Guest blogger Jeffrey Malloy is the Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer at the Heising-Simons Foundation (HSF) as well as NCG Board Treasurer/Finance.
A couple of months ago we approached NCG with a request to help us put together a customized educational session for our staff and board about mission-related investing (“MRI”), and to plan and facilitate a board-level discussion to inform our thinking about how to approach the issue.
They were delighted to oblige.
Working with senior Heising-Simons staff, NCG put together an educational program tailored to our specific interests. They engaged colleagues from finance and philanthropy advisory services to explain MRI basics, provide an overview of how they can be structured, and present aggregate data on how MRI’s have performed relative to more traditional investment vehicles over the past several years.
They also invited executives from several foundations that have grappled with whether and how to invest their assets in mission-related causes/funds to share their insights and learnings, and to articulate the key principles they have used to inform their decision-making in this space. And they supported a structured, facilitated board-level conversation to enable Heising-Simons trustees to consider how what they had heard might inform our own thinking and approach.
The day really helped our team understand the myths and facts about mission-related investing, and more importantly, set us on a path to think strategically and in an informed way about how we want to consider it for ourselves.
This is a great way to work with NCG. They listened to that we were looking for, worked with us to determine how best to structure an experience to address our interests, and then planned and executed a program and meeting that delivered what we needed. It’s great to know we can turn to them when we want to do a deeper dive into an issue.