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Investing with Impact
How do we use the other 95% of our endowment for good?
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Investing our endowment in alignment with our mission and values enables us to drive positive impact with the vast majority of our foundation’s assets, alongside our grant making.
By aligning our endowment with our mission and values, we:
Minimize investments that counter our values.
Intentionally drive positive impact, generating both social and financial returns.
Use our endowment to enhance our programmatic objectives.
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Our Goal
Working in partnership with our advisors, we look to identify values-aligned investment managers who can achieve market-rate financial returns, as well as tangible social and environmental impacts. These investments are broadly aligned with our mission to support Denver’s cultural community.
Portfolio Activation
We focus on socially responsible, thematic, and diversely-owned funds to activate impact themes throughout our portfolio.
Select Approaches and Sample Investments
Program Related Investments (PRIs)
Program Related Investments are impact-first investments directly in support of our programmatic and place-based mission. These investments are typically structured to have a below market rate of return. Examples include: a loan to support a real estate project that includes creative spaces for a culturally under-resourced part of our community, affordable housing for the creative workforce, or access to capital for entrepreneurs in the creative economy. The Foundation treats PRIs as an addition to our annual grants budget, above and beyond our required 5% annual payout.
Mission-Related Investments (MRIs)
Mission Related Investments are impact-first investments with a broader lens than a PRI, with the expectation of a market rate of return. For example, while we might not invest in a manager focused on a single industry sector in our Core Endowment portfolio, we may consider an MRI in an equity fund focused on investments in creative economy businesses, or a fund investing in emerging diverse entrepreneurs.
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Inline with our commitment to equity, we proactively source diversely owned investment funds. A 2021 study by the Knight Foundation revealed that women and BIPOC owned funds manage only 1.4% of assets in the asset management industry. While at the same time, research by McKinsey shows investing in diversely led teams can lead to materially positive financial outcomes.
BSF partners with As You Sow, a leader in using shareholder resolutions to bring about positive corporate change in areas such as gender inequalities, workplace equity, environmental health and more.
79% of Bonfils-Stanton's portfolio is now invested with a lens toward the Foundation’s values (as of March 2026).
Quantitative Approaches
Qualitative Approaches
In Percentages
79% of the Foundation’s portfolio is aligned with values inherent to Bonfils-Stanton Foundation’s mission.
69% of Private commitments are aligned with values inherent to the Foundation’s work
39% of the Foundation’s portfolio is focused on DEI – either the strategy is diversely owned and/or is intentionally investing to address diversity, equity, and inclusion.
3.5% of the overall portfolio consists of eight mission-aligned investments emphasizing the foundation's values.
How to Engage
If you have a project or investment that you think aligns with our mission and our description of one of the Mission Aligned Investment categories and/or just want to know more, please contact our CFO, Ann Hovland at ann@bonfils-stanton.org or 303.825.3774.
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