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Access Capital
Access Capital Strategies, a division of Voyageur Asset Management, creates secondary markets for Community Development Investments. Founded in 1997, their core investment approach is to create specialized mortgages and asset-backed securities that support low- and moderate-income homebuyers, affordable housing, education, health care and job creation in underserved communities.
Altrushare Securities
AltruShare Securities offers institutional clients a brokerage platform based on an agency-only model free of traditional conflicts of interest. AltruShare also sponsors cutting-edge, independent research on community investment.
Arabella Advisors
Arabella Advisors focuses on strategy, insight, and analysis to help their clients reach their philanthropic goals. They also provide services tailored to Families and Individuals, Institutional Foundations, and Corporations. Their efforts have enabled donors to influence issues ranging from neighborhood social services and environmental education to global poverty reduction and improved nutrition. Beyond core strategy and evaluation services, Arabella Advisors offers a full range of administration services, educational products, and rich content to better enable clients to meet their goals.
Blended Value
The Blended Value Proposition states that all organizations, whether for-profit or not, create value that consists of economic, social and environmental value components—and that investors (whether market-rate, charitable or some mix of the two) simultaneously generate all three forms of value through providing capital to organizations.
Blue Orchard Finance
BlueOrchard Finance is a Swiss company specializing in the management of microfinance investment products. It assists banks and financial intermediaries who wish to invest in the microfinance industry by offering services designed to invest efficiently in the sector. This includes initial identification of, and due diligence on, microfinance institutions, as well as continuous monitoring and reporting on their activities and portfolios.
Brown English Capital Advisors
Brown English Capital Advisors (BECA) is a double bottom-line capital advisory firm that specializes in finding high quality community development mortgages that earn market rates of return while delivering measurable social impact to low and moderate income communities. The firm offers a portfolio that invests in senior mortgage loan participations, collateralized bridge loans, and investment-grade-rated community development revenue notes. These investments support the creation or expansion of affordable housing, charter schools and community facilities that serve the needs of low and moderate-income communities throughout the United States.
Calvert Foundation
Calvert Foundation’s Advisory Services program, Community Investment Partners (CIP), makes information and services available to support – or initiate – community investment programs. In addition to their advisory services, Calvert's Community Investment Notes provide opportunities for PRIs.
The Canadian Social Investment Organization
Established in 1989, the Social Investment Organization is the national non-profit association for the socially responsible investment (SRI) industry in Canada. It is funded primarily from membership dues and has more than 400 members, serving more than half a million depositors and investors in Canada.
The Carbon Disclosure Project
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an independent not-for-profit organization which acts as an intermediary between shareholders and corporations on all climate change related issues, providing primary climate change data from the world’s largest corporations, to the global market place.
Carleton Centre for Community Innovation
Through research, education and program management, the Centre investigates, strengthens and disseminates innovation in social finance, community-based economic development, and local governance and administration, on the part of geographic communities and communities of interest, in Canada and around the world. Their Responsible Investing initative engages stakeholders on institutional investors’ corporate engagement and responsible investing polices and practices. The Centre also has a Social Finance initative that provides tools and instruments essential for the implementation and measurement of social finance.
The Center for Applied Philanthropy
The Center for Applied Philanthropy (CAP) is focused on increasing the understanding, use and adoption of non traditional funding streams among philanthropic organizations to help leverage traditional funding streams. Through its Fund for Sustainability and its partners, CAP aims to become a leading resource for those practicing, supporting, or considering program and/or mission related investments (PRIs/MRIs) by helping to build the knowledge and practice of these non-traditional investments.
Center for Development of Social Finance
CDSF was established in 2004 to help stakeholders understand and navigate the complex and often invisible channels of the financial world. They believe efforts to build a sustainable world are most effective when the ways that money moves among communities, businesses, and governments are understood. They seek to provide a deeper understanding of social finance and improve financial literacy.
Center for Social Philanthropy
The Center for Social Philanthropy, currently being beta-tested, aims to provide an online portal of research, resources and tools for foundations and donors seeking to maximize the long-term, social and environmental impact of their philanthropic work, not only through grant-making but also by leveraging the full range of assets at their disposal.
Ceres
Ceres is a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. Its mission is to integrate sustainability into capital markets for the health of the planet and its people.
Charity SRI
Charitysri.org provides free and accessible information, advice and resources on Responsible Investment for charities, supporters, and service providers - what it is, reasons for doing it and how to go about it. The site features an interactive guide to social, environmental and ethical issues and asset classes. It is overseen by the EIRIS Foundation and was developed in partnership with UKSIF.
Community Capital Management
Community Capital Management is an institutional investment adviser that specializes in the management of portfolios containing government-related bonds issued to promote community development. For foundations seeking to align investment assets with their organizational missions (i.e., "Mission-Related Investing"), the firm offers a set of optional screens designed to proactively identify market-rate securities that support a variety of social and environmental objectives.
Community Development Banker’s Association
Since its inception in 2001, the mission of the Community Development Bankers Association (CDBA) is to facilitate economic revitalization and educate the financial services industry, socially motivated investors and community development banks (CBDs) regarding the credit and financial service needs in disinvested low income communities.
Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund was created for the purpose of promoting economic revitalization and community development through investment in and assistance to CDFIs. The Fund's mission is to expand the capacity of financial institutions to provide credit, capital, and financial services to underserved populations and communities in the United States.
Community Development Venture Capital Alliance
The Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA) is the network for the rapidly growing field of community development venture capital (CDVC) investing. CDVC funds provide equity capital to businesses in underinvested markets, seeking market-rate financial returns, as well as the creation of good jobs, wealth, and entrepreneurial capacity. CDVCA promotes use of the tools of venture capital to create jobs, entrepreneurial capacity and wealth to advance the livelihoods of low-income people and the economies of distressed communities.
Community Health Facilities Fund
The Community Health Facilities Fund (CHFF) assists non-profit, community-based behavioral care providers in accessing capital through low-cost, fixed-rate loans. They have set up a loan program that can finance borrowers one at a time and on their own schedule.
Community Investing Center
The Center’s mission is to provide financial professionals with information and resources to help them channel more money into community investing. This includes “how-to” guidance for investors and a comprehensive database of Community Investment Institutions (CIIs).
Community-Wealth
Community-Wealth brings together information about the broad range of community wealth building activity. A project of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, Community-Wealth believes that practitioners, policy makers, academics and the media need solid information and tools that can help them understand and support the expansion of community wealth-building institutions.
Conservation and Community Investment Forum
The Conservation and Community Investment Forum (CCIF) works with partners in the foundation, multilateral, and private philanthropy communities to design and evaluate innovative conservation programs. CCIF specializes in the design of programs which use entrepreneurial and private sector initiatives to complement traditional conservation activities.
Council of Institutional Investors
The Council of Institutional Investors (CII) is a nonprofit association of public, union and corporate pension funds with combined assets that exceed $3 trillion. Since it’s founding in 1985, the Council has strived to educate its members and the public about good corporate governance, shareowner rights and related investment issues, and to advocate on our members' behalf.
Council on Foundations
The Council on Foundations is a Washington, DC, area-based nonprofit membership association of more than 2,100 grantmaking foundations and corporations. The assets of Council members total more than $307 billion. The Council works to create an environment in which the movement can grow and thrive, and to provide Council members with the products and services they need to do their best work.
European Foundation Centre
The European Foundation Centre is an international association of foundations and corporate funders dedicated to creating an enabling legal and fiscal environment for foundations, documenting the foundation landscape, strengthening the infrastructure of the sector, and promoting collaboration, both among foundations and between foundations and other actors.
EIRIS
EIRIS is a leading global provider of independent research into the environmental, social governance (ESG) and ethical performance of companies. With over 25 years experience of conducting research and promoting responsible investment strategies, EIRIS now provides services to more than 100 asset owners and asset managers globally. In the last ten years new EIRIS research has focused on the risks and exposure of companies in key ESG areas, and how companies are responding. EIRIS works with clients to create their own ESG ratings and rankings, to engage with companies and to create specific funds for their clients. EIRIS has a multinational team of over 50 staff in London, together with offices in Boston and Paris.
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Community Development
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's Community Affairs Office is a resource for the Community Reinvestment Act, technical assistance and regulatory guidance to community-based organizations, and government entities and others engaged in community and economic development efforts.
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Center for Community Development Investments
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Center for Community Development Investments supports the long-term growth of the community development investment industry by serving as a national center for research, training, pilot initiatives, and policy-making discussions.
Financial Innovations Roundtable
The Financial Innovations Roundtable, housed at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, creates cross-sector partnerships among conventional and non-traditional lenders, investors, and markets to provide low-income communities with increased access to capital and financial services.
Foundation Center
The Foundation Center is an authority on philanthropy, connecting nonprofits and the grantmakers supporting them to tools they can use and information they can trust. The Center maintains a comprehensive database on U.S. grantmakers and their grants. It also operates research, education, and training programs designed to advance philanthropy at every level.
Foundation Partnership on Corporate Responsibility
The Foundation Partnership on Corporate Responsibility was created in 1996 as an association of foundations working to link their grantmaking values with their investments to promote greater social responsibility of corporations.
The Funders' Network
The Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that exists to inspire, strengthen and expand philanthropic leadership and funders’ abilities to support organizations working to improve communities through better development decisions and growth policies. It brings together foundations, nonprofit organizations and other partners to address the range of environmental, social, and economic problems caused by development strategies that fail to consider the big picture.
The Global Reporting Initiative
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has pioneered the development of the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework and is committed to its continuous improvement and application worldwide. This framework sets out the principles and indicators that organizations can use to measure and report their economic, environmental, and social performance.
Impact Community Capital
Impact Community Capital LLC makes and manages investments in low-income communities for its insurance company investor/members. Impact has pioneered the pooling and securitization of community investment portfolios to meet the needs of low-income communities and the requirements of prudent management of policyholder funds.
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City
The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) is a national not-for-profit organization that conducts research that highlights the competitive advantage of inner cities. Its market-based approach to economic development comprises a number of efforts oriented toward increasing private-sector investment in the inner city, linking inner city development to metro, city and regional development strategies and breaking down information barriers that keep inner cities underinvested.
International Finance Corporation
International Finance Corporation (IFC) fosters sustainable economic growth in developing countries by financing private sector investment, mobilizing capital in the international financial markets, and providing advisory services to businesses and governments.
Investors' Circle
Investors' Circle is a network of over 200 angel investors, professional venture capitalists, foundations, family offices and others who are using private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable economy. Since 1992, Investors' Circle has facilitated the flow of over $130 million into 200 companies and small funds addressing social and environmental issues.
Investors Network on Climate Risk
The Investors Network on Climate Risk (INCR) is a network of institutional investors and financial institutions that promotes better understanding of the financial risks and investment opportunities posed by climate change. INCR is coordinated by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups working to advance sustainable prosperity.
IW Financial
IW Financial is an independent ESG research and analytics firm that tracks over 1000 discrete sustainability and ESG data elements. The company’s Workstation analytic platform delivers comparative ratings of publicly traded companies based on user-defined criteria.
Living Cities
Living Cities develops innovative ways to provide access to the capital necessary to improve cities. They share information, research and best practices. Their work includes advocating policies that strengthen cities and increase opportunities for low-income neighborhoods and their residents to participate fully in the American and global economies. The Living Cities Catalyst Fund allows qualified investors to pool and invest flexible capital to revitalize America’s cities and transform the lives of low income people.
The Marathon Club (TMC) focuses on advancing wealth creation for people of color through deal making in America’s Emerging Domestic Market (EDM). TMC fosters strategic relationships for harnessing the deal flow of EDM.
Located in Oakland, California, Mission Markets was launched with the singular goal of promoting and expanding socially responsible investing. They are doing this by building an online capital marketplace to support companies and projects that produce triple bottom line results.
National Community Investment Fund
The National Community Investment Fund is a non-profit, private equity trust that invests in banks, thrifts and credit unions that generate both financial and social returns. The Fund invests private capital in, and facilitates knowledge transfer to, depository institutions that increase access to financial services in underserved communities.
National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions
Helps low- and moderate-income people and communities achieve financial independence through credit unions. It strives to assure that the Community Development Credit Union (CDCU) movement is both permanent and self-sufficient, by developing local and national CDCU leadership, providing forums for communication among CDCUs, and developing the resources necessary to achieve our goals.
Partners for Common Good, Inc. ("PCG") is a U.S. based nonprofit community development loan fund/Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), whose mission is to promote economic justice and social change by providing access to debt capital to community-based ventures that advance the "common good". PCG seeks to support innovative organizations and emerging sectors that have high potential to create economic opportunities for low-income people, women, people of color, at-risk populations, and others who are often left out of the economic mainstream.
An association of grantmakers who use program-related and other investments to accomplish their philanthropic goals, PRI Maker’s mission is to provide a forum for networking, professional development, collaboration and outreach to funders, including those not currently making PRIs or other social investments. Through its activities, PRI Makers Network seeks to strengthen the capacity of grantmakers to affect change across diverse program areas.
Principles for Responsible Investment
There is a growing view among investment professionals that environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues can affect the performance of investment portfolios. Investors fulfilling their fiduciary (or equivalent) duty therefore need to give appropriate consideration to these issues, but to date have lacked a framework for doing so. The Principles for Responsible Investment provide this framework.
The RPIC brings together leading real estate practitioners, from developers and lenders to fund managers, asset owners, and institutional investors, in order to coordinate and disseminate their best practices, conduct crucial research, and to create networks of investment opportunities that take advantage of the changing landscape of property investment.
Rockefeller Foundation Impact Investing
The Rockefeller Foundation has created an Impact Investing initiative that seeks to build a system that will allow impact investment to flow into broader areas of public interest. The Rockefeller Foundation’s Impact Investing work is built on three pillars: Integrating Impact Investment, Building Intermediation, and Fostering the Field.
RSF Social Finance
RSF Social Finance partners with investors, donors, and social enterprises to realize financial transactions that enliven consciousness and enhance quality of life. They cultivate environmental, social and financial sustainability, and provide access to capital for organizations committed to fair practices and improving economic conditions. The Social Investment Fund provides clients with the option of pooling their money with other investers.
ShoreBank
ShoreBank uses cash deposits from socially motivated investors to help fund loans that strengthen communities, create jobs, and preserve the environment. ShoreBank appreciates the special financial needs of foundations and the critical role that they play in creating positive community change, and is committed to serving foundations through cost-effective accounts, value-added resources, and responsive, personalized customer service. ShoreBank offers deposit products (certificates of deposit, money market, and operating accounts) that feature competitive interest rates and the security of FDIC insurance; ShoreBank also provides innovative PRI options that can be tailored to your foundation's mission. One such example is the Capacity Plus Loan Program (PDF). This program is designed to assist nonprofits access affordable credit while providing foundations with an easy-to-use deposit tool that cash secures nonprofit loans via FDIC-insured CD deposits, enabling the foundations to leverage their financial resources without making direct grants.
SJF Advisory Services (SJF AS) is a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to and increases access to capital for entrepreneurial businesses in order to expand their positive community economic development and environmental outcomes.
The Social Investment Forum (SIF) is the only national membership association dedicated to advancing the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. Their members integrate economic, environmental, social and governance factors into their investment decisions and SIF provides programs and resources to advance this work.
Social Venture Network
Social Venture Network is a community of leaders— company founders, private investors, social entrepreneurs and key influencers—who share a commitment to building a just and sustainable world through business. Through its network makers are able to deepen relationships and to work together with greater social impact.
Launched in 2008 by the Business-Higher Education Forum, StrategicEdSolutions.org is an online resource center for philanthropists investing in education-related programs. The site features strategies that are designed to maximize the impact of investments, independently evaluated programs that illustrate replicable models for success, and a compendium of research and resources that provides more in-depth information on education research and programming.
UK SIF: The United Kingdom Social Investment Forum
The UK Social Investment Forum (UKSIF) is the UK's membership network for sustainable and responsible financial services. UKSIF promotes responsible investment and other forms of finance that support sustainable economic development, enhance quality of life and safeguard the environment.
The United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative
The United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) works closely with over 160 financial institutions who are signatories to the UNEP FI Statements, and a range of partner organizations to develop and promote linkages between the environment, sustainability and financial performance.
Through its partnership with the Templeton Foundation, Wall Street Without Walls fills a finance expertise gap in the nonprofit sector by matching senior and retired volunteers who have investment banking and capital markets experience with community development organizations who are seeking creative solutions to financing challenges of $10 million or more.
Xigi.net is a space for making connections and gathering intelligence within the capital market that invests in good. It’s a social network, tool provider, and online platform for tracking the nature and amount of investment activity in this emerging market also referred to as blended value investing. Xigi's goal is to help this international emerging market to grow through market formation activities that guide and educate a growing wave of new money, while connecting it to the emergent entrepreneurs and deals in the space.