With the arrival of the holiday season, we are reflecting upon our shared success during the past year in advancing the conversation around sustainability among endowments, investors, students, companies, and the general public. We are filled with gratitude for the engagement of IEN members, event attendees, and all that have shown interest in this critical work.
We appreciate the support so many of your organizations have provided to make IEN possible -- and as you think about your own personal year-end charitable giving, we invite you to consider supporting IEN with a personal donation.
You can also help IEN by setting "The Crane Institute of Sustainability" as your charity when you shop online at Amazon Smile and GoodShop.
Our society faces many interrelated challenges - climate change, food security, water, income inequality, forced labor, terrorism, mass-migrations - that threaten to undermine the very viability of our civilization if we are unable to summon bold and tireless leadership from every sector. Investors and businesses have a powerful role to play. Done right, creating the solutions we need to can drive tremendous opportunity and prosperity. We are honored to be exploring and supporting the path forward with you.
We have a big vision: As a peer network designed to support endowments in aligning investments with sustainability goals without sacrificing returns, we seek to create a healthy, prosperous, sustainable society -- powered by clean renewable energy, where materials are well managed in closed-loops, and neither natural systems nor people's capacity to meet their needs are undermined. By working at the intersection of finance, business, and education, we can transform the sectors that allocate capital, produce the goods and services we rely on, and educate our professionals and leaders.
Together we’ve accomplished much: After an 18-month pilot phase, IEN formally launched in March 2016 with nearly 80 Founding Members, and now has nearly 100 members, including higher education endowments, foundations, non-profits, and industry leaders. We have hosted seven interactive, action-oriented forums for senior decision makers with partners around the country, with former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson speaking at the latest one earlier this month. We are advancing initiatives in the Network to support shareholder engagement, student-managed investment funds, implementation of the Paris Climate Agreements, and more. We are publishing articles and reports and delivering webinars designed to quickly educate trustees and other decision makers on sustainable investing topics such as fiduciary duty, clean energy investing, and financial performance.
But that’s just the beginning: Within the next three years, IEN aims to expand the network of hundreds of institutional decision-makers and stakeholders, industry practitioners and academic experts, and 300 member colleges and universities to make intentionally designed endowments the norm in higher education and beyond.
This is an ambitious goal, and we need your help to reach it!
Please help support IEN with a holiday donation today. Online, tax-deductible contributions are quick and easy: www.intentionalendowments.org/donate
And setting "The Crane Institute of Sustainability" as your charity when you shop online at Amazon Smile and GoodShop is an easy, free way to help that can really add up.
Thank you for all you do to make our world a better place for people everywhere today and generations to come!
Warm regards,
Georges, Tony & the IEN Team
About the Intentional Endowments Network
The Intentional Endowments Network is a broad-based, collaborative network advancing intentionally designed endowments – that enhance financial performance; are aligned with institutional mission and values; and contribute to creating a sustainable society. Working closely with leading organizations the network engages leaders and key stakeholders from higher education, foundations, business, and non-profits. It provides opportunities for learning and education, peer networking, convening, thought leadership and information exchange around a variety of strategies (e.g., ESG integration, impact investing, and shareholder engagement).
About Crane
The Crane Institute for Sustainability is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to promoting leadership for sustainability. Crane works with organizations in the higher education, business, non-profit, and public sectors to promote a strategic approach to sustainability, and facilitate collaboration among organizations and across sectors to accelerate progress toward sustainability.