Faith-Based Investors Deploy $287M in Impact Strategies Through Common Good Fund

A group of Catholic nuns walked into their asset manager's office more than a decade ago with a simple but radical question: could their money do more than avoid harm? They didn't just want Ascension Investment Management to screen out "sin stocks"—weapons makers, tobacco companies, the usual suspects. They wanted their capital actively deployed to help the vulnerable and protect the environment. That conversation, born from a religious order that ranks among AIM's largest clients, set off a chain of events that has reshaped how faith-based institutions think about their portfolios.

Ascension Investment Management, a unit of Ascension Health, one of the largest nonprofit Catholic hospital networks in the country, took the question seriously. The team began sifting through its existing private equity and real assets portfolios, looking for funds that were already doing the work the sisters described. In 2014, six Catholic institutions pooled $50 million into AIM's first impact investments. The asset manager had found a way to deliver competitive financial returns while pointing to actual companies and stories within those funds that aligned with the sisters' mission. "We started pinpointing some of those funds that were in our traditional portfolios," says Jessica Cook, a managing director at AIM. "They could deliver competitive returns and also point to stories and companies within those funds that were delivering on the idea and mission behind what the sisters were talking about."

That initial $50 million has grown into something far larger. Today, 21 Catholic faith-based investors have committed a combined $287 million across four of AIM's impact strategies. AIM itself, which began managing capital for outside investors in 2012, now oversees more than $42 billion in total. The momentum has attracted new institutional partners. Ascension Investment Management has now joined with Anthos Fund & Asset Management, the investment arm of the Brenninkmeijers—the Catholic family behind the European clothing retailer C&A—to launch the Common Good Fund, a private market fund-of-funds grounded explicitly in Catholic social teaching and guided by Mensuram Bonam, a 2022 Vatican document that provides ethical guidelines for Catholic institutional investing.

The Common Good Fund, based in Luxembourg with AIM serving as its U.S. partner through a subsidiary, has raised $90 million toward a $250 million target, with a second close expected at month's end. The fund operates on three core principles: a Call to Exclude, screening out investments misaligned with Catholic values; a Call to Engage, meaning active collaboration with fund managers to improve social and environmental outcomes; and a Call to Enhance, by directing capital toward solutions that generate measurable positive impact. An in-house ethics team works alongside the investment team to ensure that financial screening and faith-based considerations move in tandem. As Tyler Blickhan, an AIM investor, notes, the work requires vigilance—venture capital can quickly become defense contracting, energy investments can become weapons programs. "We rely really heavily on internal guidance," he says.

The portfolio itself splits roughly evenly between social and environmental investments. On the social side, AIM backs funds focused on financial inclusion, housing, food, healthcare and education access. Environmental investments span renewable energy and conservation. The fund has invested in Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, a private credit firm financing employee-led buyouts; Blackstar Stability, which converts predatory contract-for-deed loans into conventional mortgages, reducing borrowers' monthly payments by roughly 40 percent, or $200 to $400 a month; and Creation Investments Management, which provides capital to microfinance and affordable-housing-finance companies in emerging markets. AIM has also backed Jonathan Rose Companies in acquiring and preserving affordable housing in cities like New York and Boston, where renters face mounting housing costs.

The scale of this movement extends far beyond Ascension and Anthos. Religious congregations and their governing bodies collectively oversee $12 trillion in assets globally. The Franciscan Sisters of Mary, the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, the Daughters of Charity, and the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus were among the first to sign the Catholic Impact Investing Collaborative's impact investing pledge. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, based in La Crosse, Wisconsin, screen investments against Catholic social teaching and source opportunities through the Collaborative and Charism Capital, a global fund launched last year with a restorative investing lens that secured a $24.3 million first close in July. Mercy Investment Services, the investment arm of the Sisters of Mercy, operates the Mercy Partnership Fund from St. Louis, supporting initiatives like Vita Green Impact Fund's work on sustainable energy, water, and forestry solutions—including clean cookstoves in Ethiopia and Eritrea that reduce deforestation, improve water access, and enhance health outcomes for women and girls.

What distinguishes this wave of faith-based investing from earlier generations is its ambition. Catholic institutions have long practiced negative screening, excluding companies whose products or practices conflict with their values. But increasingly, dioceses, religious orders, and Catholic health systems want their money to affirmatively build something. Sister Sue Ernster of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, speaking on ImpactAlpha's Agents of Impact Call in July, described the shift: "While we have been doing the excluding and the shareholder advocacy in the public arena in line with Mensuram Bonam, we also had the opportunity to enter into private markets which allows us to enhance our portfolio." When the sisters invest in private companies, they look for evidence of human dignity—how workers are treated, how products serve end users. Ernster, invoking Pope Francis's book "Let Us Dream," invited faith-based investors across traditions to pool their capital into investments that serve the planet and human flourishing. "The financial markets really show what's important," she said. "The world is really looking to us to see where we are witnesses, where our values are."

The Common Good Fund represents the institutional maturation of that vision. It offers professional investors—foundations, endowments, religious institutions, family offices—a structured vehicle for aligning financial objectives with mission-driven values, backed by expertise in both faith-based investing and private markets, and supported by rigorous impact measurement. The fund's second close is imminent, and the appetite appears genuine. As Marjolein van Dongen of Anthos observed, "We see increasing interest in practical ways to align their portfolios with their values while maintaining institutional investment standards." What began as a conversation between nuns and their asset manager has become a template for how institutions with values can deploy capital at scale.