How faith-based investing could and should become more impactful': Impact Alpha article

We are delighted to share an article on faith-based investing and the Faith in the Common Good forum in Impact Alpha, the leading digital media platform covering impact investing and sustainable finance

Written by two of our Faith in the Common Good delegates, Jim Sorensen and Terrence Keeley, the article begins with a question: 'Can faith-aligned investors become known what they are for, in addition to what they are against?'

That is the challenge posed by FaithInvest founding president Martin Palmer, and it lay at the heart of our Faith in the Common Good forum which took place at the College des Bernardins in Paris last month.

As Jim Sorensen and Terrence Keeley say in their Impact Alpha article: 'For faith-inspired investors, few questions are more important.'

While faiths manage trillions of dollars in investments globally, only a small portion of this is invested intentionally to promote positive impact – despite the fact that participants in our Faith in the Common Good forum overwhelmingly told us this was precisely what they wanted to achieve with their investments.

As our just released Good Intentions 2026 study – the biggest and most comprehensive assessment of real faith-based investment policies to date – outlines, it is easier for faiths to identify what they don't want to invest in than to proactively direct capital toward positive, faith-aligned outcomes.

Doing more good in the world

In their Impact Alpha article, Jim Sorensen, the founder and Chairman of the Sorenson Impact Group, and Terrence Keeley, Chairman and CEO of 1PointSix LLC and the Impact Evaluation Lab, discuss how their separate faith traditions – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Roman Catholicism – have always guided their personal and professional lives.

'At the Faith in Common Good conference, we were in the cordial company of dozens of other men and women of deep religious convictions, including Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans and other denominations. We all placed our religious convictions front and centre to explore how faith-consistent investing could do more good in the world,' they write.

Images from the Faith in the Common Good forum. From left to right: Terrence Keeley and Jim Sorensen; Jean-Baptiste de Franssu and Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg; and delegates chatting during a coffee break.

Momentum and hope

Faith in the Common Good concluded with momentum and hope, they say: 'In closing surveys, 90% of the attendees observed faith-based investors have something of unique value to contribute to global capital markets; 75% strongly claimed they saw specific opportunities for deeper co-ordination.'

The conference ended by mandating conference organiser and Vatican Bank Board President Jean Baptiste de Franssu to draft a statement of intent from global religious leaders across multiple faiths; and tasking FaithInvest with becoming a centre of religious investment excellence, promoting best practice and highlighting important case studies of relevance to the entire community.

They add: 'And we have volunteered to work with other attendees to help promote practical ideas – including better analytics and transactional opportunities – so those who want their investment capital and religious convictions to remain fully complimentary have professional, vetted tools to do so.' 

Like so many delegates at the Faith in the Common Good forum, Jim Sorensen and Terrence Keeley see 'multiple opportunities to put capital to work that would verifiably promote human flourishing, amplify human dignity, protect our earth, land and waters and generate a range of acceptable financial returns'.

They say: 'We imagine a day not far from now when all investors, perhaps led by the faith-based community, say not only how much their investments have made, but also how much good they have done.'

Read the full article on Impact Alpha. 

• Since the Faith in the Common Good forum was held, Jean-Baptiste de Franssu has stepped down after 12 years as President of IOR (Vatican Bank). He has been succeeded by Luxembourg banker Francois Pauly.

• Jim Sorensen and Terrence Keeley also wrote a briefing paper for delegates to Faith in the Common Good, entitled A World Made New: How Faith-Based Investing Could and Should Become More Impactful.