For decades, faith-based investing has largely functioned as a filter, avoiding tobacco, adult entertainment, and alcohol. But according to Steven Libman, founder of Investing with Purpose, this approach is a failure. “The definition that the industry has been operating under for the last 30 years is a lazy one,” Libman said. “Screening is the floor. Building intentionally would be the ceiling.”
Libman, who has 15 years in the industry and recently built a multifamily real estate investment platform structured around faith-driven principles, argues that the gap between genuine alignment and surface-level compliance is widening. Investors who cannot tell the difference are outsourcing their conscience to people who may not share their priorities.
The core premise behind intentional faith-based investing is that capital goes somewhere, and where it goes signals something. Libman asks prospective investors a simple but disorienting question: if your grandchildren inherited your portfolio tomorrow, what would they know about what you believed in? “A question I asked at an event recently was, if you turned your portfolio over to your pastor, is there anything in there you might feel embarrassed about?” he said. “It is not to convict anyone. It is to get people thinking in a different way.”
The cautionary tale is the ESG sector. ESG funds marketed themselves through the 2010s on the promise of impact investing but often delivered weak returns and questionable impact. “ESG put a dagger in the heart of values-aligned investing,” Libman said. “They were saying, you are going to get lower returns, but we will make an impact. In fact, they were not making an impact, and they were not making a return either.” A recent study tracking ESG fund performance put total average returns well behind conventional benchmarks.
Libman’s firm, Investing with Purpose, embeds values directly into its operations through an on-site asset ministry program. Free apartments are provided to on-site ministry staff who run tenant engagement programming—movie nights, farmers markets, and hospital visits. The business logic is clear: tenants with six or seven friends within the same complex are 45 percent less likely to move out, reducing turnover and costs. “Ministry is the moat around the investment,” Libman said. “When people say impact is going to decrease returns, we think the opposite is true. Caring is a durable business advantage, not a disadvantage.”
Transparency is key. The firm sends investors not only financial KPIs but also a ministry impact report tracking resident connections and acts of care. Investors are invited on-site quarterly for serve days. “Unlike your Wall Street investments, you can drive by it, touch it, feel it, actually see the impact that we are making,” Libman said.
For investors, the entry point is real estate, a familiar asset class. The faith-based label is not a constraint on returns but a signal about operational philosophy. “Every dollar that you invest is a vote for something,” Libman said. “So when you deploy your capital, it is either going to build something you are aligned with or something that might be in conflict with your own values.”
