Criterion’s series of Blueprints on Using Finance as a Tool for Social Change are designed to demonstrate how leaders working within diverse social change organizations can use finance as a tool in their work. This may entail disrupting or influencing current systems, forging new alliances or partnerships with individuals and organizations that are already using finance for social change, or crafting new models that fundamentally shift how power operates in the economic and financial relationships within a society.
The Blueprints outline five strategies for using finance for social change, a methodology developed by Criterion and utilized by social change organizations, governments, and investors across six continents. The Blueprints are a metaphor for the technical process of developing a detailed plan of action. They are intended to expand the imagination of leaders in a specific context, so they can transform design into reality.
Criterion’s work is about expanding what investors, governments, and civil society organizations see as possible for using finance to create transformative social change. Explore our resources based on the specific types of audiences they were intended to support.
Not every congregation will have the same access to capital, the same financial savvy, or the same investment goals. Congregations will be drawn to a range of mission priorities. We have identified ten areas of social concern that are relevant cultural and social issues, and influenced by economic structures.
Criterion Institute is making a long-term commitment to addressing gender-based violence, directing one third of our resources over the next five years toward re-imagining possibilities for using finance as a tool to effect change on this critical issue.
Since our founding, we have partnered with churches because they inspire a large number of people to imagine greater possibilities.
This issue of Criterion Connections, featuring Oxfam America’s Laté Lawson-Lartego, is adapted from a Conversation for Change led by Criterion Institute’s Director of Engagement, Christina Madden, at Opportunity Collaboration.
Building on years of existing work and partnerships, Criterion Institute launched the Power of Policy Program this February of 2020.
This poem was inspired by a wonderful quote used by both Martin Luther King Jr., and President Barack Obama in their speeches: “the arc of the moral universe — of history — is long but it bends toward justice…”
The Blueprints demonstrate how a variety of social change organizations can design strategies that use systems of finance as tools to create positive social change.
These roadmaps lay out insights for how finance can be used to address gender-based violence in a range of sectors, asset classes, geographies, and investor types.
The TOOLKIT is designed to support your journey as you explore how finance can be used as a tool to create social change.
1K Churches was launched in 2012 to galvanize a movement in the faith-based community and engage US churches to invest in the local economy.
These gender-based violence due diligence tools analyze existing due diligence categories – including political, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks – and show how they can be affected by gender-based violence.
Gender-based violence is ubiquitous. More than 1 in 3 women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence, and millions of men, boys, and gender-diverse individuals are affected by physical, sexual, and emotional abuse daily.
Our work depends on an ever-expanding community of team members, advisors, donors, and other partners who help us demonstrate our theory of change and ultimately achieve our mission. Learn more about how you can become more engaged in our work.
Invitations to Engage