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Blog Archives: January 2019 — December 2019

• Implementing the SDG Framework for Impact Reporting: An Honest Discussion

July 09, 2019
Adopted in 2015, the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognize that ending poverty and the impacts of poverty must go hand in hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth—all while tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s natural resources. Many in the impact investing community have sought to use the SDGs as meaningful frameworks for thinking about how we approach our investments, but these goals stop short of providing substantive guidance and ...

• Exploring Investor Solutions for Restoring the Ocean

June 12, 2019
Bridget Croke and Georgia Sherwin, Closed Loop Partners
Barely 10% of plastics are recycled globally today; plastic has become a serious terrestrial and ocean pollution problem that requires urgent attention. Mark Spalding, President of The Ocean Foundation, moderated a webinar discussion titled Exploring Investor Solutions for Restoring the Ocean, in which participants discussed the current state of order as well as possible solutions to plastic pollution. He spoke with Bridget Croke, Vice President of External Affairs of Closed Loop Partners, an impact investing firm focused on the development ...

• A New Economy for All: A Women’s Leadership Dinner

June 10, 2019
Radhika Nayar, Arabella Advisors
As part of its Women’s Leadership Initiative, Confluence Philanthropy partnered with Arabella Advisors to co-host an intimate dinner program in New York titled “A New Economy for All.” The dinner brought together 15 women working in diverse roles in financial services and philanthropy eager to engage with each other on the broad topic of creating an equitable economy that allows women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups to build wealth. Dana Lanza, CEO of Confluence, opened the evening, introducing the Women’s Leadership ...

• Using "Place-Based Shareholder Engagement"

June 04, 2019
Kelly Ryan, Incourage Community Foundation
As a community-led philanthropy and impact investor in Central Wisconsin, Incourage is committed to aligning all of our assets in ways that advance our core purpose of co-creating an inclusive, adaptive and sustainable community. To that end, and in partnership with Confluence members, we are advancing a new practice that we are calling Place-Based Shareholder Engagement. Our experience shows that creating truly inclusive, adaptive and sustainable communities requires coordinated, long-term strategies. In urban, rural and tribal ...

• Impact Covenants: Term Sheets as Tools for Change

May 06, 2019
Chintan Panchal RPCK, Rastegar Panchal
An increasing number of investors are embracing “impact covenants,” or legally enforceable promises, as a tool for maximizing the positive impact of their investments. Jeff Rosen, Chief Financial Officer of the Solidago Foundation and Confluence Board Member, recently moderated a webinar discussion about impact covenants. He spoke with Deborah Frieze, co-founder of the Boston Impact Initiative Fund, an impact fund focused on economic justice, and Chintan Panchal, founder of RPCK Rastegar Panchal, a law firm focused on innovative finance and ...

• NFG speaks with place-based funders on how they are using impact investing to further justice and equity

April 30, 2019
This piece was originallty published here by Neighborhood Funders Group. It has been republished here in its entirety with permission.   An increasing number of foundations are embracing impact investing as a powerful strategy to potentially make use of all of their assets — not just 5% — to advance their place-based and justice-oriented missions. Last month, several Neighborhood Funders Group members attended Confluence Philanthropy’s 9th Annual Practitioners Gathering to explore how the philanthropic and investment sectors can ...

• Finding Your Way to the Right Investing Advisor

April 29, 2019
Deciding to pursue mission-related investing is just the first step on a long journey. Once a foundation has made the choice, it’s key to identify the right partner: an investment advisor who understands your mission and can guide your institution through the process. To help support this process, Eric Stephenson, Director of Client Services at Align Impact, moderated a webinar discussion about how to choose a values-aligned investment advisor. He spoke with Lenora Suki, Board Member, of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation; Philip Carey, ...

• When Will Philanthropy Lean Into Funding the Plumbing?

April 23, 2019
Tina Joh Senior Advisor, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
I had the opportunity to join a Confluence Philanthropy event for the first time in March, in a lovely, sustainable setting in Brooklyn. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisor’s session on “Yes, But Can it Scale” on the second day of the conference came after hearing some unpleasant truths – since 1995 women and people of color in high status and high power jobs have plateaued – and before more unpleasant truths to come – nearly a quarter, or 24%, of California’s workforce lives in poverty. But this standing room only lunchtime session offered ...

• Confluence Philanthropy’s 9th Practitioners Gathering

March 29, 2019
Jeff Rosen, Solidago Foundation
This piece was originallty published here on the Solidago Foundation website, written by Confluence Board Member Jeff Rosen. It has been republished here in its entirety. Go ahead, name one.  Certainly not retailers.  Just ask Sears.  Automakers?  Weapons manufacturers?  Government?  Universities?  Maybe.  But, when one asks the question of philanthropy, we find a sector of our economy that relies on the business model of perpetuity.  Not only do foundations establish a business model that is designed to live forever, but they also ...

• Is It Time to Stop Talking About “Impact Investing”?

March 25, 2019
James Bunch, Managing Director, AIMS Imprint, Investment Management Division, Goldman Sachs moderated a lively discussion about the usefulness of the term “impact investing.” The panelists included Josh Mailman, President of the Joshua Mailman Foundation, Preeti Bhattacharji, Vice President of Integrated Capitals of the Heron Foundation, and Robynn Steffen, Director of Impact Investing of Omidyar Network. Audience instant polling was used to structure their discussion. Bunch posed three questions to an audience of approximately 240 ...

• Democratizing Finance

March 25, 2019
Nick Tillson, President and CEO, NDN Collective, and an Oglala Lakota tribal member, began the discussion by offering a Native welcome, acknowledging the ancestors and spirits of the Lenape people who first inhabited the local area. This set the tone for critical discussion about how investors can make tangible change for communities left behind by the prevailing economic and political system. Each discussant offered a cross-cutting orientation to the issues. Tim Lampkin, CEO of Mississippi-based Higher Purpose, highlights that the ...

• Practitioners Institute: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

March 22, 2019
Each year, Confluence opens the Annual Practitioners Gathering with a three-hour strategic focus on an emerging topic in the investment industry. Previous discussions helped to launch the now $8 trillion fossil fuel divestment movement and, separately, efforts to create place-based impact investing strategies. This year we focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).   “What If We Had Racial Equity?” Keynote remarks by Angela Glover Blackwell, Attorney; Founder in Residence, PolicyLink; and author of Uncommon Ground: Race and ...

• The Power of Interrupting Bias

March 22, 2019
The second day’s session dove into two major issues: gender in the workplace and democratizing finance. Stacey Faella of the Woodcock Foundation (and Confluence board member) introduced Joan Williams, Hastings Law professor, the keynote speaker. Williams is the author of over 11 books and her article “What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class” has been read over 3.7 million times. She is recognized as one of world’s leading scholars on gender in the workplace and has reshaped the conversation on work, gender, and class.  ...

• A Discussion with Anand Giridharadas and Edgar Villanueva

March 21, 2019
Anand Giridharadas is the author of The New York Times bestseller Winners Take All and was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times from 2005 to 2016. Edgar Villanueva is a nationally recognized expert on social justice philanthropy and author of Decolonizing Wealth. In Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas poses a troubling question: Are elites hijacking social change? Could philanthropy and social entrepreneurship actually be amplifying the inequality they seek to solve? Because these questions strike at the heart of ...

•The Money Story Behind Family Detention

March 20, 2019
Morgan Simon, Founding Partner, Candide Group
When we read the news these days, it’s easy to not only get mad, but want to get even. The many stories of family separation and dehumanizing violence on the border motivated Candide Group to do exactly that, using the three things we know best: the power of money, the power of celebrity, and the power of social movements. Here's how we’ve been taking action on family detention, and how you can get involved: The power of money. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of immigrants detained are held in privately-owned facilities, ...

• Fighting Fire with Finance: Innovative Investments for Climate Resilience

March 01, 2019
We’ve all noticed the sharp uptick of catastrophic wildfires in recent years; California’s 2018 wildfire season involved the biggest loss of lives and homes ever, and is estimated to cost the state billions. In a warming climate, fire conditions are only expected to get worse. That’s why we teamed with the Biodiversity Funders Group to explore how to use investment to catalyze forest health. Dan Winterson of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation moderated a conversation between a diverse group of experts working on financial instruments to ...

• A Dialogue About Democracy and Capitalism: Q&A with Stephen Heintz

February 28, 2019
Stephen Heintz, Rockefeller Brothers Fund
On January 29, Confluence Philanthropy hosted an online discussion between Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz and author-activist Naomi Klein, two dynamic thinkers at the intersection of democracy and capitalism, moderated by Dana Lanza, the Confluence CEO. While the lively conversation provoked new thinking about our approaches to global challenges like climate change, it did not leave time for live Q&A. In a follow-up below, Stephen Heintz tackles some of the questions submitted by members of our audience during the eve ...

• A Dialogue about Democracy & Capitalism with Naomi Klein and Stephen Heintz, Facilitated by Dana Lanza

February 22, 2019
  Confluence had the honor of hosting a webinar with the inimitable Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, and Stephen Heintz, the visionary president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. We expected the conversation to diverge from philanthropy’s mainstream: our theme was a dialogue about democracy and capitalism and the speakers are two of the foremost thinkers around philanthropy and social change. But what we received was a soul-shaking wake-up call about the state of the world, as well as some surprising moments of hope. Our ...

• Investing in Indian Country

February 18, 2019
On Monday, January 28, Confluence was honored to co-sponsor a webinar with the Investors and Indigenous Peoples Working Group (IIPWG). The subject: How do we bring investment to American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities? The lack of investment in Indian country is dire. “Resources just aren’t coming to Native America,” said Confluence’s CEO Dana Lanza. “In grantmaking, less than 1% of dollars come to tribal communities. It’s hard to understand how that could be possible, but it’s the truth.” Without vigilance, she ...

• Advancing Racial Equity in Investments

February 01, 2019
Of the world’s $70+ trillion in investments, little more than 1% is controlled by firms owned by women and people of color. Likewise, women and people of color comprise less than 13% of investment managers or executive committee-level staff. How to facilitate real change – undergirding discussions of “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) with a substantial transfer of capital – was the focus of Confluence’s day-and-a-half retreat in mid-January at the California Endowment. As part of our Kellogg-funded racial equity initiative, and ...

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