By Bruce Krasnow, The Santa Fe New Mexican
For two decades, Santa Fe’s Cliff Feigenbaum has been the sage of the sustainable-investing universe.
GreenMoney’s masthead has a simple message: “Covering sustainable business and investing since 1992.” But those who have watched the industry say it has been the interviews, articles and information from Feigenbaum and his contributors that has powered sustainable investing into the mainstream.
The soft-spoken pundit who founded GreenMoney has nurtured the publication with help from an editor in Washington State, graphic designers in California and a Web-design partner in Santa Fe who is now poised to take the content global.
Earlier this year, Feigenbaum was named as one of the top leaders in trustworthy business thought by the Trust Across America organization. And GreenMoney Journal has been honored by Utne Reader as one of the best of the alternative press for several years.
“He’s really respected in the field,” said Michael Loftin, the executive director of Homewise, a nonprofit in Santa Fe that helps with affordable home ownership. Loftin went to a sustainable investment conference in New Orleans to talk about the Homewise Community Investment Fund and saw how Feigenbaum was connected to just about everyone there.
“Who would have thought some guy from Santa Fe, New Mexico, would have one of the leading publications on this, you’d think it would be in New York or someplace else. But it’s here; that’s pretty cool,” said Loftin.
Feigenbaum often meets investment advisers at funds such as Calvert and Pax World who credit the publication for their careers. “I never know where GreenMoney ends up,” he said.
Feigenbaum said he is one of the investors in the Homewise fund, which aims to finance sustainable development in Santa Fe. He also seeks out credit unions and companies with his own beliefs when he invests his money. Unlike Mother Jones, GreenMoney Journal will refuse advertising from certain businesses, Feigenbaum said.
Slow Movement
When water moves quickly through a field, it causes a flood; when it moves slowly, it brings life. That is the basis of the Slow Food movement and the Slow Money movement, a philosophy spirited by Woody Tasch, a GreenMoney contributor. “Just like you slow water down, you slow money down. Instead of a six-month return, you aim for a five-year return,” Feigenbaum said.
The evolution for Feigenbaum started when his father, who bought and sold dairy farms in the Pacific Northwest, went bankrupt and died of a heart attack at age 46. “I watched him struggle and how he died. I starting thinking about the impact money has on your life.”
Feigenbaum received a business degree from Whitworth College in Spokane, with minors in religion and economics. He then got a job in the business office of a major hospital and noticed that some of the 401(k) mutual funds had investments with tobacco companies.
He talked to the CFO, expressing that it was inappropriate for a health care institution to profit from smokers. His questions spawned more inquiry and that led to a column in a weekly business publication. Within a few months, he had quit the hospital job and started to research, think and write about what was then called “socially responsible investing.” The term has since evolved into a concept now called “sustainable business and investing.”
He used membership lists from social justice groups and sent out some 2,000 newsletters. He attended conferences and started to build a following with professionals, many of whom were thinking about the same things. It was all about “the impact money has on your life and using money to create the kind of world we want to live in,” Feigenbaum said.
Interest in GreenMoney really spiked when he got a mention in Utne Reader, a compendium of thoughts and articles from the progressive press. “People were listening to what we were saying, and reading what we were writing,” he said. Today, federal employees have a choice of sustainable investment options and state pension and investment funds are among his subscribers and contributors.
The Internet Reach
Michelle G. Mosser, owner of Grace Communications on Second Street in Santa Fe, NM had a journey similar to Feigenbaum. She was working for a national advertising agency in South Florida and many of her clients had started outsourcing jobs overseas. She became more aware about profits and what she wanted from a career
“I started to wake up to what was going on in corporate America, there was not much in sustainability and local business,” Mosser said.
She moved to Santa Fe and got involved in a group called LOHAS — Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. “I got very excited when I saw this smart marketing-based research group with common values in people — companies wanting to create a business by doing good,” she said.
It was at a LOHAS conference in Boulder, Colo., that she met Feigenbaum and saw the print edition of GreenMoney on his exhibit table.
“SRI [socially responsible investing] was a very small and tight-knit community and Cliff had pioneered a lot of those relationships with the founders of those firms who were taking ethics and cause into the investment world, and telling their story,” she said.
Still, Mosser saw a huge opportunity to reach out electronically, while maintaining the GreenMoney brand, which is long-term, more deliberate — aka slow. Though Feigenbaum has a Twitter feed, Mosser said GreenMoney is not going to publish daily and try to be all things green. It will continue to tell the big picture story, cover trends and feature in-depth writing on its website and in its expanding E-Journal.
“Whatever we do, we do well, but we can’t do everything well,” said Feigenbaum.
“We aren’t going to be The New York Times of green where we publish daily. We want to sift through to the long-term trends. What is relevant to the leaders in the green sustainable movement?” Mosser said.
Still, Mosser sees a huge opportunity as global markets mature and more cultures learn to invest responsibly — and to a younger generation of investors who matured thinking and learning about sustainability. The GreenMoney website and E-Journal is currently reaching about 30,000 people, with 3,500 of those outside the United States.
A testament to that untapped potential might be an advertisement on the GreenMoney website (www.GreenMoney.com ) from Antioch University for an MBA business school program in sustainability: “Triple-bottom-line concepts (people, planet, profit) are woven throughout the MBA courses,” according to the school. “Profit is not the only measure of an organization’s success.”
Even though he’s been writing about sustainability for more than two decades, Feigenbaum could not have said it any better.
GreenMoney Journal Timeline
• 1991 — Cliff Feigenbaum’s first article on Socially Responsible Investing, co-written with Tom Kliewer, is published by the Spokane Journal of Business.
• 1992 — GreenMoney Journal is launched as a 6-page newsletter with the tagline, “Responsibility from the Supermarket to the Stockmarket.”
• 1993 — Well-known activist Paul Hawken mentions “GreenMoney” by name in the Socially Responsible Business issue of the Utne Reader in the fall of 1993; the pitch sparked broad interest in the publication.
• 1995 — GreenMoney launches website, www.GreenMoney.com
• 1999 — Feigenbaum co-authors a book, “Investing with Your Values,” that’s written with former Santa Fe resident Hal Brill and published by Bloomberg Press.
• 2000 — Feigenbaum moves full time to Santa Fe
• 2006 — GreenMoney launches it first e-newsletter to more than 25,000 readers; it’s designed by Michelle Mosser of Grace Communications in Santa Fe.
• 2012 — GreenMoney celebrates its 20th anniversary by featuring leaders looking at “The Next 20 Years of Sustainable Business and Investing.
• 2013 — Feigenbaum was named to The Top 100 List of Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business by the Trust Across America organization
Article Source: Santa Fe New Mexican
