For decades, faith-based investing has been defined primarily by what it excludes: tobacco, alcohol, adult entertainment. But Steven Libman, founder of Investing With Purpose, calls this approach a "lazy" industry failure. After 15 years in the industry, Libman has built a multifamily real estate investment platform explicitly structured around faith-driven principles, arguing that screening is the floor, not the ceiling.
"The definition that the industry has been operating under for the last 30 years is a lazy one," says Libman. "Screening is the floor. Building intentionally would be the ceiling." The distinction matters as capital allocation increasingly reflects values, and investors who cannot differentiate between genuine alignment and surface-level compliance may be outsourcing their conscience to those who do not share their priorities.
Libman's core premise is straightforward: capital goes somewhere, and where it goes signals something. He poses a simple but disorienting question: if your grandchildren inherited your portfolio tomorrow, what would they know about what you believed in? He asks investors to consider whether they would feel embarrassed about any holdings if their pastor reviewed their portfolio. The goal is to shift thinking away from the conventional wisdom that separates investment returns from values, deploying returns philanthropically after generating them through potentially misaligned investments.
The cautionary tale is the ESG sector, which Libman says "put a dagger in the heart of values-aligned investing." ESG funds marketed impact but delivered weak returns and questionable impact. A recent study tracking ESG fund performance put total average returns well behind conventional benchmarks. For Libman, the lesson is that values and returns are not incompatible; rather, funds using impact as a marketing hook rather than an operational framework tend to deliver on neither.
Investing With Purpose generates community outcomes through an on-site asset ministry program embedded in its multifamily properties. Free apartments are provided to on-site ministry staff who run tenant engagement programming – movie nights, farmers markets, food truck events, and hospital visits for residents in need. The business logic is clear: tenants with six or seven friends within the same complex are 45 percent less likely to move out, reducing vacancy and unit-refresh costs. "Ministry is the moat around the investment," Libman says. "Caring is a durable business advantage, not a disadvantage." The faith dimension is service-first; residents are not required to participate in religious programming.
Genuine transparency is a key differentiator. Libman's firm sends investors not only standard financial KPIs but also a ministry impact report tracking community connections, pastoral support, and acts of care. Investors are invited on-site quarterly for serve days, providing tangible engagement with the asset and community. "Unlike your Wall Street investments, you can drive by it, touch it, feel it, actually see the impact that we are making," Libman says. This stands in contrast to the opacity of much of the ESG sector.
For investors not considering values-aligned portfolios, Libman's framing starts with real estate as an asset class. Most people understand rental property and housing as a fundamental need. The question becomes not whether to invest in real estate, but what kind of operator and structure best reflects your principles. "Every dollar that you invest is a vote for something," Libman says. "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." In an era of harder questions about where money goes, that framing is less niche than it seemed a decade ago.
