Find a Values-Aligned Financial Advisor

This deep dive course is intended to help you clarify what you want from your financial advisor and then take you through the steps to find an advisor that is a great fit for you. The course takes place within a trusted community of like-minded investors. You will go through a series of exercises on your own and then come together with your peers to share insights. The robust conversations you will have during your time together will sharpen and refine each participant’s thinking. During the course you will prioritize your goals, create a short list of potential advisors, and walk away with the ability to “close the deal” with a preferred advisor.

Express Your Interest

Course Calendar & Structure

The Financial Advisor course is a 3-part series that will be supported by bi-weekly Circle discussions. Members can ask questions on Mighty Networks, and they will be responded to by the Course Creators or other experts.

The process of building a stronger relationship with your current advisor, getting them to integrate your requests for more values-alignment into your portfolio, or finding a new mission-driven advisor can seem daunting. During the course you will prioritize your goals, create a short list of potential advisors, and walk away with the ability to “close the deal” with a preferred advisor.

Outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will have:

  • Prioritized a list of the characteristics and attributes you want from your financial advisor
  • Used the ValuesAdvisor platform to perform research and create a short-list of advisors that could fit your needs
  • Conducted at least one informed interview with a prospective advisor
  • Built the confidence you need to identify and hire a preferred advisor
  • Identified at least one accountability and thought partner to help you complete the process

Prerequisites & Level of Effort

This course is recommended for women who have decided they want professional support with their investing and who are ready to find a values-aligned financial advisor. Although most of the advisors you will be introduced to in this course require their clients to have investable assets between $2 to $50 million, or more, some have no minimums. Thus, regardless of your asset base, you have the opportunity to find someone who could match your need.

Time Commitment: About 2 hours per week for 6 weeks

Each meeting is expected to last 1 to 1.5 hours. Approximately 1 – 1.5 hours of homework is required prior to each meeting. The majority of the research will be handled by the ValuesAdvisor platform, so your primary workload will be thinking about your priorities and conducting one or more interviews. A significant amount of the value in this course will be the discussions that you have with other members of the Circle.

Course Content

The process of building a stronger relationship with your current advisor, getting them to integrate your requests for more values-alignment into your portfolio, or finding a new mission-driven advisor can seem daunting. This deep dive course is intended to help you clarify what you want from your financial advisor and then take you through the steps to find an advisor that meets your needs. During the course you will prioritize your goals, create a short list of potential advisors, and walk away with the ability to “close the deal” with a preferred advisor. You will be supported and encouraged along the way by a group of women who are joining you on the journey.

  • Meeting 1:

    Exploring and Prioritizing What is Important to You

    To get the most out of, and to offer others your best, you will be asked to identify and clarify the services, knowledge and traits you want in your next financial advisor. You will bring your pre-work results to your first meeting with your peers. Your initial thinking is likely to be augmented by learning about others’ experiences – positive and negative – with their financial advisors. Their stories will illuminate what is possible and what you might want to avoid. You will have the opportunity to adjust your priority list as a result of those discussions. You should leave this session with a fairly good idea of what you want from your financial advisor.

  • Meeting 2:

    Build a Short List of Advisors

    Before your second peer meeting, you will watch a short video demonstrating the ValuesAdvisor website. Then you will access and subscribe to the site using a personalized access code. Once in the site, you will be able to set parameters to identify the financial advisors that might be the best fit for you. You also have the ability to review and research all the advisors on the platform. At the end of this session, you should have a short list of prospective advisors. In your meeting, you will discuss the results of your research, exploring why you chose the advisors on your short list. The similarities and differences between the members of your group will further inform your own process. You may even find that a few people have identified the same advisors, an outcome that could be helpful as you move into the next step of the process.

    You will be asked to conduct an interview with at least one advisor before your next meeting.

  • Meeting 3:

    Report Out and Discuss Next Steps

    During the meeting, Circle members will report on the outcomes of the interviews they conducted, as well as any changes they made to their Prioritization Matrix. Everyone will choose an accountability partner(s) to help you see the selection process through to hiring a new financial advisor.

Course Creators

Kate Simpson

Co-Founder & Head of Outreach, ValuesAdvisor

Kate co-founded ValuesAdvisor, a non-profit platform to connect investors with values-aligned financial advisors. Since first working in the impact investing field in 1992, Kate has been interested in helping investors use the power of their investment capital to positively influence social and environmental issues. Kate brings an understanding of the power of resilience, knowledge of the impact investing field, and formal training in education to help investors of all backgrounds learn to align their investments with their values. In 2020, Kate developed and co-authored “Take Two: A Journal for New Beginnings” published by Chronicle Books to help people deepen their resiliency skills. In 2022, Kate launched the Take Two “Invest Your Values” course, a self-directed online course to help empower investors with the knowledge to start aligning their investments with their values.

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