At NCEJN, we have been searching for a 401(k) service provider for our staff. While our financial resources are modest, we firmly believe that everyone deserves access to retirement and investment opportunities—because retirement should be a right, not a privilege. We’ve chosen to offer an equitable retirement benefit by providing a flat contribution for all staff, rather than a percentage of salary. In our search, we prioritized providers whose investment practices align with our values: no investments in military technology or contractors, no fossil fuel production, and no corporations known to violate labor laws—regardless of potential returns.
We found such a provider, and would like to share their work with you.
Just as we signed the Break the Bonds: Divest from Oppression, Invest in Our Communities, —and urge all justice-aligned organizations to do the same—we encourage all organizations not only to provide equitable retirement benefits to their staff, but also to ensure those investments reflect our shared principles.
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Just Futures: Aligning Investment with Social Justice, Equity, and Community Power, written by George Guerrero
Just Futures is a people of color-owned investment advisory firm that connects nonprofits and ordinary people with values-aligned financial solutions that build towards a more inclusive and sustainable economy for all.
Our commitment to this ethos is ingrained in our organizational structure and governance. We have dedicated 55% of the firm’s ownership to five BIPOC-led nonprofits organizing for social justice and human rights:
- Center for Economic Democracy
- The Chisholm Legacy Project
- NDN Fund
- National Black Food & Justice Alliance
- Right To The City Alliance
Just Futures is also a Public Benefit Corporation, which means that while we are accountable to our shareholders, we are also bound to our registered public purpose. Over the course of the next decade we will look to leverage innovative business models and technologies, and partnerships with nonprofit and social justice movement organizations, to promote investment opportunities that are: 1) deeply aligned with social justice movements, 2) accessible to ordinary people, 3) offer non-extractive investment terms, 4) support community-controlled enterprises, and 5) build power and wealth in historically marginalized communities.
Community accountability grounds us as we help nonprofits take a justice-oriented approach to investing. While complete divestment is difficult to sustain, we continuously work to limit investment in companies that contribute to weapons of war, the depletion of natural resources, the prison industrial complex, and other sectors that do harm to people and planet.
We at Just Futures are committed to a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy. Just Transition is a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy—a manifestation of that aforementioned “more inclusive and sustainable economy for all.”
Our process is designed to assess, and manage, a broad spectrum of risks, including those that impact people and planet. We examine traditional measures of risk—equity, interest rate, and credit risk—while also evaluating across 75+ distinct values metrics to provide even greater depth to our comprehensive risk assessment.
Working in concert with our movement owners, these metrics are categorized and ranked across thirteen themes:
- Climate Change
- Environment
- Racial Justice
- Labor Rights
- Community Health
- Gender Justice
- LGBTQIA+
- Corporate Predation
- Human Rights
- Prison Industrial Complex
- Weapons
- Corporate Governance
- Animal Welfare
More than just financial acumen, Just Futures provides an active partnership rooted in accountability to social justice movements and a commitment to transformative change—change by moving capital towards a Just Transition, change by holding finance accountable to community, and change by creating financial access for ordinary people.
If you are interested in learning more about bringing social justice investing to your organization, please reach out to us at info@justfutures.com.
— George Guerrero is a purpose-driven leader and investment professional at Just Futures, helping to align clients’ money with their mission.
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