What's Happening

October 22, 2024, Chicago – During a panel discussion held during the Catholic Social Teaching Investment Summit held in Chicago last month, Sister Corinne Florek, OP, encouraged investors to “redefine risk” and to take a chance on investing in nonprofit community organizations. 

“I’ve given a lot of talks about not defining risk the way Wall Street does,” Sister Corinne said in an interview. “Wall Street doesn’t invest in local communities. You have to redefine risk and realize that these groups are not risky.”

Sister Corinne speaks from experience. She served on the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Portfolio Advisory Board, which was started in 1975 and made its first community investment in 1978. In 2008 she was one of the founders the Religious Communities Investment Fund (RCIF), and organization that offers communities of women religious the opportunity to pool their money to invest in community organizations. She also started Mercy Partnership Fund for the same purpose. After various congregations of the Sisters of Mercy in the United States merged, they started a successor program, Mercy Investment Services, which also gives low-interest loans to community organizations. 

Sister Corinne spoke to the success of all three organizations, which increased the size of their investment funds, enabling them to offer low-interest loans to more community organizations. The loss of investment is less than 1%. 

Sister Corinne has worked with many grassroots organizations, helping them to create financial statements and get on solid financial ground so that they can receive loans from other organizations. These grassroots organizations are “committed to their work, and they’re so grateful for the loan that they make sure to pay it back.”

The Francesco Collaborative – which co-sponsored the Summit with the Catholic Impact Investors Collaborative – is encouraging professional investment managers to invest in grassroots community organizations, Sister Corinne said. Many of the smaller communities of women religious are also investigating the idea of starting a community impact investment fund with other communities. 

Read an article on the Summit by Michelle Martin in the Chicago Catholic.

October 10, 2024, Adrian, Michigan – The Adrian Dominican Sisters Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) held its annual meeting during the last week of September and shared the fruits of that meeting in a September 27, 2024, Fireside Chat in the Weber Center Auditorium.

After the Board and staff members introduced themselves, Cynthia Crim, PAB Chair since 2022, offered an update. The Board approved five loans to community organizations. The Board’s greatest accomplishment during the meeting, however, was adopting the 2023-2028 Strategic Plan, which had been approved last year by the PAB and the General Council. “More than anything, we spent a lot of time listening to each other and really studying and making sure the plan embodied all of the Enactments,” particularly diversity, gender equity, and environmental sustainability, Cynthia reported.

Details on the Strategic Plan and on the five organizations whose loans were approved will be included in upcoming PAB articles published on the Adrian Dominican Sisters public website.

Cynthia also announced the Vision and Mission of the PAB, crafted during the meeting:

Vision
Rooted in the Vision, Mission, and Enactments of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, the Portfolio Advisory Board envisions a beloved community without poverty, hunger, homelessness, and ecological degradation. The beloved community is shaped by its collective voices and is committed to promoting racial and gender equity and systemic changes to policies and practices of institutions inhibiting its realization. Building on its collaborative strength, the beloved community is an active, healthy, and thriving space where all are welcome and have a voice.

Mission
The Mission of the Portfolio Advisory Board is to use the assets of the Adrian Dominican Sisters to build the beloved community. We invest in community organizations that create opportunities for those who are marginalized and that embody values of collaboration, inclusiveness, right relationship with Earth, and racial and gender equity. We use our voice as shareholders in corporations to promote policies and practices that build the beloved community.

Marilín Llanes, OP, PAB Director and Portfolio Manager, announced the upcoming 50th anniversary celebration of PAB, Building on Legacy, Impacting the Future, set for Friday, September 26, 2025, at Weber Center. The celebration will include a video telling the story of PAB through the voices of 13 Sisters, Associates, and lay members of the Board. Details are forthcoming.

Sister Marilín also encouraged Sisters and Associates to check out the refreshed PAB page of the Congregation’s public website, which features pictures and articles depicting the work and partners of the PAB. Articles focus alternatively on corporate responsibility efforts and community investments.

For the remainder of the Fireside Chat, Eric K. Foster, Co-Founder, Chair, and Managing Director of Rende Progress Capital, spoke of his work offering loans and other financial services to businesses owned by people of color. Rende has been part of the PAB’s portfolio since 2020, Sister Marilín said. “We were very taken by [Rende’s] whole mission and vision because it was so aligned with our values.” 

Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rende has 47 loan customers, Eric said. Those clients “represent statistically having higher loan denials than their white peer business owners,” he explained. “In credit, they have had similar credit worthiness to white businesses, but in our landscape in Western Michigan, they cannot get a bank loan.” Of his clients, he said, 70% never received a loan before Rende took them on.

Eric emphasized the impact that loans have on the lives of the entrepreneurs of color and the people they serve. One company, Reliable Medical Transport, offers rides to vulnerable people with mobility problems for non-emergency medical appointments as well as non-medical activities. With loans, Reliable Medical Transport and other businesses have been able to expand, increase their revenue, and pay higher wages to their employees, he said. 

Eric thanked the PAB for the loan that he had received from them, enabling him in return to offer loans to entrepreneurs of color. He also encouraged them to stand strong in the face of a movement of “aggrieved white people who fought back against affirmative action,” which has persuaded some corporations to stop funding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. Many companies are “under pressure from those who tell them that it’s wrong to promote racial justice,” Eric said. But as a 501(c)3 organization, he added, the PAB has the right to offer grants and investments to people of color and other marginalized groups. “Don’t stop it,” he said. “Don’t cave in.”

View the entire Fireside Chat below or in our public video library.

Caption for the feature photo at top: Members of the Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) during their September 2024 meeting are, from left, Carla Manning; Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP; Marilin Llanes, OP, Director and Portfolio Manager; Bibiana “Bless” Colasito, OP, General Council Liaison; Sidney Williams, Jr., in back; Judy Byron, OP; Kris Cooper, Office Manager; Joseph Barker II; and Cynthia Crim, Chair. Not pictured are Carmen Mora, Vice Chair, and Mary Minette, Mercy Investment Consultant.