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.  

As we enter a new decade, our resolution is represented in a ten-year plan that acknowledges the seriously ambitious social change goals – and systems change goals – that we need to tackle as we pursue our mission of expanding what’s seen as possible for using finance for social change.  

In this, we’re committing to:

Radically expand and amplify the power of social change leaders to engage finance in their work to address social inequality, centering the movements of impact investing, gender lens investing, and innovative finance in the expertise and lived experience of these leaders  

Unleash the power of local and global social policies to be implemented with more imagination, supporting governments as they “up the game” of what is expected of the private sector in achieving the SDGs and how they can truly advance social and gender equality through innovative finance

Make a bet on the future of equality, developing a globally recognized investment methodology that analyzes systemic injustice as a “megatrend” and asking the question, how would we invest today if we truly believed that the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice?

Prove that we can finance the reduction of gender-based violence, using the power of capital to finance prevention and intervention initiatives and to signal that we will no longer tolerate the risks that gender-based violence poses to investments in companies and regions that don’t take serious measures to prevent it from occurring on their watch

Expand how innovative finance understands the ways power, bias, and privilege operate and impact systems of finance, so this remarkable field can truly advance equality and social justice while producing better analysis that incorporates the complex power dynamics that shape our world

To do this, we will continue to use our power, in whatever form that takes, to disrupt the current structures that work against the greater good. And we need our supporters like you to join us. To scheme, to connive, and to conspire with each other as colleagues.  

This is my resolution for the new year and the new decade. Will you join me?

-Joy

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Criterion Institute to support our growing team as they stand in the face of power. Donations can be made online by clicking here, or by check, made out to Criterion Institute and mailed to 81 Church Hill Road, Haddam, CT 06438.