“I want us to be just as excited and proud of our investments as we are of our grantmaking” - Bailey Malone, Executive Director, CS Fund
Launching Just Transition Investment Community (JTIC)
Earlier this year, the Justice Funders team was thrilled to launch our brand new Just Transition Investment Community (JTIC), a new peer learning and action community for staff and trustees of philanthropic institutions to align their investment practices with the values and principles of Just Transition.
Our inaugural community is made up of 8 philanthropic institutions that are on a journey to transform the ways their assets are managed and invested to usher a Just Transition for Philanthropy (as articulated in the Resonance Framework) to redistribute wealth, democratize power and shift economic control to communities.
As we all know, the vast majority of assets held by philanthropic institutions are invested in the extractive economy (e.g., public equities and venture capital) in ways that gravely undermine their mission and vision – particularly for foundations that fund movements for racial, economic and climate justice.
The Just Transition Investment Community aims to facilitate measurable shifts in endowment dollars out of Wall Street and into community-controlled, movement-aligned Just Transition projects and loan funds that build economic power in Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities and nourish local, regenerative solidarity economies.
Because philanthropic wealth comes from historic practices of extraction and exploitation, we believe our sector has a moral obligation to repair these harms and redistribute wealth and power to the communities that have long borne the brunt of extractive capitalism.
Philanthropy can play a proactive role in building the just and thriving world by utilizing the entirety of the assets in our control and activate capital investments alongside grants to community-controlled institutions that are the building blocks of local, regenerative solidarity economies.
The members of the Just Transition Investment Community are following the lead and resourcing the work of the visionary movements that are igniting a Just Transition away from the extractive economy and building new economic systems that provide for the needs of all of our communities.
We are honored to be on this journey with the participants of the Just Transition Investment Community to redefine the role of capital, reimagine the purpose of endowments and reconsider whether wealth accumulation and perpetuity should remain the status quo in philanthropy. We look forward to sharing our lessons as we go along…and invite you to join us on this journey, too.