Mellon Capital & McKnight Foundation: Building a Carbon Efficiency Strategy
Questions:
How can philanthropy and the private sector collaborate to design new models for investing in social change? How are new products developed that yield social and environmental as well as economic returns? How can values be aligned with fiduciary responsibility to make such partnerships possible?
Brief:
The case explores how the McKnight Foundation, one of the largest US foundations, worked with its financial advisors and Mellon Capital, a boutique of BNY Mellon, to design an investment strategy aligned with its programmatic values. Their work together led both to revisit assumptions, contributed new models for CSR, and broke new ground for the emerging practice of impact investing and social finance.