The Socially Responsible Investment Coalition (SRIC) is a left-of-center, faith-based organization which aims to promote left-of-center “environmental, social, and corporate governance” (ESG) policy through exerting shareholder influence in major businesses. The SRIC is a member of the powerful Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and consists of over twenty member organizations in Texas.

History

The Socially Responsible Investment Coalition was founded in 1974 by Sister Francis Lorene, a Catholic nun, as the Texas Coalition for Responsible Investment. ¹ In 1982, the SRIC was joined by a number of Catholic and other Christian denominational organizations and joined the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a left-of-center coalition of nearly 300 investors controlling over $200 billion of invested capital to promote left-progressive social change. ² The SRIC refers to its partnership with the ICCR as “instrumental to SRIC’s shareholder advocacy,” and the groups have collaborated on several shareholder initiatives in recent years. ³

Since 1982, the SRIC has grown to include 20 organizational members in addition to a number of individual members. ⁴ Most of the SRIC’s member organizations are Catholic, with notable exceptions including Morgan Stanley’s Quantitative Group at Graystone Consulting and the Texas American AFL-CIO, the Texas state affiliate of the AFL-CIO, one of the most powerful left-of-center labor unions in the country. ⁵

Activity

Most of SRIC’s activities are coordinated within the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, focusing on promoting a range of left-leaning corporate policies on issues including health care, climate change, and corporate governance. SRIC and ICCR members “engage” with major companies as shareholders in an attempt to promote left-of-center policies, which often includes shareholder discussions and the filing of shareholder resolutions. ⁶

In 2018, the SRIC won several significant left-of-center victories through direct advocacy on shareholder resolutions in conjunction with ICCR. Following an ICCR resolution, Dick’s Sporting Goods decided to stop selling high capacity magazines and assault rifles in stores and raise the minimum purchase age for firearms to 21. ⁷ The ICCR and the SRIC also pushed left-of-center diversity initiatives, getting increasing support for internal diversity reporting and diversity considerations in hiring from shareholders of Sealed Air and Home Depot. ⁸ In 2018 alone, SRIC members proposed over sixty shareholder resolutions at multinational corporations. ⁹

In addition to shareholder advocacy and direct influence on public policy, the SRIC also hosts annual education events and conferences on left-of-center issue advocacy for shareholders, featuring speakers from labor unions and left-leaning activist groups. ¹⁰

Climate Change

The SRIC takes a left-of-center stance on climate change, calling for “strong global policy and regulation that drastically reduce carbon emissions.” ¹¹ The SRIC calls for large scale regulation of the conventional energy industry by the government to drive a transition to a low carbon economy. ¹²

In addition to supporting increased regulation of the energy industry, the SRIC encourages companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investing in environmentalist technologies, setting “ambitious” targets to reduce emissions, and taking an active role in influencing public policy on climate change. ¹³ Following the effective withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement, the SRIC joined a coalition to uphold the mandates of the climate accords opposing the Trump administration’s decision to begin to rollback regulations brought on by the agreements. ¹⁴

Health Care

The SRIC works with companies to promote left-of-center global and domestic health policies. ¹⁵ The SRIC targets large pharmaceutical companies, calling on corporations to develop a global code of conduct to market pharmaceuticals responsibly and call for robust oversight of supply chain management. ¹⁶

Domestically, the SRIC calls for expanded access to healthcare, targeting the health industry for its congressional lobbying practices. ¹⁷ Specifically, the SRIC faults the health industry for spending over $40 million on congressional lobbying in an attempt to prevent the passage of the Affordable Care Act. ¹⁸ The SRIC is involved in advocacy with many large companies in association with the ICCR, including Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer. ¹⁹

Financial Regulation

The SRIC calls for worldwide government intervention in the financial sector. ²⁰ The SRIC also calls for wealth redistribution, calling out executive compensation and lobbying programs as flaws of a loosely regulated financial system. ²¹

The SRIC, in association with the ICCR, works with some of the largest companies in the world in an attempt to influence corporate governance and financial regulation policy, including Facebook, Walmart, and AT&T. ²²

Direct Advocacy

In addition to working as shareholders to influence corporate policy, the SRIC engages in direct advocacy on left-of-center social issues, including immigration reform and expanding government health programs. ²³

On immigration, the SRIC works with the Interfaith Welcome Coalition (IWC), which advocates for ending all deportations of illegal immigrants and closing all family detention centers in the United States. ²⁴ Working with the IWC, the SRIC engages organizations such as GEO Group and Core Civic, which own detention facilities, in an effort to reform their daily operations. ²⁵

In 2013, the SRIC hosted Sister Simone Campbell in an event with NETWORK, a national Catholic, left-of-center social justice lobby. ²⁶ As part of the event, the SRIC assisted in organizing a 400-person march and rally to promote Medicaid expansion, delivering over 500 letters to the governor of Texas and entering the capitol building to speak about expanding government-subsidized healthcare. ²⁷

People and Funding

Socially Responsible Investment Coalition is classified by the IRS as a church, and as such is not required to disclose its funding and donors. ²⁸

The SRIC consists of seventeen individual members, along with twenty-two institutional partners. ²⁹ SRIC is run by a three-person executive team, consisting of Esther Ng, Sister Veronica Cahill, and Sister Patricia Reagan. ³⁰

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