Foundation News

By Dan Chu, Executive Director, and Henry Holmes, Director of Grants and Compliance

In March, we attended Confluence Philanthropy’s 9th Annual Practitioners Gathering. The event took place in Brooklyn, New York, and over 300 people attended representing a diverse group of foundations, family offices, and investment advisors and managers.

Confluence Philanthropy is a community of foundations and investment managers intent on advancing mission-aligned investing. Collectively, these members hold over $70 billion in philanthropic assets under management and $3.5 trillion in managed capital. Each year, Confluence hosts a gathering to share perspectives on challenges and opportunities in the field and emerging areas of work. The theme of this year’s gathering was “Truth and Transparency.”

This year, on a community field trip highlighting climate disaster response, resilience, and a just transition, Henry met with UPROSE, an environmental justice collective developing a community solar initiative in Brooklyn. He also met with the Red Hook Initiative that worked on recovery and rebuilding in the borough post-Hurricane Sandy in 2012. A collection of renewable energy and urban agriculture projects have developed since the storm in a multitude of neighborhoods, an exciting development for community resilience and to ensure strong recovery from future storms.

Aside from clean energy and community organizing, the Practitioners Gathering also focused on economic and social factors that negatively affect the workplace. Joan Williams, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley Hastings, delivered a keynote on workplace bias and the structural and systemic barriers that exist in our communities and that permeate many aspects of society, including business, investment, and financial systems. These barriers continue to prevent gender and racial equity in the workplace and society at large. Notably, we have stagnated nationally at just 14% female representation at the C-Suite level.

A highlight of the convening was the live production of the Hip Hop Caucus Think 100 podcast. The creators recorded an episode during the convening featuring Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and Ellen Dorsey of Wallace Global Fund. Billed as the coolest show about climate, the sobering content was balanced with music and performances to energize the crowd.

These topics were all tied together by the broad concept of “decolonizing capital” - in other words, the notion that we must construct a system that redistributes access to capital beyond the current white male dominated financial industry.

As the gathering came to a close this year, foundations and socially-responsible investment managers across the spectrum considered this challenge as the next obstacle to overcome on the path toward an equitable, sustainable, and just world.