Co-op America Business Network: the Original Socially Responsible Business Network
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Connections Newsletter - Newsletter of the Co-op America Business Network and the Social Investment Forum

Social Investment Forum Program Highlights

October 6, 2006

 

17th Annual SRI in the Rockies Conference!

Don’t miss the 2006 conference in Colorado Springs, CO: OCTOBER 28-31!
To register visit www.SRIintheRockies.com
We have an exciting speaker line-up you won’t want to miss, including: Patricia Aburdene, author of Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism; Jane Ambachtsheer, Principal at Mercer Investment Consulting; Paul Epstein, expert on climate change; David Korten, author, whose latest book is The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community; Joel Makower, author and leader on sustainability issues; Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund, a not-for-profit global venture fund; and Bob Veres, author and consultant to the financial services industry.
Break-out sessions include timely, diverse topics such as:

  • Footprint Neutral: How Well Are Corporations and Investors Dealing with the Challenges of Climate Change?
  • The Power of Online Marketing: How Socially Responsible Investment Organizations Can Use the Internet to Attract Interest, Attention, and Assets
  • Post-Apartheid: South Africa and SRI
  • Institutional Investors Making a Difference Through the Power of the Proxy : Taking ESG Into the Mainstream
  • Social Policy Shareholder Resolutions: At the Tipping Point to Becoming Mainstream?
  • Internet Privacy, Censorship & Human Rights
  • Piercing the Veil of Secrecy that shrouds Corporate Political and Lobbying Activities: The SRI Community as a Catalyst for Reform
  • Into the Mainstream: Trends in Social Research—Strategic Opportunities for SRI
  • Clean Energy Rising: The Mainstreaming of Solar, Wind and Biofuels
  • Lessons Learned from Natural Disasters: A Gulf Coast report from Community Investing Organizations on the Ground
  • Preserving Native American Culture through Socially Responsible investing: From Sacred Sites to New Economic Development Projects
  • Global Corporate Transparency and the GRI
  • 2006 Moskowitz Prize-winning SRI research paper

The Forum will also conduct its Annual Members’ Meeting at the conference on October 29, highlighting our progress, future plans, and introducing our first CEO, Ms. Lisa Woll.


If you have never attended SRI in the Rockies—make this the year do! Start with the New Participant Orientation & Introduction to SRI on the first day of the conference for tips on how to make the most of the experience and for background on the SRI industry.

Co-op America’s Green Business Conference

Time is running out to make your reservations to attend the next Co-op America Green Business Conference in San Francisco – November 7-10, 2006.
View the entire program with speakers »

Register at www.coopamerica.biz »

E-mail Denise Hamler to become more involved and support the conference »

Green Festival News: Co-op America Launches Green Festival Getaway

This year’s Green Festival season is already shaping up to be the most exciting ever. Along with an expanded three-day program in San Francisco, and our first-ever Chicago Green Festival set for April 21-22, 2007, we launched the first Green Festival Getaway Sweepstakes, offering a trip for two to the San Francisco Green Festival.
As a thank-you for answering our Green Living Survey, each survey participant will receive an entry in our sweepstakes and a chance to win our prize package including: airfare (including carbon offsets) to San Francisco, accommodations at Hotel Vitale, a meal at the famous vegan restaurant Millennium all compliments of CABN member Chip Conley’s Joie de Hospitality as well as transportation passes and passes for two to the Green Festival, and more.

Get the latest news on the Green Festivals, a project of Co-op America and Global Exchange »

Green Festivals—News and Updates

This year’s Green Festival season is already shaping up to be the most exciting ever. Along with an expanded three-day program in San Francisco, and our first-ever Chicago Green Festival set for April 21-22, 2007, we launched the first Green Festival Getaway Sweepstakes, offering a trip for two to the San Francisco Green Festival.

As a thank-you for answering our Green Living Survey, each survey participant will receive an entry in our sweepstakes and a chance to win our prize package including: airfare (including carbon offsets) to San Francisco, accommodations at Hotel Vitale, a meal at the famous vegan restaurant Millennium all compliments of CABN member Chip Conley’s Joie de Hospitality as well as transportation passes and passes for two to the Green Festival, and more.

Reserve booth space or plan to attend »

 

Community Investing – the 1% or More (!) in Community Investing Campaign

Visit www.communityinvest.org to see our newest community investing content! We’ve included two new categories of institutions, bond funds and social enterprises, and we have increased the number of venture capital funds profiled on the site in our user-friendly, searchable database—the largest of its kind!

On August 29th the Community Investing campaign issued a press release on the one-year commemoration of Hurricane Katrina that highlighted the work of several Forum members in rebuilding the Gulf region, including Access Capital Strategies, Calvert Foundation, Jewish Funds for Justice, Enterprise Corp. of the Delta/Hope Credit Union, and the Local Initiatives Support Coalition, among others.

“Investing in CDFIs has resulted in an unprecedented outpouring of community investing support for the areas in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina,” said Joe Black, senior vice president of the Southern Financial Partners/Southern Bancorp. He continued: “The tremendous potential of community investing institutions to channel a direct and powerful investment response to the hurricane crisis continues to empower and lift up citizens in the region.”

Learn more about how to support the regions devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and learn how to become a community investor if you aren’t already! Participate in the SRI in the Rockies Conference and attend the following sessions:

  • Saturday, October 28 Panel Presentation at 3:30pm: Lessons Learned from Natural Disasters: A Gulf Coast Report from Community Investment Institutions on the Ground;
  • Breakfast Meeting on Sunday, October 29 at 7:00am to Learn About Becoming A Community Investor.

For more information on these sessions and the pre-conference community investing strategy meeting contact Prianjali Mascarenhas at 202-872-5335.

International Working Group

The Forum’s International Working Group (IWG) is eagerly awaiting its annual fall meeting to be held directly before the SRI in the Rockies Conference (October 27-28th). This year, the meeting will center on “Challenges and Opportunities in Emerging Markets: The SRI Experience.”

Sessions will range from ESG (economic, social, governance investment issues) in Asia, the role of private investments in local business, best practices and an examination of ESG & the mainstream market. The keynote speaker, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund, will speak on entrepreneurial approaches alleviating global poverty. The IWG is especially excited that the Forum’s new CEO will join the event and attendees will have time to engage Lisa Woll at the networking reception on Friday October 27th.
For more information, contact Kate Rosow at (202) 872-5347. .


Social Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN)

Numerous newspapers and companies took note of SIRAN’s recent report comparing the sustainability reporting of companies in the S&P100, including their use of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). SIRAN participant Steve Lippman of Trillium Asset Management Corp. was quoted in The Wall Street Journal (September 6, 2006) saying “Increasingly, companies are looking to the GRI. There’s a little bit of a case of ‘follow the leader’ here. Companies don’t want to be really out front or really behind.”
The report on corporate sustainability reporting included the following findings:

• More than three-quarters of the S&P 100 Index (79 companies) now have special sections of their websites dedicated to sharing information about their social and environmental policies and performance. This represents a 34% increase from last year, when 59 companies in the S&P 100 included this information on their websites.

• Overall, in the last year a dozen new companies issued corporate social responsibility reports for the first time, including Cisco Systems, General Electric, Time Warner, and Wells Fargo. Other members of the S&P 100, such as American International Group and Black & Decker, have pledged to issue their first reports later this year.

• Over a third of the S&P 100 Index (34 companies) say they base their CSR reports on a widely recognized external standard for reporting called the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. This was up sharply from 2005, when 25 companies in the S&P based their reports on the GRI guidelines. The uptick reflects a concerted outreach effort by SIRAN members to promote reporting based on the GRI to the S&P 100.

SIRAN also noticed a sharp increase in traffic to the web site since releasing the report.

SIRAN is now exploring projects ranging from responsible real estate investing to vendor standards. In conjunction with the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College, SIRAN is also working on a curriculum project. As always, SIRAN continues to dialogue with companies and hosts brownbag lunches on a variety of key topics. Over the past few months, SIRAN has dialogued with Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola and BP.
For more information on SIRAN’s telephonic brownbag lunches, including participant eligibility, please contact Kate Rosow at the Forum at (202) 872-5347..

Visit SIRAN’s Web site this summer for updated information. »

Advocacy & Public Policy Program (APP)

The Forum’s APP program continues to monitor policies and changes that could affect socially responsible investing, our environment and social issues. APP is currently monitoring any proposed rule changes to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), a corporate pollution transparency measure, and will update members if any new action is required. The Environmental Protection Agency has received more than 100,000 communications on the TRI following a proposal in late 2005 to weaken it—the vast majority of the letters urging protection of this important disclosure tool.

New! Be on the look-out for an upcoming sample letter to business groups that counters charges made against socially responsible investing and corporate social responsibility. As more corporations produce sustainability reports and engage with socially responsible investors it’s increasingly clear that SRI and CSR help improve businesses practices—and that there are now many companies that can play a role in challenging anti-CSR sentiment.

APP recently provided a letter to financial advisors and planners urging them to ask their clients to write to select corporations responding to the Carbon Disclosure Project (an initiative for institutional investors to gather information from corporations regarding their greenhouse gas emissions.) Recently, APP found that the Carbon Disclosure Project had more companies responding to their queries about climate change than ever before—thank you to everyone who urged their clients to generate letters!

Learn more about APP and help shape our direction for 2007! Members are invited to a strategy and planning session during the SRI in the Rockies Conference. All Forum members interested in this are encouraged to contact Kate Rosow at (202) 872-5347.