Earlier this month, the Confluence Philanthropy community celebrated our 16th Practitioners Gathering in Asheville. Together, we explored how resources and relationships flow together to create capital markets and the economy. Amid a beautiful Appalachian backdrop, we engaged in lively discussions, built meaningful relationships with old and new friends, celebrated Appalachian culture, and put on our dancin' shoes! As always, it was truly wonderful and inspiring to be together.
Our discussions were wide ranging and explored several key themes, including ramping up investments in climate solutions, championing solidarity economics, strengthening investment governance, advancing the field of values-aligned investing, and strengthening the role of investors in developing responsible AI and tech.
Key takeaway: Working together to increase the flow of capital—in all its forms—is more urgent now than ever.
Reflecting on the Gathering, Katherine Pease, Managing Director and Partner at Pathstone, writes: "In Asheville this year, that urgency was front and center. We had candid conversations about the need to support philanthropists and investors in moving as much capital as possible, across structures and strategies."
Mark Campanale, Founder and CEO of Carbon Tracker Initiative writes: "One thread connects us: we’re traveling forwards together, pointing in the same direction. Whatever may separate us apart in terms of our professional backgrounds, ethnicities, cultural experiences – the challenges we face are profoundly similar... It’s an old cliché that the ‘commitment and passion of a handful of leaders can change the world for the better’. I think that’s especially true."
Emily Williams, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Gary Community Ventures writes: "This is the imperative for modern philanthropy. We must hold a mirror to ourselves and ask the provocative, necessary question: Are we regenerative, impermanent participants in a broader ecosystem? Or have we convinced ourselves that we are immortals among the very people we seek to serve? To truly fund a thriving future, we must embrace the courage to let go and trust the flow."
Launching Confluence Overview Effect
At the Gathering, I was excited to launch Confluence Overview Effect, Confluence's new public benefit LLC. Overview Effect was launched as a wholly owned subsidiary of Confluence Philanthropy.
The company is the new home for Confluence’s Advisor Members (OCIO’s, Asset Managers, CDFI’s and Consultants), but the experience that these members have benefited from for many years will not change. The company will provide a platform to take on additional activities that are outside the scope of a 501(c)(3) organization. This will help accelerate the field of values-aligned investing at a time when it is needed most.
Overview Effect’s primarily focus will be on the middle-market economy, including those that benefit, and the impact on vulnerable people and places; while continuing to invest in social responsibility and sustainability across the large industries that drive the global economy.
Our Call to Action for Tech Integrity! (Excerpt from Stage Remarks)
On the last day of the Gathering, I launched Confluence's industry-wide call to action:
We're asking every investor and investment manager in our membership to take a position on technology and AI by the end of the summer.
Technology companies are not just working towards restructuring the world order and raising VC by charismatically chatting about ending human life as we know it. They aren't just building PAC’s that denigrate DEI but extol synthetic life, or that deny the rights of humans to make choices over our own bodies while seeking to put neurotransmitters in our cranium. They're also planning to mine our moon to the tune of $7+ billion within 5 years. The tech industry must be deeply interrogated and ethically questioned by investors and by the capital markets themselves. Our future hangs on it.
If we truly want to be ‘tech forward’, let's be forward about technology that doesn't put synthetic life before organic life. Let's be forward about technology that doesn't raise capital by bragging about a dystopian human future. Let's be forward about technology that doesn't ravage the moon nor any of the planets. Let's be forward about technology that doesn't destroy the incredible diversity of fragile life on our Earth.
We're calling on our members to take a position about the tech companies they will invest in and those that they will not; to take a position about the kind of entrepreneurs they can trust to shape our future and those that we cannot.
Over the coming months, we'll work with our members to shape investor criteria and frameworks so that they can have a clear position on these technologies and the companies building them.
Thank you to everyone who made this year’s Practitioners Gathering so meaningful!