What's Happening

By Elizabeth Garlow, 
CEO, Charism Capital Fund

October 9, 2026, Adrian, Michigan – Long before "impact investing" had a name, women religious were already practicing it. Congregations like the Adrian Dominican Sisters directed their retirement funds and other savings into community development credit unions, loan funds, and the earliest community development financial institutions (CDFIs) – patient, affordable capital moving toward the neighborhoods and enterprises the conventional financial system wouldn't touch. It's an approach rooted in discernment, an openness to asking "what is enough of a return?" and the instinct to ask what capital owes to relationships rather than only to the financial bottom-line.

This legacy has had a profound impact, and it is evolving. Many of the congregations that pioneered this work are smaller now, with fewer sisters and leaner staff to carry it forward. 

Community investing was never simple to administer. It means dozens of investee relationships, each with its own documents, reporting expectations, and due diligence, spread across a landscape of projects and funds. Left to run its course, that kind of administrative weight could mean these programs struggle to stay afloat. Naming that clearly, though, is also what has made it possible to do something about it. 

At the same time, a different kind of barrier has been keeping newer people out of this kind of investing. Lay collaborators, foundations, families, and smaller congregations who want to put their own capital to work on mission keep running into challenges: private impact funds are usually built for large checks, with minimums in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and multi-year holding periods that some funders simply can't meet. Doing this work also requires expertise. None of this is a reason the work can't grow. It's simply been missing a front door. 

Those challenges – a legacy in need of continuity, and a newer generation locked out of community and impact investing by structural barriers – were the starting point for a participatory design workshop in May 2025, where sisters, lay practitioners, and other collaborators sat down together at the Casa Iskali in Chicago (a former Cabrini Retreat Center) to ask what it would take to lower those barriers without diluting what made this work distinctive. 

What came out of that room was the vision for Charism: a new nonprofit organization built to sponsor and manage a pooled fund of funds, moving capital toward partners both in the United States and in the Global South where communities are especially vulnerable in light of declining global aid. The fund is structured specifically so both legacy investors and newer investors – including smaller monasteries, congregations and organizations – can participate in the same kind of relationship-first investing the sisters have been practicing for more than 50 years. Charism launched this July with a founding circle of 12 investors, including 10 congregations of women religious, alongside ten donors, including the Adrian Dominican Sisters, who chose to be part of building it from the start.

The fund itself is just the vehicle. What makes this collaboration unique is the weaving together of multiple communities for a sustained practice of impact-first investing as a way of concretely living out our charisms to build a more life-giving economy. It helps all of us live our charisms in how we relate to money and to people, ensuring the treasures of these practices are handed down, tested, and re-embodied by whoever picks it up next – which, increasingly, means lay collaborators working alongside sisters. 

For the Adrian Dominican Sisters, whose own history in this work helped shape the field well before Charism existed, being part of the founding circle is a continuation of their work as well as planting seeds for the next evolution of how they express their mission and values through investing, in deep partnership with others. Charism is an exciting effort to build something all of us – women religious and others – can lean on.

Learn more. 
 

Caption for above feature photo: Standing near a display of Charism Capital are, from left, Bill Hatch, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Charism Capital; Molly Harmon, fund investor; Elizabeth Garlow, founder and CEO of Charism Capital; Sister Molly Brockwell, OSB, fund investor; and Sister Marilín Llanes, OP, fund investor and Director of the Portfolio Advisory Board. 
Photo Courtesy of Sister Marilín Llanes, OP

By Caroline Bode, 
Director of Shareholder Advocacy Mercy Investments

Growing scientific evidence links pesticide use to reduced soil health and farm resilience, and exposure to pesticides and agrichemicals is associated with serious adverse health impacts, particularly for children and farm workers. The base of a successful regenerative agriculture system is healthy soils and, without addressing and reducing agrichemical use, such systems are unable to effectively achieve regenerative outcomes.

Despite growing reference in food company annual reporting to regenerative agriculture programs and commitments, As You Sow’s 2026 Pesticides in the Pantry report found that more than half of the 17 benchmarked companies’ scores declined from their 2023 assessment and that several companies decreased or eliminated pesticide disclosure from their public reporting. And the assessment of 78 global agri-food companies by the investor network FAIRR  (formerly the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return) found that none have set a target to reduce the use of pesticides as part of their regenerative agriculture programs.

For decades, Adrian Dominican Sisters Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) has been a consistent voice calling for a transition to a safer and more sustainable food system and the development of safer forms of pest control, leading a multi-year engagement with Michigan-based Dow Chemical and participating in a similar engagement with Missouri-based Monsanto.  

The PAB has continued to engage with Dow’s agricultural chemical spin-off company, Corteva, and the German company Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018. Current engagements with both companies ask them to develop pest control products that are safer for people and planet. In 2025, Corteva announced a multi-million-dollar joint venture to accelerate the development of new crop protection solutions inspired by nature. 

In its 2026 sustainability reporting, Bayer shared that it has reduced the environmental impact of its global crop protection portfolio by 14% against the baseline. However, Bayer has also been in the headlines this year due to its legal stance in the numerous lawsuits brought against the company concerning the health impacts of its signature product Roundup, which was originally developed by Monsanto.  

Earlier this year when the case reached the Supreme Court, Bayer argued that they should be immune from “failure to warn” lawsuits on the grounds that the language in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) gives the EPA universal control to approve product labels and that any EPA-approved labels should preempt state labeling laws or individual rights to sue agrochemical producers. 

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bayer’s favor removes a primary tool for individuals to hold these companies accountable when they fail to warn consumers of undisclosed risks and harm. Adrian Dominican Sisters and other investors will continue to engage Bayer and other agrochemical producers on the need to transition their crop protection portfolios to solutions that are less hazardous and toxic to human and environmental health.

In part due to years of investor pressure, most major food manufacturers also have commitments to implement regenerative practices and several, such as Campbell’s, Lamb Weston, and Nestlé, are tracking and monitoring pesticide use. Kroger and Walmart have commitments to implement integrated pest management practices with their food suppliers to help transition to least-toxic growing methods.

Investors are also asking food retailers to disclose how they are working to reduce the use of pesticides in the products they sell. In the 2026 proxy season, the PAB co-filed a shareholder proposal at Target asking the company to report on pesticide use and reduction efforts within its supply chains. 

Despite Target’s commitments to safer chemical management and protecting biodiversity, the company lags its peers and may be overlooking risks associated with pesticide use. The proposal received 17.2% of the vote in support, indicating strong interest from shareholders on this issue.  

Investors will continue to press chemical companies to reduce the environmental and human health impacts of their agricultural products and to ask food and beverage companies and retailers to disclose how they are working to reduce pesticide use in their supply chains.