Lauren Webster, Tides CFO

Every day, we're faced with choices about aligning our values with our financial activity. Our concern for the environment may lead us to buy local produce or to stop buying bottled water. In support of human rights, we might monitor which apparel manufacturers employ sweatshop or child labor. We might select Credo Mobile, who donate a portion of their profits, as our cell phone carrier.  Or we can choose to use a credit union or a local bank as an alternative to the Wall Street institutions implicated in the financial crisis.

In the philanthropic sector, foundations are increasingly examining how their financial assets can work most effectively to further their mission, beyond grantmaking. At some level, this is just common sense. Why would a foundation that cares about health outcomes have their assets invested in tobacco, or a community foundation in companies that pollute communities it serves?

Image: flickr.com/photos/tochis  

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Shareholder Activism Wins Victories

Timothy Smith, Senior Vice President, Walden Asset Management

The investment portfolio at Tides has been managed for decades by Walden Asset Management (formerly U.S. Trust of Boston), a leader in sustainable and responsible investing. 

Here are four areas where Walden helps Tides' investments to support a double bottom line of financial returns and social change: Screening; Public Policy; Community Development Investing; and Shareowner Engagement & Advocacy.

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Transform Society with Your Resources

More Shareholder Activism
Open MIC, a Tides project, is a coalition representing socially responsible investors in media and telecom. Open MIC works to promote a vibrant, diverse media ecosystem through market-based solutions including shareholder activism.

Corporations for Social Responsibility
Corporations interested in social responsibility have joined with Freedom to Roam to put financial and human resources towards social change. Founded as a Tides project by Patagonia in 2007, Freedom to Roam sits at the intersection of corporations and conservation.

Young People Giving & Investing Wisely
Twelve years ago, twenty-five young inheritors got together for a weekend of strategic thinking, donor organizing, and community-building. This informal retreat was named Making Money Make Change, and over a decade later it has turned into a much larger national, multiracial gathering for young people with wealth who believe in social change. Participants support, challenge, and inspire each other to align their resources with their values and work. Making Money Make Change is co-sponsored by Tides.

Move Your Money

From a New Year's resolution to a national movement, the idea is simple: if enough people who have money in one of the Big Six banks move it into smaller, local, traditional community banks, then collectively we the people will have taken a big step toward returning the financial system to the productive, stable engine for growth it's meant to be.

• Stop the Abuse: It's Time to Break Up With Your Big Bank
• From NPR's Marketplace: Consumer Reports explains the right way to switch banks
• Economist & Tides Momentum speaker Rob Johnson's Move Your Money interview on Democracy Now
• The Community Banking Initiative: promoting a community-scaled financial system to reduce systemic risk, strengthen local economies
• The Religious Case for Moving Your Money Where Your Heart Is
• Move Your Borrowing Along with Your Money

Or Don't Spend at All

Give Something Back (Tides' source for office supplies) combines community giving and environmentalism with service and value.

Buying for Equality: the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's annual report card on corporate America's treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees, consumers, and investors.

Rethink excessive consumption habits: our friends at Adbusters advocate a 24-hour consumer spending moratorium on Buy Nothing Day.

NEW! The Story of Bottled Water (from the folks behind internet sensation The Story of Stuff) shines light on manufactured demand: Americans buy over half a billion bottles of water weekly—and it already flows from the tap.

Image: Adbusters
 

Health Care for America Now: What's Next?

April 15, 12:30-2pm PDT / 3:30-5pm EDT | Thoreau Centers for Sustainability, San Francisco and New York

Health care for all Americans, a goal that eluded progressives for 94 years, is now the law of the land. What did it take to win this victory? What lessons can we learn, especially during the run up to the 2010 elections? Health Care for America Now, a Tides project and grantee, operated at a scale and with a sense of strategy rare for progressives. Is it a model for future campaigns? What did it take to organize and support HCAN, and what's next?

Join Jeff Blum, Richard Kirsch, and Anthony Wright from HCAN for a briefing that will be both a celebration and a learning opportunity. Join us in person at Tides' San Francisco office or via videoconference at Tides New York. The San Francisco event will be followed by a donor reception from 2-3pm.
 

Image: Health Care for America Now