Mutual Fund Primer for Community Investing

Mutual funds have an important opportunity to integrate community investments into their portfolios. While there are a range of compliance and risk management considerations in such untraded community investment instruments, more and more funds have found ways to increase their positive impact on underserved communities while at the same time achieving their financial goals.

The community investing options for mutual funds include, among other things, certificates of deposit as well as other direct investments that have an even greater impact. While the positive impact of these investments motivates some funds to pursue these opportunities, others do so to diversify a fund’s portfolio. Increasingly, sophisticated socially responsible investors are looking to their mutual funds to attain the direct positive social impact associated with community investment.

The Mutual Fund Primer below addresses the opportunities and challenges community investing presents mutual funds, and profiles some of the funds that have integrated community investing into their portfolio.

Mutual Fund Primer (pdf)

Mutual Funds with Community Investing Components

These socially responsible mutual funds have 1%+ of their assets in communities.

Mutual Funds with CI Components (pdf)