Good Friday morning!

Ed note: Your Daily Phil will return on Tuesday morning.

Aspiration Partners, the financial services company co-founded by Andrei Cherney and Joe Sanberg will become a public company that aims to incorporate tzedakah into its products — such as a credit card that triggers the company to pay for the planting of a tree with every transaction, Sanberg told eJewishPhilanthropy. “We’re making it easier to have positive impacts throughout your day,” Sanberg said.

Aspiration will merge with InterPrivate III Financial Partners Inc., a special purpose acquisition company, and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in the fourth quarter of this year. The deal will provide the company with more than $400 million it will invest in marketing and product development.

Cherney will serve as the CEO, while Sanberg will serve on the board, which will enable him to pursue other projects, such as Golden State Opportunity, the nonprofit he founded that advocates for low-income Californians. Sanberg, whose pinned tweet starts with the words, “I love being Jewish,” vowed more than a year ago to tweet about his longstanding campaign to raise the minimum wage both at the federal level and in his home state of California. The minimum wage at Aspiration is $25 an hour, Sanberg said.

The refugee aid organization HIAS has deployed staff to Fort Lee in Virginia and Fort McCoy in Wisconsin to help resettle what the organization expects will be a surge of refugees from Afghanistan as American troops leave the country after 20 years, HIAS CEO Mark Hetfield told eJewishPhilanthropy.

HIAS has already been a part of the effort to resettle Afghan citizens who supported the U.S. and allied forces as interpreters and in other roles. As many as 30,000 refugees might ultimately need help resettling in the U.S. from HIAS and other national agencies. HIAS and its allies are advocating for the military to control the airports and roads to them in order to ensure their safe exit, Hetfield said.

HIAS works mainly with Jewish family services agencies, but also with other groups, to help refugees create new homes in the U.S. In June, the organization received a major gift from MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett, and plans to use some of that funding to expand its capacity to respond nimbly to situations like this one. “If there ever was an emergency, this is an emergency,” Hetfield said.

FIRST MOVER

The Leichtag Foundation aims to make 100% of its portfolio ‘mission-aligned’

eJP Archives

The Leichtag Foundation aims to have its entire portfolio in investments that support its mission by 2025, Charlene Seidle, executive vice president of the foundation, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Helen Chernikoff. “It’s a culture shift and it’s a constant educational process,” Seidle said. “But there’s more awareness now that you can do well and do good.”

More measures: Based in both Encinitas, Calif., near San Diego, and Jerusalem, the foundation, which has $105 million in assets, has adopted a “broad” definition of mission alignment that includes programs and projects compatible with or directly supportive of the foundation’s work in those locations, or that combat climate change, Seidle said. Financial return is still a goal, but it’s considered along with other measures, such as “social good,” when deciding whether to invest, and how to gauge the success of an investment. “Leichtag is the first Jewish organization to go all-in on impact investing,” said Julie Hammerman, the founder and CEO of JLens, which maintains an index of about 300 public companies screened for compatibility with a set of six Jewish values. “They’re setting a terrific example of a partnership between the mission side and the investment side.”

Careful exploration: The structure of Leichtag’s investments runs a wide range; they invest in real assets, like housing, and in the equities screened by JLens. One example: Leichtag Commons, a 68-acre campus in Encinitas that hosts a farm, educational programs and arts and culture events. The foundation is also considering investments in affordable housing. Leichtag’s announcement reflects a much broader investment trend, said Hammerman, citing a Bloomberg article that estimates that more than a third of assets globally, or $53 trillion, will be in investments that have met “ESG” criteria — environmental, social and corporate governance — by 2025. The Jewish world is proceeding relatively slowly, said Michael Lustig, an investor and philanthropist who wrote the Jewish Funders Network’s guide to impact investing.

DAF market: Assets under management at JLens have increased from $120 million to more than $130 million since June, and 11 Jewish community funds or federations that administer donor-advised funds (DAF), including the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, are offering JLens as an investment option, Hammerman said. Community foundations “have to be creative and innovative, and impact investing appeals to younger donors,” she added. Federations, by contrast, tend to have long-established processes of managing their endowments with the support of investment committees and professional advisors.

Read the full article here.

MOVING FORWARD

Lessons from camps

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“As the summer winds to a close, there are important lessons for us to take from summer camps,” writes HUC-JIR faculty member Dr. Betsy Stone in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Uncharted waters: “Our camp staff have worked so hard and they are spent. They have planned for summer 2021 for 20 months, wisely anticipating that campers and staff would be more tired, more needy, and more regressed… They provided moments for quiet, for spiritual questioning, for connection. They have held kids and each other. They have navigated uncharted waters. They, like teachers over the past 18 months, have given of themselves to the point of exhaustion. And the summer has been hard.”

Middle schoolers: “We might have expected that high schoolers would be having a rough time, but it seems that younger kids are truly suffering. Why is this happening? It seems at least likely that the ability to self-regulate, both behaviorally and emotionally, is developing in middle school. Younger children are externally regulated, by parents and teachers. Older kids have some skills at self-regulation, and turn to friend groups (who they may have seen in person, given their extra freedoms) for identity and behavioral input.”

Many are thriving: “[M]any of our kids are actually thriving. Without the pressures of school, appearance, after-school activities, and social expectations, they are calmer. Without the absurd wake-up times we impose on teens, they are less sleep-deprived. With greater family time, they are more grounded. Not all teens, but some. They have supported each other, gotten closer to family, deepened their self-knowledge and their values. How do we build on these nascent strengths?”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Call And Response: Tencent, the Chinese gaming and social media company, pledged both to give more back to society and to comply fully with the government as it tightens and expands industry regulations, reports Yue Wang in Forbes. The company said it would set aside $7.7 billion for a “common prosperity program” that includes medical infrastructure and assistance to low-income communities. “This new strategy of Tencent’s is a proactive answer to our nation’s strategy,” the company wrote, referring to a recent speech by President Xi Jinping that called for “common prosperity,” by “eradicating illegal income” and “reasonably adjusting excessive income.” [Forbes]

Reversal Of Fortune: The pandemic erased global progress on ending extreme inequality, as both billionaires and traditional philanthropic endowments saw their wealth increase, writes Michael Sheldrick in an opinion piece on PhilanTopic. In 2020, $140 billion was held in donor-advised funds (DAF), despite a need for $6 billion in international famine relief efforts, he notes. “Leaders in philanthropy should respond to the urgency of this moment by paying out more to fuel an equitable global recovery,” Sheldrick concludes. [PhilanTopic]

Helper’s High: In Big Think, Stephen Johnson documents the many ways in which giving to others produces physiological and psychological benefits, although the exact neural mechanisms involved remain unclear. Giving time or money produces a “warm glow” — a pleasurable rise in temperature related to the release of oxytocin and endorphins  — and might also alleviate depression by shifting the sufferer’s focus away from him or herself. “If you can’t give time, the idea is that at least you can give money so that you’re being generous with at least one of your resources,” said Michael Norton, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. [BigThink]

Pic of the Day

Steve Goode/MAZON

Chicago motorcyclist Steve Goode is visiting Jewish-style delis in 42 states as part of the “Great American Deli Schlep” to raise awareness of hunger in the United States on behalf of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. The journey, which raised $16,000 for MAZON, drew to a close last week.