How Foundations Are Using Impact Investing to Advance Racial Equity

Racial inequity is inextricably connected to nearly every social challenge that philanthropy seeks to address. Quality healthcare. Affordable housing. Access to a better education. Participation in a just economy. These are just some of the challenges that disproportionately affect people of color and are central to the mission-driven work undertaken by foundations.

Foundations and their partners have been fighting for racial equity for decades through grantmaking and advocacy. But the time has come for them to put an additional tool—impact investing—to work in advancing these goals. Indeed, as the impact investing field continues to grow, it is important to ensure that racial equity is at the center of the movement, an integral element of impact.   

In this series, presented in partnership with Mission Investors Exchange, 10 foundation presidents share their organization’s efforts to embed commitments to racial equity into their institutions and impact investing practices. Articles explore impact investing strategies grounded in uprooting racial inequity and bias, as well as examining who controls and receives capital as it flows among asset holders, asset managers, intermediaries, investees, and the ultimate users of products or services. Foundations’ diverse efforts remind us that, along the many different roads to change, there are scores of ways to pursue racial equity.

The series opens with introductions by Mission Investors Exchange CEO Matt Onek and W.K. Kellogg Foundation President La June Montgomery Tabron. Along with other contributors, they hope to further dialogue on how to deepen the connection between racial equity and impact investing, and to provide concrete models that can inspire others to act.