Criterion’s series of Blueprints on Using Finance as a Tool for Social Change are designed to demonstrate how leaders working within diverse social change organizations can use finance as a tool in their work. This may entail disrupting or influencing current systems, forging new alliances or partnerships with individuals and organizations that are already using finance for social change, or crafting new models that fundamentally shift how power operates in the economic and financial relationships within a society.
The Blueprints outline five strategies for using finance for social change, a methodology developed by Criterion and utilized by social change organizations, governments, and investors across six continents. The Blueprints are a metaphor for the technical process of developing a detailed plan of action. They are intended to expand the imagination of leaders in a specific context, so they can transform design into reality.
Explore our extensive library of resources on using finance as a tool for transformative social change. Browse by category and sub-categories to find the most relevant materials for your needs. Our library contains reports, case studies, toolkits, and other content aimed at investors, governments, civil society organizations, and anyone interested in harnessing capital for positive impact. Dive in and discover insights and guidance to help drive progress on critical issues.
Investors’ goals are reflected in a portfolio that is composed of a diversified set of asset classes. In order to build their portfolio, asset holders invest in financial products.
Finance has its own business model. A set of processes define how finance works and those processes have costs. Those processes are paid for by a set of revenue sources based on the functional role(s) played.
Intermediaries are institutions with a particular legal form that use instruments or vehicles to move capital. The instrument is defined by the terms written out in documents.
(Stanford Social Innovation Review; April 2021)
(UNICEF Connect; April 2020)
(Women Rule Newsletter (Politico); March 2020)
(Wired; March 2020)
(Next Billion (blog); July 2018)
(Impact Alpha; September 2017)
Pacific RISE partnered with femLINK to produce this video capturing the Criterion Institute TOOLKIT and the experience of the participants.
(Wharton University of Pennsylvania; July 2017)
Sian Rolls and Hannah Hicks speak to Joy Anderson, President of the Criterion Institute, and Kate Nethercott Wilson, gender specialist with Pacific Readiness for Investment in Social Enterprise (Pacific RISE), about a gender lens investment training we ran in Suva. Participants to the event are gender specialists from Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu working in civil society, regional organisations and national governments. (June 2017)
(Huffington Post; February 2016)
(Huffington Post; November 2015)
(Bloomberg TV; April 2015)
(Harvard Business Review (blog); February 2015)
At the 2012 CGI America Meeting, Joy Anderson announces a new CGI America Commitment to Action by Criterion Ventures.
The Blueprints demonstrate how a variety of social change organizations can design strategies that use systems of finance as tools to create positive social change.
These roadmaps lay out insights for how finance can be used to address gender-based violence in a range of sectors, asset classes, geographies, and investor types.
The TOOLKIT is designed to support your journey as you explore how finance can be used as a tool to create social change.
1K Churches was launched in 2012 to galvanize a movement in the faith-based community and engage US churches to invest in the local economy.
These gender-based violence due diligence tools analyze existing due diligence categories – including political, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks – and show how they can be affected by gender-based violence.
Gender-based violence is ubiquitous. More than 1 in 3 women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence, and millions of men, boys, and gender-diverse individuals are affected by physical, sexual, and emotional abuse daily.
Our work depends on an ever-expanding community of team members, advisors, donors, and other partners who help us demonstrate our theory of change and ultimately achieve our mission. Learn more about how you can become more engaged in our work.
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