. Over the past century, our stock market has tended to take a staircase steps approach to progress. We see roughly 15 years of flat followed by roughly […]
It’s Monday Morning – Integrating Money, Business and Your Spiritual Life
It’s Monday morning, the beginning of a new week. The day starts with greeting the sunrise from our garden that faces to the East. A few minutes of taking in the energy that provides us so many benefits every day, and then some meditation, establishes the foundation for all else. Next is a stroll through […]
Sustainable Investing: From Possibilities to Probabilities
Guest Blog by Joe Keefe, President/CEO, Pax World Funds When industry leaders look at the future of sustainable investing, our tendency is to pat ourselves on the back for the tremendous progress we have made and make optimistic predictions about the wonderful progress that still lies ahead. While not wanting to be the skunk at […]
Reflections From a Field Builder: The Next 25 Years of SRI Investing
The Unstoppable Growth of Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing by Lisa Woll, CEO, US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment While offering the standard disclaimer that past performance is no guarantee of the future, I nevertheless offer some predictions for, and reflections about, the future of sustainable and impact investing. The field has […]
The SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing is November 1-3 in San Diego
The SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing, is the industry’s seminal event. The 28th annual conference is right around the corner. Thought leaders, investors, and investment professionals from all corners of the Sustainable, Responsible, Impact (SRI) investing universe convene to gain and share knowledge and strategies that align financial performance with positive change. Conference […]
LOCUS Impact Investing is Empowering Foundations To Build Prosperous, Vibrant Communities
New consulting, financial advisory and services organization offers comprehensive solutions to help foundations unlock new sources of capital, generating more impact in local economies Leading community development financial institution (CDFI) Virginia Community Capital (VCC) and the nationally recognized Center for Rural Entrepreneurship (CRE) announced in June the launch of LOCUS Impact Investing (LOCUS), a new […]
The Next Quarter Century’s Organic Marketplace: Insights from Stonyfield Farm’s Gary Hirshberg
In 1977, during the heyday of the emerging “alternative energy” movement, I attended a solar greenhouse conference where I remember one of our little tribe’s pioneers opined about how much less exciting the solar “revolution” was going to be when it finally went mainstream. “I know what’s going to happen,” architect Steve Baer of Zomeworks […]
The Next 25 Years – Big Picture Thinking by Amy Domini, CFA
New article by SRI pioneer Amy Domini, founder, Domini Impact Investments Responsible investing momentum is strong. For me, and for many of my generation, the future is clear: we are well on our way towards the installation of a vitally important system-level force for good, one that will protect future generations, indeed the planet itself. We […]
The Future of SRI – Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing
by Matt Patsky, CEO of Trillium Asset Management Eight years ago I received the call asking me to consider joining Trillium Asset Management as CEO. Since that time, we have seen more interest than ever in the field of sustainable investing from a wide variety of institutions, mainstream money managers, and families often driven by […]
GreenMoney’s 25 Year Journey – Influencing Capital and Corporations
The inside story on the award-winning publication from its founder by Cliff Feigenbaum, founder and managing editor, GreenMoney Journal and GreenMoney.com Twenty-five years. Is that possible? Have I been publishing the GreenMoney Journal for 25 years? When I realized that 2017 was upon us, and that 25 years had passed, I knew it was time to take […]
SOIL – Slow Opportunities for Investing Locally
by Woody Tasch, founder, Slow Money I often refer to Slow Money as “the CSA of investing.” As with community-supported agriculture, our efforts revolve around informal, direct relationships and shared risk. Slow Money funding is flowing in a variety of ways in dozens of communities across the United States (and a few in Canada and France) — peer-to-peer […]
A Guide to Sustainable Farmland Investing
Healing People and the Planet by David Miller, co-founder and CEO, Iroquois Valley Farms We at Iroquois Valley Farms are pleased to announce a new corporate entity as we begin our 11th season of operations. In 2007 when we started the company, our idea was simple –growing healthy foods on organic soils would be good […]
How to Initiate a Local Foodshed Resilience Program
A Call to Action by Theo Ferguson; founder, Healing Living Systems and Stuart Valentine; founder, Centerpoint Investment Strategies Imagine you are seated on a patio in the Tuscan countryside. The fresh mozzarella coupled with sweet tomatoes, ripe from the warm sun, pairs beautifully with the garlic sourdough bread and crisp local wine. The setting […]
Momentum Grows for Gender Lens Investing
In the world of Sustainable and Impact Investing, few ideas have captured the imagination as quickly as Gender Lens Investing (“GLI”). In just the past few years, the number of Gender Lens solutions has grown rapidly. The premise of this approach is that every investment has a gender dimension and that understanding it uncovers […]
Envest Microfinance
Impact Investing Issuer Spotlight: Envest Microfinance Green Money Journal Interview with Jon Bishop and Laura Dreese For the past decade, for-profit microfinance company Envest Microfinance has been striving to bridge the gap between microfinance and financial markets to make access to financial services universally available. It has tapped into support from individual and institutional investors […]
How Millennials are using Data to Power the Impact Investing Movement
by Sean Tennerson, Program Officer, The Case Foundation For those of you who know the Case Foundation, we’re bullish on the impact investing movement and the power of private capital for public good. While still a relatively small market, impact investments are surging, with some seeing a trillion-dollar market potential by 2020. Against that context, […]
Vert Asset Management Launches the First Sustainable Real Estate Mutual Fund in the US
Vert Asset Management, a dedicated ESG investment manager, recently announced the launch of the Vert Global Sustainable Real Estate Fund (Ticker: VGSRX), an open-end mutual fund which seeks to achieve long-term capital appreciation. The Fund invests across the globe in publicly listed real estate investment trusts (REITs) using evidence-based environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. […]
Major Drivers and Trends in SRI Investing Growth
Sustainable Responsible Impact Investing Grows 33% in 2 Years In recent years, numerous trends have shaped the evolution and growth of SRI within US financial markets: Money managers increasingly are incorporating ESG factors into their investment analysis and portfolio construction, driven by the demand for ESG investing products from institutional and individual investors and by […]
Impact Investing in the Age of Fintech and Big Data
New impact investing platform harnesses technology, social networks, and scale to help investors, institutions and their advisors invest with purpose. The term “impact investing” as it relates to private debt and equity is nearly 10 years old, it has been a rarified concept for rank-and-file investors and even many institutions and advisors. Even those […]
Sustainable Investing and the Restoration of Community
The big news story of 2016 was the rise of Donald Trump. A very nasty campaign culminated in the election of a completely unsuitable and unqualified person to serve as President of the United States, in my opinion. There were signs that this was coming: the Brexit vote in the U.K., the refugee crisis in […]
Transformation at the Crossroads: Impact Investing in South Africa
South Africa’s Lessons for Impact Investors by Donna Katzin, Executive Director, Shared Interest, a social investment fund that mobilizes the financial and human resources of South Africa’s lowest income communities of color. Since 1994, Shared Interest has helped to create more than 180,000 new small and micro-enterprises, 1.9 million jobs, and 120,000 affordable homes – […]
Thoughts on Money, Meaning and Mission
How ESG, CSR and SRI Can Have Real Impact One of the most stubborn problems facing practitioners of responsible investing is the name game. Despite the fact that the practices of any one firm are almost universally accepted practices at all firms, we ourselves choose to confuse the public with a myriad of names. […]
The Smart Bet is on a Clean Energy Future
Power systems and the investment landscape are changing. Both at home and around the world, the ways that we produce and consume electricity and arrange fuel transportation are evolving. The many drivers of this transformation include public policy, consumer trends and demands, business models, and technological innovation. The ultimate outcome of the changes remains […]
Getting Our Hands Dirty: What’s Next in Sustainable Agriculture
Why Investing in Sustainable Agriculture is Vital to our Health and our Wealth Welcome to the new “Investing in Sustainable Agriculture” issue of the award-winning GreenMoney Journal. The issue feature numerous insightful articles on the current state of and the future of Agriculture. The four top articles are: • Organic Economics In A World […]
A New Look at CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility (All-Videos issue)
To begin its 24 year of publishing on sustainable business and investing – the award-winning ‘GreenMoney Journal’ launches its first-ever all Videos issue on “CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility” (May 2016). The videos featured Biomimicry expert Janine Benyus; Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard; Casey Gerald of MBA’s Across America; Marine Biologist and explorer Sylvia Earle; Former VP Al Gore; Judith […]
Are You Ready to Invest in Women?
By Kathleen McQuiggan, Senior Vice President of Global Women’s Strategies for Pax World Management LLC and Managing Director of Pax Ellevate Management LLC Imagine walking into your first Wall Street job, fresh out of college, ready to take on the world. That was me twenty-five years ago when I boldly entered the world of […]
The Conundrum of Women and Investing
Are Women Better Investors then Men? By Amy Domini, founder of Domini Social Investments and partner in The Sustainability Group As I was working on this article, the old Buffalo Springfield lyrics kept buzzing through my mind. “There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear.” The more I looked at actual research […]
Women and Millennials Drive Growth in Responsible Investing
How the Transfer of Wealth is Transforming Wall Street by Lynne Ford, Executive Vice President, Calvert Investments Three important trends are already changing the asset management industry, and are poised to become even more important in the coming years. First, based on their spending and earning power, women now represent a growth market bigger […]
Millennials, Money and Meaning
Green Money Journal’s February 2016 Issue A Generation Forging a New Economic Path By Guest Editor Patrick Davis, Community Reinvestment Fund and formerly with Calvert Foundation The Millennial Generation has been a source of much debate in recent years. Commentators seem to disagree passionately about what the ultimate legacy of this generational cohort will be. Will […]
Financial Markets and the Making of Climate Resilience
The Huge Capital Shift That No One Saw Coming The year I turned 26, scientists measured atmospheric concentrations of Carbon at 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history. According to former NASA scientist James Hansen, “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which […]
The Regenerative Generation – A Young Rockefeller Speaks
The Regenerative Generation by Christopher Lindstrom, Co-founder of Catalyst Bioenergy Group and the great-great grandson of John D. Rockefeller As I write this COP21 meetings are over, having culminated with a commitment to keep the planet’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the path to achieve this goal is still vague with many questions […]