Monday, August 17, 2015
Heron Foundation's Clara Miller Remarks on the Effects of Impact Investing
Let's say that you budget a certain amount of money to give to charity every year, based on a philanthropy plan. That might be optimistic but let's start there. That money could come from a savings account, a private foundation, a transfer of appreciated stock, or a donor-advised fund*. You are probably concerned about where that money goes: which nonprofit will use it well, and what kind of difference it will make with the causes you care about.
Yet as an investor, how and where your philanthropy money grows before you give it can also contribute to a social or environmental cause. This is not new to investors; socially responsible investing has been around since the 1960s. Yet some philanthropists are just now connecting their charitable goals with their decisions about how those resources are invested.
As Clara Miller of the F.B. Heron Foundation says, "All investing is impact investing." She goes on to say that "Foundations are investing 100 percent of their assets for impact; they just don't know whether it's positive or negative." The F.B. Heron Foundation is guided by a belief in socially responsible investing and job creation to meet their mission of fighting poverty, so their orientation at this end of the spectrum is congruent....