A company called Impact Shares says we can make money while encouraging businesses to behave more ethically.
What it means: People who want to make lots of money often invest in the stockmarket. Usually they do this by asking companies who claim to be stockmarket experts to invest their money for them. Often these money managers come across as not very nice people (we’re looking at you, Jordan Belfort). But some, like Impact Shares, say they’re trying to change the world for the better.
Impact Shares picks a good cause, such as empowering minorities, and gets money from investors who care about that cause. It pools all this money together and teams up with a relevant charity (in this case, the NAACP) to pick out companies that they think are doing stuff to encourage diversity and promote minorities.
Impact Shares buys shares in those companies (i.e. they give them the money in return for a part-ownership of the company). Companies give some of their profits to shareholders, which is how the people who invested in Impact Shares can make money.
Theoretically, companies want investment so they can grow and develop new products and all that businessy stuff, so the idea is that they will try and get onto Impact Shares investment list by doing more good, minority-empowering stuff.
Whether Impact Shares can makes a difference, of course, depends on how many people who say they care about making business more ethical are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
