Gratitude, Celebration, and Taking More & Bigger Action Together

March 14, 2024

Written by Julianne Zimmerman, Managing Director, Adasina Social Capital

As I write this article, I’m celebrating six months in my role as Managing Director at Adasina. In that brief time, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting quite a few of you at various in-person and virtual events like NY Climate Week, ESG for Impact, and Investing with Impact. I deeply appreciate the enthusiastic support for Social Justice Investing you’ve shared along the way, and I’m grateful for all I have learned from our conversations together.

In my discussions with many of you, I have heard conflicting throughlines of a strong desire to deepen your involvement in Adasina’s work, and uncertainty about how to do so. You have reflected back to me that at times we are so focused on sharing our vision for large-scale financial markets change that we may gloss over the specifics of how we go about catalyzing that change. My purpose in this article is to begin to close that gap.

Investing in Social Justice

Adasina originally coined the phrase Social Justice Investing to communicate our uniquely community-centered approach to public markets impact asset management. We also describe ourselves as, “Your bridge between financial markets & social justice.”

What does that mean in practice?

First, we invest to advance social justice across four intersectional justice pillars: racial, gender, economic, and climate.

Second, community is at the heart of our investment practice. We partner with social justice organizations to understand the material needs and issues that they and their constituents tell us are most urgent and vital to the communities they serve. Adasina then conducts proprietary research to convert that guidance into public market investor datasets, criteria, and screens.

Third, we apply those datasets, criteria, and screens to our own index (JUSTICE) and products, chiefly the JSTC global all-cap ETF. Our ETF is designed as a core strategy, compatible with other values-aligned and conventional products and asset classes.

Fourth, our community-centered approach also embraces and benefits the wider industry. We publish our investor datasets on our BRIDGE Platform, for anyone to use at no cost; we initiate investor mobilization campaigns; and we encourage other public market investors to take action in their own portfolios by engaging and/or divesting, as appropriate to their own investment strategies.

Taken together, these four elements constitute our approach to making large-scale, systemic change through investments in public markets.

Celebrating What We’ve Achieved Together So Far

In December 2023, Adasina’s ETF passed the crucial 3-year milestone. Thanks to you, not only have we established an investment product track record, but together we have mobilized public market investors to address material social justice issues with remarkable speed and impact. Highlights include:

When Adasina CEO & Founder Rachel J. Robasciotti coined the term Social Justice Investing in 2018, it was a novel and ambitious concept. Thanks to you, our beloved community, Social Justice Investing has not only caught on as an idea, but, more importantly, proven to be an effective innovation in public markets impact investing with a growing number of practitioners and adherents. Now our task is to expand the practice of Social Justice Investing for still greater impact and market influence.

Learning from Our Beloved Community

I have been thrilled to hear so many of you express strong alignment between your values and our Social Justice Investing practice, along with a desire for more opportunities to learn and get involved. I am also grateful that several of you have generously shared helpful feedback about ways we can make it easier for you to take action in your own investment portfolios — or on behalf of your clients.

We have taken your enthusiasm and feedback to heart.

In the coming months, you can expect us to share more informational and action-oriented content. In the meantime, please continue to share your constructive criticism and kudos alike via info@adasina.com. I welcome your collaboration in better expanding and strengthening our beloved community.

I especially invite you to continue to share insights into your values, aspirations, or impact investment priorities that will help us even more effectively leverage the current financial markets together in pursuit of a more regenerative future — one in which all people and the planet can thrive.

Taking More and Bigger Action Together

Thank you again for the warm welcome you have shown me in my first six months. I eagerly look forward to engaging more closely with you over the coming years.

In that spirit, I’m excited to announce that we are launching Adasina’s 2024 Quarterly Investor Briefings and invite you to attend the inaugural Q1 session, scheduled for March 19, 2024 — please register here!

If you’re interested in participating in one or more of our investor mobilization campaigns, please contact renee@adasina.com. To learn more about our JSTC fund, please contact invest@adasina.com. And if you haven’t already done so, please join our mailing list to stay connected with our beloved community and exciting upcoming initiatives.

Finally, please keep sharing your enthusiasm for Social Justice Investing with your own networks and continue to grow our beloved community.

Together we can and will become unstoppable agents of change!

 

 

DISCLOSURES AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Before investing, you should carefully consider the Fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information is in the prospectus. A prospectus may be obtained by clicking here. Please read the prospectus carefully before you invest.
Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. There is no guarantee that the Fund’s investment strategy will be successful. Shares may trade at a premium or discount to their NAV in the secondary market, and the fund’s holdings and returns may deviate from those of its index. These variations may be greater when markets are volatile or subject to unusual conditions. The Fund is new and has a limited operating history. The Fund has a limited number of financial institutions that are authorized to purchase and redeem shares directly from the Fund, and there may be a limited number of market makers or other liquidity providers in the marketplace.
Foreign and emerging market investing involves currency, political, and economic risk. Applying climate, economic, gender, racial, and movement-aligned justice domain criteria to the Fund’s investment selection process may exclude securities of certain issuers for non-financial reasons, and therefore, the Fund may underperform the broader equity market or other funds that do not utilize similar criteria when selecting investments. Adasina is a newly registered investment advisor and has no long-term track record that an investor may judge. Investments made in small and mid-capitalization companies may be more volatile and less liquid due to limited resources or product lines and more sensitive to economic factors. The securities of large-capitalization companies may be relatively mature compared to smaller companies and, therefore, subject to slower growth during times of economic expansion.
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