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California Endowment holds Mission Investing Forum: Building Healthy Communities

Lisa Hagerman, Thursday, July 16th, 2009

On July 1 the California Endowment hosted a mission investing forum to explore how foundations can enhance their place-based and healthy community missions through mission investments. The California Endowment, a member of the More for Mission Leaders Circle, has committed $75 million of its endowment to invest in 14 distressed California communities. The mission is to transform these areas into places that are safe and healthy places for children to grow and learn.

The Mission Investing Forum gathered current mission investors, intermediaries, consultants, and researchers to address ways to accomplish mission objectives while maintaining a rigorous investment discipline—that achieves both financial and social goals. Examples from investors included presentations from the Meyer Memorial Trust (see presentation pdf), F.B. Heron Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Examples of mission investing opportunities came from investment intermediaries (and their portfolio companies) at the intersection of providing access to housing, healthy food, capital, and education in California’s communities. The sessions addressed ways to think about where to make market rate investments in these areas and how to think through the opportunities and challenges of an integrated mission investing strategy. See the California Endowment’s website for several resources on the conference and a live blog of the forum.
 

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