Fully Leveraging Philanthropic Assets for Long-Term Social and Environmental Impact
Location: Weil Town Hall
Date: 10/22/2009
Time: 4:00 PM
Contact: Kara Waddell
Joshua Humphreys is founding director of the Center for Social Philanthropy, which provides research, resources, data and tools for foundations, donors, and investors seeking to maximize the long-term, social and environmental impact of their philanthropic work. The Center envisions philanthropic impact not only through the lens of grant-making but also through strategies that leverage a much fuller range of assets at any funder's disposal, including foundation endowment capital, now estimated at over $500 billion in the US alone. Fully leveraged philanthropy can take a variety of forms, including Mission-Related Investing (MRI), Program-Related Investments (PRIs), and active ownership strategies such as proxy voting, shareholder-resolution filing, and shareowner engagement, among others.
Dr. Humphreys has advised numerous organizations on issues in social and environmental finance, including Environmental Grantmakers Association, Green Harbor Financial, Proxy Democracy, the Social Investment Forum, Sustainable Endowments Institute, and the World Bank Group. He has served as Research Director for the Social Investment Forum's Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States and lead author of its Mission-Related Investing resource guide, Mission in the Marketplace (2007).
An historian by training, Dr. Humphreys teaches at Harvard as a lecturer in history and literature. He founded the Center for Social Philanthropy following his residency at the Rockefeller Archive Center in 2006. Since 2009 the Center has been housed at Tellus Institute in Boston, where Dr. Humphreys also serves as a Senior Associate.
For more information about the Center for Social Philanthropy, please visit www.socialphilanthropy.org.