The last two months of protests and political action as a result of George Floyd’s murder are a referendum on the criminal (in)justice system that punitively impacts Black Americans.

You might be thinking, “OK, but what does race have to do with financial services?”

Well, everything.

Last year, I wore a Black Lives Matter shirt on stage at a financial services conference. Among the audience feedback about my presentation were comments that my shirt made people uncomfortable. A shirt - one that asserts the basic humanity of Black folks- made people uncomfortable.

Financial services has a racism problem.

One of the most common pieces of feedback I hear about my newsletter and social media presence is, “you have such an authentic voice.” The reason it is authentic is that it’s just me. I don’t have a ghost writer or copywriter, and I no longer have corporate communications standards to which I have to conform. Financial services marketing can feel like a sea of look-alike and sound-alike messaging; embracing my personal communication style made my messages stand out from that crowd.

I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of people say this before, or read statistics about the effectiveness of newsletter marketing; I’m here today to add my voice to that chorus, and to give you some practical tips.

So you’ve seen study after study showing that investors are overwhelmingly interested in sustainable, ESG, and impact investing, but you think it might just be hype because your own clients aren’t asking about it. Right?

Values-aligned investing is called by many different names, which are commonly misused or misunderstood by investors.

Let me decode the lingo, because a shared understanding of the terminology makes this type of investing more accessible to advisors and investors alike.

Sonya explains ESG, SRI, and Impact Investing- each in under a minute, on captioned video.

The three themes I predict we'll see in the impact investing world in 2019. I'd love to hear what your predictions are too.

1. How do we effectively measure impact?

Although this theme is one I've seen before, the discussion feels more mature now. There is less talk about whether to measure impact and more talk about how to do it effectively. The “how” continues to be challenging, both in public and private investments. Best practices are focusing on materiality, and looking at impact holistically to consider the various communities each investment affects and what positive impact looks like to those communities.

Last month I wrote about the important distinction between SRI and ESG. Today I'm continuing on that theme and answering one of the questions I get about terminology: what is impact investing and why do you use that term?

Almost every conference or panel discussion about impact or sustainable investing starts with a discussion of terminology. While it's annoying that we have to start all of our conversations with a discussion about semantics, that discussion is incredibly important.

If the work you are doing is even tangentially related to impact investing, you’ve likely heard chatter about the SDGs, which is short for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. I mentioned them as one of the top themes I saw in 2017, and they continue to come up at every impact focused event I attend. So let’s do a quick catch up. What are the SDGs, why are impact investing professionals talking about them, and what’s next?