New York City, NY - The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) today launched EthVestSM, its new online database containing news, data and intelligence on ethical investing activities. EthVest contains more than 2,000 shareholder resolutions and results of proxy votes covering more than a decade of faith-based and socially responsible shareholder activism. ICCR member organizations focus on social issues as well as corporate financial performance in making their individual investment decisions, and details of many of these initiatives are provided in the online, subscription-based resource.

In announcing EthVest, ICCR Executive Director Sister Patricia Wolf said: "We believe that EthVest will be a valuable tool for those making investment decisions, as well as for managers and directors of public companies, consultants, and others involved in institutional investing activities. ICCR member activism helps companies to change harmful, or unjust policies and practices. It is our intention to create more awareness of and support for ICCR shareholder initiatives by making information about member activities more widely known in the capital markets, and in the corporate community."

The new ICCR subscription EthVest Database contains more than 12 years of ICCR shareholder activism, much of the content in the form of 2,000-plus shareholder resolutions (complete text), as well as details of shareholder-sponsored resolutions searchable by targeted company name, stock ticker, calendar year, proxy resolution filer, (sponsor), keyword and issues. (ICCR members generally focus on eight broad areas of social and environmental justice.)

EthVest subscribers will periodically receive timely "Alerts" via email based on their own selection criteria (including issue/nature of resolution, shareholder/resolution filer, target company).

For 35 years ICCR members have sponsored shareholder resolutions, held meetings with corporate management to discuss critical issues, screened their investments, participated in public hearings and investigations, published special reports, and taken part in letter writing campaigns. The focus of ICCR coalition activism has been to open doors at corporations, begin dialogues and attempt to raise ICCR memberd' social issue concerns at the highest level of corporate decision-making to bring about positive, constructive change that adds value to the enterprise.

One of the powerful tools developed to better coordinate member activism - and to encourage other institutional investors to join forces with ICCR or follow the faith-based investor leadership - is a Member Database containing comprehensive information on campaigns. The EthVest resource evolved out of ICCR's internal database and is being made available to subscribers for an annual subscription fee. ICCR leadership intends to broaden investor and capital market understanding of its social and economic justice initiatives through EthVest.

The EthVest Database is designed to provide timely, comprehensive and valuable news, intelligence and archived resources on ethical investing to institutional investors and their advisors. These include mutual fund portfolio managers and researchers; pension, trust or hedge fund trustees, internal and external managers; college or university endowment managers; and corporate executives and board members.

Subscribers have 24/7, Web access to information that could potentially affect corporate operations, market share or share price and therefore would be vital in the investment and financial decision making- process. Other groups benefiting from access to The EthVest database will include attorneys, accountants, auditors, think tanks scholars, college and university libraries, not-for-profit management, economists, social scientists, university students, journalists, and social issue researchers.

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility is a 35-year-old international coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors including denominations, religious communities, pension funds, healthcare corporations, foundations and dioceses with combined portfolios worth an estimated $110 billion. ICCR seeks to build a more just and sustainable society by integrating social values into corporate and investor decisions. ICCR is one of the foremost shareholder advocacy organizations in the world. More detailed information about shareholder resolutions is available from ICCR's Ethvest (sm), the comprehensive, on-line, subscription-based, ethical investor database, www.iccr.org.

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