On June 20, investors with a faith-driven multifamily real estate firm set aside their spreadsheets in favor of shovels and prayer walks at Rise Avalon, a Charlotte, North Carolina community owned by Integrity Holdings Group (IHG). The quarterly event, known as Serve Day, was organized by Steven Libman, co-founder of IHG and founder of Investing With Purpose. It convened investors, operating partners, and firm leadership for a full day of direct, on-site engagement with residents. Rise 48 Equity, a co-investor in the property, also took part.

Libman developed the Serve Day model across IHG's portfolio and is now extending it into Investing With Purpose as that firm builds out its own residential communities. Each gathering is intended to give back to the residents whose homes underpin the investment thesis. The approach reflects a broader, growing segment of values-based and faith-aligned investing, where sponsors increasingly seek to tie financial performance to measurable community and social outcomes rather than treating them as separate concerns.

The event centered on a Community Family Fun Day, complete with bounce houses, obstacle courses, pool games, barbecue, raffles, photo booths, and live entertainment. Local small businesses, food trucks, fire department personnel, and community vendors joined the investor team, creating a gathering that offered free meals, family activities, and opportunities for conversation or prayer.

For investors, Serve Day offered a concrete illustration of the firm's guiding principle that capital should meet calling. Libman stressed what he described as a dual focus on temporal and eternal returns.

"Every resident who pays rent here is contributing to investor returns. But can we also show them the eternal return – the people, the names, the faces on site," Libman said.

Nick Stromwall of Rise 48 Equity reinforced that perspective, arguing that community managers who build genuine relationships with residents can better align service quality with financial outcomes. That view is consistent with a widely recognized operational dynamic in multifamily real estate, where resident retention directly affects net operating income through reduced turnover costs, shorter vacancy periods, and lower re-leasing expenses.

"When you genuinely care about people and serve them, the returns come back and help the investors as well," Stromwall said.

For first-time attendees, meeting residents in person reshaped how they understood the investment. Investor Matt Emerson described the experience as transformative.

"To put faces to all of it, to come and pray with the community – that is the biggest thing," Emerson said. "It does actually make a difference where you live and how you get cared for."

The Purposed Care Initiative model that Libman has constructed forms the backbone of the investment thesis behind Investing With Purpose: the conviction that profit and purpose are causally linked rather than competing priorities. The firm encapsulates its approach with the statement: "We invest in real estate. We care for communities. We grow returns – Purposed."

Investing With Purpose is a faith-driven multifamily real estate firm headquartered in Bluffton, South Carolina. The firm invests in multifamily assets across the United States, pairing institutional-grade investment management with an intentionally values-based operating framework.