Presbyterian Divestment

I have always believed in shareholder activism so when I had to go to a meeting, I was ready for a timely discussion. Certain issues were going to be raised that are dear to my heart. I was set to make a plea to the company to listen to us and make a move in the right direction. It was a big day for what I will call company XYZ. For the shareholders, it was all about expressing ethical and moral convictions. We relish an opportunity like this to speak our minds. Who doesn’t want to make the world a better place?

That morning as I dressed, I put on my automatic watch. It keeps me on time and aware. You never need to wind it or replace a battery. A simple movement of the wrist is all it takes. When you are in an important meeting, you just glance at it for the correct time. It has been a lifesaver for years. I seldom arrive late anymore and I know when a meeting should be concluded as scheduled.

I got rid of my battery watch when it failed to give me correct time on a critical day when I had to be in a certain place without fail. The battery was dying with no warning so that I didn’t know I needed one. Sure, it is simple to replace it, but I just didn’t have a clue. Soon an automatic watch appeared on my wrist. People tell me that I made a smart choice. I had hoped to get one as a gift, but since it never happened I took it upon myself to do the research and check prices. Do you know how many watches are on the Internet? Dozens upon dozens. They run no doubt in the thousands. Prices vary and you can get a deal if you are cognizant. This is not a search you want to rush because you may miss wonderful specials and discount opportunities.

Let your automatic watch run your life and it will be your loyal friend. I can’t live without it and am always afraid of taking it off and leaving it someplace like a café, the gym, or a friend’s backyard when I am swimming in his pool. I keep tabs on it to be sure. It is not that it is a matter of value in terms of money, but value in terms of use. I write this paean to automatic watches so you will know what to get yourself next as a reward for some good action. Get a little case in which you can store your treasure.

Meetings abound in my life and I have to be reliable and punctual. When others depend on you, it is important to come through. Whether you are chairing a meeting or are a regular attendee, people want to proceed on time. A watch can be the answer to tardiness, a trait with which no one wants to be associated.

Medicine has a huge alternative branch that goes beyond what we know of it today in the normal realm of doctor’s offices and hospitals and research labs. There is room certainly for everyone. In fact, I have found a new company to invest in that makes medical tuning forks, certainly not market cutting edge medical technology, but a reuse of an old, if not ancient, concept in a radically new form. I am interested because it has an ethical precept which is beyond important to me. Any devise that has curative properties and that does no harm falls within a range of advancements I would like to see. The world is all about innovations and progress and the medical field certainly gets its fair share of them. Some people think this far surpasses digital invention that dominates the high-tech realm today. With the latter it is all about products, sales, and business.

According to sources on the Internet, the simplest description of a tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs (known as tines) formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal (usually steel). Online descriptions mention that it resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it against a surface or with an object, and emits a pure musical tone after waiting a moment to allow some high overtones to die out. The pitch that a particular tuning fork generates depends on the length and mass of the two prongs. It is frequently used as a standard of pitch to tune musical instruments and it has done so for some time. So what does this have to do with medicine? A medical tuning fork looks very similar but it is the purpose that diverges. It is said to work with treatment for diabetic neuropathy and bone fractures.

A practitioner knowledgeable in the treatment of the disease or ailment has a particular approach to curing using a tuning fork. It sounds a bit mystical but has some basis in science. There are many types and sizes of them and thus they resonate at different pitches. It is called vibrational energy medicine. You may need a harmonic spectrum which is tuned to Pythagorean mathematics—the sacred geometric blueprint of all life, C and G tuners, D and A tuners, crystal and angel tuners, and sharps. There is a group called a sacred solfeggio as well. There are tuners for the different chakras of the body, for DNA repair, for the endocrine glands and spine, as well as for the brain. It all makes for a fascinating body of medical lore. Some are called universal tuning forks and will work on any organ.

The middle OM tuning fork is the frequency of the Cosmic Ohm, the sound from God that created the Cosmos. It is the synthesis of al sound since the beginning of creation and as such particularly resonates with the heart Chakra.

Vetting companies that produce these tuning forks is not easy, but it must be done to distinguish those with the right philosophies. A superior device will have better results as it will help direct the confidence of the practitioner.

The world is made up of a myriad of investors who own an immeasurable number of stocks and bonds. They often choose them for arbitrary reasons. They inherited a portfolio, they invest at work from a finite list of choices, they got a hot tip, or they threw a dart at the business section of the newspaper (ha!). Since not every investor is successful, perhaps a different selection method is warranted. I suggest using ethical and moral criteria. These days there are many options that qualify as companies want to capture this growing market. You can’t go wrong if you approach investing in this way since it makes you feel better.

As the options expand, I become more and more perplexed and have trouble making decisions. I try to read about companies and their mission statements looking for certain buzz words like ecological, green, the environment, etc. Recently I hit on a company that makes floating tubes for use on a river. I was impressed with the words of the CEO and his concern for protecting wilderness areas. He supported many clean up campaigns and tree planting projects. This was going to be an easy choice. The company had what it takes to appeal to my need to invest ethically. So I bought the stock. After a few months it went up. I didn’t expect such immediate results. I celebrated by taking an inflating floating tube to the nearest river. I spent a day contemplating my luck. I decided to buy more stock. I get inspiration from the oddest places and a river is not unusual for me.

I started to grow my nest egg as I now had a portfolio of special stocks and bonds that were selected for moral and ethical reasons. Brokers say always diversify and I have within this larger category. I have oil stocks and transportation stocks and entertainment stocks. I suppose that is diversification. The fields are different. If you buy just one stock, it doesn’t come close. If that industry tanks, you are going to have losses. If you have many industries and one declines, you always have the others to rise. It is basic sensible investing. So when I added the water recreation stock that included inflatable tubes, I already was diversified enough for this to be a safe choice. Observing the many tube riders on the river, I knew it was a popular commodity. I think it best to pick investments to which you can relate and enjoy following. This way you have a personal connection to your choices. There are worse reasons for buying stocks. Given the thousands out there, you need a criterion to narrow it down. If you have a hunch or get inspiration from somewhere, why not go with your gut instinct. Okay, the inflatable tubes aren’t a blue chip stock with a big dividend. They are a small cap stock that you can add to your portfolio for a little speculation. I would say a growth stock. That’s my opinion.

You get what you pay for is such a trite phrase, but oh, so true. How many times have we been disappointed with a purchase, citing poor quality and lack of functionality as reasons? This is why we should select only the most ethical companies that stand behind their products. Sadly, there are mighty few of them. How many times have you sent back an item and fail to get a refund? How many times have you complained to no avail? How many times has customer service put you down as a nuisance. We go through life buying our essentials on false premises. But how do you find a quality company. It is not enough for them to just say so. It helps if they have testimonials and letters of recommendation on their website if you can trust their authenticity. It is a hard search indeed to find ethics. If a company has a good reputation, their sales will swell and word will get around. Perhaps that is how you find them.

Such is the case when I needed to buy a good hot tub cover. My friends warned me that they tear and come apart. I know this to be true from experience. I bought a cheap one thinking how bad can it be. Wrong. It can be faulty to the core. Instead, I asked around for an ethical company that I could rely on. I have some family members who own hot tubs and they all are covered with tarp. I took a poll to get the highest rated company I could find. I make it a matter of principle to go with ethics every time. You save yourself a lot of grief. I did get lucky and found the perfect vendor. The prices were good and when the item arrived, I was not sorely disappointed as I had been in the past. The cover was perfect and also guaranteed. You know that means they stand behind their product for a full refund. This is not common. I was a very happy buyer. So much so that I decided to write one of those nice letters of recommendation you see on websites. After months of use, there was virtually no wear and tear on the hot tub cover. You can be as aggressive as you like in putting it on or taking it off, and there is no jeopardy to the construction.

Don’t we all wish that our purchases could be this successful. Don’t you wish that all product vendors had ethics ratings? It would make life a lot easier, not to mention your budget. You wouldn’t have to buy anything twice. Let’s make the phrase you get what you pay for meaningful in a positive manner. Let it apply to getting your money’s worth and not that you got stuck with an inferior product. As consumers, let’s wield our powers and make our issues known.

There is something so positive and powerful when people collectively stand up and say, “We can do better!” As a means for change, whether it be in the political realm, advocating for social changes, or in the corporate world, it does not get much more formidable than that. Sometimes it can be tough for a company to sit down and evaluate their business practices, especially when there is no incentive to do so. However, when they have to answer to determined shareholders, sometimes their hand is forced. Having to justify poor business decisions and unsafe practices to angry shareholders can cause companies to reevaluate the status quo and come up with ways that they can do better.

The green movement has been incredibly consumer-driven. People crave environmentally friendly products and want to decrease their carbon footprint. Seeing a money-making opportunity, profit-motivated companies have turned their eye toward fulfilling this request. This is excellent news for both the environment and for consumers. And that makes it great for a company’s bottom line. If you can find a company that is on this globally vital track, it is worth considering for your portfolio. Research the companies that are making big changes or have a global impact. You should be investigating a company’s environmental practices whenever you are considering adding something new to your portfolio. As shareholders, we can—and should—be demanding that the companies we invest in try harder to eliminate poor environmental impact strategies. Even something as simple as providing electronic copies of shareholder reports can have an impact, both environmentally (no wasted natural resources) and financially (no printing costs). That’s money that could go into investors’ pockets or into developing other green strategies.

Here is something that I’ve been looking into space heaters. There are all kinds of space heaters on the market today. Some run on things like propane, kerosene, or gasoline. Others are electric, which are safe to use indoors but not helpful if the power goes out. But there is another option: some companies are now making high quality oil filled heaters, some of which can run on things like vegetable oil or even cooking waste oil. Some restaurants and fast food places are making money by selling off their waste oil to be used for purposes just like this. Can you imagine? Something that was difficult or costly to dispose of before is now a profitable endeavor. You know that makes shareholders happy! There are space heaters out there right now that use cooking waste oil as a heat source.

There are all kinds of different ways to make a positive impact on the environment. I urge you to look into them. As a shareholder, you can use that leverage to help guide your investments in the right direction. Do the research, take an active role, and let your voice be heard!

Inventions are no longer these huge earth-shattering things like airplanes, the steam engine, the automobile, and the microscope. They are less flamboyant than the cotton gin, the columbine, air conditioning units, or self-cleaning toilets.  Innovation is more subtle now, entailing such intangible developments as Internet apps, social media, and small-scale electronic technology. If you were to invest in tomorrow today, where would your dollars go? How could you predict selling products on Facebook or replacing your computer with a phone?  The world has gone from concrete to conceptual and investors have to stay tuned to take part.

Many successful investors did get in early of course. Witness Bill Gates or Steve Jobs among many others. These people had a vision that seemed radical, even ridiculous at the time. These kinds of far-sighted individuals are few and far between, but they do exist. Joining their ranks takes a lot of creative thinking and boundary breaking. Sometimes we all need a gentle nudge to take note of what is going on around us if we want to participate in economic growth.

As an ethical being, you will want to choose wisely and find resources that match your particular interests and concerns. It can be done. Take medicine, for example. If this is a focus with value for you, you will want to know what inventions and changes are in the making, perhaps on a par with the once colossal appearance of Lasik, the use of shunts for coronary bypass procedures, or adapting artificial organs like heart valves.

Something small can become huge in an entirely new context. Take the menial ubiquitous stapler. It has gone from the office to the surgery room with an entirely new purpose. Anticipating such a measure would have meant thinking really outside the box. Now stapling during operations is commonplace (think of shrinking the stomach or sealing wounds) and has helped save lives. You can’t get more ethical than this!

What else is on the horizon? Investing in the quality of human life and anything that facilitates a better environment is going to take priority or so we hope. Curing disease is one thing and prolonging life is another. Pharmaceuticals are billion dollar propositions. From an ethical perspective, where do you draw the line on tampering with Mother Nature? Do we want to clone people like we do animals? Do we want to make genetic alterations to create a perfect race? Do we want a better way to do an abortion?

Investing will go where the profits lie: this is the way of modern life. But we can pick and choose our battles and support efforts that benefit mankind in a healthy and natural way. We need to eschew those companies that thrive only on the greed motive.  If more people make the decision to use ethics as the basis of their financial operations, it would be an ideal world indeed. Innovation is here to stay, no matter what. The goal is to guide it toward better ends to avoid squandering valuable funds and resources on peripheral things.

Far too many people believe that they’re more or less going to have to swallow a lot of their ethical convictions if they’re going to become investors. The stereotypes about wealthy people run deep in American culture. One of the most pervasive stereotypes is that wealthy people are all deeply conservative. Many people are interested in drawing a false dichotomy between impoverished activists and the wealthy individuals who are allegedly standing in their way. The reality that wealthy people can be the allies of activists from many different economic backgrounds is the sort of truth that the media often likes to deny.

A lot of companies rely on their shareholders. They need to have some financial backing, and the management wants to avoid risking any of their own assets. The shareholders provide them with the sorts of safety nets that they never would have otherwise, and the members of the management are willing to listen to their shareholders. Shareholders can accomplish a lot with their power.

People who are capable of investing in the first place can use their influence in order to invest responsibly. There are plenty of ethical businesses that are trying to get off the ground, but they are going to be competing with the larger, established businesses that may or may not be using ethical business practices. Ethical investors can help them accomplish that. In the process, they will manage to defeat businesses that have detrimental business practices. They will accomplish different goals at once, which is an efficient form of activism. Ethical investments can manage to change entire marketplaces in many different ways, which is why investors ought to use their power more often.

It is wise to live an ethical life, for yourself if not for others. As human beings, we have this obligation. Fundamentally, we are good people if we follow basic ethical tenants, wherever and whenever we live. This applies to the workspace as well as family life. We owe it to everyone, close friend or acquaintance, to offer our best.

While we know this in principle, if not practice, there is an area often overlooked. We can also invest with a conscience. Yes, ethics strongly apply when it comes to the investment world. It is all about clean living day to day and a clean approach to one’s financial future. The Clean Home leads to Clean Investments and The Clean Lifestyle.They go hand in hand.

How can you invest with ethics at the core of your decisions? If you have an advisor, they can help position your money with this in mind. You can also do research on the Internet to find vehicles known for their ethical position. For example, there are mutual funds that purposely exclude companies that pollute or that violate human rights by using sweatshop or child labor. They are labeled accordingly so you can recognize them. Look for words like sustainable or green in their description. Opt for those that invest in fossil or alternative fuels. Seek those that are socially responsible as part of their mission statement and purpose.

It has been noted that ethical mutual funds are smaller than the big guns we all know such as Fidelity, Vanguard, or Prudential. This doesn’t mean they are less lucrative. You can study their charts for past history and determine their ability to grow. You want a good balance between risk and reward all things considered.

Ariel Fund is one of the biggest socially responsible funds with holds over eight hundred million. Based in Chicago, the fund is known for distinct criteria that includes positive environmental impact. As such it excludes tobacco, weapons, nuclear energy, and more. Pimco Total Return is even larger at over two billion in managed funds. It is used for pension funds primarily but it also excludes gambling casinos, tobacco products, military equipment, and some pharmaceuticals. It is perfect for companies with a conscience.

Also well known is Pax World Balanced Fund which focuses on companies that “provide goods and services, such as health care, technology, pollution control, housing, utilities, and education that improve the quality of life.”

There are obviously some good choices out there depending upon your personal and political philosophy. You can also add alcohol to the mix of companies to avoid as well as chemical producers and pornography studios. You can practically customize your investments based on your views of controversial categories. You can also buy individual stocks in companies you admire as long as you diversify somewhat. It is great to kill two birds with one stone: appropriate investing practices and ultimate profits. You don’t want to sacrifice one for the other. The same sound principles apply as to quality of the company, price earnings ratios, and future prospects.

People get certain mental images when they think about how activism works. The protester has become the iconic image of the activist, at least in the minds of many. Protesters certainly do important work. They manage to raise awareness about particular issues. They get public discussions going about certain issues, which can sometimes inspire massive cultural changes. Large media events get people talking, get people thinking, and get people to give donations. However, staging media events and protests is just one part of the picture.

Those kinds of large media spectacles will help promote cultural change. However, in many cases, a problem isn’t simply an outgrowth of a corrupt society or culture. Some problems really can be traced directly to individual government departments or corporations. The people who are trying to eliminate the problem on a cultural level are only going to be able to go so far if a lot of their efforts are undone as a result of the actions of specific individuals. These specific individuals in this instance can be defeated as a result of the actions of people like shareholder activists.

Shareholder activism is certainly not as dramatic as the activism that people associate with protests and protesters. Protests are large and loud and designed to attract attention. A lot of shareholder activism is going to occur at the annual meetings of companies, and that’s all. Shareholder activists may share their concerns with the management of a given corporation, and they will do it using the same business language that they would use with all of their other interactions with the management. A person on the outside may not even immediately recognize that any activism was going on, unless they knew enough about the issues at hand.

Shareholder activism often involves writing out proposals about how given companies can change. The shareholders in question will discuss the problem in detail during these proposals, and then they will usually recommend detailed suggestions for solutions. A proposal that lacks any sort of details on how to solve the problem is going to be a fairly weak proposal, so shareholder activists are going to need to make sure that they can effectively back up what they are saying.

Shareholder activists are also typically going to need to be able to win the support of many of their fellow shareholders in order to get their proposal the approval that it needs. Shareholders will often stage votes on these proposals. The voting system will work differently depending on how a given company is run, but shareholder activists are rarely going to be able to accomplish anything without getting the support of a lot of the people that they work with, and not just the management of the company in question.

Communicating with the management directly can be a trickier method, although it has certainly worked in many cases. Some shareholder activists will merely try to replace the management altogether. They can often accomplish that by just changing the people who are at the top, even as they keep all of the other employees the same. They won’t necessarily have to get more than ten or twenty people fired in order to make the changes that they need. Often times, it is only the people at the very top who have much of a say in these kinds of decisions, and it is only necessary to replace them.

However, in some cases, it won’t come to that. Shareholder activists can simply try to get the management to understand their positions and make the changes that they want. Management members will certainly understand the risks involved if they don’t listen to their shareholders, and they will often consider the changes to be preferable. The power differential between managers and shareholders is complicated, and bridging it can really make all the difference in the world for socially conscious shareholders.

Shareholder activists and ethical investors will all have their pet issues or political issues that they tend to focus on one way or another. However, these issues are far from random. There are certain issues that shareholder activists in general tend to focus on more often than others. Ethical investors will usually pay attention to certain business practices when they are trying to decide where to make their investments.

Many of these individuals have had liberal arts educations in addition to all of their business training. They will have heard about a lot of the environmental and social issues that are influencing the increasingly global society in the modern world. They will also probably know about ethical business management, thanks to courses that they have received in that category. Ethical business management is an increasingly important and widely recognized topic. Business-people who have had courses in ethical business management will be equipped to recognize ethical businesses when they see them, and they will be just as equipped to recognize unethical business practices.

Many corporations are infamous for being the cause of pollution. Pollution and toxic waste is still an important environmental issue today, although it tends to get significantly less attention than global climate change and greenhouse gases. Many ethical investors are more likely to choose companies that emphasize low greenhouse gas emissions and maintaining high environmental standards. Environmental managers now make their living making sure companies uphold certain environmental standards, and they can just as easily make sure that new and rising companies do the same thing. They can provide all of the information that ethical investors could possibly need when they are trying to decide where to put their money.

Ethical investors may have had to do their own investigative work at one point, but today, there are plenty of non-profit organizations and for-profit organizations who are interested in monitoring the business practices of various organizations. Ethical investors and shareholder activists can use that information to their advantage.

While there’s a great deal of overlap between environmentalism and other types of social activism, ethical investors and shareholder activists are also interested in labor standards. They will look at how different companies are treating their employees. The aim is to reward companies that offer their employees fair salaries and benefits, while forcing other companies with inferior standards to compete with them. The shareholders and investors that are able to accomplish that can help set new labor standards for a given industry.

However, in many cases, investors and shareholders are going to be more interested in whether or not a company benefits from sweatshop labor, or whether a company is taking advantage of individuals who come from countries with lax labor laws. Ethical investors will usually try to make sure that they support companies that don’t support sweatshops or benefit from sweatshop labor. They will also look at where given companies conduct their business, making sure that they’re not doing business with exploitative parties.

The global nature of modern business has created some truly fascinating legal loopholes. Shareholder activists and ethical investors will try to look into those loopholes, ascertain what this says about the companies they’re supporting or the companies they’re thinking about supporting, and they will make their decisions accordingly.

Some shareholder activists and ethical investors will also look at other factors. Some of them will pay attention to a company’s hiring practices. For instance, some investors will avoid supporting a company that does not seem to hire women, people of color, or LGBT people. Investors may also look for other signs that a company is discriminatory in any way, including indications that they have had a lot of problems with sexual harassment cases. Companies must treat all individuals who are involved in the supply chain well, or they are not going to get the support of shareholder activists or ethical investors.

There are many different ways that companies can be unethical. The shareholder activist and the ethical investor must be skilled at recognizing all of them, and making the right decisions based on that information. Shareholder activists and ethical investors should avoid having pet issues that they focus on at the exclusion of all of the other issues. They should try to make sure that they are taking all ethical issues into account, or they are going to risk becoming single-issue voters, with all that that implies.

There’s a certain similarity between ethical investments and boycotts. Both of them have been used frequently historically in order to bring about social change, and they have both had varying degrees of success. People have managed to convince businesses to change their practices as a result of well-publicized boycotts. Ethical investors have managed to shape market sectors as a result of putting their money in the right place. However, these two groups are not equal in terms of their influence. The people who conduct boycotts and the people who are in a position to invest ethically differ significantly in terms of the level of power that they have.

Boycotts have been successful in many cases, but there are also many cases of boycotts being unsuccessful. Businesses have to really believe that there’s a severe threat to their profit margins in the midst before they are going to be willing to change any of their business practices. In some cases, businesses won’t even be able to change in response to the boycotts for whatever reason. Boycotts also need to be able to attract large followings before they are going to be able to make any real impact on businesses. Generating this sort of following is easier today in the Information Age. However, it is still going to be challenging, and many activists will spend years on tasks like this, to no avail.

Ethical investments have a way of approaching the same issue from a different angle. Investors are looking for businesses that have the right practices in the first place. They can then lend their support for these businesses. The people who conduct boycotts are looking to take support away from established businesses until those businesses are willing or able to change, which may never be the case. The people who invest ethically are lending their support to the companies who already have great business practices, and the ethical investors know in advance that their efforts will certainly not go unnoticed. While both approaches can be effective, there is a certain wisdom in the approach of the ethical investor.

Shareholders have a lot of power within corporations and businesses. Some shareholders use that power to become wealthier themselves. Other shareholders use that power for the sake of trying to influence how that company is run for one reason or another. Many of these shareholders are actually doing shareholder activism. They disapprove of some of the actions of a given corporation, or they are trying to change the way a given corporation is run for moral reasons. This practice has become common enough that shareholder activism gets discussed quite frequently in investment circles and financial circles.

At its core, activism often involves concerned citizens trying to pressure the people in power to make changes. Activists are only going to have so much power themselves almost by definition, or they would simply change things immediately themselves. Some activists are able to make changes behind the scenes. Other activists make changes in a more public manner. Shareholder activists are doing a little bit of both in some ways.

Shareholder activists can often be more effective than many more conventional activists because, to a certain extent, they are powerful people themselves. They may not be as powerful as the people who own the corporations, but they are at least partial owners of the corporations in which they are shareholders. As a result, they are able to make changes more directly than many other activists. Far too many other activists are more or less forced to try to pressure corporations to make changes themselves, but to corporations, they are simply private citizens.

Activists often have to get large groups of people together in order to bring about any major changes. Rallying large numbers of people is certainly no easy task. Many corporations still won’t listen to large groups of activists unless they are convinced that their profit margins are going to be negatively affected otherwise, and even then, many of them will be convinced that their companies can survive anyway. Shareholders already have what many activists are trying to achieve in the first place: they have the power to influence the decisions of many corporations. A tiny group of shareholders can sometimes accomplish far more than a large group of activists, for better or for worse.