Calvert is now the largest family of socially responsible investment funds with nearly $7 billion under management. Today, one in every seven dollars is invested with some kind of social screening; and in the USA there is more than $2.2 trillion invested in this new asset class, which is also now the fastest growing asset class over the past ten years. It has also spread into many other countries around the world.
In 1988 Terry took the lead to create a “High Social Impact Program (HSIP)” within the Calvert Social Investment Funds. There had been a commitment from the beginning to take action to end poverty; however, it was important to first establish socially responsible investment as a new asset class. That had been accomplished by 1988.
The HSIP invested less than one percent of fund assets in community development financial organizations (CDFIs) at below market rates to end poverty. Terry chaired the HIS Investment Committee for the first ten years during which not a dollar was lost making loans to CDFIs that then made the riskiest of uncollateralized loans: micro-enterprise loans, low income housing loans, social enterprise loans, non-profit facilities loans, etc. He was certain that if the CDFIs were well managed and had excellent relationships with local and national foundations that they would be assisted if necessary. That has proven to be the case and continues to be the case. The HSIP capital of the Calvert Social Investment Funds is now managed by the Calvert Social Investment Foundation: since inception in the mutual funds as the HSIP in 1988 and now in the Foundation losses have been .19% of assets under management.
In the early 1990s he co-founded and became with John Guffy, who with Wayne Silby was one of the co-founders of the Calvert Group, a co-chair of the Calvert Social Investment Foundation. It was launched as a tax-exempt program modeled on the HSIP to allow investors to invest any amount they choose to end poverty. Another goal was to establish “community investment” - investment to end poverty - as a new asset class in the professional investment community just as Calvert had taken the lead to establish “social investing” as a new asset class in 1982. With now over $250 million under management and growing rapidly, its Community Investment Note is the first community investment security registered in all fifty states and able to be processed by brokers and financial planners like any other security because it is register with the Deposit Trust Capital Corporation (DTCC). The Foundation also provides a backroom for many similar programs so they can have access to these assets.
Your financial support will continue the work of building common good corporations and investment funds. They are organizations that freely choose to give priority to the common good by placing a cap on the return on equity; the excess each year is permanently set aside and managed by the firm for the common good as they judge best forever. Mail your contribution to Trusteeship Institute, 61 Baker Road, Shutesbury, MA 01072. Thank you.