Aligning Mission and Money: A Conversation with Resource Generation
Are you or your organization considering bringing your finances into better alignment with your values or mission? Maybe you’ve got some misgivings, or you’re not sure where to start. Just Futures asked various organizations why and how they aligned their investments with their mission. We hope their answers can be a resource for you!
Here’s what Resource Generation had to say about aligning their finances with their mission. To read what other organizations are saying, check out our case studies collection. Note: Some of the people and workplaces featured in this series are Just Futures clients. Others are not. In all cases, their answers reflect only their unique experience aligning their investments with their mission.
1. What does it mean to you to align your financial resources with your mission and values?
For one, there’s doing things for our employees, for example, where our retirement money goes (Just Futures). Then there's our reserves and how we might invest those. We're not a foundation, so we're 95-96% member-funded, but we had a couple of really good years, and so now we have reserves. Our board started an investment committee, because right now the reserves are just in rolling treasury bonds. Unfortunately, one good thing about all the current instability in the world is that treasury bonds are doing well, but it's not really our values-aligned ideal investment option. Our reserves aren’t currently a large enough amount for us to feel secure putting them in something less liquid. But I think the conversation is still really important, and one that at a board level we want to have. That is, if we become more well-resourced, how do we invest our reserves with intention? How are we putting those resources in alignment so that they’re doing something similar to what we're telling our members to do? Because we're encouraging our members to do the same thing.2. What changes did Resource Generation make?
Moving our retirement to Just Futures was a big piece of it. As far as our reserves, the investment committee hasn’t gone very far yet, partially because there's just been a lot of other moving parts organizationally. But the changes are still in process. The retirement accounts feel really good, and then our additional financial resources are still a conversation to be had that is on our radar.3. What challenges or concerns did you encounter?
I think the biggest thing was just giving you all a little time. Just Futures is a newer company, so you had been on our radar for well over a year before we actually made the change.Besides that, it was just coordinating the move into our workflow. As the operations manager, everything went so smoothly. I've made a few other systems changes, and for me the Just Futures one was one of the smoothest. There were just a few back-end pieces for me. But they were operationally less staff-facing. For example, we had to use some transitionary processes because of the way your policies are. I didn't know to anticipate that. I just had to trust that your team were the experts, because I couldn't all of a sudden become an expert in those things. But I did have a lot of trust, and I do feel like the relationships with both Just Futures and Vestwell have been really great. The communication's great. So the challenges have been really minimal.
And I don't think there's been any concerns. Staff haven’t shared any concerns either. It would be interesting to do some kind of survey and see how they've engaged with their Just Futures 403(b).
4. What ultimately gave you confidence to move forward?
I think for me it was about feeling like there were human relationships. There were actually humans responding to me that we could meet with, that were willing, that were interested in us, and vice versa. Just Futures was willing to meet us where we're at. And that relationship part is a huge piece of our values, and so the fact that it felt reflected in Just Futures really was the confidence booster. It just felt like that's one of the biggest pieces that feels different. I feel like now, if I send an email, if I get an email that I don't know what to do with, your team will reply, or they'll point me in the right direction. I don’t have to email support and wait for one of our assigned people. I feel like I can email anybody and they'll help me. That says a lot to me, as an ops person. I'm such a generalist, I cannot be an expert in everything, so I really have to rely on those relationships and those of you holding the expertise in different areas. And feeling confident in that is really important to me.5. How have the changes affected your organization, staff, members, or community?
I think just being able to have the confidence, especially right now, when we're seeing so much, for lack of a better word, grift around the stock market, and how money's getting invested, and things like that, to feel like at least this one piece of our life is values aligned… again, it's not going to be perfect. It's an imperfect system, partially because of the laws governing it all. But at the same time we can move with confidence and reflect that to our members. A big piece of our mission is to help young people move their money, and to end wealth hoarding, and to shift social justice. So the fact that we're able to live it in this one piece, and be able to reflect that to the work with our members feels really powerful to me. And it makes it really easy for me to, on every thread, if anybody's looking for retirement, to say, “Go to Just Futures, go to Just Futures!”6. What advice would you give to another nonprofit or foundation considering similar changes?
Go for it if you can. There's so much conversation right now around foundation investments, and while we're not a foundation or a grant-giving organization, this is our moment. More than any other time, we have to do things differently. We have to be willing to take some risk in order to put our literal money where our mouth is.We do want to live our values, and we do want the organizations around us to also be living their values, and even if it's just an employee retirement plan, it is one way to do that. And you all made it so easy. It's one way to do it without feeling overwhelmed, or like it's an impossible uphill task, or such a big thing to change.
~Michelle Welton, Director of Operations, Resource Generation
To learn about how Just Futures might help you align your finances with your values, book an intro call with us!