NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER | On Gratitude & Generosity
Hi friends,
The year's end is upon us, a time for gathering, reflection, and giving.
We’re sharing thoughts on developing habits of generosity, reparations for land theft, and resources to help our clients guide their year-end giving.
For Modernist's year-end, we're wrapping up year-end tax planning and making our final gifts to meet our 3% of revenue goal, especially fun given our 2021 growth!
With joy in generosity,
Georgia + Team Modernist
investment insights
With the holidays, we're gathering together more often, while (unconsciously) sharing our money stories. Next time you hear a worn-out theme implying that successful investors can be identified by gender, please amplify the data...Women get higher returns! Learn more from the NYT's Ron Lieber in “Women May Be Better Investors Than Men. Let Me Mansplain Why.”
Meanwhile, click the video above or read our blog post for a look back at Q3 numbers, including a slight retraction of global markets. Reminder: markets fluctuate; which is why we encourage sticking to your plan.
Structure Your Wealth Around Your Values: History + Giving
We’ve been thinking a lot about land theft and how it impacts racial wealth inequality
Want to learn more? Watch Root Shocked, a short film about generational loss due to racial disparity, and how a family is working to force Portland to reckon with its history—as all American cities should.
Called to action? Follow and support the work of the Albina Vision Trust, a nonprofit that’s reclaiming and transforming one of Portland’s historically Black neighborhoods, NE Albina, an academically-cited example of land theft.
modernist takes it outside
We’re thrilled to be included in this article about B Corps in the finance industry who are working to address racial wealth inequality. Georgia talks about how we're learning to do this work: by starting conversations about reparations with clients, living into our own Philanthropy Plan, and our commitment to making financial tools more accessible.
Thanks to B Lab for highlighting us and like-minded folks in the industry. Onward!
Our friend, Farnoosh Torabi, included Georgia’s insights in a recent CNET article on financial predictions in a climate-changing world.
Spoiler: the "values-based" investment industry needs more accountability as to what ESG actually measures (something more like B Corp for businesses or LEED for the built environment).
🏆 Award Alert 🏅 PBJ named Modernist 17th in Corporate Philanthropy for small companies! (Right beside us is fellow B Corp Nossa Familia Coffee! 🎉)
We’re proud of our ongoing commitment to generosity and are grateful to fund the heroes working for our community’s benefit.
FUND YOUR HEROES
Looking to make an impact with your end-of-year giving?
For clients and ourselves, Modernist is leaning hard into the list of 2021 Seeding Justice grantees, chosen by their community Grantmakers.
Their structures for giving are focused around a core understanding: “those most impacted by injustice—those closest to the pain of oppression—are the best equipped to come up with solutions to the problems that affect them.”
Check out these stats and let's get to funding!
ART BREAK: blessings for sound & light
David Whyte in collaboration with filmmaker Andrew Hinton and composer Owen Ó Súilleabháin
Curator extraordinaire Maria Popova provides a beautiful meditation on the collaboration (video above) on Whyte's Blessing poems, from his collection The Bell and the Blackbird. The poems act as a reminder to cultivate gratitude in our surroundings, specifically sound and light.
As we close a challenging year and summon our hopes for the next, Georgia sees these poems as a reminder to treat the world around us (including each other) with kindness and compassion.
A Song That is REALLY About tuning out the financial noise
Devo’s version of “[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction”
IWhen Georgia’s working on financial plans, you’ll often hear early punk blasting on the turntable. She thinks Devo says it best when it comes to why we regularly talk to clients about tuning out the financial noise in the media.
When I'm riding in my car / And a man comes on the radio / He's tellin' me more and more / About some useless information / Supposed to fire my imagination / I can't get no / No, no, no / Hey, hey, hey / That's what I say / I can't get no satisfaction