Common Future launched the Action Lab: Participatory Investing in 2022 to support philanthropic leaders move investment capital in more participatory ways. Shift was invited to advise this work, supporting the cohort of funders consider the ways to center community voices and participatory processes in investments. The funders pooled $175K to test participatory investing through this Action Lab. Shift helped source investments and brought additional advisors from our network into the project. Ultimately, the Fund invested in the Cihuapactli Collective based in Phoenix, AZ to expand a successful sacred birthworker training program and to expand the Blue Note Junction, an artist and entrepreneur space based in a historically Black neighborhood in Asheville, NC. Shift is now pursuing opportunities to deepen our efforts in participatory investing through supporting healthcare institutions test similar practices within their institutions as a means of continuing to deepen commitments to equitable, community-led power sharing.
