Most investors maintain two separate mental folders: one for investing, returns, allocations, and performance; the other for values, faith, giving, and purpose. This separation assumes that capital is morally neutral until it is deployed philanthropically. However, Steven Libman, founder of Investing With Purpose, contends that this assumption costs investors more than they realize, both financially and in impact.
Libman has spent 15 years building a multifamily real estate firm on a counter-premise: stewardship is not a category of finances but the entire framework. Once investors accept this framing, the silos between tax strategy, portfolio allocation, and personal values collapse into a single question: what is my money actually building?
The separation between investing and values was not accidental; it was deliberately sold by a financial services industry focused on product distribution rather than stewardship. Investors were told to chase returns, ignore the underlying activity of their capital, and express values through charitable giving from proceeds. This has led to a generation of investors who give generously from after-tax returns while their portfolios fund activities they have never examined.
The tax conversation is similarly siloed. Most people experience the tax code as an annual reckoning rather than a year-round planning tool. They discover what they owe in April, treat it as inevitable, and move on. The notion that tax strategy and values strategy could be part of a proactive framework—structured in January, not reconciled in April—has rarely been presented.
“Stewardship isn’t a category of finances,” says Libman. “It’s the whole thing. When we read the parable of the talents, the master doesn’t grade servants on one line item. He considers what they did with everything entrusted to them. Your tax dollars are entrusted capital too.”
The dominant model in values-aligned investing has been the exclusion screen—a list of what not to own. Libman argues this is the lowest form of values alignment and the least useful starting point for investors who want their capital to build something. His reframe: purpose-driven investing is not the screen you run at the end; it is the lens you build through from the beginning, covering every line item, including taxes.
“What is your money building?” is the question Libman poses before anything else. The practical steps follow a deliberate sequence: clarify core values, write them down, audit what you own, measure each holding against those values, and then assess whether your tax strategy serves the same mission or works against it. For investors new to this, the entry point is an audit, not a liquidation. The goal is to create an honest picture of alignment and then make intentional moves.
“Purposed investing isn’t the screen you’re running at the end,” says Libman. “It’s the lens you’re building through from the beginning. And that lens should cover the tax line items too.”
The connection between tax strategy and values alignment is more direct than most appreciate. Capital retained through intelligent tax structuring—such as bonus depreciation, cost segregation, and K-1 carry-forwards—can be redeployed toward causes and investments that reflect an investor’s priorities. Capital handed to the government unnecessarily is capital that cannot be used for such purposes.
Libman draws on a biblical precision argument: the obligation is to give Caesar exactly what is due—no more, no less. Overpaying taxes out of ignorance is not humility; it is poor stewardship. Every dollar that leaves unnecessarily is a dollar that cannot be reinvested, donated, or deployed toward the investor’s mission.
“You can’t manage well what you refuse to understand,” says Libman. “And the moment this all gets pulled under one owner, which is you, there’s no silo anymore. You become the silo.”
Investors who navigate this cycle most effectively are not those who separate these conversations most cleanly but those who stop separating them entirely. More information on the firm’s investment philosophy is available at investingwithpurpose.org.
