Jennifer Pryce who runs the Calvert Foundation as its CEO, and who just last year in June partnered with other foundations to launch a $100 million impact investment fund to support a broad range of enterprises in Chicago, from affordable housing to energy conservation to small business, was recently profiled in B The Change Media.
Background
Calvert, in the mid-nineties, was among who pioneered the Community Investment (CI) Note, a high-impact fixed-income bond product that has had a solid track record since its inception.
Calvert’s CI Note, to-date, counts over 13,500 investors who have purchased over $1 billion. Transacting Calvert’s CI Notes can be done online for as low as $20, thanks to Jennifer Pryce’s leadership, which makes it remarkably accessible to mass retail consumers.
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“It was born out of a desire to make investing easier and more accessible to retail investors,” Pryce explains. “Also, to keep up with the changing times, as more and more financial products and services are moving to the web.”
In 2014, Pryce increased access for average-income people to CI Notes with the launch of Vested.org, allowing people to invest online with a commitment as low as a $20. Investors who go through a broker or financial advisor must put forward at least $1,000.
About 500 people have invested through Vested.org. Pryce says Calvert has learned a lot about those 500 investors: A recent survey found that the investors are almost evenly split between men and women, that their median age is 44 although some are as young as 20 and that 64 percent have an annual household income of less than $100,000. The median investment is $5,500. More than 80 percent of those surveyed says they invested with Calvert because it aligns with causes they care about.
Pryce says private capital is critical to propel the solutions forward, faster despite the increased risk to investors.
“We’ll get there. My concern is we won’t get there fast enough,” Pryce says. “Some of these issues, like climate change, are time-sensitive. We’ve had linear growth. Now we need to shift to exponential growth.”
“No, I haven’t followed a linear path at all,” she says. “But I was really trying to understand where the intersection of finance and people can exist, and how to create value in that place so you can attract more capital and create change.”
Be Inspired Some More -> BTheChange
