organization

As You Sow

description

As You Sow (AYS) uses shareholder advocacy “to engage corporations to make positive environmental, social, and governance changes by filing formal shareholder resolutions that are voted on by all shareholders at the annual meeting.” AYS often works in coalition with grassroots groups who are on the front lines of corporate abuse. This is an inside/outside strategy that combines the outrage of street protests with direct company engagement at the most senior levels. Engagement usually starts with a letter, followed by a meeting to see if the company will agree to make specific changes to policies and practices, which may escalate to filing a shareholder resolution. Shareholder votes at the annual meeting are non-binding, so even a majority vote does not mean the company must make a change; however, it looks very bad if the company ignores even 10% of their shareholders. AYS interprets changes to negative corporate policies and practices as “risk reduction”, which makes it easy for the company to agree. AYS also produces scorecards and reports to analyze a group of competitive companies within a sector, and then creates tensions between leaders and laggards and resorting to litigation when necessary.

In order to mobilize people to align their investing with their values, AYS has developed a free online investor transparency platform, “Invest Your Values”, which enables anyone who has a workplace 401k plan or owns a mutual fund to find out what companies are embedded in those funds. This includes companies involved in fossil fuel, coal-fired utilities, deforestation and arms production, as well as those with poor scores on gender equality and, soon, mass incarceration firms.  

AYS has also partnered with Friends of the Earth to create the Deforestation Free Funds platform. The tool enables people to find out if their savings are being invested in companies contributing to rainforest destruction and related human rights violations, including companies that produce, trade, consume, or finance palm oil, rubber, soy, cattle, wood products, and pulp & paper. The tool focuses on U.S. mutual funds and Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) with direct stock investments; many funds have “hidden deforestation-related investments that our tool cannot account for, in the form of bond holdings or other asset types.” FOE has issued a report based on the platform and developed a complementary How To Guide on how to advocate for one’s pension fund to become Deforestation Free. AYS has created similar platforms for Fossil Free Funds, Gender Equality Funds, Weapon Free Funds, Gun Free Funds, and Tobacco Free Funds.

AYS holds regular online trainings, presentations, and webinars to educate financial advisors, advocacy groups, and individuals on how to align their investing with their values. “We also teach grassroots groups and other groups how to use the power of capital to shift markets and bring about systemic change. We use market forces, strategically deployed to make it in the best interest of corporations to change their policies and practices to align with ESG values.”