Imfino News

New York, NY, Tuesday, June 2, 2020 - Domini Impact Investments LLC, a U.S. pioneer in impact investing, has published the Domini Funds 2019 Impact Report, which highlights the firm’s achievements and explains how Domini works for its shareholders to create value for the planet and its people.

Throughout 2019, the firm enhanced its Impact Investment Standards, continued to identify how its investments support the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and collaborated with a wide variety of stakeholders, including companies, civil society organizations, and other investors.

In addition to its focus of addressing climate change and human rights through its investment process and engagements, the report specifically highlights its efforts to help preserve forests, promote diversity at the board and executive level, and encourage pharmaceutical companies to broaden access to medicine.

Domini’s goals of contributing to universal human dignity and ecological sustainability are achieved by implementing three core impact-investing strategies:

• Investment Standards: Use social and environmental standards to find better investments
• Community Investing: Invest to help build healthy communities 
• Engagement: Use our voice as investors to improve corporate behavior

Key Impact Highlights include:

Investment Standards:

• Launched an initiative to address the systemic risks of deforestation and how to work to protect the value that forests provide.
• Formalized an exclusionary screen on for-profit prison and immigration detention center operators.
• Refined and enhanced key performance indicators (KPIs) for the Materials, Retailing, Media & Entertainment, and Telecommunication Services industries to ensure investment evaluations remain focused on the most meaningful and relevant sustainability challenges and opportunities.
• Integrated forest-related key performance indicators to capture risks and opportunities across 24 sub-industries.
• Maintained a lower carbon footprint. The Domini Impact Equity Fund and Domini Impact International Equity Fund are 65% and 29% less carbon intensive, respectively, than their public benchmarks.

Community Investing:

• Continued to direct capital to investments that communities depend on, such as access to affordable and quality housing, health care, education, and more.
• Highlighted how Domini supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through community investing, including nearly $10 million invested in green and sustainability bonds and over $500,000 invested with Community Development Financial Institutions. 

Engagement:

• Engaged a total of 511 (300 U.S., 211 non-U.S.) companies with over 680 contacts through our various collaborations and partnerships, addressing topics such as forests, diversity, climate change, human rights, access to medicine and public health, and weapons and firearms.
• Filed six shareholder proposals with companies on topics related to access to medicine and executive compensation plans, establishing a human rights committee on the board of directors, lobbying disclosures, and publishing a sustainability report. The firm successfully withdrew five of our proposals after reaching agreements with the companies, further demonstrating the importance of the shareholder proposal process in addressing environmental, social and governance change at companies.
• New proxy voting standard for diversity on boards. The Domini Funds now oppose the election of some or all directors where women make up less than 40% or at least three members of the board (whichever is greater). The Funds apply the same standards for historically underrepresented ethnic and racial groups in markets where the information is available.

Find out more about these initiatives and highlights, download our report: Domini Funds 2019 Impact Report

About Domini Impact Investments LLC: Domini Impact Investments LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser specializing exclusively in impact investing. Domini serves individual and institutional investors who wish to create positive social and environmental outcomes while seeking competitive financial returns. Domini applies social, environmental and governance standards to all its investments, believing they help identify opportunities to provide strong financial rewards to its fund shareholders while also helping to create a more just and sustainable economic system.