RSF Social Finance: Making money, making change

February 17, 2013
Happy customers of Revolution Foods

Happy customers of Revolution Foods

If you have a few extra dollars in savings, and you’d like to earn more than 0.00001% interest or whatever it is your bank or money market fund is paying, and you’d like to support socially-conscious businesses, you’ll want to take a look at RSF Social Finance.

RSF Social Finance is a financial services organization of modest means (about $145 million in assets under management) that is bursting with big ideas and bold rhetoric. It calls itself “a leader in building the next economy.” It seeks to generate “social and spiritual renewal through investing, lending and giving,” Its mission is to “transform the way the world works with money.”

Whew. What’s going on here?

To find out, I visited RSF Social Finance’s offices in the Presidio complex in San Francisco last week to talk with Don Shaffer, the organization’s president and CEO.

At the simplest level, RSF looks and acts very much like a bank: Its flagship product, the Social Investment Fund, takes deposits and makes loans to so-called social enterprises, a term that’s widely (and often carelessly) thrown around to describe businesses or nonprofits whose intention is to improve society and the environment.

Deciding what qualifies as a social enterprise is subjective, at best. That said, the RSF Social Investment Fund supports companies and nonprofits that, by all appearances, do great work. Among them: [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Consumption, CSR, Environment, Food, Investing, Social Entrepreneurs, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability, Transparency Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Deep green investing: a closer look

February 3, 2013
A divestment rally at Harvard

A divestment rally at Harvard

As you’ve no doubt heard, Bill McKibben and his allies at 350.org have launched a  a national campaign to persuade colleges, universities, churches, foundations and, yes, people like you and me, to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry. The campaign raises interesting questions as, I’m sure, McKibben hoped it would. Among them:

Does divestment make sense as a strategy to curb climate change?

If those of us who are concerned about climate change want to align out investments with our beliefs, what options are available?

In a column called Deep Green Investing published last week by Ensia, a lively new online magazine about environmental solutions, I argued that, by itself, divestment will probably not accomplish much. Having said that, the campaign could prove useful as one of a number of tactics being deployed by 350.org, the Sierra Club and others that are aimed at bringing about political change–namely, taxes or caps on global warming pollutants, EPA rules to curb coal-burning, etc.

In The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard argues that these grass-roots climate efforts have already produced results–350.org galvanized opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, which may have persuaded President Obama to delay a decision after the election, and the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign has, along with cheap natural gas, helped drive the decline of coal in the US. Hertsgaard writes:

As important as the victories themselves was how they were won. Both the Sierra Club and 350.org eschewed the inside-the-Beltway focus and top-down political strategy of big mainstream environmental groups, as exemplified by the cap-and-trade campaign. Instead, they emphasized grassroots organizing at the local level on behalf of far-reaching demands that ordinary people could grasp and support. Their immediate goal was to block a specific pipeline or power plant, but their strategic goal was to build a popular movement and accrue political power.

This is the political context in which the divestment movement makes sense. It won’t shake up the oil industry–the Ensia story explains why–but it’s a useful organizing tool.

But what might the campaign mean for investors? Today, I’m taking a closer look at a couple of “deep green” broadly-diversified mutual funds that have decided, unlike most other funds that market themselves as green or socially responsible,” to cleanse their portfolios of companies that extract fossil fuels. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, CSR, Energy, Environment, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

In Israel, clean tech is not the new new thing

January 13, 2013
David Ben-Gurion, a clean tech pioneer

David Ben-Gurion, clean tech pioneer

Sounding more like a clean tech venture capitalist than a head of state, David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, once said that Israel requires “the study of desalination, massive utilization of solar energy, preventing waste of useful rainwater and maximization of power from wind turbines.”

Ben Gurion, who was born in 1886, said this in 1955. This was a man ahead of his time.

Since then, an Israeli company called Netafim pioneered the idea of drip irrigation in agriculture to save water, another called Luz built the first solar thermal power plants, still another called IDE Technologies became a global leader in desalination and Chromagen developed solar thermal water heaters that can be found on most rooftops in Israel, and elsewhere.

Today, Israel, which has been dubbed Startup Nation, remains a seedbed of clean tech innovation–last year it ranked second in the world (behind Denmark) in a report called Coming Clean: The Cleantech Global Innovation Index 2012 [PDF, download] by CleanTech Group and WWF.  I visited Israel last week, and had a chance to talk with a founder of Israel Cleantech Ventures, the chairman of a company called Miya Water and executives at electric-car company Better Place. I’ll report this week on my findings.

First, some context. As Ben-Gurion saw more than half a century ago, Israel is short on natural resources–water, land, oil–and thus needs to use what it has efficiently. This is the biggest, but not the only, explanation for the growth of Israeli clean tech. Most everyone serves in the military, exposing them to advanced technology. Ariella Grinberg, a young associate with Israel Cleantech Ventures, told me she did her service in the Israeli equivalent of the US’s super-secret NSA (National Security Agency), overseeing a multimillion dollar budget and sophisticated software, when she was just 19. The country also benefits from its world-class colleges and universities, among the Israel Institute of Technology, aka the Technion, the nation’s oldest university. (Here’s a fun example of what their students can do.) A strong entrepreneurial spirit pervades the culture, which may also have its roots in universal military service. “People come out of the army, they’re tired of taking orders, they want to be their own boss,” one executive told me. Finally, targeted government support for basic research has helped underwrite the sector. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Investing, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability, Water Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Should “green” funds invest in fossil fuels?

December 2, 2012

Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking Rolling Stone story (Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math) and 350.org’s “Do the Math” divestment campaign raise important and difficult questions about fossil fuels. One that is starting to roil the world of socially-responsibly investing is this: How should mutual funds that strive to be “green” or “sustainable” or “socially responsible” deal with the fossil fuel companies in their portfolios? Should they divest, as McKibben argues?

That was the topic of a column I wrote last week for the Guardian Sustainable Business, which generated some noteworthy responses. It’s part of the British newspaper The Guardian, which has one of the most popular English language media websites in the world. Here’s how the column begins:

“We’re going after the fossil fuel industry,” Bill McKibben tells about 1,800 cheering fans in a Washington, DC, theatre. “They’re trying to wreck the future, so we’re going after some of their money.”

Al Gore notwithstanding, McKibben – an author, academic and founder of the grassroots climate group 350.org – is America’s leading environmental activist. His 21-city Do The Math tour begins a campaign to persuade colleges, churches, foundations and governments to divest their holdings in coal, oil and natural gas companies.

“It does not make sense,” McKibben tells the Washington audience, “to invest my retirement money in a company whose business plan means that there won’t be an earth to retire on.”

He’s right about that, but the divestment campaign raises a thorny question: where can investors who worry about climate change put their money?

Divest for our Future, 350.org’s divestment website, recommends “environmentally and socially responsible funds“. The trouble is, the biggest and best-known mutual funds that call themselves environmentally and socially responsible also invest in fossil fuel companies. They evidently haven’t heard McKibben’s message.

Is this green?

The column–you can read the rest here–goes on to report that the Parnassus Equity Income Fund  holds about 14% of its assets in oil, natural gas companies and electric utilities that burn fossil fuels, that the TIAA-CREF Social Choice Equity Fund owns shares in dozens of oil and gas firms including Hess, Marathon and Sunoco, and a pair of shale gas giants, Devon Energy and Range Resources, that the Calvert Equity Portfolio  has about 10% of its portfolio in fossil fuels, including  Suncor, which says on its website that it was “the first company to develop the oil sands, creating an industry that is now a key contributor to Canada’s prosperity,” and that the Domini Social Equity Fund has, among its top 10 holdings, Apache Corp, an oil and gas exploration and production company.

Are you surprised to learn that these funds invest in oil and gas companies, including those in the Canadian Tar Sands? Perhaps naively, I was. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, CSR, Energy, Environment, Investing, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Chevron. Sustainable. Really?

November 28, 2012

It’s not every day that one of the world’s biggest corporations files an ethics complaint against a little-known government official–in fact, if it’s happened before, I missed it–but that’s exactly what Chevron did last week in the state of New York.

The company accused Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller, who oversees the state’s pension fund, of accepting about $60,000 in campaign contributions from lawyers and supporters of people who are suing Chevron in Ecuador. The campaign donations, it is alleged, influenced DiNapoli to use his power as the trustee of  the pension fund, which owns Chevron stock, to push Chevron to settle the long-running, bitterly-fought lawsuit.

Imagine. Politicians being influenced by campaign donations.

Chevron would know about that. Last month, the company donated $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that supported House Republican candidates. The donation “appears to be the largest contribution from a publicly traded corporation to a political group” since the Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling, The Washington Post reported. Chevron also spent nearly $15 million on Washington lobbying since the start of 2011, the Post said.

So…evidently, it’s fine for Chevron to lavish money on politicians but unethical for its opponents to do so.

As it happens, Chevron’s complaint against DiNapoli was not even the most surprising news about the company to surface last week. Even more unexpected was the announcement that Chevron was being added to the holdings of the NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability Index, a “benchmark for stocks of companies that are taking a leadership role in sustainability performance reporting.”

The NASDAQ CRD Index helps guide investors seeking companies that are more sustainable.  Just a few months ago, at the Rio + 20 confab, NASDAQ  and several other stock exchanges promised, along with the UN Global Compact, to “promote long-term, sustainable investment in their markets.”

But what does that mean when an index includes Chevron, America’s second-biggest oil company? [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Investing, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Commerce and conservation in Africa

September 25, 2012

A conservation lodge in Namibia

Much of Africa, you may be surprised to learn, is growing faster than the US. The economies of Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, Rwanda and Tanzania all grew by at least 4% last year. (US GDP growth was 1.7 percent.) But while modernization is lifting millions of Africans out of poverty, unchecked growth — of farms, ranches, mining and infrastructure — threatens Africa’s unsurpassed wildlife and wild places.

Can commerce and conservation coexist in Africa? A nonprofit called the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has set out to prove that they can do better than co-exist: It is going into business for itself to demonstrate that thriving commercial enterprises, if run right, can help protect wildlife and their habitat.

Last year–its 50th anniversary year–the foundation created an  investment company called African Wildlife Capital to raise money from investors in the US to support conservation-friendly businesses in Africa. African Wildlife Capital has raised about $3 million, all of it through its own board, and so far it has invested in three projects–an avocado farm in Tanzania, a livestock operation in Kenya and a tourism lodge in Namibia. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Investing, NGOs, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , ,

Stephen Viederman: Foundations don’t practice what they preach

May 7, 2011

Today’s guest post comes from Stephen Viederman, the former president of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and an expert on sustainable investing. Steve, who has worked in the foundation world for more than 25 years, defines sustainable investing is “future-oriented, risk-adjusted and opportunity-directed.”  This is also called socially-responsible or green investing.

Here’s the problem: Even foundations that aim to promote sustainability or social justice with their grants don’t see their investments as another tool to achieve that end. They don’t, in other words, put their money where their mouth is, or where their values are. Steve, by the way, is also the father of Dan Viederman, executive director of Verite, a human-rights nonprofit; evidently, working for the public good runs in the family. This essay was originally published by Inflection Point Capital Management, a new sustainability-driven asset management boutique led by the estimable Matthew Kiernan with offices in Toronto, London, New York and Melbourne.

Philanthropic foundations are like old-fashioned slot machines. They have one arm and are known for their occasional payout.

Although the term “mission-related investing” found its way into the lexicon of philanthropy decades ago, the finance committees of most foundations continue to manage their endowments like investment bankers. Their portfolios give no hint that they are institutions whose purpose is the public benefit. There is a chasm between mission – grantmaking – and investment. The logic of a synergy between the two has yet to take hold. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economics, Investing, NGOs, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

B the change you want to see

May 3, 2011

Is shareholder capitalism broken?

Few would argue that it’s working well. Business as usual has us on a path to climate catastrophe. The housing/banking industry collapse threw the world into recession. We’ve seen Fukushima, the BP oil spill, the Massey coal mine deaths. Growing income inequality has become a persistent worry.

The conventional response to all that – indeed, the one that I share – is that smarter (though not more) regulation is needed. But a growing number of business people say the problems go deeper. They say a new kind of corporate legal structure is needed to require companies to operate for the  good of society, not just for their shareholders. These new corporations—they’re called B Corporations—are growing in number, and their structure has been enshrined into law in four states—Vermont, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia.

Here’s what B Lab, the nonprofit behind B Corp, says on its website:

Our vision is simple yet ambitious: to create a new sector of the economy which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. This sector will be comprised of a new type of corporation – the B Corporation – that meets rigorous and independent standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

And in its annual report:

After the latest round of economic and environmental crises, it’s clear we need systemic solutions to the systemic problem that places the interests of shareholders over the interests of workers, community and the environment.

Interesting, no? A couple of months ago, I heard Jay Coen Gilbert, a founder of B Lab along with Bart Houlahan and Andrew Kassoy,  talk about B Corp (it stands for Benefit Corp.) at a GreenBiz conference; afterwards, we caught up by phone to talk some more. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Business Ethics, Climate Change, Corporate Governance, CSR, Environment, Investing, NGOs, Social Entrepreneurs, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Investments in genocide, hidden from view

November 30, 2010

Here’s what Eric Cohen, the chairperson of Investors Against Genocide, told a congressional hearing today:

It has been over 12 years since the U.S. imposed sanctions on Sudan and noted serious human rights abuses, seven years since the Darfur genocide began, six years since Congress declared it a genocide, and five years since the movement for targeted divestment from Sudan began Yet most financial institutions are still investing in the worst companies funding the genocide, and, through the fund offerings of these investment firms, millions of Americans are caught in the web of these problem investments, almost always unknowingly and without the possibility of choosing.

Tragically, he’s got a point. Better, he’s got a proposal–a requirement that mutual funds disclose whether they chose to be “genocide-free,” which is simpler than it sounds. Better yet, he had a receptive audience on Capitol Hill–Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York and Gary Miller of California, who are the chairman and ranking member of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services, as well as such interested legislators as Mike Capuano of Massachusetts, who has been active on Sudan issues. Congress could act to mandate fuller disclosure from the mutual fund industry next year.

Genocide in Darfur

Investors Against Genocide has been campaigning against money management firms that own stock in companies that do business in Sudan since 2006. (See Fidelity’s Sudan Problem at fortune.com and  Fidelity, Vanguard and the genocide in Darfur) The group has asked financial institutions to avoid investments in foreign firms that are known to substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, an approach it calls “genocide-free investing.” (U.S. companies can’t operate in Sudan) Socially responsible mutual fund families Calvert Investments and Domini Social Investments have also taken a leadership role, cleansing their portfolios of companies doing business in Sudan and asking others to do so. As Domini’s general counsel, Adam Kazner, told the submcommittee:

Investors are not simply passive actors in this system – they are playing a critical capital allocation role, and should be mindful of the implications of their investment decisions.

Congress has stepped up to the plate before. In 2007, it passed the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act (SADA), which prohibits the government from contracting with companies doing business in Sudan and supports state and local divestment efforts. Thirty-five U.S. states have enacted legislation or adopted policies affecting investments related to Sudan, primarily in response to the Darfur crisis and Sudan’s designation by the U.S. government as a state sponsor of terrorism.

So what’s the problem? Essentially this–a small group of foreign companies continue to operate in Sudan. According to Cohen:

In Sudan, the CNPC group (including PetroChina), the Sinopec group, Petronas and ONGC are internationally recognized as providing the government of Sudan with the funding needed to support the genocide in Darfur. The government of Sudan has used 70% of its oil revenue to provide arms and funding for the genocide. Some of these same problem companies are also active in Burma and Iran.

Some U.S.-based mutual funds then invest in those companies. Fidelity, Vanguard and Franklin Templeton have been singled out by Investors Against Genocide for holding shares in Chinese oil companies.

No one from the  fund industry testified before Congress. Fidelity has said that stopping the genocide is a matter for government officials, not mutual fund managers, while Vanguard has said it has a human rights policy, while continuing to invest in companies doing business in Sudan.

Shareholder proposals calling for divestment were defeated at Vanguard and Fidelity funds, but that’s no surprise since most mutual funds investors automatically vote their proxies with managements. It’s safe to say that most investors would rather not see even a tiny fraction of their money supporting genocide in Sudan, or winding its way to Iran or Burma, with their terrible human rights records.

Investors Against Genocide has scored a couple of big victories. TIAA-CREF, to its great credit, first lobbied the Chinese oil firms to get out of Sudan and then sold its holdings. (Here’s the fund’s announcement.) The American Funds group also sold its stock in PetroChina, but did so without explanation.  Cohen told me: “I congratulate them even though they won’t say anything publicly.”

Some investors have taken note. Last May, the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Board of Trustees announced that it would end a 10 year relationship with Fidelity and move their $178 million retirement accounts to TIAA-CREF in order to be genocide-free.

You can read all the testimony, as well as a GAO report on the issue, here. Cohen’s testimony provides specifics on how genocide-free disclosure would work. Mutual funds would be required to disclose if they have a policy prohibiting investments in countries that have been subject to U.S. government sanctions for human rights violations. Right now, they report on their holdings only once a quarter, and their human rights policies, if any, can be hard to find.

Says Cohen: “Right now you need a doctorate in research to have a clue about who’s on what side.”

This seems like a classic example of investors’ right to know. Transparency would shed some light on the values of the investment firm, and we can hope that markets would do the rest.

Filed Under: Human rights, Investing, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Can sustainable investing beat the markets?

October 20, 2010

This week, Newsweek released its second annual  Green Rankings of the largest companies in America, as well as a new analysis of big global corporations. These sorts of cross-industry comparisons of companies are difficult to do, but my sense is that Newsweek has done a credible job, with the help of partners MSCI ESG Research, Trucost and CorporateRegister.com. Given the attention that the list is getting,  it seems like a good time to return to a question I’ve thought about for years: Do companies committed to sustainability represent good investment opportunities?

The stock-market performance of Dell, which tops the 2010 list, is not encouraging: The firm’s shares have fallen by 55% during the last five years, while the NASDAQ is up by 18% during the same time period. Of course, one company’s performance over one time period doesn’t prove a thing. It turns out that over the past year, the top 100 companies on the 2009 Newsweek list outperformed the S&P500 by 6.8%.  While this data point doesn’t prove anything either, it’s interesting. So I arranged an email interview with Cary Krosinsky of Trucost to explore the issue further.

Cary Krosinsky

Cary is head of investor and corporate services for North America for Trucost, which is based in the UK. He’s also the author and co-editor, with Nick Robins of HSBC, of Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long Term Performance (Earthscan Publications, 2008), and he has taught classes on investing and sustainability at Columbia.

Marc: Cary, let’s start by defining “sustainable investing.” Is it different from socially responsible investing?

Cary: Socially responsible investing, or SRI, is too broad an investment category.  SRI encompasses very different things—alternative energy investing on the one hand, funds with a religious mandate on the other, as well as funds investing in a mainstream index such as the S&P 500, and subtracting out alcohol, tobacco and firearms.  We see many different styles of SRI.

Sustainable Investing is the more positive strand of SRI – one that is future-oriented, risk-adjusted and opportunity-directed. It looks at what companies can do to lessen risk, as well as capitalize on opportunities, in order to be ahead of the curve in their respective industries. It helps create long-term value, identifies “predictable surprises,” (as opposed to “black swans,”) such as climate change, diminishing water availability, human rights issues and others that influence investment outcomes.  Innovation emerges as a key driver of value through sustainability, as does the active management of environmental impacts.

Marc: It sounds like sustainable investing means identifying the smartest, most forward-thinking companies. In your book, you write that “sustainable investing funds have already outperformed consistently over the short, medium and long term.” How can you support that claim?

Cary: We found that for the 1, 3 and 5 years leading up to the end of 2007, when looking at SRI funds with this positive, opportunity-focused sustainable investing methodology, that they consistently outperformed their mainstream index equivalents.  When updating this study for a UN Principles of Responsible Investment academic paper in 2009, this still held true, both before, through and after the recent financial crisis of 2008 into 2009.

Further correlation of this has been demonstrated by diverse investors including Paul Hawken, who helps manage the Highwater Global Fund as well as Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs.  Mark Fulton of Deutsche Bank spoke earlier this year regarding how the climate change sectors they are tracking have been outperforming their benchmarks since the recent market bottom. Matthew Kiernan, formerly of Innovest, now runs money and is also demonstrating outperformance from this more positive approach. The top 100 performers in the Newsweek Green Rankings which we actively participate in at Trucost, have outperformed the S&P 500, on an equally weighted basis, by 6.8% over the last year. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Economics, Investing, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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