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With the publication of the College Sustainability Report Card 2010, more than 1,100 school survey responses from over 300 institutions are now available online. In total, these surveys offer more than 10,000 pages of data collected from colleges and universities during the summer of 2009. To access surveys from other schools, go to the surveys section of the website. To see grades, or to access additional surveys submitted by this school, please click the "Back to Report Card" link at the beginning or end of the survey.
Name: Michael Casel
Title: Assistant Vice President and Director of Investments
Date survey submitted: 7/14/09
1) How does your school handle proxy voting on environmental, social, and governance issues?
(a) We do not have the ability to vote proxies as the entire equity holdings of the endowment are invested in mutual funds (e.g. CommonFund, Fidelity, Vanguard, etc.).
(b) We ask that our investment managers handle the details of proxy voting.
(c) We provide our investment managers with general guidelines that determine our proxy votes.
(d) We provide our investment managers with specific corporate governance guidelines that determine our proxy votes.*
(e) We provide our investment managers with specific environmental and social guidelines that determine our proxy votes.*
(f) A member of our school administration determines our proxy votes.
(g) A committee of administrators and/or trustees deliberates and makes decisions on proxy votes.
(h) A committee that includes student representatives deliberates and makes recommendations or decisions on proxy votes.
(i) School community feedback is incorporated into proxy voting decisions through town hall meetings or a website.
Your answers:
Proxy voting on corporate governance matters:
The answer is a combination of (a) and (h). Haverford employs an index approach to equity investment, using multiple index funds to provide exposure to U.S., international and emerging market equities, and answer (a) would apply to these funds. The move to index funds was made over a decade ago, with the understanding that Haverford would lose the ability to vote proxies. We made a number of attempts to address this issue, including exploring with other Colleges the possibility of creating a sustainable investing index fund and looking into the possibility of shorting certain holdings in the indexes to, in essence, cancel out our holdings in these stocks, but found that to be too expensive and complicated.
So, we decided to approach the proxy-voting issue by deliberately owning shares of certain companies that draw a substantial interest in stockholder resolutions because of the nature of their business or their practices. Haverford has owned for several years a minimal amount of shares in these companies to participate in and offer shareholder resolutions, as well as vote proxies. These holdings include Altria, Bank of America, Chevron, DuPont, ExxonMobil, GE, Pfizer and Walmart. Answer (h) would apply to these holdings. The Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility (CISR) maintains this portfolio and is responsible for proxy voting, which gives the student members of CISR (as well as faculty and staff) the experience of considering the positions that the College should take with regard to shareholder resolutions. CISR is described in more detail in question 2 below.
Proxy voting on environmental and social resolutions:
Same as for corporate governance matters as described above. CISR is responsible for all shareholder resolution matters.
*Please provide URL or attach guidelines (optional).
2) If you answered "g" or "h" to question 1, please provide the following information about the committee:
Name of committee: Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility (CISR)
Number of meetings held since August 2008: Four (same schedule as the Board of Managers)
Name of chair(s): Steve Curwood (Executive Producer and Host of Living on Earth, which is aired on more than 300 National Public Radio affiliates in the USA.)
Position of chair (e.g., administrator, faculty, staff, student): Member of the Haverford Board of Managers
To whom does the committee report (e.g., Trustee Committee, President, Vice President): Haverford Board of Managers
Number of administrators on committee: Two
Number of alumni on committeee: Three
Number of faculty on committee: Two
Number of staff on committee:
Number of students on committee: Four
Number of trustees on committee: Four
Total number of committee members: Twelve
3) Please indicate what information about proxy voting records is made available to each of the groups listed under "Your answers" (select all that apply):
(a) No information is made available
(b) Votes cast on proxy resolutions only by category (and not company specific)
(c) Votes cast on proxy resolutions on a company-specific level
(d) Votes cast on proxy resolutions on a company-specific level, including the number of shares
Your answers:
Trustees and senior administrators:
Trustees, senior administrators and other select members of the school community:
All members of the school community including faculty, staff, students and alumni:
The public per open records law:
The public:
The answer would be (d) for all categories. CISR receives a report at each fall meeting about how individual company proxies were voted the prior spring (the proxy season runs well past our spring board meeting), and receives reports on the number of shares of each company that Haverford holds. The same proxy voting records at the company level are publicly available on the College website (per question 4 below).
4) Where is information about proxy voting records made available?
(a) Information is not made available.
(b) Information is available at the investment office or similar office on campus.
(c) Information is sent to individuals upon request.
(d) Information is on the school website with password protection.
(e) Information is on the school website and is accessible to the public.
Your answers:
To the school community.
Proxy voting records on environmental and social resolutions:
Proxy voting records on corporate governance matters:
To the public.
Proxy voting records on environmental and social resolutions:
Proxy voting records on corporate governance matters:
The answer would be (e) for all categories. All proxy voting records at the company level are publicly available on the College website. Your organization provided the impetus for us to be pro-active about making this information available on the website, although it has always been available to anyone who asked for it. The link to the website with proxy voting information is http://www.haverford.edu/business/financial.php or directly to the online document is http://www.haverford.edu/business/files/proxy_record.pdf.
5) Please indicate what information about endowment holdings is made available to each of the groups listed under "Your answers" (select all that apply):
(a) No information is made available
(b) Asset allocation
(c) List of external managers
(d) List of mutual funds
(e) Equity holdings
(f) Fixed income holdings
(g) Real estate holdings
(h) Hedge fund holdings
(i) Private equity holdings
(j) Venture capital holdings
(k) Natural resource holdings
(l) Cash
(m) Other holdings (please specify)
(n) All holdings
Your answers:
Available to trustees and senior administrators:
(b) - (n). All endowment holdings are made available, and detailed reports of holdings and asset allocation are produced for the Board of Managers and Senior administrators. The information is available to all other members of the College community upon request. Recent improvements in reporting on endowment holdings has enabled us to provide additional detailed breakdown and risk analysis of investments, including exposures to economic sectors, world regions, investment styles, bond quality ratings, and additional information about holdings, at both the individual investment level, and at the portfolio level across all asset classes. We also provide more detailed performance information and performance-based risk analysis, examining attributes such as beta, alpha, drawdown, tracking error, and additional statistics.
Available to trustees, senior administrators, and other select members of the school community: Same as above response
Available to all members of the school community, including faculty, staff, students, and alumni: Same as above response
Available to the public per open records law:
Available to the public:
(b), (c) and (e) – (m): We make available a less detailed five-year summary of endowment holdings in our annual Factbook, which is available to anyone online at Haverford’s website. This includes asset allocation information and holdings amounts across all asset classes. We also provide detailed information on our portfolio holdings to a number of external organizations, such as NACUBO, Cambridge Associates and other data-sharing groups.
6) Please indicate where information about endowment holdings is made available to the school community and to the public:
(a) Information is not made available.
(b) Information is available at the investment office or similar office on campus.
(c) Information is sent to individuals upon request.
(d) Information is on the school website with password protection.
(e) Information is on the school website and is accessible to the public.
Your answers:
To the school community:
(b) (c) and to an extent (e). Detailed quarterly reports are prepared by the Investment Office and sent to Board members and anyone else who requests them. In addition, we make available a less detailed five-year summary of endowment holdings in our annual Factbook, which is available to anyone online at Haverford’s website.
To the public:
(e) We make available a less detailed five-year summary of endowment holdings in our annual Factbook, which is available to the public online at Haverford’s website.
We also provide detailed information on our portfolio holdings to a number of external organizations, such as NACUBO, Cambridge Associates and other data-sharing groups.
7) Is your school currently invested in any of the following areas? (Please list all that apply.)
(a) Renewable energy funds or similar investment vehicles
(b) Community development financial institutions or community development loan funds
(c) On-campus energy and/or water efficiency projects through the endowment (as an investment and not a payout)
(d) None of the above
Your answer:
(a) Haverford is currently invested in three renewable energy funds. Our total commitment to these funds is $50 million. While much of the capital for these investments remains to be called, the current value of our investments in these funds is approximately $12 million, or 3.4% of the endowment. This amount is expected to grow significantly, given the large uncalled commitment to these funds.
8) Is your school currently exploring investment in any of the following areas? (Please list all that apply.)
(a) Renewable energy funds or similar investment vehicles
(b) Community development financial institutions or community development loan funds
(c) On-campus energy and/or water efficiency projects through the endowment (as an investment and not as a payout)
(d) None of the above
Your answer:
(d) Given the large amount of capital committed to our existing renewable energy funds, along with a current focus on maintaining adequate liquidity, we are not actively exploring new investments in any of these areas, or any other illiquid asset classes for that matter. Future exploration of opportunities in these areas will certainly be considered on an ongoing basis, as with every asset class – as necessary based on our actual asset allocation versus our targeted allocation.
9) Does your school have any investment policy provisions, or use any investment managers, that consider environmental/sustainability factors?
(a) No
(b) Yes (please describe)
(c) Currently under consideration (please describe)
Your answer:
(b) Yes, the managers who run the three renewable energy funds as described in the answer to question 8 above. Also, Haverford has investment policy provisions that restrict ownership of certain “sin” stocks such as defense and tobacco, in any actively managed separate account portfolio where the restrictions can be implemented, as opposed to commingled funds where restrictions are usually much more difficult to implement, as we discussed above in question 1.
10) Does your school offer donors the option of directing gifts to an investment fund that considers environmental/sustainability factors?
(a) No
(b) Yes (please describe)
(c) Currently under consideration (please describe)
Your answer:
(c) While this option does not currently exist at Haverford, the Committee on Investments and Social Responsibility has discussed and begun to explore the possibility of a social/sustainability gift fund as an option to invest in community development projects. This process was initiated by a student member of CISR who was exploring such funds at other institutions.
Question 11 is for informational purposes only; responses will NOT be included in the Report Card evaluation process.
11) Please provide total endowment value as of the following dates:
6/30/2008: $521 million
9/30/2008: $465 million
12/31/2008: $378 million
3/31/2009: $334 million
6/30/2009 (may be submitted separately at a later date): $333 million
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