Dana Lanza and Stacey Faella
In support of goal five of our mission and strategic plan, “[to] provide our members with a strong organization, with the capacity to effectively advance Confluence Philanthropy’s mission and goals,” we are pleased to share that Confluence’s Board of Directors crafted its first investment policy statement in Fall 2023. Stacey Faella, our Treasurer and Executive Director of the Woodcock Foundation, led the process.
We’re glad to have a policy in place that will guide Confluence’s investment decision-making, which prioritizes the ongoing ...
Dana Lanza, Confluence Philanthropy
Corporations are not merely economic entities; they are intricately woven into the fabric of society. They hold substantial influence, molding our surroundings, livelihoods, and well-being, especially as the world grapples with escalating environmental and social issues. It is increasingly clear that progress hinges on a fundamental shift in our interactions with these entities.
This year, the global communications firm Edelman discovered that public trust in businesses remains relatively high. Two-thirds of respondents perceive businesses ...
Roraj Pradhananga, Veris Wealth Partners
Last month, I participated in a Climate Week NYC event co-organized by Confluence Philanthropy and Carbon Tracker focused on the need for transparency within capital markets to help address the climate crisis.
We are nowhere close to aligning our economy to a 1.5-degree warming scenario."Why aren't investors more outraged?” asked Dana Lanza in her closing remarks at Confluence Philanthropy’s Climate Week event “Policymakers and the Value of Data and Transparency.”
It is a question that impact investors have been asking for decades....
Tom Ferguson, Burnt Island Ventures
It’s always odd to hear the water sector referred to as “niche.” This is a substance that underpins all economic activity and all life on earth, and accounts for well over $1 trillion in annual capital and operating expenditure. Unfortunately, in climate financing, it is a niche. Since 2021, almost $100 billion has been invested in climate tech, of which less than 2% has gone to water. Investors have focused their attention elsewhere—storage, generation, hydrogen, mobility, fusion, CDR—because water isn’t in their circle of competence. It ...
Fridah Kiboori, Dalberg Advisors
The effects of climate have become the lived reality of many Africans; in my home country, Kenya, we are expecting heavy rains due to El Niño. Undoubtedly, climate change poses a significant threat to Africa’s development, as funds and resources that could have gone to development are increasingly diverted to mitigate climate-related issues and emergencies. The impacts are further compounded by other challenges such as unemployment, financing gaps, and the increasing debt burden.
But there is a silver lining, which is that Africa has the ...
Aimée Christensen, Christensen Family Foundation
As we head into Climate Week NYC, held each year alongside the United Nations General Assembly, the climate community is preparing to host hundreds of gatherings across New York City to accelerate climate action. Confluence Philanthropy will bring its members and friends together at its own Climate Week events designed to share information, spark new efforts, and build community. As a Confluence member, I look forward to every time I can gather with fellow members, people seeking to deploy their resources for ever greater impact. This Climate ...
Mari Schwartzer, NorthStar Asset Management, Inc.
Take a moment to remember the worst mistake you’ve ever made in your life. Now imagine being forced to describe that moment to strangers who can use it against you in hiring or firing. For the 77 million Americans that hold a criminal record, the worst mistake of their lives often becomes an insurmountable barrier to getting a good job, building self-respect, and pursuing a family-sustaining career. For Black and Brown people who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, racial discrimination further limits the likelihood of achieving ...
Alberto Gómez-Obregón, CO_Capital
Latin America is one of the main “breadbaskets” of the world, primarily for the US. It produces roughly 13% of global agri-food production, which represents 25% of its total production. Additionally, it is the most biodiverse region on the planet with five of the world’s megadiverse countries being there – Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. In contrast, it is also the most unequal region in the world, where roughly 40% of the population (about 270 million people) live under food insecurity, and one in four adults suffers from ...
Stacey Faella, The Woodcock Foundation
Our planet is losing its biodiversity at an alarming rate. In the 2020 Living Planet Report, The World Wildlife Fund estimates that regional biodiversity loss ranged from an alarming 33% in North America to a whopping 94% in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1970. Unsustainable agriculture and logging were key drivers. The report emphasizes the relationship between people and biodiversity:
“…humanity’s increasing destruction of nature is having catastrophic impacts not only on wildlife populations but also on human health and all ...
Omar Blayton, Sunwealth Power
We are in a period of unprecedented tailwinds for renewable energy. Federal incentives created under the new Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provide material opportunities not just for an accelerated energy transition, but a more equitable one as well. Items such as tax credits and funds that target underserved communities will no doubt significantly contribute to supercharging the energy transition. But will they be enough?
While participating on a panel at the recent Confluence Climate Solutions Summit, I had the opportunity to discuss with ...
The Racial Equity Investing Collaborative Partners
Six investor networks join forces to advance industry innovation during their first Racial Equity Investing Leadership Summit
New York, New York – May 11, 2023 – American Sustainable Business Network, Confluence Philanthropy, The ImPact, Impact Capital Managers, Intentional Endowments Network, and Toniic convened a group of 60 members and board leadership from across their networks to discuss racial equity lens investing. The six networks together represent a global community of private, public, and community foundations, family offices, ...
Amy Brakeman, Catherine Burnett, and Smitha Das
This blog is part of a series stemming from the Racial Equity Investing Collaborative’s Leadership Summit, which was co-organized by six investor networks in May 2023: American Sustainable Business Network, Confluence Philanthropy, The ImPact, Impact Capital Managers, Intentional Endowments Network, and Toniic.
At the Racial Equity Investing Summit, Toniic led a session about putting racial equity investing into action. Three co-leaders of Toniic’s Gender and Racial Equity Working Group – Amy Brakeman, regenerative investor, Catherine ...
Enith Williams, Reparations Finance Lab
This blog is part of a series stemming from the Racial Equity Investing Collaborative’s Leadership Summit, which was co-organized by six investor networks in May 2023: American Sustainable Business Network, Confluence Philanthropy, The ImPact, Impact Capital Managers, Intentional Endowments Network, and Toniic.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, private foundations and companies pledged more than $200 billion to support racial justice initiatives. However, a Washington Post analysis found over 90 percent of that amount was ...
William Harris, WCCN
Imagine for a moment, trying to make a positive economic change in your life, without access to loans, a mortgage, credit cards or bank account. According to the Development Bank of Latin America, only 49% of women in Latin America have a bank account, and a mere 10% have access to credit.[1] Nevertheless, the economic gender gap is gradually narrowing, with one of the important tools being access for women to microfinance.
The microfinance movement has historically focused on women with up to 70% of borrowers being female, and empirical ...
Pawan Mehra, cKers Finance
In the coming years, electric vehicles, rooftop solar, and other digitally enabled climate assets are set to experience a rapid uptake among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as these businesses ride the confluence of three megatrends: sustainability, digitization and the formalization of credit. This provides an opportunity to develop innovative financing products that provide access to credit for SMEs tackling global, especially within developing countries.
The most recent emerging megatrend has been the drive towards ...
Dana Lanza, Confluence Philanthropy
In 2016, Confluence held our 6th Annual Practitioners Gathering in Boston, Massachusetts under the theme entitled, “Finance and Democracy”. So much has happened in the past seven years that 2016 feels like a past life. I remember walking the halls of The Charles Hotel in Cambridge feeling proud to have then President Obama’s Climate Policy team joining us as we looked optimistically ahead to the creation of a new Clean Energy Finance Center at the Department of Energy, and, at the strong potential for our first woman President and one whom ...
Kunle Apampa, Capricorn Investment Group
There is a consensus that private investment capital is critical to meeting the 2050 goal of Net Zero emissions, limiting global warming to 1.5°C. The relative scale of investment capital, compared to philanthropic capital or possible government expenditures, is also well understood. It is critical tha,t these different types of capital work together, but there is no question that in order to fundamentally shift the global economy and meet our climate goals, investment capital will be the primary driver.
While most understand this, the ...
David F. Sand, Community Capital Management
It has been said that a lot of science fiction is really a documentary from the future. If that is the case, we all know where the latest boom in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking us: sentient machines and software will gain the upper hand in our daily lives, telling us what we can and cannot do and —insidiously — what we can and cannot think or believe. George Orwell thought it might happen in 1984, Stanley Kubrick picked 2001; both crafted their tales of machine dominance by choosing dates far in the future. Those years have come and ...
Javier Hernandez, Avivar Capital
Impact investing offers the potential to create more equitable communities as well as a more inclusive financial ecosystem. However, change is not happening fast enough. Black and Brown communities remain disproportionately underinvested, fund managers of color remain vastly underrepresented, and entrepreneurs of color continue to face an uphill battle when raising capital to seed their visions.
To increase the flow of capital to marginalized communities, increase representation of fund managers of color, and level the playing field for ...
Amol Mehra, Laudes Foundation
The dialogue at the ‘Beyond Carbon Tunnel Vision’ session at Confluence Philanthropy’s 13th Annual Practitioners Gathering made one thing very clear – to properly address the full scope of climate change impacts, we also need to understand it as a social and economic issue, with profound implications for human well-being and social justice.
It is well documented that climate change will hit the poorest and most vulnerable communities the hardest, exacerbating existing inequalities and injustices. One such vulnerable region is that of ...
