We are pleased to announce that Funds4Minds, our month-long initiative that brought together the alternative investment industry, has helped raise $458,000 for mental health charities. During Funds4Minds, we facilitated a series of private capital introduction meetings between alternative investment managers and allocators, and donated $100 to select mental health charities for every meeting that took place. A dollar matching program also benefited four charities supported by our initiative.
Mental health charities supported by our event included: batyr, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, Jed Foundation, Mental Health Innovations, NAMI NYC, and Shatterproof.
We’d like to thank our Funds4Minds committee, co-chaired by Kate Reid of Longdean Capital and Alison Young of RWB Strategies for their input and support. Allocators on the committee included Benoit Ramsay of Cambridge University, Lauren Jacobson of Columbia University, David Ames of Kamehameha Schools. Managers on the committee included Laurie Katz of GoldenTree and Nathan Romano of York Capital, as well as Rahul Moodgal, Advisory Board member of iConnections who joined the committee as an observer.
“Over the last 12 months, the demand for our service has more than doubled. We are now supporting 1400 conversations with individuals struggling to cope, up from 650 pre-pandemic. We are very grateful to the whole team at iConnections for their support and their Funds4Minds initiative that has served to shine a light on the issue of mental health and mental wellbeing during this global pandemic” – Alex Le Vey, Director of Income, Mental Health Innovations (MHI).
“The anxiety that came with this monumental shift in how people lived their lives led to very large spikes in addiction-related drug overdoses compared to pre-pandemic totals. We are very grateful as we emerge out of the pandemic that we can partner with iConnections to highlight ways to prevent and treat addiction, which is a very personal and important matter to me” – Gary Mendell, Founder & CEO, Shatterproof.
Allocators who attended the event included:
| Aberdeen Standard Investments | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Aksia | Millennium Management |
| Bessemer | PAAMCO Prisma |
| Blackstone | SB Capital Partners |
| Boothbay Fund Management | Smithsonian Institution |
| Cambridge University | Stanford Management Company |
| Carnegie Corporation of New York | The David and Lucile Packard Foundation |
| CDPQ | The J. Paul Getty Trust |
| Columbia Investment Management Company | TIFF |
| Conrad N. Hilton Foundation | Titan Advisors |
| Dartmouth College | University of Pennsylvania |
| Emory Investment Management | Trinity Wall Street |
| Forbes Family Trust | Wells Fargo |
| ICG Advisors | Willis Towers Watson |
| Kamehameha Schools | William and Flora Hewlett Foundation |
| McArthur Foundation | YMCA Retirement Fund |
Alongside the virtual capital introduction meetings, we hosted a series of virtual events, including webinars, coffee chats, and fireside discussions with leading allocators and managers. Thank you to everyone that took part, especially our speakers.
Ron Biscardi, CEO of iConnections, said: “The Funds4Minds and Funds4Food initiatives underscore iConnections’ ongoing commitment through our iCare program to address the most pressing needs of our societies now and give back to the communities we live and work in globally. We’d like to thank all allocators, managers and service providers in our community for their continued support of our initiatives and look forward to announcing further details of our iCare program this Fall, as well as our next Funds4 event details in January 2022.“
Funds4Minds follows the successful Funds4Food capital introduction event that iConnections hosted in 2020, which raised a total of $1.9 million for Covid-19 hunger relief efforts.
Our Global Alternative Investment Conference for managers and allocators at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach in January 2022 will also be raising funds for multiple charities through our iCare program. To find out more information about the event, please get in touch with us.
To find out more about how you can support Funds4 events, get in touch with iConnections Chief Marketing Officer, Diana Arakelyan diana@iconnections.io.
