Bringing socially responsible investing to all

Calvert Foundation offers an investment that supports nonprofits, microfinance institutions, and social enterprises around the world. When they made a strategic marketing shift to focus on smaller investors, they knew they needed a website that would offer an engaging and mobile friendly experience.

“Over the past few years we’d invested a lot in Salesforce and wanted to be able to use it to push and pull data from our website, and really make our lead generation more efficient.” said Andrew Parrucci, Marketing Officer for Calvert Foundation.

Since 1995, the Calvert Foundation has invested roughly $800 million into its portfolio of nonprofits, microfinance institutions, and social enterprises. Those organizations use the funds to develop affordable housing, promote education, empower women, make small business loans, and much more..

“What’s unique about Calvert Foundation is how we raise the capital to lend to our portfolio partners. Individual and institutional investors invest with us through the Community Investment Note — even as little as $20 — and then we lend that money to high ­impact projects and organizations. Investors receive interest on their investment and generate positive social impact.”

This democratizing of sustainable investing has led to more than 13,500 people and organizations investing through Calvert Foundation. Traditionally, its model focused on business-to-business relationships, working primarily with financial advisors who would offer their Community Investment Note to individuals. For their website redesign, they wanted to continue offering excellent customer service to their community of financial advisors, while also reaching a more retail audience.

Small organization underscores need for efficiency, Soapbox Engage delivers

As a small organization, Calvert Foundation needed a website solution that could service the needs of other staff members, even beyond the marketing group. In Soapbox Engage, they have a tool to do that.

Through its suite of online engagement tools, Soapbox Engage transformed the website from a tool only the marketing department used to an integral part of the business processes of departments throughout the organization.

“The lending team would spend a lot of time on the phone with prospective borrowers, explaining lending criteria over lengthy conversations,” said Parrucci. “With Soapbox Engage, we created a vetting form that prequalifies lending leads, allowing for a more streamlined intake process and the ability to manage everything in Salesforce.”

Calvert Foundation also uses Engage to efficiently promote to financial advisors who offer the Community Investment Note. Advisors provide their contact information, firm name, and an avatar through a form that saves directly to Salesforce. Staff confirms the information and publishes to the website directly from Salesforce. Once approved, financial advisor profiles are searchable by website visitors and updated in real-time, should any data be changed by staff in Salesforce. This streamlining of internal processes benefits both financial advisors and interested investors while making real the goal of a more retail focus without additional staff time.

They have also saved time updating their calendar of socially responsible investment conferences and meetings with which they are involved:

“Managing events was cumbersome with our old website. We would create them in Salesforce and then again in our website,” explained Parrucci. “Now we’re doing it efficiently with Soapbox Engage.”

Soapbox: platform of possibility, “great bang for our buck”

As Calvert Foundation looks toward the future, they know they have a platform that can grow and evolve with them. With the site’s responsive design that reaches visitors on whatever device they are using and easy-to-use administrator tools for updating content, they are more nimble in communicating with their investors and can cut production costs by relying on the digital medium.

“Historically we were very print-oriented. The website is a bridge to creating a more engaging digital experience and reaching younger, more tech­-savvy audiences,” stated Parrucci. “I feel confident that we now have a platform in Soapbox that makes that possible.”

“We got a great bang for our buck. The tools Soapbox offers make us more efficient and streamline our processes,” said Parrucci. “I was involved in a website project with a budget in the hundreds of thousands, it wasn’t nearly as functional as our Soapbox site.”