Banking on Belonging

Banking on Belonging shows how capital, grounded in human dignity, can enable refugees to work, build businesses, and shape the futures they deserve. The capital exists. The entrepreneurial talent is ready. What’s needed is the courage to invest in them. -- Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO, Acumen
With the right policies and investments, refugees are assets, not liabilities. In Banking on Belonging, Kluge and Mahoney offer a compelling blueprint for how capital, strategically deployed in stable, emerging markets, can make refugees investable, employable, and economically integral at scale. Their argument is both practical and urgent: Economic inclusion is not an alternative to humanitarian aid but the way to make it sustainable. -- The Rt. Hon. David Miliband, president and CEO, International Rescue Committee
Banking on Belonging presents a rigorous, realistic, and timely blueprint for how the private sector can step up and engage economically with refugee communities and, in doing so, build shared prosperity and lessen human suffering the world over. -- U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia
In a world marked by fracture, Banking on Belonging offers a compelling thesis: Prosperity grows where belonging is financed. John Kluge Jr. and Christine Mahoney reframe refugees as economic catalysts and show how enabling their participation in markets leads to durable solutions. -- Hau Thai-Tang, retired chief operations officer, Ford Motor Company, and Vietnamese refugee
Banking on Belonging is a groundbreaking and urgently needed book. Forced migration will be a headline issue for the rest of our lives—driven by conflict, climate change, and instability. John Kluge and Christine Mahoney offer an astonishingly simple yet powerful answer: refugees can be a source of economic growth, stability, and prosperity in their new communities. Beyond entrepreneurship, the book illuminates pathways for employment, workforce development, and social infrastructure that create dignity, opportunity, and agency for refugees and host communities alike. As humanitarian budgets shrink, refugee-lens investing is essential for a stable, inclusive future. This is essential reading for anyone committed to turning a crisis into a shared possibility. -- Sasha Chanoff, executive director, RefugePoint, and cofounder, Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative
Global Citizen was founded on the belief that ordinary people, acting together, can move the power and capital that shape the world. Banking on Belonging applies that logic to one of the most overlooked opportunities of our time. Kluge and Mahoney show that investing in refugee entrepreneurs isn’t charity. It’s economic, strategic, and winnable. What's needed now is the citizen pressure, institutional will, and financial imagination to act on it. This book gives all three a vocabulary. -- Michael Sheldrick, cofounder, Global Citizen, and author of From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook For Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World