Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

Lisa Hall, President/CEO of Calvert Foundation, on the Potential of Impact Investing to Transform Underserved Communities

Excerpts: Lisa Hall, President/CEO of Calvert Foundation, on the potential of impact investing to transform underserved communities

LisaHall-239x164Lisa Hall of the Calvert Foundation on Impact Investing: An In-depth Interview. Forbes.com. October 20, 2011.

….Rahim Kanani: How can we convince traditional investors to reevaluate their portfolios and consider social impact investing?

Lisa Hall: I thought about this a lot at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference, where I spoke about impact investing and the widening wealth gap. During the past few years, our economy has suffered greatly and yet the wealth keeps building at the top. Impact investment creates a virtuous circle of empowerment, opportunity, and engagement by connecting investors, underprivileged individuals, and communities. We need more people to get involved in impact investing because it is a critical part of the solution to closing the wealth gap. ….

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Lisa Hall on How Calvert Foundation is Democratizing Impact Investing. Forbes.com. December 17, 2012.

Sixteen years ago, Calvert Foundation was born of a seemingly improbable idea: using investment dollars to help end poverty.

Today, investment banks describe impact investing as an “emerging asset class”;… the impact investing market is estimated to raise at least $500 billion in the next decade;…and according to Calvert Foundation’s recent research survey, 72 percent of financial advisors are interested in offering impact investing products to clients….

Impact investing is undoubtedly an idea whose time has come. As budgets of philanthropies and governments have shrunk, investment capital has come to be recognized as a tool that can address some of the world’s most pressing problems.…..

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BET Founder Robert L. Johnson’s “RLJ Rule” to Increase Employment Opportunities for African Americans

Robert-L.-Johnson-CNBCRobert L. Johnson Urges President Obama to Encourage U.S. Businesses to Adopt Version of the NFL Rooney Rule for Employment. News Release. Rljcompanies.com. December 17, 2012.

Robert L. Johnson, chairman of The RLJ Companies and founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) today calls on President Barack Obama to renew his commitment in addressing the employment gap between African Americans and White Americans, by encouraging U.S. corporations to adopt the RLJ Rule to address the overwhelming gap in unemployment.

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Stephen DeBerry on the Power of Impact Investing to Foster Black Progress

16535_200_150One of the very interesting presentations at the Innovation and Impact Forum for Black Male Achievement conference, held October 3, 2012 in New York City, was on the transformational potential of “impact investing” by Stephen DeBerry, Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Bronze Investments and a partner at Kapor Capital

According to his bio, DeBerry “makes and manages investments that align strong financial returns with positive social impact.”

Watch his full presentation here: Stephen DeBerry: Power of Impact Investing & Technology.

Related:

The BlackProgress.com essay, Financing Black Progress, Part 2: A Self-Reliance “Marshall Plan”: Creating a National Resource-Pooling Fund, discusses impact investing in the context of a national resource-pooling “impact fund” that can attract investments from millions of black investors.

See also: Pooling Our Resources on a Large, Transformative Scale: Breaking Through the Trust Barrier

Perspectives on Buying Black

Maggie Anderson tells the story of her family’s pledge to buy black for an entire year in Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy. [See links to media coverage of the book here.]

The Andersons’ endeavor evolved into The Empowerment Experiment, which “converts our family’s pledge into a positive awareness campaign about the need for strategic entrepreneurship and conscious consumerism in and to benefit the Black community.”

Ms. Anderson provides an excerpt from the book in Black Enterprise (July 2012): How To Buy Black (“14 strategies for conducting your own empowerment experiment”).  Continue reading

Emerging Trends in Collaborative Black Philanthropy: The First Head and Heart Philanthropy Summit

From BlackGivesBack.com 

On August 10-11, 2012, nonprofit executives, foundation leaders and philanthropists convened at the inaugural Annual Head and Heart Philanthropy Summit in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, “for learning, professional networking and idea generation.”

The invitation-only summit was organized by Christal M. Jackson, founder of Jackson and Associates Group, LLC, a boutique fund development and philanthropic consulting firm, who noted: “…Given the serious issues facing our community, we must begin to collaborate for greater impact to create systemic change.”  Continue reading

On Banking Black

Support Your Local Black Bank. Derek T. Dingle. Black Enterprise.com.
Buying Black is only one step to economic freedom, we also have to bank Black

“Popular syndicated radio talk show host Warren Ballentine recently teamed up with the National Bankers Association, the Washington, D. C.-based consortium of minority-owned financial institutions, to unveil “The People’s Economic Movement,” a program designed to encourage African American individuals and institutions to deposit dollars in Black banks. The initiative’s supporters, among others, include National Urban League President Marc Morial, NAACP head Benjamin Jealous and National Action Network President Rev. Al Sharpton.

Ballentine firmly believes Black institutions and consumers will recover from the Great Recession by pooling resources and strategically leveraging our buying power . “We don’t want to create a minute. We want to create a movement,” Ballentine told me earlier this week. “We’re asking everyone to get involved.” The call to action has been gaining traction as organizations like the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists have decided to transfer funds to local Black institutions.  Continue reading

Pooling Our Resources on a Large, Transformative Scale: Breaking Through the Trust Barrier

The “trust barrier” is the major obstacle hampering the establishment of a large-scale, self-reliance-based resource-pooling fund that can have a transformational impact in addressing urgent problems in our distressed communities. Even black churches are losing trust and credibility among many African Americans. There would be no “trust barrier,” however, if, for instance, five or more of the most respected African Americans got together to start a fund and hired a few highly competent people to run it.

A fund backed by such an ideal “dream team” is unlikely or infeasible (but not impossible!). The more likely way it will happen: a few visionary, motivated, and accomplished entrepreneurs who have solid, unblemished reputations, armed with a sound and credible business plan, convince some less well-known but equally highly-regarded people to back the fund. 

Such backing need not even be financial: by virtue of their strong reputations, relationships, and public standing, just lending their credibility, prestige, gravitas, and imprimatur to the fund will provide it with the instant credibility it needs to be able to attract contributions from large numbers of African Americans even at start-up.  This is the most likely way a potent large-scale fund will get established. 
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As discussed in the BlackProgress.com article, Financing Black Progress, Part 1: A Publicly Financed “Marshall Plan” Is Unrealistic, So What’s the Alternative? A “Self-Reliance Marshall Plan”?, given the current noxious and racially-charged political environment — in which even the reasonable and very modest American Jobs Act remains stalled in Congress — waiting for massive public investment in initiatives that can transform distressed communities of color is largely futile.

And there is no indication this situation will change in the near future. Regardless of who is president and whether or not Democrats retain control of the Senate and/or retake the House in 2013, Congress will most likely remain closely divided, highly polarized and acrimonious, and is unlikely to pass any legislation to fund, on a substantial enough scale, the types of initiatives that can sufficiently meet the dire needs of these communities.

Rather than simply standing by helplessly and wringing our hands while Congress remains gridlocked and yet another generation of children in distressed communities remains trapped in poverty and dysfunction, we must focus on organizing proactive self-reliance approaches to transform our own communities.

By pooling our resources on a large enough scale, we would be able to amass sufficient capital to adequately attack the most critical problems in our communities, especially with respect to education, entrepreneurship and business development, job creation, and wealth-building. The BlackProgress.com article, Financing Black Progress, Part 2: A Self-Reliance “Marshall Plan”: Creating a National Resource-Pooling Fund, discusses such a resource pooling effort–a National Ventures & Excellence Fund or “EXCEL Fund”. Continue reading

Pooling Our Resources: Giving Circles Network Raises Funds at Kellogg Foundation’s Online “Cultures of Giving Donor Challenge”

Another step forward on the “pooling our resources to foster progress” front:

The Community Investment Network (CIN), a “national network of giving circles and everyday philanthropists,” was one of the participants in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s 10-day Cultures of Giving Donor Challenge, which took place April 17-26. The online challenge provided a dollar-for-dollar match up to the first $20,000 per nonprofit.

According to CIN, 183 donors contributed $20,744 to CIN during the Challenge. With WKKF’s $20,000 matching contribution, CIN gets a total of $40,744. Continue reading

“Why Giving Circles? Why Now?” Webinar Hosted by Friends of Ebonie (from BlackGivesBack.com)

As noted in previous blog entries [Black Philanthropy and the Creation of a Transformational National Resource-Pooling FundRegional Resource-Pooling Initiatives], giving circles are “micro models” of the ambitiously transformational, large-scale, national resource-pooling fund discussed in the BlackProgress.com article, Financing Black Progress, Part 2: A Self-Reliance “Marshall Plan”: Creating a National Resource-Pooling Fund. Giving circles could potentially proliferate and grow into potent variants of such a fund at regional and national levels.

Tracey Webb, the laudable advocate of giving circles and philanthropy at BlackGivesBack.com, reports on a recent webinar titled: “Why Giving Circles? Why Now?” (available online here). According to Ms. Webb, “[y]ou’ll learn what a giving circle is, how they work, and why they are essential to communities of color. You’ll also learn why I started The Black Benefactors and resources if you’d like to start or join a giving circle.”

[Full post at BlackGivesBack.com: “Why Giving Circles? Why Now?” Hosted by Friends of Ebonie.]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Self-Reliance and “Pooling Our Resources”

MLK_Chicago rally“We need to pool our resources” has been a recurring exhortation in the African American community for decades. For example, here’s Dr. Martin Luther King in a 1958 interview:

Question: Do you think Negroes are partly responsible for their plight? They don’t stick together and they don’t help each other. Negroes, for example, will walk past a Negro-owned grocery store or shoe shop to get to a white place. Instead of trying to make themselves financially independent, most Negroes are trying to keep up with the Joneses. Isn’t it time for us to stop begging and stand on our own feet? 

Dr. King: I quite agree that there is a great deal that the Negro can do to lift himself by his own bootstraps. Well has it been said by one that Negroes too often buy what they want and beg for what they need. Negroes must learn to practice systematic saving. They must also pool their economic resources through various cooperative enterprises. Such agencies as credit unions, savings and loan associations, and finance companies are needed in every Negro community. All of these are things that would serve to lift the economic level of the Negro which would in turn give him greater purchasing power. This increased purchasing power will inevitably make for better housing, better health standards, and for better educational standards.

From: “Advice for Living,” The King Papers Project, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University — http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/Mar-1958_AdviceForLiving.pdf