Location: Upper Sayles
Time: 12:00 pm
Secretary: Claire Milsted
CRIC Minutes for 3/1/2010 REC Overview Kristen Vellinger and Fadi Hakim went to the Responsible Endowments Conference (REC) on 2/25 at the New School in New York City. They made contact with many interesting people connected to Socially Responsible Investment. They gathered a lot of resources; they share these resources through collab and/or email. They also took away information on three things the CRIC should look into: developing institutional memory, engaging with fund managers, and developing overarching policies. People at the Conference Heidi Walsh, an acquaintance of Joel Weisberg’s, is involved with Si2, a competitor of ICCR, and was a the conference. She told Kristen and Fadi about a downside of the ICCR: Apparently, it only has information on about 15% of resolutions filed , because it only concerns itself with those filed or co-filed by members. Si2 is apparently more comprehensive—they claim to keep records of all resolutions, as well as records of engagement between shareholders and the companies. We should probably contact her in the near future, possibly via conference call. They also met Linda Kimball, who does SRI work at Stanford. Kristen will meet with her over spring break; both of them live in the Bay Area. These contacts could prove useful to us in the future. If we ever try sponsoring or co-sponsoring a resolution, we should definitely contact somebody who has experience with doing so. There are pitfalls associated with the process, including an SEC rule saying that resolutions can’t be related to “ordinary business.” Loyola University Chicago created an anti-mountaintop-removal resolution, but it was successfully challenged by the corporation under this rule. Active v. Passive CRIC The CRIC right now is not a very active body vis a vis the student population. For now, this seems to be the best arrangement—Carleton Students do not have a long record of activism with regards to the endowment, and we also want to be careful to stick to our role as defined by the charter. However, one thing we should do is learn more about students’ values; maybe we should launch a more thorough survey. SRI at other colleges Fadi and Kristen learned about SRI initiatives at other colleges. They learned from Linda Kimball that SRI is much more established at Stanford—for example, they have language about social, environmental, labor, and diversity issues alongside language about fiduciary duty in their Statement on Investor Responsibility. Students at Macalaster are trying to set up a system to invest some of their endowment in their community. Green Mountain College in Vermont has a 10% student-managed endowment. However, their endowment is on the small side; this is not a reasonable goal for us. SRI and long-term risk/return SRI’s popularity is rising—for example, New York State has SRI criteria for how it invests its retirement fund. Large firms such as Pimco are hiring SRI consultants. One possible explanation for this is that SRI principles can actually help to manage risk. Most SRI funds produce at or above market returns. Large externalized costs such as excessive pollution can create reputational risk, but also risk sabotaging a corporation’s operations in the long term. SRI criteria can help manage such risks. Engaging with Fund Managers We should discuss SRI principles with future managers that Carleton hires. Perhaps we could create a “comply or explain” system, where managers must take into account a set of SRI criteria, and explain their rationale if they make investment decisions that go against those criteria. This system is not perfect (vagueness of criteria is a problem) but other institutions are doing it. Developing Overarching Policies We could try to create an informal list of SRI criteria that Carleton should try to follow in collaboration with the trustees. Such a list would save time and effort during the process of bringing resolutions before the board of trustees. Understandably, trustees might get nervous about agreeing to such a list, so it would have to be unofficial, and we would probably still have to give presentations.