Investment Guidelines

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IASJ encourages its affiliates to integrate Socially Responsible Investing into their asset allocation. This is supported through clear Investment Guidelines that identify their approach to investing and highlight their values and priorities when it comes to the management of their portfolio. Many affiliates will include issues related to religious teachings or social justice to encourage alignment in the management of their portfolio.  In a fully aligned and integrated approach, Investment Managers and Consultants use the guidelines to inform their asset allocation priorities and include reporting on the Investment Guidelines in their regular meetings with Investment Committees or Treasurers. In practice, this may include integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance Factors, commitments to climate finance and other forms of positive investments, themed investing in priority areas, such as water, or other innovative financing mechanisms. 

Resources

One element of the approach is to identify areas, firms, or services in which an investor will not invest.  These are generally called Negative Screens, and may identify certain sectors or companies and thresholds of ownership for their portfolio.

Impact Investing is another tool that investors have to prioritize environmental or social goals in their financing, while still earning competitive returns on investment.

Community investing directs capital from investors and lenders to communities underserved by traditional financial services institutions, and provides access to credit, equity, capital and basic banking products that these communities would otherwise lack. In the United States and around the world, community investing makes it possible for local organizations to provide financial services to low-income individuals and to supply capital for small businesses and vital community services, such as affordable housing, child care and healthcare.

IASJ’s affiliates are trailblazing participants in community investing, having launched in 1983 the Leviticus 25:23 Alternative Fund, a US Treasury-certified Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) that provides capital and financial services for the development of affordable housing and community facilities throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Our affiliates also invest in a variety of US-based CDFIs as well as loan funds that invest in microfinance and cooperatives in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Resources on Community Investing