Topic of the month March 2012: Responsible Investing for Foundations

Responsible Investing for Foundations

The role of foundations and their responsible investment policy are in the spotlight. Foundations control large volumes of financial assets, beyond the realm of corporate decision making, public policy and civic accounting frameworks. Herein lay great opportunities in the making of choices for the common good.

Today most foundations keep their mission and their investment strategy apart. But they increasingly face criticism that some investments create conflicts with their missions, for example when health organisations invest in tobacco companies or coal production. More and more foundations have come to the understanding that investments in line with their mission are not only possible, but also profitable and a perfect tool to finance development activities supported by grants.

So if foundations are to achieve their ambitions for social impact, they must find creative ways to use every resource they possess. Mission investing is one of the possibilities and stands for using financial investments as a tool to achieve a foundation’s mission and is therefore a value-added complement to traditional grants.

There are many reasons for mission investing:

• aligning assets with the foundation’s mission
• achieving social benefits in ways that grant cannot
• double impact: investing in impact investments and making grants with these returns
• expand risk management by including ESG criteria
• enhance the diversification effect

Mission investing has increased significantly in the past years and is more and more seen as a new direction of philanthropy.

-----------------------

Long version
If you are interested in detailled information about this topic, please contact the yourSRI team to provide you with the long version of this article.

The long version includes:

• descriptions of challenges in Mission Investing
• hot spot Liechtenstein, Luxemburg and Switzerland – new places for Mission Investing?
• sources for further information
  
  
  

Conditions:
Free of charge for all subscribed yourSRI members (yourSRI Membership). All other can get a copy of the long version for a fee of EUR 80.00.

Contact us to get long version

Q1/2012 - Preview of upcoming "Topics of the month":

March 2012:Responsible Investing for Foundations

April 2012:Transparency Survey 2012 - Responsible Investing & Philathropy Services