Join Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania and Social Venture Partners Pittsburgh for a live viewing of the National Center for Family Philanthropy's webinar: Mission Investing: Overcoming Resistance and Getting Started. We will gather at 11:30 a.m. for brief introductions and the webinar will begin promptly at noon. Following the webinar, we will engage in a roundtable discussion about mission investing.
This will be a brownbag lunch; drinks and desserts will be provided.
About Mission Investing
Webinar Description:
Family foundations and family offices are increasingly turning to mission (more broadly known as impact) investing strategies as a key tool for aligning investments and operations with their mission and objectives. How can you engage your board in a thoughtful conversation about the options and added benefits of the mission investing approach? What are some of the best ways to get started with mission investing, and how do family foundations, especially those with limited staff capacity, manage these new strategies to better leverage their philanthropic assets and mission? Join us for a discussion with a leader from Mission Investor Exchange and family foundations who have become active impact investors.
Featured Speakers
As Deputy Director of Mission Investors Exchange, Melanie Audette assists in leading a national association of over 250 foundations who are contemplating or are already engaged in mission investing. The organization provides opportunities for peer-to-peer learning and networking, practical tools and templates, and leadership in driving greater amounts of capital assets toward positive social and environmental change. Melanie began her career as a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, with postings in the State Department and in U.S. embassies in London and Quito. Upon her return to the United States,
Melanie managed the family offices and foundation for the Behnke family of Seattle. She also has been vice president of Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, where she was a co-founder of the Youth Philanthropy Initiative of Indiana. Melanie has a degree in communication studies from Indiana University and focused her consultancy, Audette Communications LLC, on communication services to philanthropy organizations.
Tomer Inbar is a partner with Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP where he represents U.S. and international tax-exempt organizations in a broad range of structural and operating matters, including tax and corporate issues, regulatory compliance, governance, operational policies and procedures, audits, unrelated business income tax issues, and executive compensation matters. He regularly advises on an array of corporate transactions, such as joint ventures and the establishment of for-profit subsidiaries, corporate restructuring, private equity fund formation, and licensing and service arrangements.
Among Mr. Inbar’s clients are public charities, private foundations, colleges and universities, economic development corporations and museums and cultural institutions, many of which are active worldwide.
Mr. Inbar is a regular speaker at programs for tax-exempt organizations. Recent topics have included corporate governance, charitable investment funds, lobbying by charitable organizations, legal aspects of program-related investments, and board governance considerations and liability concerns.
John Hawkins lives in Strafford, Vermont, and has been a teacher, a cabinetmaker, a wooden toy designer and manufacturer, a software engineer and a college administrator. He also spent several years as a local elected official serving as a Selectman and the Town Moderator. John, who has served on the Surdna Foundation Board of Trustees since 1999, is a great-grandson of John E. Andrus, who founded Surdna in 1917.
As a college administrator, John spent 17 years at Dartmouth College where he served as Associate Director of Consulting, Associate Director of Curricular Computing, Director of Distance Education and Director of Strategic Projects for Computing Services. He is also a graduate of Dartmouth College (BA 1969, MA 1995) and wrote his Master's Thesis on "The Design of Computer Interfaces and the History of Cartography."
John consults to foundations to help them utilize data visualization and mapping tools to evaluate grant-making and share information.