Membership – Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investing

Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi Rejoin SGI

June 24, 2021August 16, 2021Chris Cox

SGI is in the midst of welcoming new members. We will features some brief profiles of them so that the broader membership has an opportunity to welcome them. Our first new member is really a member who rejoins us. The Sisters of Sr. Francis of Assisi have been members of SGI through many years. The membership lapsed a few years back, and, now, we are delighted to renew our collaboration!

Jill & Steven Haberman, the community’s Justice and Peace Animators, share the following:

The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi is a community of women religious with a 172-year history of acting on Franciscan Christian values in the world. Trusting in God’s providence, the sisters strive to live the Gospel by nurturing a deep sense of the worth of every person and of all creation. They have a longstanding commitment to social justice action and socially responsible investing. Their relationship with SGI has its roots in Irene Senn’s work with Fr. Mike Crosby. We are delighted to rejoin this collaboration!
As the current Justice and Peace Animators, we are the SGI member contacts for our congregation. We are new to the role, having spent years as middle and high school Catholic educators, including mission teaching on the Texas/Mexico border and in Appalachian Kentucky. Steven also worked for three years against the death penalty in Texas. Social justice is always close to our hearts.
Areas of action we would like to focus include anti-racism, human trafficking, care of creation, and immigration. Thank you for making us feel so welcome; we look forward to working with this dynamic group.

We offer a hearty welcome to the Sisters of St. Francis as we continue our collaboration in building a more just and sustainable world!

Investor Engagement by a Novice

February 25, 2021June 11, 2021Chris Cox

By Judy Sinnwell, OSF Dubuque

A year after retiring to Mount St. Francis in July 2015, the president of our congregation asked if I would facilitate the formation of what came to be the Sisters of St. Francis-Dubuque SRI Working Group. My previous ministry experience was elementary education-administration, adult formation, licensed health practitioner and after-school tutoring in the rural south. Saying ‘yes’ acknowledged that the topic would be interesting and that the ‘working’ part of the label would have me personally engaged in a significantly new arena addressing life’s meaning and purpose.

And so it has! Especially in recent years, as active ownership has effectively increased its voice and influence in the investment arena. Belonging to a faith- and values-based investor coalition, Seventh Generation Interfaith based in Milwaukee, provided education, professional resources, and mentoring in this important work, which for the Dubuque Franciscans, is a way of keeping our congregational mission alive.

One thing I became aware of in those first years was the annual general meeting, the AGM, which a company has for shareholders to weigh in on important company matters. Being a co-owner enabled me to file a shareholder resolution, challenging the company to make improvements in its governance, environmental and social practices. It seemed to be the right thing to do when we had the chance; but at times, it felt a bit intimidating. Recently, that was my experience as a co-filer on a resolution presented at the Tyson Food Inc. annual meeting.

The resolution asked for human rights due diligence in Tyson’s meat packing sites across the country. Iowa has several Tyson sites; one is in Waterloo, where Rath Packing Co. once had a positive reputation and provided a level of economic mobility for Blacks who migrated from the South until it was shut down in 1985. Learning about workers’ conditions during the COVID pandemic in Tyson’s Waterloo plant, where our congregation provided staff at two elementary and a central high school, became a concern and made this an obvious focus of our shareholder action.

When the resolution was made public and the AGM date was nearing, Investor Advocacy for Social Justice (a sister coalition to SGI) began to build awareness among the press and all shareholders who would have a proxy vote on the proposal during the meeting. Reporters from the Des Moines Register and Reuters contacted me for comment, specifically interested in the fact that ‘nuns’ were engaged with a national company; and the Iowa connection because of the negative news that had been previously reported about the Iowa Tyson site and COVID. Their news coverage educated readers about the broad impact of shareholder action. Each request also made me very aware that this experience was not something I anticipated when I agreed to facilitate a group investment effort five years previous!

Was it worth it? Definitely! Yes! Taking the chance to be the voice for marginalized sisters and brothers had to be done. It’s who we are as Dubuque Franciscans. And it stretched me. The support of faith-based and value-based organizations like SGI and IASJ made this possible as an investor. It’s what the world needs right now as one way to reclaim the commitment to the common good and the dignity of the individual person in the economic arena.

SGI Board Elects Officers for 2021

December 15, 2020March 24, 2021Chris Cox

SGI is pleased to announce the election of board officers for the year 2021. These include:

President: Cindy Bohlen, Riverwater Partners
Treasurer: Peg Groth, Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother International Finance, Inc.
Secretary: Ann Roberts, Dana Investment Advisors

Both Peg and Ann are continuing in their positions as officers. Cindy Bohlen, Chief Mindfulness Officer at Riverwater Partners, leads the firm’s sustainability practice and does primary research for the health care and technology sectors. Cindy has prior research experience at Robert W. Baird and M&I Investment Management. She added a sustainability lens to her investment process while working for another private firm and for a local foundation. Cindy earned a B.B.A. in Finance and a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In addition, she is a CFA® charterholder. Cindy joined SGI’s board this year.

The outgoing board president is Dan Tretow, Director of Financial Services in the International Office, School Sisters of St. Francis. Dan, who served as board president from 2018 through 2020 remains on the SGI board and will participate in the development committee.

Frank Sherman, executive director of SGI, said, “I congratulate Cindy on her election as president of the SGI Board of Directors. Her commitment to ESG issues and her professional experience are great assets to SGI. We value her leadership at SGI and know that she will help guide us in our work for people and planet.”

The entire team at SGI thanks Dan for his service as president. Under his leadership, we have grown in members, hired staff, expanded our corporate engagements, and commenced our annual conference. We are grateful for Dan’s generous service to our organization since the 1980s and to the School Sisters of St Francis, one of our founding members.

The SGI board is elected by SGI members in staggered three-year terms. Board members elected in the October 11th member meeting were: Caroline Boden (Mercy Investment Services), Ed Fitzpatrick (The Fitzpatrick Group, Wells Fargo), Ann Roberts (Dana Investment Advisors), and Sr. Carmen Schnyder (Sisters of the Precious Blood). The board officers are elected by the board, as per the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws. To learn more about SGI’s board, click here.

A hearty welcome to Riverwater Partners

January 22, 2019January 22, 2019Chris Cox

As you likely know, last year, SGI added 5 new members, and we are grateful for the efforts of our members, in particular Mark Peters (an SGI board member, chair of our development committee, and director of Justice, Peace and Reconciliation for the Priests of the Sacred Heart), to encourage more organizations to join SGI and to make us genuinely an interfaith organization. We’d like to introduce our newest member, Riverwater Partners, to the broader SGI family.

Our members may have learned a bit about Riverwater Partners from a recent article from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
Wisconsin’s B Corporations want to be a force for good, not just profit.

Additionally, they describe their work in the following way:

Riverwater Partners, an employee-owned registered investment advisor, believes it is in the best interest of our clients, our firm, our communities, and our world to consider the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies and practices of the firms in which we invest our clients’ assets, as we do at Riverwater Partners. Therefore, we evaluate potential investment candidates on the basis of their ESG efforts, alongside their more traditional investment characteristics of Superior Business, Exceptional Management, and Reasonable Valuation.
Riverwater Partners uses a Three Pillar Approach to evaluate the ESG efforts of companies being considered for inclusion in client portfolios:
Research
Riverwater Partners analysts and portfolio managers research the ESG efforts of companies, gathering information provided in sustainability reports, financial statements, corporate disclosures, and press releases. In addition, we inquire about ESG efforts when we speak with management directly.
Engagement
Riverwater Partners engages company Executives and Boards regarding their ESG efforts, or lack thereof, in order to assist them in understanding the benefits of, and in initiating and/or improving their ESG efforts. It is our goal to promote greater impact over time with respect to improved corporate governance, fair treatment of all stakeholders, enhanced environmental impact, and ultimately, superior financial outcomes and real economy benefits.
Collaboration
Riverwater Partners collaborates with organizations that promote ESG efforts to inform our practice. Riverwater is a member of US SIF, CDP Worldwide, Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment, and is a signatory of United Nations PRI. In addition, Riverwater is a Certified B Corp. Membership in these organizations provides us with thought leadership on best practices, current trends, impact, etc., which enables us to focus our ESG lens effectively.
Many believe one must sacrifice financial gain to achieve real economy gain; however, history has shown that companies that incorporate ESG policies and practices into running their business have generally outperformed companies that do not. The fact is that these practices often result in meaningful financial gain in the form of increased revenue (as customers want to support the efforts) and/or decreased expenses (as a result of lower energy consumption, for example) or potential liability. Our commitment to investing in companies that consider impact on all stakeholders will likely generate superior investment returns for our clients and will surely lead to a better world.

Again, we offer a hearty welcome to Riverwater Partners and look forward to their collaboration with us in the work of building a more just and sustainable world.