About Natural Investments

You may be wondering how Natural Investments is unique. As a pioneering firm in the socially responsible investing field for over 35 years, our thought leadership and expertise as innovators makes us unlike any other investment advisor in the U.S. because we have been socially responsible investors ourselves for decades. Our nationwide advisors have been active in the environmental, local economy, and social and racial justice movements for well over an entire generation, and we have helped to shape the purpose and standards of the socially responsible investment industry.

Our team was founded by people who in the ‘80s started local revolving loan funds and who fought for divestment from corporations operating in the apartheid regime of South Africa. Our founding partners were environmental and permaculture educators who taught the principles and practices of sustainable living before focusing on finance as a way to use capital to bring about the evolutionary change we wish to see in the world. Educators at heart, we are the only advisory firm to have written three books on socially responsible investing, and we even coined the term “regenerative investing” in 2008 in the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World.

As activists and advocates, we are deeply committed to profound, systemic social change, gender and racial equity and justice, and ecosystem regeneration. We endeavor to model as a business the values and practices of our investments. In 2007, we became one of the first Certified B Corps in the world.  In 2023, we became a Public Benefit LLC and the first financial services company in the country to be owned by a perpetual purpose trust. After being owned by our mostly white male advisors since our founding in 1985, we are now owned by the Natural Investments Purpose Trust we created, with members of our team serving terms as elected Trust Stewards who oversee the firm. This enables our team – which features 60% women and 33% people of color – to share power and profit equally and for our firm to remain independent in perpetuity. Let’s make it happen.

Gender Equity

Empowerment of female & non-binary

Solidarity Economy

Racial equity, asset ownership, and reparations

High Social Impact Technology & Services

Decentralized power and democratized access to capital, goods, and services

Local Economies

Non-corporate control of business and community assets

Green Products & Services

Focus on eliminating carbon and toxicity

Good Governance

Supporting each other to be the best possible

If you’re wondering how else we’re different, here are some of the ways

We Walk Our Talk

as a responsible enterprise (a Founding Certified B Corp) and live our progressive passions in our professional and personal lives.

We Have Been Rating

socially responsible mutual funds for 30 years via our proprietary and rigorous Heart Rating.

We Speak Truth To Power,

seek to shift the priorities of the economic and political system, and are fully committed to addressing racial and gender justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion through our investments and our actions.

We Volunteer In Our Communities

to foster healthy lifestyles, racial justice, organic food, renewable energy, and local economic development.

We Donate

a significant portion of our gross revenue to meaningful charitable organizations.

We Are Authors

thought leaders and vocal leaders within our industry, serving on national boards and committees, publishing white papers and articles, and speaking around the world and with policymakers to push for deeper responsibility and impact standards and effective governance and regulatory policies, laws, and practices in the financial services landscape.

We surely balance the social change agenda with caring for your assets because we take our fiduciary responsibility seriously. We also value quality relationships so are highly responsive to you. As a small, independent investment adviser registered with the SEC, we work on a fee-only basis, paid only by you. With no commissions or allegiances to large financial services companies, our sole interest is in giving you the best possible advice for your situation while making a difference in the world.
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