You may be wondering how Natural Investments is unique. As a pioneering firm in the socially responsible investing field for over 35 years, our thought leadership and expertise as innovators makes us unlike any other investment advisor in the U.S. because we have been socially responsible investors ourselves for decades. Our nationwide advisors have been active in the environmental, local economy, and social and racial justice movements for well over an entire generation, and we have helped to shape the purpose and standards of the socially responsible investment industry.
Our team was founded by people who in the ‘80s started local revolving loan funds and who fought for divestment from corporations operating in the apartheid regime of South Africa. Our founding partners were environmental and permaculture educators who taught the principles and practices of sustainable living before focusing on finance as a way to use capital to bring about the evolutionary change we wish to see in the world. Educators at heart, we are the only advisory firm to have written three books on socially responsible investing, and we even coined the term “regenerative investing” in 2008 in the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World.
As activists and advocates, we are deeply committed to profound, systemic social change, gender and racial equity and justice, and ecosystem regeneration. We endeavor to model as a business the values and practices of our investments. In 2007, we became one of the first Certified B Corps in the world. In 2023, we became a Public Benefit LLC and the first financial services company in the country to be owned by a perpetual purpose trust. After being owned by our mostly white male advisors since our founding in 1985, we are now owned by the Natural Investments Purpose Trust we created, with members of our team serving terms as elected Trust Stewards who oversee the firm. This enables our team – which features 60% women and 33% people of color – to share power and profit equally and for our firm to remain independent in perpetuity. Let’s make it happen.
Gender Equity
Empowerment of female & non-binary
Solidarity Economy
Racial equity, asset ownership, and reparations
High Social Impact Technology & Services
Decentralized power and democratized access to capital, goods, and services
Local Economies
Non-corporate control of business and community assets
Green Products & Services
Focus on eliminating carbon and toxicity
Good Governance
Supporting each other to be the best possible
If you’re wondering how else we’re different, here are some of the ways
We Walk Our Talk
as a responsible enterprise (a Founding Certified B Corp) and live our progressive passions in our professional and personal lives.
We Have Been Rating
socially responsible mutual funds for 30 years via our proprietary and rigorous Heart Rating.
We Volunteer In Our Communities
to foster healthy lifestyles, racial justice, organic food, renewable energy, and local economic development.
We Donate
a significant portion of our gross revenue to meaningful charitable organizations.
We Speak Truth To Power,
seek to shift the priorities of the economic and political system, and are fully committed to addressing racial and gender justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion through our investments and our actions.
We Are Authors
thought leaders and vocal leaders within our industry, serving on national boards and committees, publishing white papers and articles, and speaking around the world and with policymakers to push for deeper responsibility and impact standards and effective governance and regulatory policies, laws, and practices in the financial services landscape.