US SIF

US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment is a United States-based membership association located in Washington, DC. that promotes environmentally and socially sustainable investment practices.^[1] US SIF was formerly known as the Social Investment Forum.^[2] It changed its name on June 9, 2011.^[3]

Events

In 2010, US SIF held its first annual conference entitled "Responsible Investing: Impact & Innovation." The event was held June 8–10 in Washington, DC and featured Al Gore and Elizabeth Warren as speakers.^[4] In May 2016, US SIF held its most recent conference “Investing for the Next Generation” in Washington, DC, with a keynote address by US Secretary of Labor Perez.^[5] The event attracted nearly 400 sponsors and attendees. In 2017, the seventh annual conference will be held on May 10–12 at the JW Marriott in Chicago, IL.

US SIF also organizes a number of small gatherings around the country for members and non-members to learn about US SIF as well as recently release publications.

Publications

• US SIF's biennial SRI study, The Report on US Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing Trends, also known as the Trends Report. According to the 2014 Trends Report, at the start of 2014, professionally managed assets following SRI strategies stood at $6.57 trillion, a rise of 929 percent from $639 billion in 1995, the year of the US SIF Foundation’s first Trends Report.^[6] Over the same period, the broader universe of all invested assets under professional management increased only 425 percent from $7 trillion to $36.8 trillion.^[6]
• Family Offices and Investing for Impact^[7]
• Unlocking ESG Integration^[8]
• Investing to Advance Women: A Guide for Individuals & Institutional Investor^[9]
• Confronting Corporate Money in Politics^[10]
• Unleashing the Potential of US Foundation Endowments: Using Responsible Investment to Strengthen Endowment Oversight and Enhance Impact^[11]
• The Impact of Sustainable and Responsible Investment^[12]
• Investing to Curb Climate Change: for institution and individual investors, highlights strategies available for investors to manage climate change risks in their investment portfolios and help generate solutions.^[13]
• Expanding the Market for Community Investment in the United States^[14]
• Options & Innovations in Community Investing^[15]
• Sustainability Trends in US Alternative Investments^[16]
• Opportunities for Sustainable and Responsible Investing in US Defined Contribution Plans
• Resource Guide for Plan Sponsors^[17]
• Creating a Sustainable World: A Guide to Responsible Stewardship of Tribal Assets^[18]
• Investment Consultants and Responsible Investing: Current Practices and Outlook in the United States^[19]

Public policy

US SIF runs a public policy program that aims to support a public policy agenda. US SIF has worked on Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act through the rulemaking process at the SEC, as well as supported a number of other issues.

US SIF has worked heavily around the Employee Retirement Income Security Act guidance. In October 2016, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez announced that the Department of Labor is rescinding its 2008 Bulletin on Economically Targeted Investments and reinstating the 1994 guidance on ETIs with a revised preamble that assures that “Fiduciaries need not treat commercially reasonable investments as inherently suspect or in need of special scrutiny merely because they take into consideration environmental, social or other factors.”^[20] US SIF and several of its members, along with other colleague organizations, have engaged in numerous meetings with Obama Administration officials in the White House and the Department of Labor beginning in 2009 to register our concerns on the 2008 ETI bulletin and a companion 2008 bulletin, not addressed in October, on shareholder rights.^[21]

US SIF organizes a Policy and Advocacy Training and Capitol Hill Day for attendees of its annual conference. Members learn of current and central public policies related to sustainable and impact investing, and have the opportunity to meet their Senators and members of the House of Representatives.

Global SIFs

US SIF is part of the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA). Other GSIA members include the EuroSIF, The European Sustainable Investment Forum,^[22] RIAA, Responsible Investment Association Australasia,^[23] UK SIF, UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association,^[24] and VBDO, The Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development.^[25]

GSIA publishes a biannual global Sustainable Investment Review with regional data around the world. According to the 2014 report, the global sustainable investment market rose from 13.3 trillion at the onset of 2012 to $21.4 trillium at the start of 2014.^[26] Over this two-year period, the fastest growing region has been the United States, followed by Canada and Europe.^[26]

References