Any organization wishing to get the word out on something is likely
to draft up a press release and send it off to as many media outlets
as possible. Sometimes they get lucky and it catches the eye of
an editor and ends up as a news story or feature article. Occasionally,
coverage is national, where the potential audience is enormous.
Media coverage is one of the main goals of trade associations,
and this is no different in the SRI field. Undoubtedly thousands
of press releases have been written, resulting in hundreds of
articles being published in newspapers, magazines (both national
and trade), and journals. This section will present a few excerpted
samples of these types of articles.
"Thursday, January 23, 1997
Ethical funds no nightmare for those who sleep lightly
By ROSEMARY MCCRACKEN
The Financial Post
To invest profitably, you don't have to support companies that
pollute, manufacture tobacco products or military weapons, or
have a poor record of hiring and promoting women, advocates of
ethical investing claim.
'The typical knee-jerk reaction, even in the investment community,
is that you have to accept a lower rate of return for investing
with a social conscience. But that is not so,' says Chantal Campbell,
a financial adviser with Gordon Private Client Co.
Campbell says about 30% of her clients want to make investment
choices that are based on social responsibility.
Financial success and social responsibility are not mutually
exclusive, agrees Susan Vance-Barrett, a financial adviser with
Nesbitt Burns Inc.
Her ethical investment clients, like Campbell's, are typically
babyboomers with $100,000 or more in their RRSPs.
'They come to me having thought about supporting companies that
reflect their social and ethical beliefs,' she says. 'They're
usually not adverse to slightly underperforming the market for
these beliefs. But the reality is you don't have to pay a penalty
to be socially responsible.'
Most ethical investors ignore companies that deal in tobacco
products, armaments or non-renewable resources.
They'll apply their "screens" or guidelines for evaluating
corporate behavior to key areas such as environmental responsibility,
labor relations and profit-sharing plans..."
According to a 1995 Green Money Journal article, in the US in
1994,
"The press continued its coverage of Socially Responsible
Investing (SRI) with articles in The Wall Street Journal,
Business Ethics, In Business, The New York Times,
Washington Post, Out, Smart Money, Los
Angeles Times, Co-op America Quarterly, Fortune,
The Spokesman-Review, The Lutheran, Barron's,
United Airlines' Hemispheres, and Green Living".
"The ethical imperative: if you don't talk about a wider range of values, you may not have a bottom line [Includes SIO's study of the social performance of TSE 300 companies]
Walker, Robert; and Susan Flanagan
Financial-Post-500, 1997 pg. 28-36.
In business and investing, conventional wisdom tells us that
corporate social responsibility and a focus on the bottom line
don't mix. Perhaps economist Milton Friedman made the point most
directly: "Few trends," he wrote in Capitalism and Freedom,
"could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our
free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social
responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders
as possible." But conventional wisdom and Milton Friedman
are wrong. Companies are beginning to acknowledge the need to
accept real responsibilities beyond the financial values of the
marketplace. They are starting to engage in a public discussion
about the duties and obligations of business to society, and many
are implementing policies, programs and practices out of a desire
to become better corporate citizens..."
"Beyond the bottom line
Schachter, Harvey
Canadian-Banker. v. 103 Sept./Oct. '96 p. 24-8
Canadian banks are among the country's most socially conscious
corporations, but some observers believe that they could do more.
A recent Report on Business Magazine survey of CEOs named Royal
Bank as the most socially responsible of Canadian companies on
the basis of its charity and equality measures; Bank of Montreal
ranked third and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) tenth.
Marc de Sousa-Shields, executive director of the Social Investment
Organization, based in Toronto, agrees that the banks are among
Canada's corporate social leaders, but he thinks that they can
improve on some key fronts. Chris Pinney, director of the Canadian
Centre for Philanthropy's Imagine program, says that he is disappointed
that only Royal, CIBC, and National Bank have pledged to meet
his group's widely accepted benchmark for corporate donations
of 1 percent of pretax profits to charitable efforts over three
years. Initiatives being taken by banks in the areas of employment
equity and diversity, the environment, staff training, and unemployment
are discussed."
"TITLE: The association between corporate social-responsibility and financial performance: the paradox of social cost
PERSONAL AUTHOR: Pava,-Moses-L; Krausz,-Joshua
SOURCE: Journal-of-Business-Ethics. v. 15 Mar. '96 p. 321-57
PUBLICATION YEAR: 1996
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: bibl tabs
ISBN/ISSN: 0167-4544
LANGUAGE OF ARTICLE: English
ABSTRACT: It is generally assumed that common stock investors
are exclusively interested in earning the highest level of future
cash-flow for a given amount of risk. This view suggests that
investors select a well-diversified portfolio of securities to
achieve this goal. Accordingly, it is often assumed that investors
are unwilling to pay a premium for corporate behavior which can
be described as "socially-responsible". Recently, this
view has been under increasing attack. According to the Social
Investment Forum, at least 538 institutional investors now allocate
funds using social screens or criteria. In addition, Alice Tepper
Marlin, president of the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities
has recently estimated that about $600 billion of invested funds
are socially-screened (1992). Reprinted by permission of the publisher."
