With nearly a thousand published pages in three books over close to 35 years, what has been our impact? If you add in the more than 100 issues of this newsletter and all the related articles, blog posts, and social media posts, what difference have we made? And what can we learn going forward?
I remember standing in the new age Ark Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1992 reading Jack Brill and Alan Reder’s book, Investing from the Heart: The Guide to Socially Responsible Investments and Money Management. I had just graduated from college, and I was destitute. The book hadn’t come to the public library yet, so the Ark was a vital source for alternative ideas.
During those formative years, I’d lean against the incense-infused bookcases and discreetly read books I wanted but couldn’t afford. (I found “socially responsible investing” in Bill Mollison’s textbook Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual, another life-changing, read-while-leaning-at-the-Ark book. It cost $65!) Who would have guessed then that I’d spend 20 years as a manager and the Chief Compliance Officer for the firm Jack started? No one who saw me then, that’s for sure.
I recently looked back at my Amazon order history, and it turns out the very first order I placed in February 2000 was for three books on finance, including Hal Brill and Cliff Feigenbaum’s Investing with Your Values: Making Money and Making a Difference. That year I was contemplating a transition from permaculture teacher to, well, it wasn’t quite clear. I owe the Ark, and Jack and Hal Brill, a debt of gratitude for setting my life in motion, and for all the hopeful labor that a book embodies.
The point of this nostalgia fest is to reflect on how seemingly small acts can transform the life of one person. Did those books have a positive impact? Can you say “hell yeah” in a family publication like this? The Designer’s Manual, Investing from the Heart and Investing Your Values were the tracks that guided my life. They had a huge impact.
It turns out they impacted not just me, Hal, Michael, and the other investment advisors of Natural Investments, but obviously these ideas impacted the clients, families, and non-profits that we work with—thousands of people. And we went from humble beginnings with just 12 SRI mutual funds and $50 million to manage back in those early years, to managing nearly $2 billion and several hundred funds now. And, of course, the access to so many private investments that were not available at all in those early days. As detailed in these pages, so much impact!
But it’s almost cliché now to note that no one is reading books anymore. I know, a couple of us still do, but when we published The Resilient Investor in 2015, the publisher explicitly told us: “People don’t read big books, they don’t finish books, and you’re competing with blogs and websites.” This was before TikTok and YouTube shorts, the latest distillation of content into ever shorter, addictive bites. We couldn’t publish Investing from the Heart or Investing with Your Values today—they’re too big, too thorough, too dense with information. Values weighs nearly two pounds, for gosh sake.
Over 35 years, the impact of those ideas has been huge, but what about for the next generation? How do we further and deepen that impact? Let me offer a few suggestions based on what has worked so far, in three handy phrases: Heed the pitchfork, speak truth to power, keep turning the wheel.
Japanese natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka used to say: “If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.” People can deny climate change and the need for justice, but that doesn’t make them untrue. Reality will assert itself. We need to keep coming back to what is true, what seems honest and right, what will eventually be proved, and what history will regard favorably. It’s amusing to look back at something like Whole Earth Ecolog: An Environmental Toolkit, published in 1990, and flip through the pages thinking, “Hmm, right about climate change, right about renewable energy, right about organic farming, right about building efficiency, right about meditation…”
“Speak truth to power,” sounds like a scary encounter—very biblical—the little guy in sandals taking on a monster. That’s needed of course, but speaking truth—at all scales—is also essential. Holding out as self-evident that it’s natural to “actively balance the need for financial return with the yearning to make life a little better for others and the Earth,” is a humble and valiant truth from Hal Brill that challenges power. Standing up to bullshit and bad ideas is even more important now, in an age of rampant lying and disinformation.
“Turning the wheel,” refers to the Buddha’s teachings that spread the dharma, setting in motion the practices of freedom from suffering. I’ve also understood it as a helpful metaphor regarding putting your shoulder into the work and joining with so many others to help push us out of the muck and into a greater health and helpfulness. Humility and simple good deeds and doing the work and persevering for decades, that turns the wheel of progress.
As I reflect on serving nearly 20 years as Natural Investments’ Chief Compliance Officer—a role that was never my primary life motivation but that I have done well—I see it as a small but helpful spoke of service to the broader turning of the wheel. There are no accolades and plenty of annoyances, but it’s an essential part of the work that Natural Investments has been engaged in these past several decades. Thank you to the Ark for letting me lean, thank you to Jack and Hal and so many others for the inspiration, and thank you for joining with us to continue to deepen our impact. The good shall prevail!