FB Heron Foundation Leads Foundations Toward 100 Percent Impact Investment
This post was originally produced for Forbes.
When people hear about impact investing, a light goes on. People immediately begin to see the potential. Once they do, they often assume that foundations must be doing the bulk of impact investing. In fact, relatively few are actively doing it.
The FB Heron Foundation has made a bold, public commitment to move 100 percent of its assets to impact investments by the end of 2017.
In her President’s letter issued last month, Clara Miller wrote, “In 2014, we continued to push forward on our core operating principle that “all investing is impact investing,” meaning that we believe that all investments (spanning the range of debt, equity, cooperative shares, warrants, and hybrid instruments) have social as well as financial repercussions. These social and financial repercussions can be positive or negative and vary over time. Bidden or not, intentional or unintentional, all of the enterprises that we invest in have impact that goes well beyond a financial return to an individual investor.”
On Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 2:00 Eastern, Miller will join me for a live discussion about the Foundation’s remarkable commitment to deploy its investment capital 100 percent toward its mission. Tune in here then to watch the interview live. Post questions in the comments below or tweet questions before the interview to @devindthorpe.
More about the FB Heron Foundation:
Twitter: @HeronFdn
The mission of the FB Heron Foundation is to help people & communities help themselves prosper, especially those that are economically disadvantaged. Heron is looking for ways to help rebalance the economy so that it ensures opportunity for all, which is a critical responsibility not only of philanthropy and government, but of business and investors. Heron invests in enterprises as if people matter.
Heron is uniquely investing all its assets for mission. Its funding is tax-status agnostic (for-profits and nonprofits) and utilizes all forms of capital.
Clara Miller, President, FB Heron Foundation
Miller’s bio:
Twitter: @ClaraGMiller
Prior to assuming the FB Heron Foundation’s presidency in 2011, Miller was President and CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund which she founded and ran from 1984 to 2011. NFF serves as a “philanthropic bank” for both social sector organizations and their funders, and has invested and managed more than $1.5 billion in financing for social sector organizations.
In addition to serving on The F. B. Heron Foundation’s board, Miller is on the boards of Family Independence Initiative, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, StoneCastle Financial Corp., and The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. She is a member of the Social Investment Committee of the Kresge Foundation and the U.S. National Advisory Board to the G8 Social Impact Investment Task Force. In 2010 Miller became a member of the first Nonprofit Advisory Committee of the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
Miller was the inaugural laureate of the Prince’s Prize for Innovative Philanthropy awarded in 2014 by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the Tocqueville Foundation-Institute of France. She was named to The NonProfit Times “Power and Influence Top 50” for the five years from 2006 through 2010 and received a Bellagio Residency in 2010 by The Rockefeller Foundation.
In 1996, Miller was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Treasury’s first Community Development Advisory Board for the then-newly-created Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. She later served as its Chair. She was a member of the Community Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for eight years, and she received the “Shining Star Award” in 2014 from New York City performance space PS122.
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