Launched last week, the Briefing Paper: Warren Wilson College, Impacting How Companies Do Business , details how, through partnerships with IEN and As You Sow, Warren Wilson College (WWC) has influenced companies’ actions through proxy voting and shareholder resolutions.

During the 2021-2022 engagement season, WWC signed 32 letters of authorization allowing As You Sow to enter into dialogue and submit shareholder resolutions to companies WWC invested in. Of those 32 signed letters of authorization to engage, dialogue with over 80% of companies led to impactful agreements that addressed the resolution request sufficiently.

WWC has also influenced the actions of companies through proxy voting. From March 2021 through January 2022, 13,000 proxy ballot line items were voted on WWC’s behalf at approximately 1,200 companies, including 420 shareholder proposed ballot items.

Colleges and universities across the country can learn valuable insights from the process WWC has developed and followed to engage with the companies in their endowment investment portfolio through proxy voting and shareholder resolutions.

Read the full briefing paper to learn more (pdf).

The Nest Summit, a part of Climate Week NYC, will take place on September 21-22, 2022 and gather the leading organizations in the climate solutions movement.

IEN’s Roundtable on September 22rd from 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM ET will be a dynamic, interactive set of conversations on mission-aligned investing, ESG options in retirement plans, Net Zero Portfolios, JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) in the investment process and more.

Please note that attendees will also need to register for the Nest Summit, which can be done for free below:

We're pleased to welcome the following members to the network:

• Third Culture Capital
• Fiducient Advisors
• VegTech™ Invest Management Advisory
• CornerStone Partners
• ReThink Education
• First Peoples Worldwide
• Tobacco Free Portfolios
• Regenerative Food Systems Investment

To learn more about the benefits of membership, click here.

IEN is thrilled to welcome our Sustainable Investing Program Manager, Climate Justice & Events, Aicha Ly! Aicha is a recent Eastern Connecticut State University graduate, where she majored in political science and government. Aicha brings her extensive event programming experience to the Network, and will also support our Net Zero Endowments Initiative.

We also named two new senior fellows, Dorien Nuñez and Garrett Ashley. Dorien (left) is the Co-Founder and Director of Research, The OMNIResearch Group, and Co-Founder of the ‘OMNI Wall Street Advantage’. Garrett (right) is the Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the California State University System. We’re looking forward to contributions both will bring to the network by way of their unique experiences and perspectives.

Additionally, we extend a warm thank you to our summer sustainable investing intern, Lisa Su. Lisa is studying at Boston College in the class of 2025 and is from the greater Chicagoland area. She’s currently pursuing a degree in finance and business analytics with a minor in philosophy. Thank you for your contributions to the team, Lisa!

IEN Members can access the following recent webinars through our member-only archive:

• IEN Learning Cafe with MSCI | August 22, 2022, 12 PM ET
• IEN Learning Cafe with Southern Reconstruction Fund | August 8, 2022, 12 PM ET
• Decarbonizing our Maritime Industry and the Global Supply Chain | July 26, 2022
• The Power of Intersectionality in the Endowment and the Urgency of JEDI & Racial Equity Investing | July 13, 2022
• Overcoming Unconscious (and conscious) Bias in the Asset Management Industry: A Juneteenth Season Discussion | June 30, 2022
• Investing for Impact in the Food System: Philanthropic, Private & Public Markets Strategies | April 29, 2022

Please join us for our upcoming IEN events:

• Intentional Endowments Network Roundtable at the Nest Summit | September 22, 2022
• Workshop: Unconscious Bias in Hiring and Belonging | October 6, 2022
• 2023 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit | February 5-7, 2022

Other Events

• AASHE Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education | AASHE, Oct. 26 & Nov. 3 - Virtual
• Dickinson College Science-Based Choices for Climate Action: Insights From the IPCC 6TH Assessment Report | October 24 – 26, 2022
• Annual HRLF Panel on Diversity + Equity + Inclusion + Belonging | HR Leadership Forum

We’re thrilled to share that this spring we announced the winners of our 2022 Student Corporate Engagement Challenge! Student teams from Bard College and Virginia Wesleyan University are our graduate and undergraduate winners, respectively.

And now is the time to indicate your interest in participating in the 2023 Student Corporate Engagement Challenge! Participating students will receive a variety of benefits, including access to mentorship and networking opportunities, free and discounted registration to educational workshops and industry events, presentation opportunities, and multimedia interview opportunities.

We are also looking for sustainable finance professionals to serve as mentors to students participating in this year's Challenge. Mentors will guide student teams as they develop their investment recommendations and shareholder engagement strategies. If you are a sustainable investing professional, we want you to volunteer to mentor a student team.

Indicate your interest to compete or mentor a student team here.

To connect on the Challenge or additional ways to be a part of our work supporting sustainable investing education through SIILK, reach out to Nicole at [email protected]

Supported by

As part of IEN’s Sustainable Retirements Initiative, we launched our Guide to Sustainable Retirements. This guide is designed to provide practical information relevant to plan sponsors, human resources and finance officers and personnel, advocates, employees, investment advisors, legal scholars, and others. It aims to address misconceptions related to the use of ESG funds in retirement plans. In addition, this guide contains modules on financial performance and fiduciary duty concerns, a how-to guide for plan sponsors evaluating the addition of ESG funds to retirement plans, and steps outlining how to advocate for ESG integration in retirement plans.

The Sustainable Retirements Initiative was also the focal point of a recent panel the Intentional Endowments Network had at GreenFin 2022, entitled “Aligning Retirement Funds With ESG Goals.” The panel, moderated by Georges Dyer and featuring Marina Severinovsky from Schroders, Eric Pitt from Ceres, and Danielle Fugere from As You Sow as speakers, explored how groups like IEN are working to encourage retirement plans to adopt options that will support the transition to a regenerative economy.

Read the full Guide here.

Sustainable Retirement News:

• Finding ourselves in the ESG avocado: Schroders
• Starting ground for a Just Transition: Schroders
• Why ESG funds are used haphazardly in 401(k): Investment News

Supported by

In July, we hosted a webinar with IEN Member EnTrust Global and with Purus Marine focusing on the role the maritime industry has in decarbonizing the global supply chain. Members can view the recording here, and you can watch a short highlight reel on our LinkedIn. In August, we hosted a “Learning Cafe” with MSCI, exploring the concepts and methodologies investors can use in tracking progress toward zero carbon emissions, such as Implied Temperature Rise and Carbon Value At Risk.

IEN’s Net Zero Steering Committee meets monthly to advance this initiative, and in recent meetings heard guest presentations from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), FFI Solutions, and Ninety One.

It was encouraging to see a number of net-zero commitments made in the past few months from asset managers like AllianceBernstein. In addition, a number of asset owners have announced their divestment from fossil fuels, including Rose Bruford College, The University of Northampton, and the Presbyterian Church USA, who divested from 5 fossil fuel companies.

The meaningful progress we’ve seen in this space in the recent months and years is encouraging, and we’ll look to push these commitments forward through our Climate Justice & Net Zero Portfolios panel at our Nest Summit roundtable.

Supported by

This summer has been a busy one for our JEDI Initiative! Thanks to the guidance of our new Director of JEDI, Paris Prince, we’ve had the opportunity to host a three-part series on unconscious bias. The first webinar in this series provided an overview of unconscious bias in the asset management industry against a backdrop of Juneteenth season discussions. The second focused on racial equity investing and the power of intersectionality in the endowment, while the third will be a workshop focused on unconscious bias in the hiring process and employee belonging.

We also enjoyed a learning cafe, the first of its kind for the Intentional Endowments Network, with the Southern Reconstruction Fund! Founder Dorian Burton and senior adviser Theresa Zawacki shared the work SRF is doing to lay the foundations for a restorative economy, especially in the South.

Supported by

IEN’s Investment Governance Initiative supports endowment fiduciaries in developing the tools needed to provide the leadership, stewardship, and governance to ensure their portfolios and institutions are positioned to have their investment practices reflect their mission while meeting the endowment’s risk and return objectives.

Members of the Investment Governance Initiative undertake and enable peer-to-peer connections among endowment trustees.

The group meets quarterly to hear case studies and expert presentations, network with peers and share best practices, covering a number of topical discussions from how to engage with endowment decision makers to implementing best practices in investment governance with asset managers and allocators and integrating justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion and climate solutions.

In July, we hosted a learning session on As You Vote, a new ESG aligned proxy voting service which was created to streamline the process of proxy voting along ESG guidelines for endowments. As You Sow shared an overview of the service and examples of the impact you can make by proxy voting, and Warren Wilson College and Arizona State University also shared their experience utilizing the service.

Additionally, be sure to check out our new Briefing Paper: Warren Wilson College, Impacting How Companies Do Business, which details how, through partnerships with IEN and As You Sow, Warren Wilson College has influenced companies’ actions

If you have interest in getting involved in our shareholder engagement work, reach out to [email protected]

Below are some recent resources from the Intentional Endowments Network and other organizations. To see more reports, articles, videos and other resources by topic, visit the resource page on our website.

From IEN’s Blog:

• [Member Only] How Can Private Impact Investments Help Address the Current and Looming Global Food Crisis

Endowment Sustainable Investing Reports:

• Warren Wilson College: Impacting How Companies Do Business
  
  
• Commitment to Sustainability: Investment Strategies at the University of Illinois System

Other Resources from the field:

• Net Zero Blueprint | FFI Solutions
• Climate Report 2021: The race to zero | Stewart Investors
• 2022 Climate Risk Scorecard | Ceres
• Investor Guidance for Prioritizing Gender | Boston Common Asset Management
• Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance Position Paper on Governmental Carbon Pricing | United Nations Environment – Finance Initiative
• Exchanges Carrying 3 Times More Carbon Reserves than Can Be Burned Under Paris | Carbon Tracker
• The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 | UN

Below is a sampling of recent news articles we've posted in our Weekly News Round-Up, ranging in topics from Sustainable, Impact and ESG Investing, Climate Risk, Science & Regulation, Sustainability in Higher Education, Divestment, Clean Energy, and more. To receive news updates directly in your inbox every Friday, manage your mailing preferences here.

IEN in the News:

• University of Illinois Finds Diversification, ESG Progress in Farmland | Fundfire, June 2022
  
  
• Most US Investors Still Have ESG-Performance Fears: Survey | Fundfire, July 2022

Read more coverage of the network here

Other News:

Read coverage of recent announcements by endowments and other asset owners about their progress:

• University of Northampton: The University of Northampton is the 95th UK university to divest of fossil fuels and has updated its responsible investment policy to exclude fossil fuel companies from its portfolio and to require investment managers to consider “protection of the global environment, its climate and its biodiversity.”
• Northwestern University: Northwestern University has unveiled climate change investment guidelines that will push the institution to divest from companies with poor practices related to “greenhouse gas emissions, energy production or climate change information and research.” The new guidelines will also push the university to compile the endowment’s footprint and work to reduce that footprint by engaging with external managers.
• Rockefeller Foundation: Following a pledge to divest its $6B endowment from fossil fuels in 2020, the Rockefeller Foundation will now make climate change central to its programmatic, operational, and investment strategies. The foundation will develop a strategy reflecting the new changes within the year, focusing on action between 2025 and 2030.
• As the concept of using ESG factors in the investment process has come under fire from partisan political attacks, there have been many strong responses in defense of using this data in investment decision making:
  • The backlash to climate-smart investing in the U.S. is based on a blatant lie by Mindy Lubber, Ceres
  • No Such Thing as “ESG Investing” by Erika Karp, Pathstone
  • In defence of ESG: A response to The Economist by Hugh Wheelan, Responsible Investor
  • Americans Want to See Greater Transparency on ESG Issues and View Federal Requirements as a Key Lever for Increasing Disclosure by Jennifer Tonti, Just Capital
  • Cutting Through the Nonsense Around ESG by Jon Hale, Morningstar