PROGRAM RELATED INVESTMENTS
Program Related Investment, also known as "impact investing" is a newly evolving financial hybrid that seeks to blend profit seeking and philanthropy. Used with a Donor Advised Fund (DAF), it can greatly amplify the impact of your giving. Instead of investing all the money in your DAF in stocks, bonds, and other traditional securities, you can ask Capstone to invest some or all of the money into private companies engineered for social impact. These companies use your capital to help others while still providing a profit from their operations. Financial returns from this impact company go back into your DAF balance.
REAL LIFE EXAMPLE
Sunshine Nuts grows cashews in Africa, seals them immediately upon harvesting them, locking in flavor that surpasses that of normally packaged cashews, and then sells them to high-end grocery stores at a fair profit. The business works with smallholder farmers, seeking Quadruple Bottom Line results – financial, environmental, social, and transformational. Through cultivating relationships with growers, they offer fair wages and provide a reliable market for their harvest. Their in-country production facility allows them to provide deeper economic opportunity through factory employment. While doing this, they also focus on environmental stewardship through efficient packaging and transport methods. In addition to supporting local farmers with fair prices, they reinvest 30% of their net proceeds into supporting agricultural development, and another 30% toward caring for orphans at children's centers.