About our mission based investing

In line with our call to mission as expressed in the Constitutions of the Society of the Sacred Heart and premised on the belief that the gifts of the universe belong to all and on the imperative to care for and protect all of God’s creation, we offer our support for and the avoidance of the following standards of practice in three areas:

Environmental

• We support development of alternative energy sources that will protect the environment and human life and help conserve the resources of the earth.
• Consistent with our mission of protection of the environment and existing sustainability practices, we will not make or continue any direct investment in companies whose principal business is mining coal for use in energy production. Further, we will not support investment in the top 100 public oil and gas companies globally as ranked by the potential carbon emissions content of their reported reserves.
   

Social

• We support companies that have a strong record of labor rights, specifically those that provide living wages and adequate benefits; safe working conditions; and equal opportunity for all employees regardless of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality, disability or sexual orientation.
• We support companies that promote the empowerment of employees through training, development and participatory decision making.
• We support companies with established family friendly programs and policies as well as training and advancement programs specifically designed for the disadvantaged.
• We wish to affirm the sanctity of human life and its blessings. Therefore, we seek to avoid any direct investment in corporations whose activities include the manufacture or sale of conventional, nuclear or biological weapons.
• We seek to avoid companies that participate in abortion or derive more than 10 percent of their revenue from the manufacture of abortifacients.

 

Governance

• We favor companies that offer transparency and completeness with respect to financial reporting and disclosures.
• We support the policies of truth in advertising and product purity.
• We support those companies with active corporate donation programs.
• We encourage companies to have diverse and independent corporate boards.