UUA SRI: Proxy Voting and SRI

Proxy Voting and SRI

Proxy voting is a component of our democratic process that is a important force for moderating the excesses of capitalism. As shareholders, we have the right and the responsibility to understand critical aspects of the challenges facing the corporations in which we have invested, and to express our views and concerns to the management through the annual proxy voting process. Each year, companies ask the guidance of shareholders on myriad governance issues such as selection of auditors, board structure, share issuance, etc. In addition, shareholder sponsored resolutions appear on annual proxy ballots to alert management to shareholders views on key policy issues with social and financial impact. The UUA uses a proxy voting service, called Institutional Shareholder Services , which votes our shares by proxy according to our strict SRI criteria. For more information see the UUA's proxy voting policies .

Voting Proxies

A number of members of local congregations have asked questions about how to understand the many issues that appear in materials sent to them by companies in which they or their congregations hold stock. The links to the websites listed below provide good explanations of these issues.

Most issues appearing in proxy materials can be categorized as follows:

Financial
Governance
Social
Environmental

The UUA Committee on Socially Responsible Investing does not profess to be of help on the many financial issues, most of which are very particular to individual corporations, as are a number of the Governance issues.

However, the other categories of Social and Environmental issues, and some of the Governance issues, appear in the proxy materials of several corporations, generally because of concentrated campaigns of groups of institutional investors like the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), of which the UUA is a member, or other activist organizations such as labor unions and human rights non-profits.

For more information on these issues and guidance on how to vote your proxies see: