FaithInvest news, including our CEO search; looking ahead; membership update

 

  • FaithInvest's Interim Chief Executive Martin Palmer reflects on a busy, challenging and exciting year
  • FaithInvest has launched a search for its new Chief Executive
  • Update from our Membership Team, including Member Portal, Manager Database, Commingled Vehicles, Dharma Fund and more
  • Welcome to our new Director of Movement Building, Lorna Gold
  • Webinar and events, including the Faith Long-term Plans series

FaithInvest's Interim Chief Executive Martin Palmer reflects on a busy, challenging and exciting year, and looks ahead to 2021

May I start by wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a healthy New Year, with prayers and hopes that 2021 will be an easier time for us all.

 

As for so many of us, 2020 has been challenging for FaithInvest but it also has created many opportunities and enabled developments we could not have expected a year ago. 

 

As the pandemic hit, FaithInvest found itself in an unusual space. Because of our links with ARC and our public profile, we became a 'first stop shop' for a wide range of secular organisations wanting – somewhat urgently – to engage with faiths and their values. At one point it felt like a new group was approaching us on a daily basis, from UN agencies to international investment groups, from media to national governments.

 

It has been an exciting time and a challenging one and led us to a major new development: We found we had become not just a membership group or an information hub; we had become a centre for movement on all these issues from a faith perspective. And so we have created a new Movement section, and welcomed Lorna Gold as its Director – see below.

 

One special surprise this year has been the development of closer ties with the Vatican and, through the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and its Prefect Cardinal Turkson, our links with the Pope. This will, we believe, lead to new programmes jointly undertaken in 2021.

 

We end the year with another hugely exciting development – our search for our new CEO. See below for more details, and please share the news with your networks.

 

Read Martin's full reflection here. 

FaithInvest has launched its search for a new CEO 

FaithInvest has launched a search for 'an exceptional individual' to be our new Chief Executive. This is a unique opportunity for someone with a rare and special combination of talents – a highly influential strategic thinker who is as comfortable in the faith world as in the investment world, and who shares our passion for growing the movement of faith-consistent investing globally.

 

  • Closing Date: Midnight, 8 January 2021
  • More information
  • Apply via NFP People

 

FaithInvest was founded in 2019 as a non-profit, global membership network for faith-based asset owners, with funding secured to 2022. Our new CEO will lead FaithInvest from its current start-up phase to maturity and spearhead our mission to grow faith-consistent investing worldwide.

 

This is an exciting time in the world of values-driven investing. Together faith groups comprise the most powerful, values-guided investor block in the world. The simple fact is that the faiths alone through their investments could change the course of international finance towards a more sustainable and environmental world. And FaithInvest is one of the key engines for this hugely exciting movement.

 

I will stay on as FaithInvest's Honorary President – a position it was always intended that I would hold before Covid and other circumstances meant I was asked to stay on as Interim CEO for longer than originally anticipated.

 

News and look ahead to 2021 from our Membership Team

Over the past year we have spent time with many of our members – both directly and in various seminars and forums – to try to understand their needs and priorities, and to align our initial focus with them. We have also focused on designing our member-only portal which will be launched early in 2021 and will directly support our projects and members.

 

Our initial focus in 2021 will be on three areas:

 

AREA 1: Directly enhancing collaboration across our members – hoping to save time and resources. This includes:

  • Setting up a Member Portal – to facilitate Member Work Groups and allow direct interaction on areas of interest, among others.
  • Creating a Manager Database – we will initiate a member work group focused on sharing asset manager information, with the ultimate aim of creating a database of managers and strategies known to our members and an ability to match members with specific interests with other members active in the same space.

 

AREA 2: Creating infrastructure to allow quick and smooth investing:

  • We will begin a long-term project to create infrastructure that allows reasonably quick and cheap construction of Commingled Vehicles for our members.
  • We will also try to leverage a pre-existing project started by one of our members to create a Dharma Index aimed at Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu investors.

 

AREA 3: Creating interesting investment opportunities – where possible, opportunities uniquely suited to the Faith Community. These will include:

  • Impact Investing Fund-of-Funds: There are many complexities that make this area particularly challenging including specialised due diligence. There have been few successful efforts in this area; we will explore one tuned to the faith community. 
  • Real Estate: Many of our members control “operating real estate” (as opposed to investment real estate) in the shape of houses of worship, hospitals, schools, etc. Some members have projects that lever that real estate to further community impact – often in coordination with their investment goals and plans. We will explore this space and the potential for greater expansion and impact.

 

Read the Membership Team's full update here. 

Welcome to our Director of Movement Building, Lorna Gold

As Martin explained in his full reflection, in the past year FaithInvest has become a focal point for the growing movement on faith-based investing. We are delighted to welcome Lorna Gold as our Director of Movement Building. Lorna has more than two decades' experience of engaging faiths on environmental, climate and economic justice issues, and is a leading voice on faith-consistent investing within the Catholic Church. Contact her at lorna.gold@faithinvest.org

WEBINARS AND EVENTS

 

15 January 2021, 9am-5pm CET

4th Faith-based Investment Conference

Following three successful conferences, this event, which is normally held in Geneva, Switzerland, has moved online due to covid restrictions. Entitled 'Faith-driven Investing: Walk the talk', it is organised by Geneva Agape Foundation, FaithInvest, the World Council of Churches and the World Evangelical Alliance's Business coalition. The focus will be on Africa-Europe due to time zones; subsequent conferences will focus on Asia (Friday 5 March 2021) and America (later in 2021). Find out more.

REGISTER NOW

Wednesday 13 January 2021, 12noon GMT

Developing your Faith Long-term Plan: Managing Assets –
Land & Forests; Water; Wildlife & Habitats

Globally, faiths own around 8% of all habitable land on earth, and more than
5% of commercial forests. Join us to discuss sustainable use, management
and protection of land assets, with a particular focus on biodiversity. 

REGISTER NOW

Tuesday 19 January 2021, 2pm GMT

Developing your Faith Long-term Plan: Lifestyles

This webinar will engage key thinkers in a conversation on self-assessment, pilgrimage, tourism, family life, purchasing power, and the art of simple living.

REGISTER NOW

For more details of the Faith Long-term Plans webinar series, visit our website.

 If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter, please email unsubscribe@faithinvest.org.

FaithInvest, c/o Stone King LLP, Boundary House, 91-93 Charterhouse Street, London, UK EC1M 6HR

Share on social

Share on FacebookShare on X (Twitter)

www.faithinvest.org  
This email was created with Wix.‌ Discover More