Our Impact
Since our founding, we have focused on how our advice and investments impact the community at large.
“Doing well and doing good isn’t a cliché - it’s extremely doable.”
– Brent Kessel, CFP®, Abacus Co-Founder
Abacus Is a Founding B Corp
As a founding B Corp, we use business as a force for good. Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
It’s a certification that looks at our entire company and the impact we have on our workforce, suppliers, community and the environment. You can check out our B Corp Impact Report here.
Sustainability
Sustainable investing is not a sideshow for us—it is central to how we manage portfolios for the majority of our clients.
In February 2008, our clients provided seed funding for the first environmentally screened, industry neutral, and globally diversified passive (index) equity funds in the marketplace. To date, these funds have fulfilled their objective of shifting capital toward the most environmentally responsible corporations while closely tracking market benchmarks.
We actively seek to expand the positive good we bring into the world through the allocation of clients’ funds. We believe this reduces legal and regulatory risk, expresses our values, and enhances the potential for long-term, sustainable social structures and investment returns.
Our Corporate Footprint
Beyond investing, Abacus has taken a number of steps to reduce our environmental footprint:
- Encourage telecommuting for many employees
- Reduce commercial air and car travel by using video-conferencing for both internal and client meetings
- Strive for a paperless work environment and when necessary, use 90% post-consumer recycled paper for all printing and copying
- Ask that employees rideshare to company or industry events to reduce emissions
- Keep compost bins in our office kitchens for employees to utilize
- Our Sebastopol location receives all of its power from a local renewable energy source
- Improve our offices with environmentally responsible building materials and furnishings
Social Private Equity & Debt
For more than a decade, Abacus has been a leading investor in private companies focused on financial and social results. We were one of the first SEC Registered Investment Advisors to make equity investments in microfinance institutions that make very small loans to impoverished but ambitious micro-entrepreneurs. Combined with others, our clients’ funds have helped millions of people fund businesses to help alleviate the poverty they and their families have lived in for generations.
Charitable Grant
We believe philanthropy, self-sufficiency, and generosity are the cornerstones of a healthy and fulfilling relationship with money. That’s why every year we donate 1% of the firm’s revenues to charity.
Part of this money goes towards the annual Abacus Charitable Grant. Our charitable giving honors:
- Human rights: Creating safety and opportunity for all to forge healthy and successful lives.
- The Earth: Confronting the climate crisis to create a healthier planet.
- Education: Empowering the disenfranchised to build lives through financial literacy.
