Since our founding in 2002, we’ve created various tools and resources focused on transforming relationships of power in finance. We connect with social change leaders across different sectors, to bring people together to reframe and demonstrate new ways to shape our financial systems.
Below we’ve highlighted some of these and we will continue to add to this as new resources are created.
We hope you find these useful in your work and encourage you to reach out to share your thoughts at info@criterioninstitute.org.
Featured Resources
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EveryoneSocial Change LeadersGender ExpertsCongregationsInvestors
Civil Society and Impact Investing Brief
Civil society plays a crucial role in bridging gaps between systems of finance and social impacts. Traditionally, civil society is seen as separate from the market but, in reality, civil society actors are already impacting market systems. Civil society actors engage in grassroots community endeavors which have the potential...
My Resolution for the New Year and New Decade
On December 31st, when you’re with family and friends, reflecting on your new year’s resolution for this coming decade, I invite you to join with Criterion Institute and name that our collective resolution is to direct every ounce of our power to be a positive force against systemic injustice....
A Blueprint for Grassroots Organizations on Using Finance for Social Change
The Blueprint is a document about social change, written for change makers. The focus of the Blueprint is to show how individuals working within grassroots organizations can use finance as a tool in their work, whether by disrupting or influencing current systems, forging new alliances or partnerships with individuals...
Key Concepts in Gender: A Primer for Investors
Interest is swelling in gender lens investing across the globe. With this swell is an increased use of gender-related terms and concepts. Similar to many fields, the terms we use and the way we use them when we talk about gender is important and meaningful. When terms are misused,...
Reflection: Beyond Borders Forum – Building the Runway for Young Women to Enter the Global Workforce
By Amy Chen Last month, I had the privilege of attending the second annual Beyond Borders Forum, hosted by Women’s Education Project (WEP), in New York City. The Forum focused on two compelling issues: preparing young women for fulfilling careers in the global economy and creating a corporate climate...
Gender Lens Investing Tool: Designing an Action Plan
Gender lens investing is the incorporation of a gender analysis into the systems of investing to make better decisions. A gender analysis is a disciplined approach to understanding how differences in power impact the advantages or oppression people experience based on their gender. An intersectional gender analysis considers how ethnicity, socio-economic status,...
Criterion Connections: Building the Field of Gender Lens Investing with Oxfam America’s Laté Lawson-Lartego
This issue of Criterion Connections, featuring Oxfam America’s Laté Lawson-Lartego, is adapted from a Conversation for Change led by Criterion Institute’s Director of Engagement, Christina Madden, at Opportunity Collaboration. Oxfam America partnered with Criterion on the recently released Blueprint for INGOs on Using Finance for Social Change. The Blueprint provides...
Congregations Stories: Emmanuel Lutheran’s Micro-lending Initiative Part II
From Mountaintop through the Valley of Implementation Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Naples, FL conducted its first 1K micro-lending retreat in April, 2018. The retreat lasted 7 hours on a Saturday at the church. Although we had never done any project like the IK micro-lending initiative, especially using a one-day retreat...
Video: A Spiral Of Change: Understanding The Investment Impact Of Sexual And Gender-Based Violence
From Cornerstone Capital: Recently, Cornerstone Capital’s Head of Impact Strategy, Katherine Pease, sat down for an in-depth discussion with two leading figures in the field of gender-focused investment and philanthropy, to discuss the role that investors and finance can play in addressing gender-based violence in companies and society....
Reflection: Finance and Gender Experts in Vietnam Shape a Growing Community of Practice in Gender Lens Investing Across Southeast Asia
Over 40 gender and finance experts came together with community leaders in Ho Chi Minh City for a two-day workshop on gender lens investing. This event provided an opportunity to frame, identify and debate a shared vision for how to include gender in investment decisions. As investments across Southeast...
Nascent? No way! Southeast Asia is Worthy of the Global Gender Lens Investing Stage
Now is a critical moment to shape the terms of capital in Southeast Asia. More than ever, investments are being made in Southeast Asia by actors in and outside the region. With this increased capital in and attention on Southeast Asia, now is the time to push to make...
Document: Framing Gender Lens Investing
Conversations about the intersection of finance and gender are gaining traction and generating exciting momentum for the field of gender lens investing. However, these conversations can be fraught with fear, including the fear of offending or saying the wrong thing. The language that surrounds gender is powerful. Therefore, how...
Reflection: Making Gender-Based Violence Material to the World of Finance
“But I’m not sure how that’s truly material.” This is a refrain we hear constantly when we talk to people in finance about gender. Discussing whether or not something is “material” is a short-handed insult meant to dismiss and undermine. It suggests that, while we might think including a...
Implementing A Gender Strategy: Grand Challenges Canada’s Story
Following four years of engagement with Grand Challenges Canada, an initiative funded by the Canadian government, Criterion is excited to share insights and learning in “Implementing Grand Challenges Canada‘s Gender Strategy.” The white paper demonstrates how a thorough gender analysis—one that documents patterns in how gender and its relationship with other factors like race, ethnicity,...
Growing the Field: Finance and gender experts brought together in Indonesia
Jakarta, Indonesia, 2 February 2018 – Over 70 investors, business and finance leaders, and gender experts from Southeast Asia came together at the Australian Embassy for two days to identify, and debate opportunities for success in gender lens investing – the practice of using capital to advance gender equality and...
Reflection: Gender Lens Investing Field-Building Event in Jakarta
This re-cap of the gender lens investing field-building event hosted in February by Investing in Women partners was contributed by ANGIN (Angel Investment Network Indonesia). Gender Lens Investing Field-Building Event in Jakarta contributed by ANGIN (Angel Investment Network in Indonesia) Criterion Institute held a two-day Gender Lens Investing workshop...
Reflection: Finance as a Tool to Address Gender-Based Violence Workshop, January 22-23, 2018
This was contributed by Nina Weissberg. Nina Weissberg, CEO of Weissberg Investment Corp (WIC), guides a diverse portfolio of long-term real estate commitments in the Greater Washington, DC community. In 2017, she joined the board of the Criterion Institute to focus energy on gender and social change through capital markets. Last...
Video: Why Develop an Investment Thesis?
Criterion Institute’s Joy Anderson, Pacific RISE impact investing lead, shares why Pacific RISE is developing an investment thesis.
Video: Pacific RISE and Gender Lens Investing
Pacific RISE will use gender lens investing to incorporate gender into financial analysis to improve investments and promote equitable social change. For more information visit: www.pacificrise.org/
Video: Resilience and Climate Change in the Pacific
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A Blueprint for Women’s Funds Using Finance as a Tool for Social Change
As we continue to face challenges to achieving gender equality, we need to deploy all the strategies at our disposal to create the social change we seek. Finance is one strategy, along with media, policy, community activism and corporate engagement. Investing with a gender lens is an extension of...
Demonstrating New Possibilities: The Pacific RISE Investment Thesis
Pacific RISE is using an investment thesis to engage with investors and broaden the sense of possibilities about what types of opportunities exist in the Pacific. Pacific RISE is focusing on particular trends and ideas for the future which will entice investors into thinking differently about the Pacific. The...
Design Session: Finance as a Tool to Address Gender-Based Violence
In July 2017, we partnered with InFaith Community Foundation and Futures without Violence to bring together a group of over 30 leaders from women’s rights organizations, philanthropy, and finance to think together about strategies to affect gender-based violence. The session was inspired by our partners at InFaith Community Foundation’s recent announcement of a...
Video: Understanding Gender and Finance in the Pacific
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Poem: Alice Through the Gender Investing Lens
This poem was inspired by a wonderful quote used by both Martin Luther King Jr., and President Barack Obama in their speeches: “the arc of the moral universe — of history — is long but it bends toward justice…” I’ve titled my poem “We are Alice.” My poem also...
Reflection: Experiencing TOOLKIT
Since 2016, Criterion Institute has been delivering our signature workshop, TOOLKIT for Using Finance for Social Change to audiences throughout the globe. Participants come from a wide variety of backgrounds and sectors, including foundations working to end domestic poverty, women’s rights organization promoting gender equality in government policy, t...
2015 Recap: Notable Gender Lens Investing Resources
The resources below, represent a collection of notable resources on gender lens investing published in 2015. Criterion Institute’s president, Joy Anderson, and Katherine Miles authored the State of the Field of Gender Lens Investing report documenting a comprehensive history of the field and strategies for the road ahead. Here are a...
Report: State of the Field of Gender Lens Investing
Criterion Institute’s President, Joy Anderson, and Katherine Miles authored the State of the Field of Gender Lens Investing report documenting a comprehensive history of the field and strategies for the road ahead. The report, published in October 2015, narrates the history of Gender Lens Investing, offers several strategic road maps for the...
Reflection: Convergence Over the Years
The beauty of Convergence is its format. Convergence is not like other conferences. There are no speakers, no panels - just conversations designed carefully around the people who attend. We collect information about the passions, interests and experiences of each registrant before the conference and work carefully to design...
Framework: Gender Metrics in the Value Chain
Many investors and business managers would like to take a similar approach to improving their own organizations’ gender strategies. But how do you go about assessing an organization on how it integrates gender considerations into its business plan? And how do you measure progress as you implement changes? Following Convergence...
Reflection: Reframes as a Tool in a Social Movement
In 2013, intern Scott Elias reflected on 4 different reframes discussed at Convergence XII and considered the power of each reframe to bring about social change. His reflection and the reframes where documented in Reframes as a Tool in a Social Movement, which you can download here. His introduction...
Reframe: Gender & Women – Identity and Material Reality
In 2013, intern Scott Elias reflected on 4 different reframes discussed at Convergence XII and considered the power of each reframe to bring about social change. His reflection and the reframes where documented in Reframes as a Tool in a Social Movement, which you can download here. Below he focuses on the reframe...
Reframe: Gender as an Opportunity (Not a Screen) in Finance
In 2013, intern Scott Elias reflected on 4 different reframes discussed at Convergence XII and considered the power of each reframe to bring about social change. His reflection and the reframes where documented in Reframes as a Tool in a Social Movement, which you can download here. Below he focuses on the reframe...
Reframe: The Reframes of Impact Investing
In 2013, intern Scott Elias reflected on 4 different reframes discussed at Convergence XII and considered the power of each reframe to bring about social change. His reflection and the reframes where documented in Reframes as a Tool in a Social Movement, which you can download here. Below he focuses on “The Reframes...
Reframe: Finance as Opportunity to Transform (Gendered) Social Systems
In 2013, intern Scott Elias reflected on 4 different reframes discussed at Convergence XII and considered the power of each reframe to bring about social change. His reflection and the reframes where documented in Reframes as a Tool in a Social Movement, which you can download here. Below he focuses on the reframe...
Reflection: Gender Lens Investing – From Margins to Mainstream
In this article, Stephanie Marton, Associate Consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, presents a practical and strategical perspective to approach Gender-Lens Investment. Distinguishing the philanthropic cause of gender equality from pure market opportunities, Stephanie emphasizes that the message of gender-lens investing needs to be reframed in order to attract...
Reflection: Power Plays – Scenarios from “Stories of Power”
Below Hannah Lewis, former intern at Criterion Institute delves into some of the central themes from a 2013 Convergence conversation about stories of power with a gender lens in the finance world. She outlines basic scenarios that one might face related to gender and power dynamics, and then lets...
Reflection: Gender Lens Investing by Linda Scott of Double X Economy
After a conversation with Criterion’s Joy Anderson about gender lens investing, Linda Scott, the DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Saïd Business School at Oxford, wrote this compelling blog post about gender lens strategies in finance. In it, she discusses developing a system for valuing investments along gender dimensions. Check...
Reflection: System Changers Meeting in London
Inspired by a meeting in London with Criterion’s Joy Anderson and other leaders engaged with systems change, Linda Scott, the DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Saïd Business School at Oxford, wrote a blog post looking at women’s gendered role in economics throughout history. In her post, Scott examines the...
Demonstrating New Possibilities: Alternative Term Sheets as a Game Changer
Recently, social enterprise aficionado, Kerri Murphy, took the time to listen in on a call about a gender lens on alternative term sheets. Kerri works with us on a Gender Lens Investing Ecosystem Analysis project most of the time, but she had an interest in this conversation and took the time...
Gender Lens Investing: Notable Resources from 2012
We have compiled great articles from 2012 to help your understanding of gender lens investing. Goldman Sachs – Power of Purse As women gain more bargaining and consumer power, the way of household spending has been changing. This article goes deep into the changing pattern of household spending spurred...
Project Reflection: Reframing Healthcare
For five years from 2007 to 2012, Criterion, with Good Capital and the Access Project, examined the root causes of medical debt and designing an innovative approach to leverage financial systems to alleviate the burden. Initially we began this exploration by looking at the tip of an iceberg: medical...
Reflection: Leaders Shaping Market Systems – London Dialogues
We launched the Leaders Shaping Markets initiative in 2012 and began by identifying the initial set of Community of Practice members. This group came together in Berkeley in May of 2012. Thanks to the generous efforts by See Change, Inc. and Melanie Moore, we have a video that captures...
Framework: Leverage Points – Places to Intervene in Systems
This pieces by Donella Meadows has been an extremely valuable tool across all of Criterion's market shaping initiatives. It explores the levers at our disposal for systemic change and assesses their relative effectiveness and impacts.
Report: The Landscape of Gender Metrics
Questions of social impact are central to the growth of impact investing. However, establishing impact standards and specific metrics has been one of the greatest challenges for the entire industry. As part of our mapping efforts, we examined the metrics within funds, standards bodies and various initiatives to understand...
Framework: Defining a Gender Lens
We treat a Gender Lens as a viewfinder that reveals opportunities for the world of investing. In this new space of Gender Lens Investing, we have already seen proven opportunities to hasten economic development, increase profitability, scale social impact, and cement lasting change. To help structure the use of...
Reflection: Deconstructing Expertise
In 2011, Joy attended a workshop by the OpEd Project on writing for influence. The first exercise was to fill in the following blanks: I am an expert in _____ because _____. The critiques that followed provided a brutal but useful study in how efficiently we make claims to...