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Many companies striving to be good corporate citizens today face an internal tug of war between giving attention to community initiatives that address social problems and the growing demand to make environmental issues paramount.
Aligning mission and investment pays off for foundations
By Susan Thomas, Assistant Director, Electronic Communications, Boston College Center
As foundations face shrinking endowments in challenging financial times, they are turning to alternative investment opportunities to maximize the impact of their existing financial resources. Now a group of leading foundations is putting into high gear a campaign challenging their peers to dramatically increase their investments in community development, environmental sustainability and other so-called “mission investing” strategies.
The More for Mission Campaign, with a Leadership Committee of 31 foundation CEOs that represent over $21 billion in assets, is challenging other foundations to increase mission investments by at least 2 percent of total foundation assets – some $12 billion over the next five years.
Applying the mission investing approach might result in a foundation with a commitment to home ownership investing in low-income housing or to entrepreneurship in venture capital, or commitment to underserved communities making deposits in community development banks. A foundation with an environmentally focused mission might invest in clean technology, green collar jobs or sustainable real estate projects.
Formerly known as the 2% Campaign, the More for Mission Campaign has developed a Resource Center based at the Boston College Center’s Institute for Responsible Investment. The Resource Center is a web-based effort aimed to help foundations build capacity and provide tools such as policy statements, due-diligence evaluator tools, links to investment databases, consultants, measurement impact tools, and mission investing workshops. With a variety of tools for mission investors, www.moreformission.org strives to be the marketplace for mission investing reflecting a robust and dynamic mission-investing field with active players.
The Resource Center is funded by three pioneers in the field of mission investing: the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the F.B. Heron Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust.
The long-term goal of the More for Mission Campaign is to develop a robust and dynamic mission-investing field with foundation endowments as leaders. Foundations are encouraged to join the Leadership Committee to demonstrate support and provide resources in various ways including their time, technical expertise and ongoing support for the infrastructure and growth of the campaign.
“The More for Mission Campaign Resource Center is available as a resource for foundations as they develop their mission investing platforms,” said Boston College’s Lisa Hagerman, director of the Resource Center. “We encourage practitioners to share with us their experiences in the field, and to contact the Center with questions about mission investing strategies and investment resources available to start the practice.”
The Resource Center’s blog comments on how mission investments are holding up well in a down market. In particular, the F.B. Heron Foundation estimates the annual return for 2008 on their program-related investments to be 3.6%.
