Several prominent RIA firms, including Mariner Wealth Advisors, Halbert Hargrove, Modera Wealth Management, Perigon Wealth Management and Wealthspire Advisors, are joining forces to launch a new consortium to promote and spread best practices on “net positive” strategies for clients and communities.
Other founding member firms in the Net Positive Consortium include Andrew Hill Investment Advisors, Brighton Jones, Cornerstone Wealth Group, Crestwood Advisors and Sentinel Group. Solution providers, including AdvoKate IQ and Bento Engine, also signed on.
Conversations about the group started about a year ago between GYI Financial Strategies CEO Gerry Goldberg and Grant Rawdin, the founder and CEO of Wescott Financial Advisory Group (both firms are founding members, while Goldberg and Rawdin co-chair the consortium).
The CEOs were inspired by the book Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive By Giving More Than They Take and began discussing ways to apply the book’s lessons to the wealth management space with other firms.
In an interview with WealthManagement.com, Rawdin said the hope was to reach out to other companies who may already be doing community, civic or employee-minded things.
“Some firms, particularly on the smaller side, don’t even know how to begin doing it, or they don’t know that they are doing it and how to magnify their impact,” he said. “The thought was there’s no one really coalescing around these things.”
According to its executive brief, the consortium intends for firms to focus on five broad areas or “pillars,” focused on clients, the workforce, the industry, the community and the planet.
Specifically, the consortium aims to concentrate on education and support for clients, particularly “financial literacy, impact investing and charitable giving;” emphasize a workplace culture supporting the “holistic” well-being of employees; “pay it forward” within the industry by supporting mentorship, student internships and better knowledge-sharing at conferences; and urge firms to consider how they can minimize their own carbon footprint and support the communities they work in through “charitable giving, volunteering or partnerships with non-profit organizations.”
The consortium will facilitate exchanging best practices and sharing experiences through webinars, thought leadership content and in-depth videos guiding firms on how to incorporate these philosophies into their business strategies. Firms that wish to join the consortium must complete an inventory assessment and demonstrate they have initiatives brewing in at least three areas within the group’s five pillars.
According to Suzanne Siracuse, an industry consultant who helped facilitate the consortium’s launch, the executive brief and inventory assessment are the immediate deliverables (both of which can be found on its website).
There is a fee for membership in the consortium, which currently ranges from $1,500 (for advisory firms under $250,000 in AUM) to $5,000 annually (for firms with more than $2.5 billion). The fee for solution or technology providers is based on revenue and ranges from $500 annually for companies with less than $1 million in revenue up to $7,500 for those with more than $10 million in annual revenue.
Ideally, the consortium hopes to recruit five more firms and other funding partners before the end of the year (Siracuse said she’d already received inquiries about potential support in the hours since the launch announcement).
According to Goldberg, initiatives like the Net Positive Consortium can help bring people together in increasingly polarized (and sometimes toxic) environments. They can also help firms garner reputations as caring about communities and not just offering a “solid value proposition” to their clients.
“That gives you a qualitative edge, besides the fact that you’re doing good,” he said. “It will be extremely helpful to you in terms of attracting the people that you presumably want to be part of your organization."
