Bard College
PA-10: Sustainable Investment

We use a broad range of selection criteria to determine investments, so funds and companies chosen strictly on the criteria above are very few. All of the investments are subject to the scrutiny of the SRIC and it should be noted that the criteria as outlined only reward investments within sustainability, as opposed to using investments to foster greater sustainability.

N.A. Although all holdings are publicly available.

N.A. Drop down message should refer to the previous question.

Proxy votes guidelines are made by the student members of our SRIC. Students received trustee approval to vote the proxy rights on any of the holdings on the endowment and to make investments themselves.

SRIC has held blind votes in the campus center, where we hand out ballots with descriptions of companies without their titles, and students have chosen where they would like change to occur.

How SRIC is unique to Bard: Clubs similar to SRIC, such as UPenn’s Social Responsibility Advisory Committee, exist at other institutions, but they are only advisory committees and have little to no rights to make investments like students at Bard do. They are only allowed to make recommendations to the managers of funds at their institutions.

Students in similar committees at other institutions, such as Divest Harvard, generally call for the divestment of funds from companies or industries they believe to be immoral, and to reinvest in a socially responsible company.

At Bard we specifically choose to invest in companies we feel need improvement to be more socially responsible in order to make positive changes from within.

Establishment: SRIC was founded in 2007 by an empowered group students who wanted to see where the college’s investments were going. These students received trustee approval to vote the proxy rights on any of the holdings on the endowment and to make investments themselves. They also established Bard’s Social Choice Fund, which is a fund that invests in companies that demonstrate direct and measurable environmental and social impacts and screens out any “sin” stocks.

Past Initiatives: SRIC​ ​at​ ​Bard​ ​introduced a resolution for McDonald’s that asked the company to stop its use of harmful pesticides on its potatoes. McDonald’s now monitors all of its potato pesticide use, which is over 25 percent​ ​of​ ​​potatoes​ ​in​ ​North​ ​America, alongside phasing out the most harmful pesticides and meeting with Bard SRIC on an annual basis.

Through the Bard College Socially Responsible Investment Committee (a group of 4 elected student representatives and 4 faculty and staff members), Bard actively screens its investments and engages companies over issues of concern. This shareholder engagement has taken the form of letter writing, proxy voting, and resolution filing. Bard has engaged companies over issues such as, but not limited to: oil sands drilling; operation in Darfur; and pesticide practices, monitoring and reduction. Most notably, the College lead-filed a shareholder resolution over cotton engagement in Uzbekistan . This dialogue remains ongoing, as do the active screening and engagement of holdings within the endowment. Bard also offers a Social Choice Fund that negatively screens its holdings for donors wishing to contribute to the endowment through predefined social screens.

Bard also offers a Social Choice Fund that negatively screens its holdings for donors wishing to contribute to the endowment through predefined social screens.

We have worked with the Investor Environmental Health Network and the Responsible Endowment Coalition. Socially Responsible peer to peer, that works with other colleges.

Updated URL SRIC

Para on Cotton Engagement

SRIC Voting Proxy public plan