Responsible investing doesn’t just mean screening out gambling, drugs and weapons. As the investment manager for over 390 Quaker organizations, Friends Fiduciary also does something called “shareholder advocacy”—talking with companies about how they can be more just, peaceful and equitable in their business practices.
Learn about how Friends Fiduciary witnesses to Quaker values on Wall Street.
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Transcript:
Christina Repoley: Quakers care about how our money is invested because we don’t see a distinction between our religious values and our social values and our economic values. We believe in equality and peace and nonviolence in every aspect of our lives, and so the way that our money is spent and invested has just as much of an impact in how our values are lived in the world as any other aspect of our day-to-day lives, or our social or political lives.
Investing the Quaker Way
Minerva Glidden: My name is Minerva Glidden, and I live in Orlando, Florida, and I’m a member of Orlando Monthly Meeting. We recently sold a piece of property that the meeting had owned, and we looked around for a place where to best use that money so that it would reflect our values and absolutely earn us some money. We discerned and really had to thresh it a little bit, but Friends Fiduciary was the best fit for us and our money.
Jeff Perkins: Friends Fiduciary is a Quaker nonprofit investment management organization that invests funds for other Quaker organizations in a manner that’s consistent with Quaker values and beliefs.
Screening Out, Screening In
Christina Repoley: Quaker Voluntary Service decided to invest our funds with Friends Fiduciary corporation, instead of any of the other options that were available to us, because we knew that Friends Fiduciary corporation has done the really hard back-end work of screening our investments.
Jeff Perkins: First we screen out those companies that produce goods or services that Friends simply cannot support, and that Friends do not want to profit from. Those are companies that produce weapons, weapons components, that produce alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and companies that run gambling operations and for-profit prisons.
We then positively screen in those companies in the remaining sectors, the financial services sectors—so the banks, etc.—that have the better ESG record, and ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance record.
Minerva Glidden: People will say when we started talking about money in this meeting, “We don’t want prisons and we don’t want fossil fuels and we don’t want whiskey, we don’t want drugs, we don’t want tobacco…” What we didn’t want. What we didn’t sit down and say is what we do want, and that’s what Friends Fiduciary brought to the table for us.
Shareholder Advocacy
Jeff Perkins: When you’re a shareholder in a company, you’re actually an owner in that company, and I believe and we believe at Friends Fiduciary that as owners, we have both rights and we have responsibilities.
Kate Monahan: We talk to companies about many different issues, from food waste to methane reduction, to how they’re doing their lending and financing with banks. When we engage with a company, we’re coming to them with a Quaker-values perspective and also a business case, because we really believe that Quaker values are good long-term business values.
Jeff Perkins: That process of engaging with companies is called “shareholder advocacy,” and we believe as Friends that shareholder advocacy is a continuing witness to our Quaker values in the investments in which we’ve made.
Minerva Glidden: Shareholder advocacy was a very strong point for us. Once that was brought to our attention, that was very strong, because to use our money to change the world, to use that capital as human capital, as capital to stand by our testimonies, was very important to this meeting.
A Quaker Approach to Change
Christina Repoley: Corporations are made up of people. When we engage in that kind of advocacy work even when it feels like we might not be having an immediate impact, I think we’re doing that from a core belief that there is that of God in every person, that every person is capable of finding that place of compassion and divine love within themselves and other people.
Kate Monahan: If a company reduces its methane, that means something to the people living around the natural gas extraction site, it means something for the environment. And I think for us at Friends Fiduciary we are in a position to make that happen because we’re coming to companies with this unique voice. We’re investors and we can talk to companies in a language that they understand, because we have that business grounding, but we’re also Quakers and we can also come at this from a place of wanting to express our Quaker values and to make those real in the world.
Christina Repoley: The concept of “speaking truth to power” is relevant here. Corporations are huge and powerful, but if we are dedicated to speaking truth to power in the world, that’s another area where we can have the opportunity to speak truth. It may be that our impact isn’t felt for a long time, but that’s been true of our history. We’ve stuck with what we perceive to be true and we’ve spoken our truth even to the most powerful people and corporations and situations in the world. That’s just a part of our tradition and this is another opportunity for us to practice that speaking truth to power.
Discussion Questions:
- Do you have experience with investing money? Have you tried to be intentional about which companies you invest in? Why or why not?
- Christina Repoley says that Quakers care about how our money is invested because we “believe in equality and peace and nonviolence in every aspect of our lives and so the way that our money is spent and invested has just as much of an impact in how our values are lived in the world as any other aspect of our day-to-day lives or our social or political lives.” Do you agree? What do you think is the impact of being conscious about how our money is invested?
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
Has FF considered serving individual investors?
Does it identify specific mutual funds that follow Quaker values?
This is great I would love to learn more
This approach to investing is a powerful tool. What is Friends Fiduciary’s approach to fossil fuels? Is that screened?
It’s difficult to determine a list of inclusives when it comes to corporate investing.
For instance, while the industries listed on the taboo list ( above ) of investment possibilities is certainly a worthy group; what about a company that, for instance, sells viable products to consumers — let’s say books, for example — but fails to pay its employees living wages? What about the sugar industries — whose products are singularly responsible for so much illness and death ( way more than terrorism ); or factory farm or insecticide industries?
Because the nature of the corporation is to make money for its investors — sometimes at any cost — what I’m saying is that it’s very hard to pick out those few corporations that ultimately do both well and good.
Please use “a” instead of “the” in the title. It is misleading to others to say, no matter how fine this format of investing is, that this is “the” Quaker way. There are those that disagree with this focus and practice. It is OK to use “a.”
Sounds almost too good to be true, hope its not.
Great idea.
Does Friends Fiduciary ever allow individual investors to work with them or, if not, is there another company they might recommend individuals with Quaker values invest with?
Hi Deb,
The way we’re legally structured right now doesn’t allow us to serve individual investors, but we are hearing more and more from individuals interested in our approach and are always discerning ways to serve Friends. To keep abreast of future developments, email info@friendsfiduciary.org to be added to our mailing list. To our knowledge, there aren’t any mutual funds that specifically use Quaker values in their screening process, but there are a number of investment options out there.
Hi Judith,
You can learn more at http://www.friendsfiduciary.org!
Hi Jim,
We have a fossil fuel free fund for those Friends organizations who don’t want to invest in fossil fuel companies. For more information, go to http://www.friendsfiduciary.org/our-funds/quaker-green/. We exclude coal across all our portfolios. Some Friends Fiduciary funds have oil and gas companies, but they are rigorously screened, and those holdings allow us to engage the companies in dialogue. We hold significantly fewer fossil fuel companies compared to the S&P500 because of our screening.
Hi Deborah,
We agree, which is why we take care with our screening processes and actively engage the companies we do hold. No company is all good or all bad—so our staff and board are continuously discerning where to draw the line. Many Quaker organizations face the question of how to invest according to their values, because they feel they can do the most good with a steady income, be it for scholarships or a new roof. When organizations, meetings, or churches decide that investing is the right choice for them, we provide an option that’s based on broadly held Quaker values. We believe that actively engaging with Wall Street is an important witness to our values. We leverage our ownership in order to change corporations, which are a huge part of our everyday lives.
Hi Brad,
Thank you for your comment. As with any QuakerSpeak video, the voices featured are just a few in our diverse, worldwide community. Friends Fiduciary invests on behalf of more than 380 Quaker meetings, schools, churches, and organizations across the United States, with affiliations across the Quaker theological spectrum.
Hi Valerie,
The way we’re legally structured right now doesn’t allow us to serve individual investors, but we are hearing more and more from individuals interested in our approach and are always discerning ways to serve Friends. To keep abreast of future developments, email info@friendsfiduciary.org to be added to our mailing list. We don’t have staff capacity to recommend companies to individuals, but encourage you to seek out socially responsible investments that you feel comfortable with.
Thanks very much for your response!