The Dominican Sisters of Adrian, MI are a congregation of more than 500 women religious and 200 Associates that minister in 22 states and three countries. They trace their roots to St. Dominic in the 13th Century and continue the Dominican tradition of preaching through prayer, study, common life, and ministry. In all of their ministries, they strive to live out one Vision: to seek truth, make peace, reverence life.
The Adrian Dominican Sisters have been on the cutting edge of socially responsible investing for more than 45 years. Over this time period the Sisters have integrated environmental, social, and governance investing and impact investing into their portfolio. Their journey began in 1974 when the Adrian Dominican Sisters began to craft a mission of community impact investing through the establishment of the Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB). The PAB called for the Congregation to evaluate its investments in relation to Gospel principles, and balancing Catholic social teachings with fiduciary responsibility was a challenge. While the Congregation wanted to work for justice, it also needed to finance its own future and take care of its retired Sisters. The PAB was created as a way to be financially responsible as well as remain true to its mission of social justice.
While the Adrian Dominican Sisters continue to holistically integrate their values across their portfolio, they have specifically been leaders in community driven investment. In 1978, the Congregation developed an alternative investment allocation within their portfolio. This effort was a way to directly impact people on a local level by investing in entities that are trying to improve their own communities. They decided to invest a portion of the Sisters’ portfolio in loans to community-based organizations building affordable housing or making capital available to women- owned businesses in impoverished areas as well as community development banks and credit unions. They also invested internationally, beginning with Shared Interest, an effort in line with their shareholder advocacy work against apartheid in South Africa.
In its first year, the Congregation committed $350,000 to an Alternative Investment Fund and made loans to four institutions. Over time, the Congregation included working with CDFIs, which use grassroots investing to make a direct and immediate difference. The total amount allocated by the Adrian Dominicans per year to Community Investment has risen to more than $8 million. Most of these loans would be considered risky by traditional financial institutions, and not all of the ventures have been successful, yet the Sisters’ loan-loss rate over 40 years of lending is less than 2 percent.
Corinne Florek, an Adrian Dominican Sister, has spent her career focused on using capital to empower low-income communities. One of the funds that the Adrian Dominican Sisters support is the Religious Communities Impact Fund, a collaborative fund started in 2008 and now sponsored by 32 Catholic women’s religious congregations. The Congregations pool their individual assets to support the mission of promoting economic justice through investments in low-income communities worldwide. The Fund is a portfolio of debt and equity investments in projects consistent with the Gospel mission of economic justice for all, including credit unions, community banks, and CDFIs. Part of their mission is to support intermediaries that can’t afford to borrow money at a high interest rate, as well as to directly invest in nonprofits. “We want to empower disenfranchised communities so we use a loan as a way of partnering with them. It’s a way to say we believe they have a future,” says Sister Corinne, who has served as RCIF’s Executive Director for the past thirteen years and currently administers the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ portfolio.
One such group that has benefited from the support of the Adrian Dominicans is indigenous communities. Issues around investment in these communities have long been fraught with constraint. Unfortunately, the narrative is that these communities aren’t considered good stewards of capital based on stereotypes of the primary industries they are involved in, like gaming and tobacco. Tribes also remain isolated in remote, resource-deprived areas, and by design, poverty becomes pervasive and generational. Many tribes aren’t rated well by credit and bond agencies, which makes it hard to gain the investments they need to grow their communities.
The Adrian Dominicans recognized the lack of access to capital and started working directly with Indigenous communities through CDFIs to support economic restoration. One group in particular, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (TVCDC), was introduced to both RCIF and the Adrian Dominicans when they shared their plans for building a regenerative community development within their community.
TVCDC was founded in 2007 to address the underlying economic and social issues facing the Oglala Lakota Nation, located in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Pine Ridge is home to about 40,000 residents, many of whom are unemployed and live below the federal poverty line. TVCDC seeks to create an ecosystem of opportunity and transform families and communities in a way that encompasses a future of growth, healing, and ultimately liberation for their people.
Working with its youth, elders, political leaders and parents, TVCDC created the “Regenerative Community Development” project, which includes the construction of single-family homes and multiple apartment buildings on a 34-acre tract that contains residential spaces, a grocery store, artist studios, municipal facilities, schools and public spaces. They have also created a five-year strategic plan through 2023 that includes five strategic directions (healing, wellbeing, engagement, policy and sustainability) and nine initiatives aimed to address the social determinants of health in their community. Tatewin Means, the Executive Director of TVCDC, was eager to work with RCIF to help achieve their community development goals. She says, “we align ourselves with partners and stakeholders that understand our vision and have similar views about community and transformation, and we hope to act as a catalyst in overcoming the narrative and invisibility of Indigenous communities”.
“For many of our community investments, you’ll hear them say that the Adrian Dominican Sisters were the ‘first in,’” said Sister Corinne Florek. By being some of these community- based groups’ first investors, “we provided patient and risky capital and gave them room to grow.” Though Sister Corinne is stepping back from her work with RCIF, she still works as the Portfolio Manager for the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ community investment program. The Adrian Dominicans continue to pave the way for other Catholic investors and have leveraged funding from other faith-based investors because of their long-standing reputation for innovation in community investment.
