This video is a resource from the 2019 CIF Leadership Summit

by John Siverling

Hear Ron Blue and Jeff Cave talk about the history, the present and the future they see for Faith Based investing at the opening plenary of the 2019 CIF Leadership Summit

by Peter Greer

What would it look like if logos and egos could be tamed so that they no longer get in the way of creative partnerships, collaboration, and greater examples of collective impact? 

When I joined the nonprofit sector, I imagined that hard work, compelling missions, and formidable challenges would forge an uncommon spirit of camaraderie—not just within an organization but within an entire sector. Chalk it up to youthful idealism, but I assumed backbiting and competition were far removed from the noble nonprofit.

I understood and appreciated the merits of my co-laborers’ work—providing clean water, combatting human trafficking, feeding the hungry, and expanding access to education—so I never expected the twinge of envy I felt when I heard of worthy organizations’ substantial accomplishments in these sectors.As I sought to understand the source of this uncharitable reaction, I began to realize that, at my core, I subscribed to a scarcity mentality. On a subconscious level, I feared there would not be enough recognition or resources for all of us. More for others meant less for us, so I felt threatened by others’ success. 

When we lead from this posture of scarcity, we’ll inevitably see others as competition. But what if we truly believed that God is a God of abundance, not scarcity? Do we remember that with Christ, five loaves and two fish are enough to feed multitudes? 

Moving toward an abundance mindset opens the door to relationships. It allows us to see others as collaborators instead of competitors. To develop genuine friendships and partnerships that avoid unnecessary duplication and inefficient use of resources. To think beyond our organization and discover our part in a much grander and more compelling mission. 

It was with these realizations that Chris Horst and I wrote Rooting for Rivals in 2016, and for the last several years, we’ve been on a mission to apply the words we wrote. We open-sourced everything we have at HOPE International. Our resource library made organizational documents—from board manuals to operating models—freely available to any interested organization or individual. While clearly there is more to do, we have moved toward a posture of generosity and collaboration. That move has been life-giving. Over the past several years, we’ve actively engaged with other Christ-centered organizations in the economic development sector through The Christian Economic Development Network: a space where organizations could share best practices, learn from each other’s challenges, and encourage one another in our pursuit of transformational economic development.

The CED Network encompasses more than 175 organizations in 65 countries. Through frequent webinars, an online resource library, and an annual summit, members have grown in relationship. We truly believe the wisdom of the Burundian proverb, “You’ll never make it through the dry season on your own.” We also believe that the dry season is not the time to initiate these relationships; it’s the time to draw on them. 

When the pandemic struck in 2020, the CED Network had already been meeting together, establishing trust, and sharing best practices. When it became clear that standard operating procedures were not going to sustain our organizations in this season, none of us knew exactly what to do—but we didn’t have to figure it out alone.

Vision Fund, World Vision’s financial services provider, promptly consulted with global health experts and was among the first to share the resulting health protocols, training materials, and revised standards for gathering they had established. 

Other members of the CED Network were figuring out how to extend grace periods to borrowers and reschedule loan repayments while remaining solvent. These were challenges that every organization in our network needed to address—and perhaps we could have each solved them on our own. But what a gift it was that we didn’t have to!

We built from the foundation of what our peers were successfully implemented, and the men and women we served were better served as a result. The resources donated to each of our organizations went further toward empowering those hit hardest by the crisis. In collaborating with our colleagues across various organizations, we found opportunities to navigate each new challenge together.

This was possible because we truly have grown to see one another as friends and co-laborers in Christ, not competitors for limited resources.

As Christ’s followers, we have the opportunity to work as one body. To move toward the prayer Jesus prayed for the unity of his followers in John 17:21: “that all of [us] may be one … so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

May we be a people who long to see God’s Kingdom come, even as our earthly kingdoms fade. May we ready ourselves for the work God is calling us into together.

by Benjamin J. Bailey

In my experience, most values- and ESG-oriented investors are generally familiar with the concept of shareholder advocacy, in which stock owners seek to influence company policies and practices. 

Multiple fund families and other institutional owners often will come together and speak as one voice, raising the likelihood that a company’s management team and board of directors will listen and take action.

Fewer investors focused on values and environmental, social and governance factors consider the potential to elicit corporate change on the fixed-income side of their portfolio. Those who are aware of this potential may not know the role of green and other positive-impact bonds to further corporate progress.

And indeed, we see the purchase of positive-impact bonds as a primary avenue to affect real-world change. But in addition to purchases themselves, we regularly find other opportunities to pursue change by engaging with companies about fixed-income offerings. In these conversations, we ask additional questions that can spur change.

In fact, at Praxis we use the term “company engagement” as a broad way to refer to both shareholder advocacy and fixed-income engagement. To us, this recognizes the opportunity and responsibility to seek opportunities to engage with companies – regardless of the asset class in question.

Following are three examples of what company engagement can look like on the fixed-income side of the portfolio:

• Prompting companies to raise the quality and consistency of their ESG data disclosures.

  There are many ESG data providers, among which MSCI and Sustainalytics are leaders. When talking with company representatives before a new bond issuance or on company calls, we’ll often ask about the company’s ESG score or about interactions with ESG data providers. Sometimes, management will tell us the ESG data is wrong. When that’s the case, it’s often also true that the company hasn’t had meaningful interaction with the ESG data provider. MSCI tracks the frequency of interactions with each company. We encourage the company to interact with the largest ESG data providers to ensure their data is accurate. The result will be better data available to all ESG-oriented investors across asset classes. Here’s some very good news: Compared to five years ago, companies are far more cognizant of their ESG ratings, and they generally talk about their multiple interactions with the ESG rating agencies. The fact that less of this prodding is needed reflects its success.

• Asking about social factors.

  “Social bonds” are a growing component of the positive-impact bond space. Rather than just emphasizing green projects, social bonds relate to projects that promote positive impacts on employees, local communities or other people-related contexts. Companies like to highlight their social endeavors – whether related to a specific social bond or just general company policies – and this gives us an opportunity to ask questions. We may compliment a social factor strength – and ask tough questions about past controversies or current weaknesses.

• Raising concerns about greenwashing.

  “Voting with our dollars” – and avoiding certain issuances – is the main way we address bond issuances that, by our analysis, are labeled as “green” but aren’t convincingly so. An example was a bond issued to fund the purchase a second company that was a leader in using recycled materials within its main product … but the product itself was hardly green. We did not purchase the bond. We have also asked questions of investment bankers about green bond concerns. It’s been interesting to hear that they, too, are sometimes uncomfortable with labeling. We believe that as we and other institutional buyers express hesitation, bonds will improve and standards will be raised.

Many investors and clients haven’t even thought about the opportunity of fixed-income engagement. They may be pleased to hear that in our experience with engagement on the fixed-income side of the portfolio, companies listen and improvements can occur. 

Article originally posted and shared with permission by Praxis Mutual Funds®. Praxis is dedicated to stewardship investing — a philosophy of financial decision-making that balances social and financial considerations and is motivated and informed by faith convictions. Through a suite of equity index funds and an actively managed Impact Bond fund, Praxis seeks to help investors make real-world impact.

Article originally posted here by coindesk

by Brady Dale

More or less decentralized? For Jimmy Song, there’s no in between.

An author and Bitcoin Fellow at venture firm Blockchain Capital, Song made that point repeatedly in a debate with IBM engineer and Hyperledger Fabric co-lead Chris Ferris at SXSW Thursday, where he told the crowd at the Hilton Austin in no uncertain terms: “You either have control over your stuff or you don’t. It’s a zero or a one.”

The debate pitted permissioned blockchains – the private networks being pitched to big business – against permissionless blockchains – the technology undergirding bitcoin and other open-source networks. Billed as a “deathmatch” on the festival agenda, Song was determined to give the audience what they came for.

“Why do you need permission if it’s supposed to be decentralized?” he asked. “There has to be an entity that’s giving you permission, and that’s by definition centralized.”

While Song took the binary view of decentralization, Ferris argued that blockchains can exist on a spectrum. Sure, permissioned blockchains are less decentralized, Ferris said, but their added trust mechanisms mitigate perceived risk.

“Permissionless blockchains do not necessarily solve the problem of trust,” he added.

Song wasn’t having it. To illustrate the degree to which he was willing to extend his point, Song used the example of the ethereum fork following the infamous hack of The DAO, when the project’s developers and users agreed to introduce a code update aimed at rolling back the stolen funds.

“I think Ethereum is a permissioned blockchain,” Song said, adding:

“When Vitalik says, ‘These particular transactions aren’t particularly good for the ecosystem so we’re going to roll them back,’ that, to me, is a permissioned blockchain.”

On stage and in conversation with CoinDesk beforehand, Song argued that every application of blockchain to anything but bitcoin is a waste. “Blockchain is really useful for bitcoin,” he said during the debate. “Everything else has a central point of failure.”

Prior to the debate, Ferris told CoinDesk that he hoped he could make the point that there’s just different use cases for different kinds of blockchains, and those use cases should determine what level of decentralization should be called for.

“Certainly part of the conversation will be that bitcoin doesn’t solve the same problems we are trying to solve in an enterprise context,” Ferris told CoinDesk.

IBM, he explained, is primarily building products that allow large enterprise partners to share information rather than exchange money. For example, today Big Blue announced a deal to record information about businesses’ legal status across France. Trying to find some common ground, Ferris argued there’s space for the approaches of both sides.

“I think there are a ton of use cases where permissioned blockchains make a ton of sense,” Ferris said. “I also think there’s a ton of use cases where a permissioned blockchain doesn’t make any sense.”

But Song didn’t come to accept concessions. He said all the blockchains besides bitcoin’s might as well just run on a faster, cheaper centralized database.

“A permissioned blockchain is an oxymoron because it’s a centralized database that’s masquerading as something decentralized,” Song said.

Click here to read the full article!

[Photo by André François McKenzie on Unsplash]

by Bill High

It’s a common story.  A person starts a new venture or business.  In the early days, the struggle is real, and it’s hard.  The trial is marked with uncertainty, much prayer and a building trust.  But at some point, there’s a breakthrough.  Perhaps it is imperceptible but the struggle is lessened.  Or so it seems.

And with the success, there’s excess, and with the excess, there becomes indulgence into toys—the trappings of having arrived. Maybe it’s a fancy car, a boat or a second home.  The toys are easier to come by when the treasury—the storehouse is stocked.  Life is not so hard when there’s money in the bank.

Such was the story of King Asa.  He rose to the kingship in a period of upheaval.  His grandfather, Rehoboam,  lead the kingdom to civil war and the split of the nation.  His father, Abijah, was a  wicked king by all accounts.

So when Asa reaches the throne, much of his early reign was to bring stability.  Asa was a good king.  He wanted to do what was right and likely those early days were hard as he sought to correct the wrongs of the past.  Worse still, in the 10th year of his reign, Asa is confronted by a nearby king who seeks his destruction.   In despair and desperation, Asa pleads to God:

And Asa cried to the Lord his God, “O Lord, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.”  II Chronicles 14.11

God answers Asa’s plea and order is restored.  In a newfound fervor, he institutes reforms.  While the text is silent, it is easy to guess that in the coming years, the newfound peace leads to prosperity.  Without the threat of war, production surges and the treasuries become stocked.  And perhaps, with a little imagination, it’s not a stretch to believe that  Asa began to accumulate his own toys.

Sadly, in the 36th year of his reign, Asa is once again confronted by war.  This time it’s Baasha, King of Israel.  But unlike in former times, Asa does not appeal to God.  Instead, he turns to his stocked treasury and uses it to hire the king of Syria to join his opposition.

He trusted in his treasury more than God.

Sadly, it seems that Asa never recovered.  The Bible records that just three years later that  Asa suffered a disease in his feet “and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.”  II Chronicles 16.12

The lesson of Asa?  It is so easy and so subtle to move from that place of dependence upon God.  Asa’s early appeal speaks volumes—“there is none like you.”  While Asa is noted as one of the good kings of Judah, it’s likely that even in all his reforms and good deeds, he lost sight of the Deliverer and placed his trust in the security of gold and silver coins.

O Lord, let us learn the lesson of Asa.  Our hearts desire your righteousness and truth.  May you continue to fan afresh a zeal and dependence upon you.  We pray that even in success that our trust will never be in our toys or our treasury.  Let us always be prepared for battle and the desire to lift up your name.

Article originally posted here by Bill High