SustaInvest Learning Center
- Investment Tools and Resources
- Articles/Reports on Sustainability-Driven Investment
- Examples of Sustainability-Driven Investment
- Ways to Get Involved
- Career Opportunities in Sustainable Business
- Sustainable Business Student Networks and Opportunities
- Miscellaneous Sustainable Business Websites
- Industry Leaders on Investing in Sustainability
Triple Bottom Line
The Triple Bottom Line is a business concept that focuses on maximizing the benefit of stakeholders, not simply shareholders. Comprised of People, Planet, and Profit, the Triple Bottom Line is quickly establishing itself as a dominant business strategy. Firms that embrace the 3BL philosophy are ideal candidates for the investments you make in the SustaInvest competition.
Investment Tools and Resources
Dow Jones Sustainability Index (www.sustainability-index.com) Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.
The Global 100 - The Global 100 is a list of publicly-traded companies based on research and analysis on 1,800 companies by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. The companies are deemed to have the best developed abilities, relative to their industry peers, to manage environmental, social and governance risks, and to take advantage of new business opportunities in this area.
Invested Interests' Free Mutual Fund Social-Screening Tool - The web's only free and comprehensive mutual fund screening tool that allows you to choose from 16 social screens (e.g. defense contracting, human rights and corporate governance) and all U.S. equity mutual funds. You can use this tool to combine screens and compare funds to find a “least offensive” alternative for your investment.
Social Funds (www.socialfunds.com) - The largest personal finance site dedicated to socially responsible investing, featuring over 10,000 pages of information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news.
Social Investment Forum (www.socialinvest.org) The Social Investment Forum is a national nonprofit membership organization promoting the concept, practice and growth of socially responsible investing.
Stocks With Scruples - A beginner's guide to socially responsible investing
Sustainable Business - A list of socially responsible, green, and sustainable company stocks in biomass/biofuels, clean tech indexes, efficiency, energy storage, financial, fuel cells, geothermal, natural foods and home, natural health and supplements, recycling/green chemicals/building-related, renewable energy project developers, solar, transportation, water, and wind.
Sustainable Investing -This list of stocks with sustainability-leading characteristics was gleaned from multiple sources including mutual funds, indexes, research companies and asset managers. Included are publicly traded companies of all sizes, in multiple countries, and in most industries.
Examples of Sustainability-Driven Investment
The Calvert Group - For 3 0 years, Calvert has offered a broad range of investment products and services, including the nation's largest family of socially responsible mutual funds
Domini Social Investments - Domini Social Investments is an in vestment firm specializing exclusively in socially responsible investing. They manage more than $1.8 billion in assets for individual and institutional investors who wish to integrate social and environmental criteria into their investment decisions.
Innovest Strategic Value Advisors - Innovest Strategic Value Advisors was founded in 1995 with the mission of integrating sustainability and finance by identifying non-traditional sources of risk and value potential for investors. Innovest's analysis is designed to assist its clients in constructing and managing portfolios that out-perform the market. Innovest does this by tracking company performance and strategic positioning on over 120 factors that are not captured or explained by the traditional, accounting-driven securities analysis.
KLD Research and Analytics, Inc. - KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. is an independent investment research firm providing management tools to professionals integrating environmental, social and governance factors into their investment decisions.
Ways to Get Involved
Career Opportunities in Sustainable Business
Several websites featuring sustainable business jobs, environmental jobs, and socially responsible employers:
BSR- Since 1992, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has helped companies of all sizes and sectors to achieve success in ways that demonstrate respect for ethical values, people, communities and the environment. A leading global resource for the business community and thought leaders around the world, BSR equips its member companies with the expertise to design and implement successful, socially responsible business policies, practices and processes. As a non-profit business association, BSR is uniquely positioned to promote cross-sector collaboration in ways that contribute to the advancement of corporate social responsibility and business success. Listings of jobs in Corporate Social Responsibility.
Corporate Citizenship Briefing - Corporate Citizenship Briefing is published by The Corporate Citizenship Company , a specialist research consultancy helping companies succeed as good citizens worldwide. Jobs in corporate social responsibility (CSR), community affairs, sustainability, and socially responsible investment (SRI).
Ethical Corporation - Ethical Corporation is an independent publisher and conference organizer, launched in 2001 to encourage debate and discussion on responsible business. Here you'll find an up-to-date listing of corporate responsibility jobs from all over the world.
environmentjob.co.uk - With hundreds of advertisers and over 26,500 subscribers, environmentjob.co.uk is the UK's No.1 website for jobs , courses and events in the environmental sector.
Ethical Performance - This site is for anyone looking for new career opportunities in the fields of corporate social responsibility and socially responsible investment. It lists organizations with vacancies to fill worldwide and explains what skills and experience they are looking for. Click on the ‘vacancies' button to the left to view current vacancies. There is no charge for looking at the vacancies offered.
Green Dream Jobs – A section of www.sustainablebusiness.com featuring environmental jobs, business jobs, and socially responsible employers.
GreenBiz - GreenBiz is the leading information resource on how to align environmental responsibility with business success. We provide valuable news and resources to large and small businesses through a combination of web sites, workshops, daily news, feeds, electronic newsletters, and briefing papers. Our resources are free to all users.
OneWorld - OneWorld brings the latest jobs and volunteer positions from organizations working to create a better world.
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Sustainable Business Student Networks and Opportunities
Net Impact - Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a positive impact on society by growing and strengthening a community of new leaders who use business to improve the world. We offer a portfolio of programs to educate, equip, and inspire more than 10,000 members to make a tangible difference in their universities, organizations, and communities. Spanning six continents, Net Impact's membership makes up one of the most influential networks of MBAs, graduate students, and professionals in existence today. Net Impact members are current and emerging leaders in CSR, social entrepreneurship, nonprofit management, international development, and environmental sustainability who are actively improving the world.
oikos International - oikos is an international student organization that seeks to strengthen sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship among tomorrow's leaders and decision makers by sensitizing students of business and economics to sustainable development issues. oikos activities comprise the organization of lectures, conferences, simulation games and workshops as well as practice-oriented sustainability projects.
StartingBloc - StartingBloc educates, empowers and connects emerging leaders to drive positive social change across sectors. Through its renowned Institute for Social Innovation, CareerAccelerator, continuing education programs and networking opportunities, StartingBloc brings the latest innovations in corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship to these emerging leaders. StartingBloc empowers its network to drive
social change in communities and organizations around the globe.
Miscellaneous Sustainable Business Websites
BSR - Since 1992, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has helped companies of all sizes and sectors to achieve success in ways that demonstrate respect for ethical values, people, communities and the environment. A leading global resource for the business community and thought leaders around the world, BSR equips its member companies with the expertise to design and implement successful, socially responsible business policies, practices and processes. As a non-profit business association, BSR is uniquely positioned to promote cross-sector collaboration in ways that contribute to the advancement of corporate social responsibility and business success.
Corporate Citizenship Briefing - Corporate Citizenship Briefing is published by The Corporate Citizenship Company, a specialist research consultancy helping companies succeed as good citizens worldwide.
Ethical Corporation - Ethical Corporation is an independent publisher and conference organizer, launched in 2001 to encourage debate and discussion on responsible business.
GreenBiz - GreenBiz is the leading information resource on how to align environmental responsibility with business success. We provide valuable news and resources to large and small businesses through a combination of web sites, workshops, daily news, feeds, electronic newsletters, and briefing papers. Our resources are free to all users.
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Industry Leaders on Investing in Sustainability
The Emerging Relationship Between Environmental
Performance and Shareholder Wealth (Assabet Group 2000)“Examination of a variety of ‘green' and ‘non-green' portfolios suggests that companies with outstanding environmental performance generally out-perform financially.... Additionally, a review of nine investment funds yields a similar conclusion. Of four funds that have operated for more than a year, three have significantly beaten their relative benchmarks over three and five year periods.”
Environmental Performance and Shareholder Value (Blumberg et al. 1997)“The financial community can improve the quality of its decision-making by integrating companies' environmental performances into its analyses. Environmental issues can drive financial performance through traditional elements of financial evaluation such as robust and forward looking strategies, operational fitness of the company, product quality and markets, and company reputation. They manifest themselves through the elements of eco-efficiency, the recognition and management of risks, the quality of business management and the identification of new business opportunities. The quality of a company's environmental management provides the outside world with a good indicator of the overall quality of its business management.”
Creating Business Value Through Corporate Sustainability:
Sustainability Strategies and Reporting for the Gold Industry (Cotrell and Ranking 2000)“There is now significant evidence demonstrating that environmental and social performance are a good proxy for overall management quality, operational efficiency and innovation. In developing the Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index, it was recognized that companies addressing sustainability ‘have superior performances and favourable risk/return profiles because sustainability is a catalyst for enlightened and disciplined management, a crucial success factor'.”
Environmental Performance—Measuring and Managing What Matters
(Desjardins and Willis 2001)“There is growing evidence that companies have abundant opportunities to create shareholder value through their environmental performance.”
Ethical Investment: Morality Pays (Economist 2000)“In the long run, there need not be a trade-off between profits and ethics.”
Stern Stewart's EVA: Economic Value Added (Ehrbar 1998)“Companies that stressed a strong commitment to ethics had an average MVA (Market Value Added—a measure of shareholder wealth creation) of $16.8 billion, versus an average MVA of $11.1 billion for those with some commitment and $5.7 billion for those with no mention of ethics [in Annual Reports]. Value-creating companies recognize the importance of ethical behavior.”
Does Improving a Firm's Environmental Management System
and Environmental Performance Result in a Higher Stock Price? (Feldman et al. 1997)“Our results show that firms will increase shareholder value if they make environmental investments that go beyond strict regulatory compliance. Findings suggest that investments in environmental management and improved performance can be justified, in many cases, on purely financial grounds.”
For Better or Worse: Can Corporate Commitment
to Sustainability Survive a Marriage? (Griss 2000)“Evidence is mounting that companies with good performance on environment and sustainability issues tend to also do well in other areas.”
Realizing the Sustainable Development Premium (Hedstrom et al. 2000a)“SD [sustainable development] is not about enhancing the return from existing best practices in management, but about driving companies toward radical new sources of value creation.... Corporations committed to SD put the development of natural and social capital and equitable wealth creation at the centre of the way they do business. Active engagement with the external world provides the intelligence required to make decisions that balance these three imperatives in ways that generate sustained financial value.”
Sustainable Development: The Next Generation of Business Opportunity
(Hedstrom et al. 2000b)“According to a recent Arthur D. Little survey of executives in 481 companies in Europe and North America , 83 percent of respondents see potential business value in implementing SD initiatives. Companies are finding that the benefits of pursuing a sustainable development approach range from opening new avenues to innovation in products, processes and stakeholder relationships to accelerating learning organization skills throughout a company.”
Green Investment: Ecological Wake-Up Call
for Fund Managers (Houlder 1999)“Mainstream companies with good environmental records have tended to perform well. Studies, mostly from the US , have found a significant correlation between the environmental credentials of companies and share price performance.”
Wake-Up Call for Fiduciaries: Eco-Efficiency Drives Shareholder Value
(Kiernan and Martin 1998)“Eco-efficiency can be defined as the capacity to create greater shareholder value with levels of resource inputs and environmental risk less than one's corporate competitors.”
Social Funds A Novelty No More (Prial 1999)“Vanguard Group and TIAA-CREF both plan to open socially responsible funds. When names like this decide to join a trend, it's no longer a trend—it's the main- stream.”
Green Shareholder Value, Hype or Hit? (Reed 1998)“While the end game is not in sight, the trends are clear enough that corporate managers would be foolhardy not to take action now, positioning to take advantage of greater attention to their environmental performance by shareholders.”
Pure Profit: The Financial Implications of
Environmental Performance (Repetto and Austin 2000)“In many industries, environmental issues have implications that can significantly affect companies' financial results.... Assessing prospective environmental issues in detail may reveal sources of previously unrecognized financial value or risk.”
Uncovering Value: Integrating Environmental
and Financial Performance (Riggs 1998)“Like leading edge companies, analysts and investors who seek and use information about the business results of environmental linkages will have an advantage over their peers. Although the context may be new, the questions deal with familiar subjects: quality of management, risk exposure, brand image and reputation, overall operating efficiency, growth and market access.”
Environmental Shareholder Value (Schaltegger and Figge 1997)“The study demonstrates that environmental protection measures which enhance enterprise value...increase sales, raise margins, protect the flow of finance and increase the company's value over the long term.”
Investor Attitudes Toward the Value of Corporate
Environmentalism: New Survey Findings (Soyka and Feldman 1998)“Our findings suggest that money managers believe that investments in EH&S improvements can create incremental value, and that if this value is convincingly demonstrated, they are willing to pay a premium for the equity issued by the company.”
Shades of Pink and Green: Financial Markets Have Yet
to Get Serious About the Environment (Spencer-Cooke 1999)“An analysis of the history of 300 companies in the Fortune 500 suggests that environmentally minded companies outperform competitors by around 2-3 percent.”
Ethics, Environment and Enterprise (Strong 1998)“Individuals have come to recognize that significant amounts of capital can be earned by investing in environmentally and ethically friendly companies.”
Buried Treasure (SustainAbility 2000)“The jury is in—overall, corporate SD performance has a positive impact on business success.... A strategic focus on SD performance is aligned with mainstream business purpose.... Brand value and reputation is the measure that appears to be most positively linked to corporate SD performance.... It is clear that business case analysis should not focus exclusively on financial measures.... Positive links between SD performance and verifiable financial results are supported by business case research—this means that the business case can be developed without having to exclusively rely on indirect or intangible measures of business success.”
Quotes taken from: http://www.conferenceboard.ca/GCSR/research/sustainable_development.pdf
