Last updated on 11/11/2024
Pledges AJL Foundation has signed and stands behind:
Investor Statement Reaffirming the Need For Companies to Ensure Meritocratic Workplaces
Recent headlines have promoted the false narrative that investor and corporate support for DEI is waning and that efforts to ensure diverse and equitable workplaces have been stymied. This Investor Statement is intended to remind companies that their investors want them to remain committed to effectively managing diversity and inclusion in their workplaces. Signatories to the Statement call on their companies to:
- Policy: Make clear their ongoing commitment to ensuring diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.
- Oversight: Have clear executive management and board level oversight of workplace culture.
- Transparency: Publish quantitative data showing the diversity of their workforce alongside their hiring, promotion, and retention rates of employees by diversity characteristics.
We are institutional funders, individual donors and philanthropy professionals who are heartbroken and grieving the tragic loss of life in Palestine and Israel. Between October 7, 2023, and October 1, 2024, more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,139 Israelis have been killed.* In Gaza, this includes nearly 16,500 children. With every passing minute, we are losing more human lives – people with families and hopes, who once loved and dreamed. Our conscience moves us to speak out - we will not remain silent. We call for:
- An immediate ceasefire;
- Safe, unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid (including food, water, medicine and fuel), humanitarian organizations, staff and medical professionals into all areas of Gaza in a way that is sufficient and sustained enough to meet the scale of the catastrophe;
- Stopping US and European funding and weapons for the Israeli military; and
- Adherence to international humanitarian and human rights laws by all parties, including the safe release of all civilians taken hostage from Israel as well as of all Palestinians who have been unlawfully detained.
The Investment Manager Diversity Pledge
Becoming a signatory to the investment manager diversity pledge allows your organization to publicly demonstrate its commitment to diverse and inclusive investment management practices and places your organization at the heart of a community of foundations and endowments seeking to ensure a level playing field for minority and women investment managers. Your commitment acknowledges that hiring a diverse pool of quality investment managers is not contradictory to the goal of maximizing returns or fiduciary standard of care rather it demonstrates a focus on finding the best investment management talent to build wealth in communities of color and among women.
An Open Letter to Philanthropy, from People of Color-led, Movement-Accountable Public Foundations
It’s time that philanthropy acknowledges the essential role that people of color-led, movement-accountable foundations play in the larger philanthropic ecosystem. Investments in these institutions are a key strategy for advancing racial justice and self-determination. Therefore, it is critical that foundations like ours not just exist but be well-resourced and treated with respect.
Letter - Emergency Charity Stimulus
We support an emergency charity stimulus bill to mandate increased payouts for private foundations and donor-advised funds.
To catalyze movement of capital to BIPOC managers, the undersigned asset owners, consultants, and financial intermediaries, on behalf of asset owners who value BIPOC manager inclusion, commit to making the following shifts in our due diligence processes: 1) Consider Track Record Alternatives, 2) Expand What it Means to Work Together, 3) Reassess Assets Under Management as a Risk Metric, 4) Respect BIPOC Time, 5) Contextualize Fees, 6) Include Historically Unrecognized Risks, 7) Be Willing to Go First, 8) Offer Transparency about Remaining Hurdles, 9) Provide Detailed Feedback.
THE 2020 BELONGING PLEDGE – A COMMITMENT TO ADVANCE RACIAL EQUITY | Confluence Philanthropy
We commit to discussing racial equity at our next investment committee meeting. We will move our agenda forward on this. We will share our next steps and results (perhaps privately), so that we can help to identify industry-wide barriers and the technical resources required to advance the practice of investing with a racial equity lens.
Amalgamated Foundation Launches Hate Is Not Charitable Campaign | Amalgamated Bank
The campaign includes more than 20 donor networks, foundations, and Donor Advised Funds (“DAF”) providers that collectively represent over $1B in assets and growing. The campaign is calling for DAF providers to exercise their legal discretion over grants recommended by their donors and adopt pro-active policies to ensure that funds do not flow to organizations that promote hatred. Additionally, the Hate Is Not Charitable Campaign calls for “donors of conscience” to demand that their own donor advised providers adopt such policies.
Investor Statement in Support of Ending the Subminimum Wage - Adasina
A “subminimum wage” is a wage paid that is less than the federal or state mandated minimum wage. Federal law allows companies to pay less than the legally mandated minimum wage to certain groups of workers. Tipped workers are the largest group paid a subminimum wage and represent approximately six million people in the United States. In 2020, a coalition of over 65 institutional investor groups representing over $538 billion in managed assets, signed an Investor Statement calling on companies to end the subminimum wage. In solidarity with these investors, we created a public investment Exclusion List that includes all companies excluded from our portfolios for paying their employees a subminimum wage.
To share additional pledges, questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to Kristi Petrie at kpetrie@ajlfoundation.org
