Local Investing with ImpactPHL

We interview an organization linking up Philadelphia’s small businesses with local investors to generate a win-win for the community. Learn how they do it and how you can get started with local investing in your area.

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Linda Rogers: [00:00:00] My name is Linda Rogers, and this is Investing Forward. On the last podcast episode about green bonds, I had Jan Schalkwijk as the advisor guest. He briefly mentioned Iroquois Valley Farms. So that's an organization that provides long-term leases and mortgages to organic and regenerative farmers. Jan said the clients that were most interested in participating in the investment lived in the same areas where the farms were located. In other words, the idea of investing in their local community really appealed to them. That led me to explore this topic of “local investing” and understand the options that investors have if they want to invest in the community around them to earn a return, but also amplify their impact. Luckily, I met the perfect person to break this down for us. Cory and I met in New York City at the Ford Foundation. We had just finished an event and there was a torrential downpour outside. I was hanging around deciding when I was going to make a break for it, when Cory and I struck up a conversation about what he was doing in Philadelphia. It really stuck out to me because it was unlike anything I had heard elsewhere in the country. He seemed to have tapped into how to link up local businesses with local investors to generate a win-win for the community. Let's have a listen to see what I'm talking about. And make sure to stay tuned for the second half where I chat with Vincent Barbera. He's a financial advisor based in Philadelphia. He shares his take from an adviser's perspective on the conversation with Cory and investing locally. First up, Cory Donovan from Impact PHL.

Cory Donovan: [00:01:51] My name is Cory Donovan. I'm the executive director of Impact PHL. We are a four year old effort. Now we're a 501c3. Initially started as an initiative and as of two years ago, we became an official nonprofit, 501c3. I describe us as an advocacy organization to encourage people and organizations to align their financial assets with their values. Our goal is that if we do that, we can create a more sustainable, more equitable and more resilient regional economy here in the Philadelphia region. My background is I actually grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for fans of The Office. Scranton was a boomtown in 1900, but 10, 15 years later was on the decline. And so I grew up Scranton was was in rough times. So I got out of there, moved to the DC area, spent my whole career up until Impact PHL in the tech sector, first on the corporate side of things and then in the I ran a nonprofit that supported tech and the entrepreneurial economy in the Blacksburg, Roanoke region of Virginia. And then, you know, working with startups, some tech startups, side of things. And and, you know, four years ago kind of made a sidestep from sort of tech into the impact sector, which is less of a vertical. And I describe it as more of a horizontal. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, what kind of organization you are, individual, etc. Everyone can apply impact principles and practices to how they live their life and where they invest their money.

Linda Rogers: [00:03:35] Nice. OK, and did you start Impact PHL?

Cory Donovan: [00:03:38] So I won't take credit for starting it. There were a number of people and organizations in the Philadelphia region that were already at the table thinking about, you know, this is a global movement. It's it's not a new concept. I mean, you know, people have been aligning their financial assets with their values for hundreds of years here in the United States. The Quakers, I think if you go to the Wikipedia page, you know, are credited with maybe being the first Americans. They didn't invest in slavery. There are religious organizations that have been doing this for hundreds of years. So there were people here in the Philadelphia region. B-Lab is headquartered here. Reinvestment Fund is headquartered here. The oldest chapter of Social Venture Circle is in Philadelphia. Judy Wicks started the Sustainable Business Network. So we have some real strong pillars of this and a number of people in the Philadelphia region here that were sort of saying, hey, we should we should come together and work together to sort of accelerate this here within the Philadelphia region, because we also are the poorest big city in the country with 25% poverty here in the Philadelphia region. So when I say we want an equitable economy that works for all of our citizens, that's that's the first thing that comes to mind in terms of what we're trying to do. So I come to the table, I call myself the "get it done" guy. They needed someone to kind of like set up the website and, you know, figure out the processes, the operations, etc. And like I said, it was initially an initiative, and then it became an organization. So I'm now the Executive Director of it.

Linda Rogers: [00:05:24] Tell me how you introduce the idea of investing locally to investors and advisors. As you mentioned, impact investing itself is not new, but the idea of applying an additional layer of due diligence on your investment portfolio that considers social and environmental factors is new for a lot of people.

Cory Donovan: [00:05:43] I think about our work as a 4-step path: engage, challenge, inform, equip. You know, and so, and what I mean by that is engage people who aren't in the choir here, who aren't thinking this way. Challenge the 2 pocket thinking - I make money with my left hand and I do good with my right. They have nothing to do with each other. Right. I can invest in cigarette stocks and donate money to cure lung cancer. Colin Kaepernick could be unintentionally invested in, you know, for-profit-prisons. Right. Because he's through his money manager and mutual funds. So challenge that thinking and show people that, you know, your money might be doing things you don't know and you don't like, educate them about one pocket thinking and then equip them. And so when they do that, and when their intentional, that's a home run for us at ImpactPHL. But it doesn't necessarily mean a lot for Philadelphia. Right. Because it might be all public stock and it's all that macro level. So that's step one, is be intentional. And step two is think local. Right. So once you're intentional, we're sort of assuming that you care about the place you live. We should all do this right. All my money is flowing out to Wall Street. All my money is flowing out of the region. How can I think about how where that where I can invest that locally.

Linda Rogers: [00:06:57] Good. OK, let's shift gears to how people can invest locally, because as we know, it's not that easy. These opportunities are not listed on a stock exchange. I receive your newsletter, which I highly recommend, and you send out monthly updates and new investment opportunities. So I'm going to just pull up a couple investments that I saw recently to give listeners an idea of what is out there. So one investment I saw was Simply Good Jars. They were raising a bridge round to scale rollouts with Sheetz and GoPuff. So can you explain what Simply Good Jars is and what a bridge round is?

Cory Donovan: [00:07:38] Sure. So Simply Good Jars is a start up here in the Philadelphia region. They provide healthy food on the go. Right. So if you're trying to eat on the run, you know, there's fast food and there are some options for eating healthier. But that's directly what they are targeted at, is a grab and go kind of healthy eating. The CEO is a chef himself. And they have, you know, impact built in. So, you know, when it comes to things like impact or values aligned investing or business practices, I always say it's a personal thing. Right? It starts with - what do you care about? And so, you know, healthy. Sorry. Simply Good Jars is if you care about health and healthy food, and access to healthy food, especially affordable on the go stuff, then they're going to align. Another aspect of impact, and that is a unique thing for Simply Good Jars, is that they reclaim the jars they use, so they're reusable. So if you care about single-use plastics and the amount of plastics in the ocean, which is a huge problem, Simply Good Jars makes their containers recyclable and they incentivize their customers to return the jars to them by offering to donate a meal to a local food bank for every jar that's recovered. Right. So it's more sustainable, more cost effective for them. They wash and sanitize the jars, etc, and they have 91% reclaim rate. Right, who wants to be the jerk to throw away a reusable jar and not donate a meal to someone who needs it. And so, you know, environmental is another social impact issue. If you care about vulnerable citizens, then that's another impact issue. So in terms of, you know, doing business, spending your dollar with company or in terms of investing, then Simply Good Jars checks the box on a couple of different impact areas. The bridge round that they are raising - so a bridge round is usually an interim round of funding when, you know, a startup is raising capital and they go through different rounds to meet different milestones and a bridge round usually comes into play when something doesn't go as planned. And sometimes that's a bad thing. You know, revenue didn't ramp as quickly as possible or something like that. But in this case, it's actually a good thing for Simply Good Jars because they signed on with two very big distribution partners. And GoPuff, which is a on-demand delivery app, which itself is doing quite well and is also headquartered here in Philadelphia. And then Wawa, which is a bit of a religion for people that live in the Philadelphia region. It's a C-store, you know, that makes hoagies and food and, you know, and has gas stations at a lot of them. So they're doing a rollout with these two big, huge opportunities for them and so they needed to ramp up their production and they are raising a bridge round to help them do that and then prepare for a larger round of funding sometime next year.

Linda Rogers: [00:10:49] Great. And yes, I went to Villanova, so I definitely miss Wawa. So how do you work with Simply Good Jars or any of the investments that you list? Are you just sharing the investment opportunity or do you do any sort of due diligence?

Cory Donovan: [00:11:06] So we're, we're what I would call an ecosystem builder. Right. When we say "work with", I'm using air quotes, we're not necessarily working with, consulting with Simply Good Jars. We're certainly not a broker dealer or representing the investment and bringing it out to people. But part of our role is if we can help them be successful, that's a win for us. So if they need help with something, if they're looking for connections, we're happy to do that with them, but in terms of the investment that they're looking to raise, our number one goal is to get people to align their financial assets with their values, which means that we want to, you know, engage people and alert them and educate them about impact investing our values aligned investing more socially responsible investing. They're all similar terms, not necessarily the same. And part of that is to encourage them to look for deals that align with their values. I talked to earlier about healthy eating. I talked about vulnerable citizens. I talked about environmental issues, single use plastics, etc. So as people identify what they care about and what they want to, where they want to align their money and what problems they want to help solve, then we want to alert them to investment opportunities that align with those values. And so for someone that says to me, I care about healthy food or vulnerable citizens or, you know, environmental issues, we can point them towards something like a Simply Good Jars. And again, as we we haven't really gotten into asset classes yet, but theirs public stocks, theirs private equity, theirs social impact bonds, theirs crowdfunding campaigns. There's a lot of different ways that you can do this. And some of that depends on where you are and how much money you have, etc. But, you know, for folks that, you know, that are qualified investors, Simply Good Jars is available to them. And we certainly want to elevate that. You know, one of the things we've discovered in our work in the last four years is that a lot of, you know, non-public equity, impact investing is somewhat invisible, that it's hard for people to find it. And so we see that as part of our role, as identifying those opportunities and shining a light on them and elevating them to show people, look, here is another local impact, investment opportunity. And we have, in an addition to our monthly newsletter, we also have our monthly investor briefing, which only goes out to qualified investors and financial advisors.

Linda Rogers: [00:13:26] And you also have an Excel spreadsheet on the website that I found. And it's a Google doc that you update and it organizes ImpactPHL's investment opportunities by asset class. So Funds and Evergreen is one, early stage funding is another, direct real estate, and crowdfunding. Beyond that, each investment indicates which SDG, sustainable development goal, it hits. For those that don't know, there are 17 SDGs that the United Nations has put forth. It is essentially, you know, 17 calls to action such as no poverty, quality education, climate action and reduced inequality, just to name a few. The deadline to accomplish these goals is 2030. So it is nice that the spreadsheet kind of ties everything together and it encourages this idea that every investment has an impact, let's define that and zero in on what is most important to you.

Cory Donovan: [00:14:23] I'll just add with that, it goes back to this idea of visibility of impact investments. And so for again, for us here at ImpactPHL, there is a global movement towards values aligned vesting, mission investing, impact investing, etc. And we're not trying to boil that ocean, but where the cross-section between values aligned investing in the Philadelphia region, that's where we see the opportunity for us. And so, you know, the question kind of comes down to, Linda, if you were to say to me, hey, Cory, I'm interested in doing impact investing in the Philadelphia region, whether you're a foundation or an individual - where do I start looking? So that question was something we asked ourselves. And so we wanted to start to unearth these, to catalog them and to show people what they look like. And so that's what that we called it the Impact Investing Index. And we just started literally prototyping it by putting stuff onto a spreadsheet. And we started breaking it out because we realized to your point, early stage equity deals look and act different than real estate investing. And then there's crowdfunding and then there's funds and evergreen stuff that doesn't change. And so we just want to give people - it's not necessarily a comprehensive overview of of every opportunity in the Philadelphia region, but we certainly want to give people an idea of what's possible. And to your point - we linked it to the sustainable development goals as a way to show people and to provide that framework or to help - I shouldn't say to provide that framework - but to use that framework and use it and link our work to it so that people can use that as their reference point in terms of what impact areas do I care about.

Linda Rogers: [00:16:07] Great. OK. And another investment opportunity I saw was wearwell, which is actually a service that I subscribe to personally. They are a Philadelphia based startup, which I did not realize, and they were recently seeking a million dollars to grow their subscription service for ethically and sustainably made clothing. That opportunity was open to accredited and not accredited investors on the equity crowdfunding platform Republic. Crowdfunding opportunities are fairly new. Can you tell us about other crowdfunding sites that you've seen, maybe ones with more of an impact focus?

Cory Donovan: [00:16:45] Yes, I think there is a lot of crowdfunding platforms, you know, sort of like Kickstarter got the the crowdsourcing movement going. But now there are platforms through the Jobs Act that allow people to make investments as well, even if they're not an accredited investor. And so a couple of examples that we list are our Impact Investing Index are Honeycomb Credit, Small Change, so Honeycomb Credit is really for small, local businesses. Small Change is for real estate developments so you can invest literally in what's happening in terms of development in your community. Steward is for local farms, you know, for people that care about organic or local sourcing, etc., Republic and Wefunder, and I think there are probably lots of others as well. But those are the ones I think, that have more impact kind of tied to them. But again, you know, I could also argue that if you are making an intent to invest locally, regardless of what business, as long as you're not investing in an asbestos-laden lollipop factory, if you are making an intent to invest your capital locally, by itself, that is a form of intent.

Linda Rogers: [00:18:03] And if someone doesn't live in Philadelphia, where should they start if they want to learn more about investing locally.

Cory Donovan: [00:18:11] For now, I would say you can talk to your financial adviser. Again, a lot of financial advisors might not know about local investments, but if you have a financial adviser, I think that's the logical first place to start is to talk to them and let them know this is something you're interested in doing. We talked about the crowdfunding platforms where you can look for most of them will have a local filtering mechanism. Community development financial institutions, commonly known as CDFIs. They are surprisingly not well known by the average investor or by the average person, and yet they are critical to the local business community. You can you loan them your money. They turn around and loan your money to local businesses. Some of them will allow you to define your preferences. There's a national CDFI called CNote where when you invest your money there, you can let them know I want to invest this in women-led businesses, minority-led businesses, businesses in low-income neighborhoods, etc., so that you can get capital flowing to places that might have a harder time as as most of us probably know, that women and minority-led businesses have a harder time getting access to capital. So CDFIs generally, by definition, are those intentional, intentional lenders. And again, I mentioned real estate earlier. That's another example of, you know, talking to folks that are being what we call inclusive real estate development. So some real estate developers are the, you know, get in, buy something, slap up something cheap as quickly as possible and get out, make as much money as possible. And then we're fortunate here in Philadelphia to have a number of real estate developers from Shift Capital and Mosaic Development are two examples here in Philadelphia that are very intentional with what they're doing in the community, the impact they have, hiring and sourcing locally and the use of that real estate. Again, place is an important thing. So what is this building and what is this piece of real estate going to mean? Because, again, it's not something that goes away in a year or two or 5 or 10. This is this is going to be here for decades to come. And so what is the purpose and what is the use in this community and what can it be leveraged to do? So those are some examples of where someone who is looking to make local impact investments in their local community. Oh, and the other thing I should mention is look for other folks, like-minded people. So if you're a qualified investor, Social ventures Circle or Toniic might have a chapter in your city.

Linda Rogers: [00:20:51] That's helpful and you're very much a leader in this space. I mean, has there been interest for you to collaborate with other cities to try and replicate what ImpactPHL is doing in Philadelphia elsewhere?

Cory Donovan: [00:21:05] Yes, so we're all Philadelphians here with ImpactPHL. We started this and our primary goal is to help create a better Philadelphia region, as I said earlier. But having said that, you know, everybody here is very well aware of our shared collectiveness with planet with our economy and people. So we have started to get calls from across the country and talking to some other organizations. No one that's quite like ImpactPHL in terms of being this, I think of ImpactPHL as being a cooperative infrastructure. So, you know, anyone that's in this, you know, values align sort of eco system here in the Philadelphia region, we want them to be a part of what we're doing and we want to help them in their success and hope that they'll contribute to the ecosystem as well. And so we have had conversations with some folks in Minneapolis and some folks down in Georgia, and some folks down in California, and recently I talked to someone out in Rotterdam. So I think we are starting to kind of bubble as people think about local and impact investing, etc., and what that means at a local level, and certainly we're happy to share what what we've learned and what we're doing. If someone could replicate it, like you said, I think COVID and climate change highlight the need for collective activism because none of us are going to survive if we don't get everyone on board to have the ability to make better decisions and intentional decisions. So, yeah, I'd be happy to interact with anyone that's interested in this.

Linda Rogers: [00:22:42] Great. OK. How can people stay in touch with you and just continue to learn about ImpactPHL?

Cory Donovan: [00:22:49] Yeah. So our website say think is a good resource, ImpactPHL.org. And if anyone has any specific questions, suggestions etc, I'm happy to, to talk. My email is cory@impactphl.org. So I think those are two good ways and for any events that we do virtually we have one coming up on July 23rd that is focused on helping business leaders, CEOs, anyone who's involved in making decisions around a company defined retirement plans, 401ks, 403bs, we're working with As You Sow, which is a great tool that makes it very easy to understand how the mutual funds that are offered through your employer defined retirement plan, how they score on gender bias or on plastic's or ammunitions or deforestation, for example. So we're doing an event with them and it's free, so not necessarily Philly specific. So anybody's happy - you're welcome to join that as well.

Linda Rogers: [00:23:56] Cory's info and the links mentioned on this episode will be on InvestingForwardPodcast.com. Next up, we have been Vincent Barbera from Newbridge Wealth Management. He's an advisor friend that was born and raised in Philly. So I was interested to hear his take about what Cory is doing. Vincent used to work at Vanguard, but he started his own firm and had never heard of ImpactPHL before I sent him the raw audio of the interview. So let's take a listen.

Vincent Barbera: [00:24:24] Hi, I'm Vincent Barbera. I am the the co-founder of Newbridge Wealth Management. We are based in a suburb of Philadelphia.

Linda Rogers: [00:24:32] Nice. Are most of your clients in Philly or they're all over?

Vincent Barbera: [00:24:36] I'd say 75% of our clients are from the suburbs of Philadelphia. In that general area. There's a couple, you know, in Jersey, right across the river, but the remaining 25% are really across the nation.

Linda Rogers: [00:24:50] Awesome. Ok. And who is your typical client?

Vincent Barbera: [00:24:52] Typical client. I would say mid-level professional. Forty five. Fifty five. Usually family oriented. You know, children ranges in the ages of pretty much 8 to 12. And the big thing is that their lives just become a little too complicated. So where they could get away with working maybe 35 to 40 hours a week, now they're putting in 50 to 60 to try to get that VP level or, you know, head of a department if they're in a hospital, whatever you have and they're worried about college, they're worried about all these funding mechanisms. You know, they're awarded stock options at work. So their life has just become a little too complicated. They can't do it themselves.

Linda Rogers: [00:25:36] Ok. And I know you do impact investing as well. And you have a model that consists of entirely socially responsible funds. I'm curious if you also have any investments that are limited to accredited investors. And I ask just because, you know, you listened to the interview with Cory and he mentions a couple times that there's investments that are just available to accredited investors or clubs like Toniic, just available to accredited investors. And really, what that means for listeners that are not aware, to be an accredited investor, you need to earn income that exceeds $200,000 dollars, or $300,000 dollars together with the spouse, in each of the prior two years, or have net worth over a million dollars, either alone or with a spouse. But it excludes your primary residence.

Vincent Barbera: [00:26:24] Well, it's interesting. So, you know, we have we've created models depending on the risk tolerance of our clients. Right. And the majority of those models are invested in index based investments. As a former employee of Vanguard, I do believe in index investing. But there are certain things every once in a while that come across our desks, either from her clients, friends, that are more private equity, if you will, sort of off the books type investments that don't fall into those neat index or even mutual fund ETF type categories. So, yes, there are opportunities. Some clients do participate in those opportunities at a very limited basis right now. But, yes, so they would be reserved for accredited investors. And like I said, it's very limited. You know, it's not like every single client is investing 15 to 20%. If we do any investmenting, you know, it's anywhere from 1-5% of the overall investable assets. So, you know, it is small. And like I said, we do do our due diligence, make sure that it makes sense to get an idea of what the investment is or what the potential payoff could be.

Linda Rogers: [00:27:42] That's interesting, because, you know, my old firm - this is going back a decade - they had a mix of public and private investments as well. And they had a much higher percentage. So they were putting everybody in these private investments and it could be up to 20% of their investable assets. And that is also why they had a higher minimum. You know, they required a million dollars or so investable assets because then they could not participate in the full range of investments. So it sounds like you're doing something in between. It's not that you don't have any private investments. It's not that you require everyone to go in 20%. But it's sort of an opportunity basis. Is that fair?

Vincent Barbera: [00:28:25] That's exactly correct. That is fair, it's more ad hoc. Like, for example, sometimes we have, so our custodian, we use Schwab and TD Ameritrade Institutional. And sometimes TD will give us access to IPOs. So if there's a little bit of, you know, funny money, if you will, that the clients might have it, the they want to get involved in an IPO that way, we will. But like I said, it cannot compromise what we're doing, investing for the future, investing for any goals that they may have. It's really something that's on the side. The one thing we aren't doing, we are taking a closer look at it, though, as I wouldn't necessarily call it as part of the model, but potentially something that does become the bigger picture. Just because a lot of these things might be non-correlated. So we do believe in diversified portfolios. And a lot of times, too, though, when you look at U.S. and international, where in the past it may be a non-correlated, now they're almost perfectly correlated, especially when things go south. U.S. falls, international falls, usually by a little bit more. So there may be opportunities to get involved in these private investments for lack of a better term, because they're not not they're not correlated to the market yet.

Linda Rogers: [00:29:43] Yup. And we should make clear that private investments are investments that are not listed on an exchange. They do not have the same level of regulation and disclosure requirements that public companies have. You have to do your own due diligence and know what you're doing. They can take the form of an equity or a bond, just like public companies, or they can be something more early stage, such as venture capital. While they do have the potential for higher returns, they typically have a different risk profile. They're much less liquid. For example, you often have to lock up your money for months or even years with private investments, and that means you can't sell any shares during that time. So, I mean, what are your thoughts when you kind of listen to the interview with Cory and that idea of being able to invest in private investments, but instead direct them towards the city of Philadelphia that most of your clients are from - I mean, what did you think about that?

Vincent Barbera: [00:30:42] So, it's funny. I've had conversations recently with clients that want to get more involved and they don't know how. And they feel, you know, writing a check to the Cancer Society or what have you, it's just so impersonal. And their tired of just sort of writing blank checks. While they'll continue to do that, they're looking for another mechanism to get involved and get involved locally. And I think part of this is from COVID actually and a lot of stuff that's happened recently because it's really forced us to sort of sit down, look around, see where we are, and especially in this area in Philadelphia, which is probably, you know, the best city in the entire world. It just gives us the, well, what can we do to sort of give back to our local community? Because the majority of people in this area are born and raised here. You know, if you look at maybe California or other states, there's a lot of transplants. But here in the Northeast, I mean, we've been born and raised and we're just fanatical about here. And the cool thing is, is when I was growing up, let's say the late 80s, 90s, Philadelphia wasn't a great place to walk around. I mean, the buddy system wasn't two people, the buddy system was a gang of 20 just to feel protected. So they have done so many good things over the last 10, 15 years of cleaning up the city and actually bringing bright minds. And that sort of brings me to this Impact Philly, is that, I mean, the entrepreneurs and the technology and things that are coming in Philadelphia, it I mean, it's just fantastic. It's like just in a burgeoning capital of tech. Now, it doesn't compete yet with San Fran or New York or even maybe Austin. You know, Atlanta is pretty good, too, but there is some awesome, awesome stuff happening in Philadelphia and we're starting to get recognized. And I think with Cory, what he's doing with impact is fantastic because a lot of people want to get involved. Like I said, they don't know how. And, you know - they might search and ask some questions. But after six months, if they're not finding the answers to those questions, they're going to stop. And these local companies, I mean, they need funding. I mean, they need funding over these few years to really take their game to the next level. And without that, they're just going to they're just going to die. So it's, you know, what can we do? And, you know, before you introduced me, had me listen to this, this is video, I didn't know it was around. I didn't know Cory existed. I didn't know there was this ImpactPHL, and now I'm getting like all juiced up and I'm like introducing them to the Financial Planning Association, you know? Yeah. And trying to say, ah, well, this is real. This is awesome stuff. And as advisers we're almost the gatekeepers. So it's you know, we want to be able to introduce our clientele, hundreds and hundreds of clients that are looking to do these types of investments, and it's like, OK, here's an opportunity now. And at a small level, and a large level, you know, really, depending on, you know, if you don't want to commit $5,000 dollars to something, that's OK. But but some of the things that, you know, Cory was sharing with me, where it is just fantastic and it's all at the local level.

Linda Rogers: [00:33:54] Well, now that you have this new kind of tool in your toolbox, how do you see yourself implementing this with your clients? How do you see yourself introducing ImpactPHL to them?

Vincent Barbera: [00:34:06] Yeah, well, the cool thing is the one thing that Cory brought up and what we've actually begun to do with our own clients is trying to, I think, in Cory's words, aligning values with their assets. Right. So, you know, we go through this deep dive and they become clients as to what is important to you, you know, if you had all the money in the world, what would be things that you would want to give to, you know, be it charities, be it foundations, what have you. What is it? Is it women led businesses? Is it fossil free industry? You know, companies. So what are those things? And we try to unpack that because the whole idea to when we're running projections for our clients, we want to get to the point where they don't have to worry about their money. We want to get to a point where they actually have excess. So. Right. So it's like, what can we do with this excess, you know is, you know, maybe it's like I have one client actually that is in the process of creating a camp, a summer camp for disadvantaged youths because they realize we have more than enough money than we need. You know, it's what more can we do? And so it's so cool with the Cory, with the characterization of all these various companies is, all right, if you're interested in a women led business, giving to the poor, and that cares about the environment, well, those three things, those three elements, we can find businesses that hit those three. So now. Yes. And now we're like Cory said, we're assigning specific assets to those values, to those things that are important to you. And it becomes almost like your family mission statement. And they say you're really contributing now to the growth of things that are important to you.

Linda Rogers: [00:35:50] Well, is there anything else that you want to share with listeners? For example, just where they can learn more about you or if you have any events coming up?

Vincent Barbera: [00:35:58] Go to Newbridgewealth.com to learn more about what we do. If you have any specific questions about getting involved with these types of investments, you know, feel free to reach out. I mean, the best thing is if you're a consumer, an individual investor, ask your advisor about ways to get involved, because, you know, what we need is individual investors to make the push, because if there's much of an interest, it's like okay they get advisers to do their job like, well, I got to take this seriously now because, you know, we've discussed this in the past, but we do have a model that we've created that is just SRI. Right. Just sustainable responsible investing. And that might be. There's one, I think I wrote down the ticker that we do here, oh, SPYX. So that's basically the S&P 500 removing all the fossil fuel companies. Right. Or another one, IShare a low carbon, CRBN. But again, these are on a global scale. So while it's important to do this, you're still sort of missing that local touch. I think in times like these, it's important that we get back locally. And so there's a lot of people now, you know, a lot of cities that are trying to make this a point emphasis.

Linda Rogers: [00:37:25] Yeah. OK, Vince, well we are at our time. So thank you again for doing this. And I hope you'll come on again soon.

Vincent Barbera: [00:37:31] Thanks Linda. Appreciate the time.

Linda Rogers: [00:37:34] What are your thoughts about investing locally? Honestly, I don't know of many organizations like ImpactPHL in other cities. Do you? Reach out to me at InvestingForwardPodcast.com if you do, because I would love to post your organization on our site for listeners that live in other areas of the country. I'm 3 episodes in with the Investing Forward Podcast and the format has been to start with an expert and finish with an advisor to help me digest what the expert has shared. In every case, we've learned a lot from each other and I think that speaks to the fact that we as advisors really need to get ourselves educated on what is possible with impact investing. Similarly, you as investors need to push us, your advisors to ensure that we are working for you and challenging you to understand what you own and how you can be doing more with your investment dollars. I have a lot more topics planned to bring your way, some of which were mentioned on this episode, such as CDFIs, but we were running out of time, so reach out if you have other topics you want to hear about. And we will continue the conversation next time.

Linda Rogers: [00:38:41] My name is Linda Rogers. You were listening to Investing Forward. If you liked what you heard, leave us a rating, subscribe and stay tuned for next time.

Linda Rogers: [00:39:30] Linda Rogers is the owner of Planning Within Reach, a registered investment advisor, Planning Within Reach produces the podcast and makes it available on its website and through other distribution channels. Linda Rogers and any guests on the podcast are providing their own views and opinions and are not necessarily the views and opinions of Planning Within Reach. Nothing on the podcast should be construed as a solicitation or offer or recommendation to buy or sell any security. Investment advisory services are only provided to investors who become Planning Within reach clients pursuant to a written Investment Management Agreement. Clients of Planning Within Reach may hold positions in securities discussed in this podcast. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk and may lose money. The Investing Forward Podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on for any investment decisions. Consult with a financial advisor, accountant, attorney, or conduct your own due diligence.