From Forbes. It’s a pivotal moment in US history, one in which Congress uniquely holds the purse strings that will set the course of our future. Will small businesses emerge from quarantine fortified from the stimulus, ready to rebuild the economy? Or will they be truly decimated, wiping out a hard-earned generation of wealth for small business owners?

From Mission Investors Exchange. On February 26, 2012, a seventeen-year-old Black teenager named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman. Martin’s death ignited a national debate about racism and justice. It was on the nightly news and in the editorial pages. We heard from legal and criminal justice experts, historians, artists, Martin’s parents, and President Obama. And, across the country, people were having their own conversations. They were having them at dinner tables and at real and metaphorical water coolers. They were having them on social media and in the streets as a protest movement took hold.

At Living Cities, a grantmaker and investor dedicated to improving the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live, we were having them, too. The days following the Zimmerman verdict were tense at our office, as staff members found themselves in reflective and sometimes emotional conversations about Martin’s death, Zimmerman’s acquittal, and the pervasiveness of racism in America. Several staff members felt that a robust and collective interrogation of the impact of racial inequity on cities was noticeably absent— and also not encouraged— in Living Cities’ work. How was it possible, we asked ourselves, to achieve our mission without intentionally addressing the intersections between poverty and race?

These conversations eventually set us on a course to radically reconfigure the way the organization works around race. Along that road, Living Cities has redefined our mission and identity as an organization, while also surfacing what it takes for grantmakers, nonprofits, and impact investors to center racial equity in practice. This article contains key lessons we have learned so far.

From Pensions and Investments. It's not everyday that an interdisciplinary team of Stanford University professors and researchers in the fields of finance and social psychology combine forces with industry practitioners to undertake pioneering research that illuminates deep-seeded, systematic bias in asset allocation due to race. The process of doing this research was as unique as the findings themselves. This study, "Race Influences Professional Investors' Financial Judgments," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines how asset allocators evaluate teams of white-led and black-led fund managers at stronger and weaker performance levels.

From Boston Common Asset Management. As responsible investors and citizens we have long been concerned with how financial markets may exacerbate inequality and deepen injustices experienced by communities of color. By 2044, America will likely be a majority-people-of-color nation. Unfortunately, People of color continue to lag in access to education, experience higher unemployment and accumulate far less wealth than their white peers. “The growth in diversity among the populace coupled with the persistent exclusion of historically disadvantaged groups from full participation in the economic and civic life of the country form a core challenge that companies must address to remain competitive.” In this piece, Lisa Hayles explores the first of at least four interconnected dimensions of Racial Justice investing—Practices.

From ImpactAlpha. Racial equity investing isn’t about ticking a diversity box. It’s about understanding and investing to tackle social inequities in the U.S. – from education to healthcare, transportation and housing, to access to finance – that largely divide along racial lines. One approach is to deploy capital in support of investment managers, entrepreneurs, and communities of color, which face a continued capital gap. Another is to back companies with products and services that benefit racially diverse constituencies and have positive workplace cultures.

From Confluence Philanthropy. Many foundations are committed to social justice – yet they continue to rely on a “business-as-usual” approach in their investment practices. Maintaining the status quo is often counterproductive as it produces some of the same barriers that mission-focused organizations are attempting to tackle through grantmaking.

From The Business Times. Gender lens investing in both fixed income and equities grew out of evidence that companies with higher women-in-leadership (WIL) metrics outperformed on a range of financial and share price criteria.