Max Mintz

InvestmentNews Impact Forum

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We are excited to announce our collaboration with the United Nations and InvesmentNews to host the first Impact Forum on December 4-5, 2019 in New York City.

The vision for this event is huge. On Day One: A film festival will share the stories and stoke the inspiration. The next day, thought-leaders and experts will share strategies and insight for turning inspiration into impact investing action. We hope you will join us!

This event started with a film: Impact, a documentary. This film is the model, where we show the impact our investment dollars can have on the world. Now we want to take this global and highlight a story for each of the Sustainable Development Goals. Everyone we’ve shown the first film to has had a personal connection to the stories, and through this project we hope to show how, no matter which goal is most important to you, your investments can make a difference.

I’m proud to serve on the advisory board for this event! We have assembled a team of specialists in Impact Investing to build a world class event, but we need your help.

To pull this off, we need a community of ambassadors who want to help the financial advice industry make good investments that also make the world a better place.

Here’s how you can help:

We are looking for filmmakers, stories, attendees, sponsors, speakers and advocates. Fill out this short form if you would like to be involved with the event. Our partners at ImpactAssets (our high-impact Donor Advised Fund) are also helping us organize film ideas. They’ve created this form to accept submissions.

Max Mintz

It’s B Corp Month #VoteEveryDay

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In celebration of B Corp Month, we want to explain why we became a Certified B Corp and what the certification means to us.

We began our journey to certification in 2014, when we were looking for a way to show that we’re serious about sustainability. As financial advisors, we don’t produce a product that could be certified sustainable or organic, so we needed an independent third party to certify us, preferably one that’s a non-profit with open standards and communication about emerging issues.

This search led us to the B Lab, an organization committed to bringing together businesses that have a social mission at their core; firms that, like us, are committed to the highest highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

Vote with your dollars

We often think about our spending as speech. We view investing as casting a vote, which is the reason we use Environmental, Social and Governance factors when selecting investments. We also believe in the power of using these votes in a more concrete sense, through the power of shareholder activism. By choosing to buy B Corp products and work with B Corps, you too can cast your vote for a more sustainable future.

What it means to us

Being a B Corp is about more than just saying we’re sustainable. The B Impact Assessment not only gave us a score, but showed us a road map with suggestions to improve our firm. In 2014, when we first applied for certification, we scored a 99.6 out of a possible 200 points. In 2016, when we re-certified for the first time (and were randomly selected for increased verification), we increased our score to 109.7. This year we hope to do even better.

Working with the B Corp community, we’ve changed our energy consumption to clean energy and installed LED lighting in our office, which dramatically lowered our energy use. The assessment caused us to look for ways to improve our score, so we focused on the areas where we scored 0 points. This led us to seek out opportunities, and we eventually partnered with the NJ Department of Labor to increase the number of Certified Financial Planners in the state. The goal is to increase access to financial services for under-served communities by lowering the barriers to entry. We even won an award for this work!

© Photoray 2018

What can you do?

Be a conscious consumer! Look for the Certified B Corp logo on packaging, especially for brands that you think of as sustainable. Check out the B Impact Report of companies that are certified and let them know that you appreciate the work they put into the certification and how they can be better. And encourage your employer to take the certification. It’s free!

Robert Goellner

2019 Flourish Prize Finalists

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Last year, we gave an interview to a group of students from Rutgers University working on the Aim2Flourish class offered at the Rutgers Business School. As a part of this class, students must select a business working to promote one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and these students chose to write about us. Their article, Investing for a Reason Beyond Money, was selected as a finalist for the 2019 Flourish Prize!

We’re in great company! The 76 Finalists for the 2019 Flourish Prizes represent stories from the more than 800 AIM2Flourish.com stories published in 2018, spanning the globe and showcasing business innovations for each of the 17 UN Global Goals. The 2019 Flourish Prizes Finalists include 76 stories from 30 universities in 16 countries under the guidance of 35 professors. The businesses profiled come from 27 countries and more than 19 industries. We’re proud to say we even know a few of them!

The prize-winning businesses, professors, universities, and students will be honored during the 2019 Flourish Prizes virtual celebration, taking place online the week of May 6–10. Follow the awards ceremony and see photos and videos from the winners by following #FlourishPrizes2019 on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We hope you’ll join us. 

AIM2Flourish is the world’s first higher-education curriculum, story platform, and prize for the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and business’ role in achieving them. The program is an initiative of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management — Case Western Reserve University. For more information about AIM2Flourish, please contact Claire Sommer, AIM2Flourish Director at Claire@AIM2Flourish.com or +1 917-834-0323.

Highlights from the ANJEE Conference

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I serve as the Treasurer of the Alliance for NJ Environmental Education, which recently completed its’ annual winter conference. Here are some highlights, which speak to the reasons I’m involved with this fantastic organization. This year’s keynote speakers were students from around the state who inspired us with their passion for Environmental and Social justice. Enjoy (and see if you can spot Bob’s very brief cameo)!