High five!
You are receiving this e-newsletter, because you have taken small, medium, or large steps into the world of mission aligned investing. You’re already a leader in this growing movement!! In our eagerness to speed things along, we are pulling together this informal group of Paradigm Shifters to join efforts in pursuing system changes to take giant steps to move more foundations’ endowments into mission alignment. With the climate crisis on our heels, a widening gap between rich and poor, historically discriminated groups under continual attack, wars, and more, we want to free up the one trillion dollars that sit in foundation endowments to work for the very reasons they were donated. (And don’t get us started on university and other endowments!)
You know us for our one-on-one work with other foundations, webinars, shared investing, and more. As we ramp things up, we welcome your participation in this journey as little or as much as your time, motivation, and priorities allow. We are beginning with a clear belief that our collective efforts, done in concert with each other, will speed the process of moving endowments toward mission and get more money into the hands of the social innovators who can make meaningful, scalable impact.
Project Update: To leverage this work, we are in dialogue with Candid and Charity Navigator to inspire them to add endowments to their rating systems.This addition would touch and inspire – perhaps shame – thousands of foundations and other nonprofits with endowments to make a change for the better. And we welcome your ideas for other system change levers to speed things along!
–Elizabeth
Featured Paradigm Shifter
Sarah Martinez-Helfman
of the Samuel S. Fels Fund
A kindred foundation leader on the mission alignment journey
At Work…
What inspired you to start aligning your endowment with your mission?
When I arrived at the Fels Fund, I asked to see a list of our investments and recognized that we were invested in several companies that were in direct conflict with our mission.
Biggest obstacles for mission alignment?
It’s nearly impossible for the markets to solve problems that the markets helped to create, so there are trade-offs; it’s hard to determine which harms we’re okay with.
How far along are you in your mission aligned journey?
Our investment advisors say that 78.4% of our investments are a combination of mission-aligned/SRI. Our Investment Committee is still determining our investment criteria for mission alignment. It’s easy to determine what we’ll divest from and harder to determine what’s truly aligned with mission.
Most convincing thing to get others onboard?
I’ve learned that trying to convince people rarely works. I just invite people into the questions with me.
After work…
Guilty pleasure:
watching American Idol
Kickback film:
I don’t like to see films more than once.
Happy place:
swimming with turtles in Kauai
Childhood ambition:
to be Roberto Clemente, Arthur Ashe, or Billie Jean King
Biggest challenge:
I’m in a lifelong battle with sugar and it’s winning.
Soundtrack to my life:
I started writing songs at age 17, so I literally have a soundtrack of my life.
Last splurge:
I bought a ukulele last summer.
Mission-aligned Investees
At the Untours Foundation, we invest our modest endowment directly in world enhancing businesses. Divine Chocolate is a favorite not only because it’s a B Corp and produces delicious Fair Trade certified chocolates, but also because it has given part of its ownership to the Fair Trade farmers from whom it purchases cocoa. You can be a Fair Trade farmer, and still experience drought or other bad farming weather, and then have no or little income that year. If you are part of Divine, you have a share in the profits. We love models worth emulating!
We have given eight loans to this magical company so that it can purchase more cocoa to meet demand. For our last two loans, we partnered with two other foundations: 3rd Creek Foundation & SK2 Foundation. Want to join in our next loan to Divine or one of our other investees? Or just want ideas of what to invest in? Reach out any time.
About Us
About the UnTours Foundation
We were born out of Untours travel, the world’s first B Corp, and have since inherited it. We have been 100% mission aligned since our founding 30 years ago. There wasn’t a term or notion of mission alignment back then, but our founder, Hal Taussig, was always ahead of the curve. Yes, Hal inspired the B Corp movement by the way he ran his business, and we launched the Fair Trade town movement in the US making our hometown of Media the First Fair Trade Town in the US, later followed by 43 towns and cities. Now we are taking on mission alignment. We are small but mighty, and we need your help to push this boulder up the mountain!
With gratitude for you on this journey with us,
Elizabeth Killough and Jonathan Coleman
Co-CEOs
