The non

Chris Pine and others turn to non-profit film fund to make movies with a conscience

Harbour Fund uses rich donors to finance films with ‘transcendent’ messages that otherwise might never be made in a risk-averse industry

Actor Chris Pine was just 13 when his family’s finances took a turn and his parents lost their home.

So when the Star Trek actor read Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – about eight families who fight to stay housed in Milwaukee, in the US state of Wisconsin – he knew he had to make a film out of it.

Pine is producing a documentary based on the book. It is among several projects backed by Harbor Fund, an emerging non-profit investment group based in the US state of Utah that leverages the donations of high-net-worth individuals and other investors to support films, television shows and documentaries that have a positive social message.

“Good stories can change how people feel,” says Lindsay Hadley, Harbor Fund’s co-founder and chief executive. “We just really believe in the power of film and the entertainment world to harness a society of compassion.”

Since it began about a year and a half ago, the fund has raised US$15 million from 82 donors, with an average contribution of US$250,000. Already, Hadley says, US$10 million has been deployed across 22 projects, including Evicted.