Criterion Institute is an activist think tank with a focus on finance, one of the most powerful systems in the economy. Their work includes interdisciplinary research projects, training finance professionals to understand gender lens investing, and collaborating with church congregations on how to use finance for social change.

Criterion believes that great conversations create the ideas, connections, and the human relationships required for action. Furthermore, to create an economy that works for all when people believes that they can influence our practices of finance. To accomplish this, Criterion relies on the six pillars of their theory of change.

Criterion defines their theory of change as a transformative process that deconstructs existing assumptions and authorities, creates space where new possibilities emerge, and empowers people to act in new ways. This is underpinned by the idea that changes in how we think and how we act eventually affect institutions and broader systems.

Theory of change:

• Cultural reframes: new ways of engaging or transforming financial systems flow from open-ended research.
• Design and demonstration of new possibilities: engages with partners in concrete actions that show how ideas that emerge from cultural reframes might work in practice.
• Amplification of the work: uses broad network and multiple forms of communication to introduce change makers and the wider public to the power of using finance as a tool for social change.
• Invitations to a simple action: empowers change makers to believe that they can have an impact on financial systems.
• Base of leaders equipped for this work: trains and supports a growing cadre of leaders with the competence and the confidence to use the systems of finance as a tool to effect social change.
• Institutional engagement: engages with institutions that are ready and willing to build on the momentum to leverage their influence and reach.

Our mission is to broaden what matters in our economic decisions by expanding who has power and influence in the work of reinventing the economy.

Criterion Institute is funded by a community of individual donors. Find out more