Over the last 20 years, we have experimented with how to advance system change work. Our impact comes from creating threefold change in our audiences: imagination about the overlooked possibilities of finance as a tool for change, understanding about how that change happens so that it can be adopted and scaled, and a will to act and create that change in the first place.
The five pillars of our 10-year strategic plan represent the systems change we seek to effect in the world.
We aim to expand how the field of innovative finance understands the ways power, bias, and privilege operate and impact systems of finance.
Our goal is for investors of all types to assign value in their investments based on a methodology that assumes a more just and equitable future.
We empower social change organizations to design and implement strategies that engage systems of finance as part of furthering equity.
We support social change organizations, governments, and investors to design and implement strategies that use finance to prevent and mitigate the effects of gender-based violence.
We partner with government agencies to support them in using their power to align their innovative finance programs with their social and gender policies, thereby influencing what is expected of organizations using finance to increase equality and justice.
Criterion has six core approaches to creating systems change, which shape our work day-to-day:
Teaching: We build investor and organizational capacity through training and tools
Learning: We engage in collective learning to make sense of what creates systems change
Design: We innovate new approaches to using finance to create social change
Amplification: We broadcast ideas and insights to spark imagination in our audiences and show that more is possible
Influence: We encourage individuals or institutions to take specific actions and use their power to shift financial systems
Field building: We help to shape fields of actors, activities, and ideas – such as gender lens investing, or child lens investing.
Our work spans research, design, training, framing and narratives, influence campaigns, and field-building. Below are a few recent examples.
All our Tools are open source and free to use, repurpose and adapt to your context. If you’d like us to adapt them for you, get in touch.
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.
Explore our extensive library of resources on using finance as a tool for transformative social change. Browse by category and sub-categories to find the most relevant materials for your needs. Our library contains reports, case studies, toolkits, and other content aimed at investors, governments, civil society organizations, and anyone interested in harnessing capital for positive impact. Dive in and discover insights and guidance to help drive progress on critical issues.
Investors’ goals are reflected in a portfolio that is composed of a diversified set of asset classes. In order to build their portfolio, asset holders invest in financial products.
Finance has its own business model. A set of processes define how finance works and those processes have costs. Those processes are paid for by a set of revenue sources based on the functional role(s) played.
Intermediaries are institutions with a particular legal form that use instruments or vehicles to move capital. The instrument is defined by the terms written out in documents.
A power analysis serves as a critical tool to uncover imbalances in decision-making authority, resource distribution, and the prioritization of outcomes.
(Stanford Social Innovation Review; April 2021)
(UNICEF Connect; April 2020)
(Women Rule Newsletter (Politico); March 2020)
(Wired; March 2020)
(Next Billion (blog); July 2018)
(Impact Alpha; September 2017)
Pacific RISE partnered with femLINK to produce this video capturing the Criterion Institute TOOLKIT and the experience of the participants.
(Wharton University of Pennsylvania; July 2017)
Sian Rolls and Hannah Hicks speak to Joy Anderson, President of the Criterion Institute, and Kate Nethercott Wilson, gender specialist with Pacific Readiness for Investment in Social Enterprise (Pacific RISE), about a gender lens investment training we ran in Suva. Participants to the event are gender specialists from Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu working in civil society, regional organisations and national governments. (June 2017)
(Huffington Post; February 2016)
(Huffington Post; November 2015)
(Bloomberg TV; April 2015)
(Harvard Business Review (blog); February 2015)
At the 2012 CGI America Meeting, Joy Anderson announces a new CGI America Commitment to Action by Criterion Ventures.
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