Impact investment: putting our money where our mission is
What is impact investment?
“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
You’ve probably heard of ‘ethical investment’ or ‘ESG’. This involves negative screening, to weed out investments which create social harm. At Stewardship, our policy is not to invest in companies with a substantial link to armaments, pornography, tobacco, gambling, high interest rate lending, alcohol, tar sands or thermal coal. We believe that investing in such activities, even if we use the proceeds to fund charitable work, would harm our Christian witness and dishonour God.
(Matthew 5:16, NIV)
How does Stewardship invest our funds? Through the growth of our community and your generosity, total assets held by Stewardship exceeded £200m for the first time in 2021. A large proportion of this balance sheet represents funds entrusted to us by our givers.
Impact investment, also called social investment, goes a step further. Instead of merely screening out investments which cause social harm, we proactively make investments which promote the Christian faith or more widely the common good of our society. For example, our Church and Charity Lending Team strengthen churches and Christian ministries by making loans in support of building projects.
We’ve recently launched our new Investment Policy (stewardship.org.uk/blogs/newinvestment-strategy). This explains how we are seeking to prioritise investments which align with our Christian values, bring glory to God and achieve both kingdom impact and financial return. 26
