Sourced From: http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/
The Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) has received $200,000 grant from Rockefeller Foundation for development of a groundbreaking sustainable banking fund. The fund will be used to calculate sustainable banking’s impact in more meaningful ways. It will enable fund investors to have a clear view of the social and environmental results of their investments, as well as their financial results.
The GABV will communicate the results of its research to support wider efforts to expand the impact of sustainable banking. The project has additional international funding from BRAC and Brac Bank in Bangladesh, Vancity in Canada, and the Triodos Foundation in the Netherlands.
“This approach could potentially reinvigorate responsible, community-based banking models for future generations,” said Antony Bugg-Levine, Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation. “By funding research to support the development of a new sustainable banking fund, the Rockefeller Foundation aims to grow a more sustainable financial industry; one that is capable of changing the lives of millions of people and safeguarding the environment they depend on.”
“Sustainable or values-based banking — which focuses on benefits for people and the environment and finds a financial means to deliver them — has shown that a different approach to finance is possible. This funding is designed to support market research to help significantly increase its impact by growing this progressive approach to finance and improving its ability to provide needed financial services to poor and vulnerable populations in an environmentally sustainable manner.”
The GABV, founded in 2009 and now comprising 13 of the world’s most innovative mission-driven financial institutions, has ambitions to touch the lives of a billion people with its increasingly popular brand of banking by 2020. The GABV, which uses finance to deliver sustainable development for unserved people, communities and the environment, now represents over 7 million customers in 24 countries, with a combined asset base of over $26 billion. Its members are conspicuous in the banking industry for using their profits to deliver financial, community and environmental benefits.
