Socially Responsible Investment

Introduction

One of the concerns Les Purce raised in regards to socially responsible investment was the mechanism by which to judge the social responsibility investments. How does the Evergreen Foundation determine exactly where to invest? Will their investment managers have to research every company they invest part of the endowment in? Or will there be a screen: a simple set of rules that tell managers which sectors they cannot invest in?

The following section is an attempt to provide some background on both the Evergreen Foundation and socially responsible investment, in order to begin answering these questions. An Olympia-CAT Campaign generated fact sheet about the Evergreen Foundation and the Board of Governors tries to answer the basic questions we get about the Foundation. The included timeline is a handout we gave to the Board of Governors on February 15th, summarizing some of the history we gathered from 6 years of board meeting minutes. Following that section is a copy of Lee Gillentine’s correspondence with the Board of Governors, giving insight into how the board communicates. A section from the 2005 Social Investment Forum report provides an overview of socially responsible investing from a financial industry standpoint, as well as a history of the movement. Finally, there is an ever-growing glossary in the back of the section for easy reference.

One interesting side note: the Evergreen State College, not the Foundation, does have a socially responsible investment policy. It reads:

“(2) Investment policy. It is the policy of The Evergreen State College to participate as investor or as shareholder only in companies or financial institutions which do not conduct business in/with, or maintain direct involvement with nations which, by their laws, violate human rights. By asserting this principle, the board of trustees affirms that human rights shall be a factor in determining the acceptability of an investment.”

However, this does not apply to the five million dollar Evergreen endowment—only to the cash reserves that the college has on hand.