The Diversity Project is a cross-company initiative championing a more inclusive culture within the Savings and Investment profession.

We believe that we have an extraordinary opportunity to press the re-set button in our industry: to recruit, nurture and retain the first truly diverse generation of Savings and Investment professionals.

That generation will themselves perpetuate diversity in our industry; we are looking to break one cycle and create another. If we are successful, in the next four years:

1. Our businesses will better reflect both society at large, and the individuals who trust us with their money.

2. Our people will create better financial outcomes to benefit our diverse savers and investors.

3. We will attract more interest in the industry, with a pipeline of diverse talent.

Diversity is not only our social obligation, it’s a business imperative.

Transform Finance envisions a world where capital is aligned with social justice values and is accessible to activists and community leaders as a tool for transformative social change. We empower community leaders to shape how capital flows affect them – both in terms of holding capital accountable and having a say in its deployment – by demystifying finance and building capacity for community-centered initiatives. We support investors committed to deepening their impact investment practice to adopt transformative approaches and demonstrate the viability of the approach via education, concrete tools and strategies, and overall guidance. We foster a new discourse and collaboration between previously disconnected stakeholders – investors and social justice practitioners – by creating connections, breaking down barriers of knowledge and values, and facilitating dialogue.

The Midwest Investors Diversity Initiative is a coalition of institutional investors dedicated to increasing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity on corporate boards of companies headquartered in six Midwest states. With a combined $300 billion in assets in management, the coalition uses corporate engagements and shareholder rights to protect shareholder value and maximize returns. Members include the City of Chicago’s Treasurer’s Office, Illinois State Treasurer’s Office, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, SEIU Master Trust, Sundance Family Foundation, Segal Marco Advisors, Seventh Generation Interfaith, Trinity Health, UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, and Wespath Benefits and Investments.

The VC Include platform was created in 2018 to accelerate investment into diverse emerging managers—women, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and LGBTQ—to drive economic growth and opportunity in the market. We’re thoughtful about integrating environmental, social, corporate governance (ESG) and sustainability into the funds we support.

From ABFE. Becoming a signatory to the investment manager diversity pledge allows your organization to publicly demonstrate its commitment to diversity and inclusive investment management practices and places your organization at the heart of a community of foundations and endowments seeking to ensure a level playing field for minority and women investment managers. Your commitment acknowledges that hiring a diverse pool of quality investment managers is not contradictory to the goal of maximizing returns or fiduciary standard of care; it demonstrates a focus on finding the best investment management talent and alignment with the mission of community philanthropy by helping to build wealth in communities of color and among women.

From the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The report projects a tremendous boost to the United States’ workforce and consumer spending when organizations take the necessary steps to advance racial equity. Led by Ani Turner, co-director of Sustainable Health Spending Strategies at Altarum, researchers analyzed data from public and private sources, including the U.S. Census, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Brandeis University and Harvard University. Their methodology included applying established models to estimate the economic impact of the disparities faced by people of color.

From Cambridge Associates. Many institutional investors have long sought to promote social equity through grant making and other philanthropic endeavors. With the field of impact investing maturing, these institutions are now increasingly seeking investment solutions to accomplish the same goal. Yet this effort raises important questions: What is social equity investing? What does it look like in practice? And how do social equity investments fit in a portfolio?

In this paper the authors review the current state of social equity in the United States, highlight eight core social equity issue areas, and discuss the lessons we’ve learned in constructing portfolios with these investments. They define social equity investing as investments to promote equal opportunity and access for all, regardless of background, but they understand that many investors have different definitions. While investors need to be mindful of risks, the authors believe that investments can be made to promote a social equity impact agenda across the portfolio.

From Confluence Philanthrophy. “It’s About Time: A Call to Advance Racial Equity in the Investment Industry” shares what Confluence Philanthropy heard from diverse investment managers in a yearlong listening journey. That exploration culminated in a racial equity track with the appropriate theme of Truth and Transparency at Confluence Philanthropy’s 9 th Annual Practitioners Gathering in March 2019. This report also recommends ways investors can begin embracing racial equity in the investment process. In addition, it invites you to join in Confluence Philanthropy’s commitment to welcome, honor, and uphold the very premise of diversity–a core component of any well-balanced investment portfolio.

From CFA Institute. As one chief diversity officer at a financial service company said, “How do we ensure our leaders are educated on diversity & inclusion (D&I) and are clear on the expectations on them? We ask leaders to move the needle, but we don’t give them the tools.” What can we learn from companies that have succeeded? CFA Institute set out to answer this and other questions in a series of industry workshops that formed the basis for this paper. Through a series of workshops, firms were able to openly discuss what they are doing, what’s been working, and what comes next in the field of diversity & inclusion. From these workshops, CFA Institute devised a list of 20 concepts that repeatedly came up and the recommended actions for how to use them.

From Echoing Green. It’s not enough to desire equity and sustainability in our recovery. It is time to act, to make it so, and that leadership must be rooted in racial equity; anything else will be far too incremental, far too hollow, and far too idle to meet this moment. As many leaders and organizations (including many in Echoing Green’s community) have long known, successfully changing the world depends on taking an intentional, explicit, and sustained focus on addressing racial disparities across the problems we are trying to solve. Because of this, we call on all those who care about progress and positive social change, including funders, to implement five strategies as we move forward together.

By Kristin Hull, PhD. From taking a knee, to blacking out our social media, to raising our fists in protest, many of us are experiencing outrage, frustration, anguish and empathy for all that is unfolding in our country. From committing to learn about white privilege, to taking steps to dismantle systemic racism and white supremacy, to donating to organizations supporting racial justice, and shopping at Black owned businesses near our homes and online, many of us are stepping up to support in all of the ways we know how.

2020 has seen an unraveling of our social contracts, and as we look to rebuild our economy and reweave our society, it’s time to center the black community and those previously marginalized from planning and decision making tables.

From the Boston Globe. The inequities of those most impacted by COVID-19, Black- and brown- majority communities, show that we are not, in fact, in this together. People of color, particularly from Black- and brown-majority communities, have accounted for significantly higher COVID-19 related deaths; the survival rates of their businesses are positioned to follow a similar trajectory. Before the World Health Organization deemed the coronavirus a pandemic, Black businesses were already reeling. Black entrepreneurs are denied bank loans more than twice as often than their white peers — 53 percent to 25 percent. And people of color pay higher interest rates on average than their white peers — 7.8 percent to 6.4 percent. In addition, Black firms’ vulnerability is made evident by who was able to weather the 2008 Recession. About half of Black businesses survived, compared to 60 percent of white-owned firms, according to US Census research.

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 Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre. Research by the Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre (Australia) puts a figure on the additional worth a company can generate by getting more women into key decision-making roles, by finding a strong and convincing causal relationship between company performance and women holding an increasing share of leadership positions within ASX listed organisations.

From UNICEF and Criterion Institute. The purpose of this tool is to equip investors to understand the risk their investments are exposed to as a result of gender-based violence. This tool enables investors to determine how their existing due diligence process can be used to determine a potential investment’s exposure to the political, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks of gender-based violence. This tool is one component of a broader global effort to ensure the right to live free of violence.