Values-Based & Faith-Based Investing

A faith-based endowment or foundation answers to two standards at once. As a charitable fund, it must be invested prudently under UPMIFA, the state law that governs institutional funds in nearly every state. As a religious institution, it is expected to invest in a way that is consistent with the moral teaching of the tradition it serves. The two can be reconciled, but only with a written policy that says what the portfolio excludes, what it seeks out, and how the committee will measure both the financial and the moral result.

Each guide below covers one tradition and follows the same outline: the theological foundations, screening criteria and exclusions, shareholder advocacy, positive screening and impact investing, how to write values into the investment policy statement, governance, and the trade-offs with return.

The guides

• Catholic institutions
• Jewish institutions
• Islamic institutions
• Methodist institutions
• Baptist institutions
• Quaker institutions
• Christian Science institutions

For the legal framework every guide assumes, start with UPMIFA in Plain English; for how a committee turns these choices into policy, see our foundations and endowments practice.