Resources for Investing in Racial Justice

Resources for the Investor Community

• The Financial Activist Playbook for Supporting Black Lives

• Action Center on Race and the Economy

• Confluence Philanthropy's 2019 report: “It’s About Time: A Call to Advance Racial Equity in the Investment Industry.”

• Corporate Racial Equity Alliance, Investor Blueprint for Racial and Economic Equity

• As You Sow, Racial Justice Scorecard and Workplace Equity Scorecard

• Center for Economic Democracy, Social Movement Investing: A guide to capital strategies for community power

Resources on Fixed Income

• Activest.org; municipal bond ratings/valuation based on race relations, among other things

• Police Brutality Bonds ACRE Report Key Recommendations

Resources on Investment Decision-Making and Divestment

• Movement for Black Lives Divest-Invest Platform

• What It Really Means to Divest from Policing

• Worth Rises: Where Does the Police Get Funding?

• Shift Report: Black Lives Matter: Putting Human Rights at the Heart of Corporate Responses

• Guns Down America: Tracking Corporate Action on Black Lives Matter

• Investor recommendations from Zevin Asset Management report on racial justice and investing (November 2023)

• Divesting from Police Brutality Bonds 

• AFSC Investigate database The American Friends Service Committee offers a free database of main companies involved in state violence, including in mass incarceration, mass surveillance, the militarization of the border, military occupations, and immigrant detention, with an investment screening tool for portfolios and for mutual funds on these issues. 

• Engaging insurance companies on their requirements for police departments for coverage 

  • https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/03/01/how-the-insurance-industry-could-reform-american-policing/

  • https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/04/how-private-insurers-regulate-public-police/

• Toward Racial Equality: The Most Important Things the Business Community Can Do

Education and Public Policy Resources

• Fair chance hiring (NAACP Fair Chance Hiring Fact Sheet)

• Race & Inequality - Kerner Commission Report 50th Anniversary Conference

• Reparations & the Wealth Gap

• Decolonizing Wealth - An excellent, widely respected, and informative read for ALL investors and philanthropists. Written by Edgar Villanueva, a Native American philanthropist who has been calling for better social principles to be applied to giving and investing.  

• Vera Institute of Justice, Building Bridges Between Police and Communities

• A tool for local elected officials to reinvest in community driven public safety: http://reformtransform.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/policetoolkit_investments-public-safety_rev2c-12.pdf?cs-from=2af3668a-e412-4a3e-b38f-f25078629ec6 

• A Toolkit for Centering Racial Equity Throughout Data Integration - describes positive and problematic practices for centering racial equity across the six stages of the data life cycle

• Just Capital CEO Blueprint for Achieving Racial Equity

• Stanford SPARQ, Race influences professional investors’ financial judgements

• Academic Influence, An overview of milestones in Black history

Philanthropy Resources

• The 2020 Belonging Pledge – A Commitment to Advance Racial Equity, by Confluence Philanthropy

• Reclaim the Block list of organizations

Community Investing

• Opportunity Finance Network www.ofn.org

• US SIF - Community Investing resources  www.ussif.org/communityinvesting