Information on Terry Mollner, Ed.D.
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In the 1970s, he was one of the earliest pioneers of socially responsible investing, what is today referred to as ESG investing (environment, social, and governance), responsible investing, and impact investing. With his friend Robert Swann, they created the Institute for Community Economics (ICE). Once a month during the late 1970s, and over more than a year of meetings, Dr. Mollner guided fifteen social activist leaders from around the country in the writing of one of the first set of social screens for investing. With Wayne Silby, one of those leaders, those screens were used to establish the Calvert Family of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds, now known as the Calvert Funds (www.calvert.com ), the first family of socially responsible mutual funds. Today it is one of the largest with over $37 billion under management.
The team at ICE also created one of the first “community development financial institutions (CDFIs).” There are now over 1100 CDFIs in communities throughout the USA and are now also supported with annual grants and loans from the US Treasury Department. Today CDFIs make loans to low-income housing projects, social and cooperative enterprises in low-income communities, and microloan programs (small uncollateralized business loans).
In the early 1990s, this had Dr. Mollner take the lead to create the Calvert foundation, now known as Calvert Impact Capital (www.calvertimpactcapital.org). It raised low interest and uncollateralized capital from investors to fund this industry and to make loans to reduce poverty around the world. It has raised and loaned over $3 billion and is one of the largest contributors of private capital to the growth to this movement.
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In 2000, he stepped up to assist Ben & Jerry’s (www.benjerry.com) in its need to be bought by a multinational to deal with its distribution requirements as it was becoming a global brand. As part of its purchase by Unilever, he and the board arranged for a contract that allowed Ben & Jerry’s to both continue to operate as an independent company and have a legal contract that obligated Unilever to allow it to continue forever to spend the same percentage of its annual budget on social activism as of the year it was bought. It also allowed it to take any position on social issues without the need of approval by Unilever. Ben & Jerry’s is the only socially responsible company bought by a multinational to sign such a legal contract. Terry has recently resigned from the boards of the Calvert Funds, Calvert Impact Capital, and Ben & Jerry’s to focus on building the Maturation Movement, Sensation of Oneness Nation, and Trust Funds for All Children, Inc.
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Dr. Mollner is also a founder and chair of Stakeholders Capital (www.stakeholderscapital.com), a socially responsible asset management firm with offices in Massachusetts and California. Since 1973, he has been the founder and executive director of Trusteeship Institute, recently renamed Trusts Funds for All Children (www.trustsforallchildren.org). In the 1980s, it was best known for introducing the Mondragon Cooperatives to Americans. Dr. Mollner described them at conferences around the United States and, at the invitation of the Reagan White House, to members of his administration and Congress. During the 1980s, the stimulus of that meeting played a significant role in Congress launching the Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) that has assisted millions of Americans to have ownership of stock in the companies within which they work. He is a co-founder of three communities of friends, all of which to different degrees still exist after nearly forty years, and the author of several books including Common Good Nation, Common Good Capitalism Is Inevitable, Our Mutual Blind Spot, Sensation of Oneness, and soon Mature Free Choice.