NEWSLETTER VOL 25 | June 2026

Where Do We Grow from Here?

This month we celebrated Humanize Wealth’s anniversary with a gathering of friends and partners who've supported our journey. We're grateful to all who are helping us achieve our mission to activate the power of wealth for social impact, environmental justice and shared prosperity. Three years in, we're proud of what we've accomplished so far. Capital is moving into places traditional finance has long overlooked. People are making their first impact investments, moving money off of Wall Street and into values-aligned opportunities, and creating charitable giving strategies from scratch.

As we celebrate how far we've come, we acknowledge we still have a long way to go in achieving our mission, especially in a world facing so many crises. The impact investing field is at an inflection point too. With a historic wave of newly created wealth arriving, we are exploring how it can be harnessed to fund the world we actually want to live in. In that spirit, we’re launching a three-part blog series that meets this moment with intention and urgency.

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WHAT WE’RE READING & LEARNING

Does Everything in the Social Sector need to Scale? Stanford Social Innovation Review

Tanya Kak’s recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article asks a key question for those working at the intersection of values and money: does everything in the social sector need to scale? Her argument is not against scale but against the tendency to apply a one-size-fits-all model for growth to social initiatives. The reality is that many of these solutions work precisely because they are rooted in a specific place, community, or set of relationships that cannot be packaged and replicated.

Kak uses a helpful metaphor: Philanthropy tends to fund the ships, the visible organizations delivering programs, while the lighthouses and bridges that help the whole fleet navigate go chronically underfunded. At a moment when the field is asking how to absorb a new wave of capital with integrity, it is a useful reminder that scale is a means, not the mission. In her words, “in a world that no longer behaves like a scalable system, success must be something other than growth”.

A Juneteenth challenge: Political freedom requires economic freedom, too

George Ashton of Candide Group uses Juneteenth as a lens to challenge the impact investing community directly and personally in a recent article. The racial wealth gap has barely moved in 160 years, with Black Americans holding roughly 1.5% of national wealth today compared to 0.5% at emancipation. His argument is not aimed at skeptics or opponents of the field but at fellow travelers who have made equity and justice central to their professional identities. Ashton offers three actionable “levers” with strong evidence behind them including homeownership access, entrepreneurship and employee ownership, and equitable education. The paths to closing the racial wealth gap are not unknown. Ashton's challenge to the field is simply to take them seriously.

RECENT GATHERINGS

Humanize Wealth Turns Three

An evening of good company, good drinks, and three years worth of gratitude. Thank you to everyone who joined us, and to those who were there in spirit. Here’s to what comes next!

Ikigai Invest Event

Jenae attended the inaugural Ikigai Invest AI-Powered Design Studio, a convening of financial professionals, philanthropic leaders, and impact solution providers exploring what it looks like to bring purpose and flourishing into the center of finance. Organized around the pillars of Purpose, Plan, and Portfolio, the gathering brought together practitioners ready to move beyond traditional frameworks for measuring value and return.

Participants co-created post-growth portfolio strategies, embraced a new definition of return on investment, and identified opportunities to unlock catalytic capital for place-based investment. For Jenae, it was a meaningful touchpoint at the intersection of impact investing and the deeper question of what finance is ultimately for.

UPCOMING EVENTS

First Mile - Primary Event on June 29th

First Mile is a donor circle working to change who can run and win in Washington state by pooling resources for progressive candidates of color in down ballot races. The premise is simple: leaders of color have long been written off as "not viable" not because of their ideas or community connections, but because of their inability to raise early money in a system stacked against them. Their Primary Slate event is happening June 29th in Seattle at the Labour Temple, bringing together partner organizations, donors, and candidates ahead of their collective giving day on July 1st.

Learn more about First Mile through this brief video and RSVP here.