At the end of the September ICCR meetings in New York, MMA hosted a one day summit to gather information on credit card industry practices and begin initial shareholder advocacy work. An invited group of nearly thirty people attended, representing a variety of church denominations and socially responsible mutual funds.

MMA sponsored two high-profile individuals to speak at this event – Dr. Robert Manning and Danny Schechter. Dr. Manning, author of Credit Card Nation, is considered one of the leading experts on the credit industry and is a frequently invited guest in Congressional hearings and media interviews. Mr. Schechter recently produced the documentary In Debt We Trust, which takes a critical look at credit card industry practices.

During the summit, the speakers exposed ways in which credit card companies target customers and documented some of their most egregious predatory practices. Credit card debt has reached an all time high in the US, while the most financially vulnerable people are subject to increasingly high interest rates and fees. Current practices have led to large short-term profits for the credit card industry, but have caused financial ruin for many people and may prove to be unprofitable in the long term.

MMA believes that credit card practices entail both moral and economic dimensions and is committed to being at the forefront of efforts to promote better policies. Next steps for shareholder work in this area include making informational inquiries of companies, developing a set of best practices, crafting shareholder resolutions that are able to withstand SEC scrutiny, and building a grassroots element to increase visibility.

New research conducted by employment finders shows that employees are attracted to companies with environmental commitments (see stories here and here). Furthermore, employees are more likely to be satisfied at companies with good corporate social responsibility programs. It is difficult to quantify the benefit of attracting some of the best and brightest minds to a company, but the advantages are real.

At the Ceres (coalition for environmentally responsible economies) annual conference in April, one of the speakers was Mark Tercek, head of Goldman Sachs Center for Environmental Markets. Goldman Sachs has taken criticism from some stock analysts and business pundits for “wasting” shareholder money on some of their environmental policies. But Tercek refuted this claim, saying that the company’s green initiatives have more than paid for themselves through employee recruiting alone.

Along with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize today. The prize was awarded to Gore and the IPCC because of their efforts to raise awareness of climate change and mobilize worldwide support for emissions reduction.

This is a significant milestone in the development of climate change science as it further highlights the imperative for action. The world has taken note of the issue, and the need for a collaborative response is clear. There has been considerable momentum building since 2006 in support of changes in business practices, and this news should add to that momentum. For those of us who are shareholder advocates on environmental issues, we hope this can help lead to more fruitful dialogues and the inclusion of more companies in stakeholder engagements.

Nonprofit endowments, invested primarily in the stock market, provide charitable foundations with financial returns that they use to pursue philanthropic missions. However, foundations don’t necessarily align their asset management with their charitable activities. In early January, the Los Angeles Times published an investigative report detailing perceived contradictions between the mission and the investments of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest. This series of articles ignited a heated debate about socially responsible investing (SRI) in the area of endowments that has continued for months.

In response, the SRI industry has stepped up its focus to demonstrate the opportunities available to foundations in aligning their mission and investments. The Social Investment Forum, the social investment industry’s trade association, has published a booklet on the subject titled: The Mission in the Marketplace: How Responsible Investing Can Strengthen the Fiduciary Oversight of Foundation Endowments and Enhance Philanthropic Missions. MMA and the MMA Praxis Mutual Funds have been active in lifting up this conversation, particularly among faith-based charities and institutions. We believe that there doesn’t have to be a wall between the investments and mission of foundations. The following is a piece I wrote titled A Third Way for the Gates Foundation.