Featured Articles

Invest Close to Home with the Homewise Community Investment Fund

December 21, 2017

Homewise is a non-profit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that offers a comprehensive suite of homeownership services for low-to-moderate income individuals and families, many of whom have been largely underserved by traditional lending institutions. Our services include financial education and coaching, real estate brokerage, mortgage lending, home improvement and refinance lending, real estate development and disinvested property rehabilitation. Each of our services is designed to bolster our other services, providing a one-stop resource for creating an accessible and affordable path to successful homeownership.

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Community Impact Investing

December 21, 2017

Community Capital Management is an RIA, based in South Florida, with offices in Boston and Charlotte. The firm manages just over $2.4 billion, most of which is in our CRA Qualified Investment Fund (CRA Fund). \”CRA\” stands for the Community Reinvestment Act, which regulates banks within the U.S. The CRA Fund is a market-rate, fixed income fund that invests in U.S.-based community impact investments. Community impact investments focus on positive criteria for inclusion in a portfolio and can include a wide range of intentions such as affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization, and small business development.

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SRI is Growing Up Right Before Our Very Eyes

November 21, 2017

At Appleseed Capital, we have watched developments in SRI and ESG with great satisfaction. Having launched the Appleseed Fund nearly 11 years ago, we are proud to have been a participant in the long-term movement to align investments with values. As we look forward to 2018 and beyond, we expect to see the recent trends surrounding SRI investing to remain solidly intact. We believe that more and more traditional investors and asset managers will come to understand the value, both social and financial, of investing with a purpose, and we are confident that the Sustainable Responsible Impact Investing industry will continue to evolve in response to the changing political and economic environment.

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Urgent Needs for 2018

November 21, 2017

Aligning the capital markets more directly with the urgent needs we face as a society to halt environmental destruction and reverse decades of worsening inequality must be our priority for 2018. Alignment needs to occur at every level, across the global markets. Despite the tremendous efforts behind the Paris Climate Accord, formalization of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and a long history of other efforts to change the course of climate change and inequality, we are not making nearly the progress needed. The 1,700 signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which represent $70 trillion of assets and a wave of press about ESG investing, have not gotten us on track yet.

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What’s Next on a Random Walk Down Facebook Lane

November 21, 2017

There are numerous lessons to be learned from experiences at Facebook. First, agnosticism comes at a price. We live in a values laden society. To presume that our wide spectrum of values can be discounted and factored out of the algorithmic equation ignores the current reality of our society and world. It is still people who are using the platform and people are imperfect. Of course humans are integral to Facebook and when complemented by algorithms, they can make an excellent product even better. The company itself could also better manage the risks to their brand that seems to be dogging them these days. In 2018, ESG is here to help. Responsible algorithms anyone?

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My 2018 Outlook

November 21, 2017

Looking into 2018, higher corporate earnings – inevitable with the new lower taxes rates – ought to lead to the sort of volatility-free rise in the stock market that 2017 saw. Further, employment is full in this country; emerging economies continue to grow at rates that exceed those of developed economies; exciting new industries such as software-as-a-service, alternative energy storage and the internet of things arise with regularity fueling dynamic growth. Then there\’s the other picture. There are two enormous longer-term and permanent threats to my cheerful scenario. China is the macro geopolitical one and the other is due to climate change. Further, there are three short-term unavoidable threats, also worth acknowledging.

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The Magic of Money and Other Cautionary Tales

October 23, 2017

It began with a magic trick. When I was young a friend of my father\’s would pull a quarter out from behind my ear, and then make it disappear again. This became an apt metaphor for my relationship with money: one moment there and the next moment gone, feeding two powerful feelings about money: insecurity and lots of fear about never getting it back. My next memory of money was of being gifted with Kennedy silver half dollars on my birthdays (one for every year). Not realizing their worth, I spent most of them, but when I moved some years ago I found a stash of them in a small black bag.

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It\’s Monday Morning

October 23, 2017

It’s Monday morning, the beginning of a new week. The day starts with greeting the sunrise from our garden that faces to the East. A few minutes of taking in the energy that provides us so many benefits every day, and then some meditation, establishes the foundation for all else. After a stroll in the garden it is time to enter into the technological universe with a quick review of Bloomberg.com and WSJ.com. What is happening on the global stage and in the financial markets? How are the markets doing and how might global factors and the events of the day impact the people that I work with?

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Doubling Down on Impact: Leveraging all that I have for the World I want to see

October 23, 2017

As a child, money was tight; often a stressful topic at our house. Money messages included being prudent, entrepreneurial and thrifty. I wore hand-me-down clothes, planted seeds in our victory garden and overheard as my parents argued over whose turn it was to pick up the food stamps. My father taught math at a local high school and then took to the streets as a Fuller Brush salesman in the evenings. To bring in additional income, my mom corrected high school English papers and my father managed apartments to reduce our rent. I learned about the importance of saving money, of looking for opportunities, and of working hard.

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From Noble Poverty to my Brand of Joy

October 23, 2017

For my first 40 years I lived a life of \”noble poverty\”. When I heard that term I had a visceral reaction in my heart and my gut. I felt deeply understood, experiencing relief having named a condition I had lived with since I was a child. It is \”the belief that there is virtue in not having money and that good people do not have it\”. People with this mindset live by the phrase \”it is better to be good and poor than rich and evil\”. Now I understand that this mindset is based on a false dichotomy that you can have one or the other, and not both.

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