ECCR announces new Guide to Investment and Engaging with Companies for faith communities

Church-based corporate responsibility research and advocacy group the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR) today publishes a new Guide to Investment and Engaging with Companies.

The 30-page Guide aims to support church members, faith communities and other responsible investors in influencing companies on the basis of Christian and ethical values.

Co-sponsored by responsible investment specialists EIRIS and Ethical Screening, ECCR’s Guide describes and explains:

· the relationship between faith, values and finance;
· the `business case’ for corporate responsibility;
· why faith groups need to invest responsibly;
· how churches hold their funds;
· how invested funds provide opportunities for dialogue with companies and fund managers;
· the practical do’s and don'ts of dialogue and engagement.

"All of us are, one way or another, investors in companies and therefore part owners,’ says ECCR Co-ordinator Miles Litvinoff. "This may be directly through holding shares or indirectly through our pension funds, savings, bank accounts, and insurance policies - and through whichever church or other organisation we may belong to. Most of the church denominations are major shareholders.  As investors, we give companies their mandate to operate, so companies act in our name. Accepting moral responsibility for our investments is empowering and helps us recognise our potential to influence the policies and practices of business for the better."

ECCR, a membership organisation that has worked on corporate and investor responsibility for twenty years, hopes the Guide will help raise awareness and encourage more people of faith to take constructive action on the human rights and environmental impacts of business.

"The more faith communities and others seek to raise standards of corporate and investor responsibility, the sooner business will fulfil its potential to create value for the world’s poor and marginalised people as well as for those who are already well-off," Miles Litvinoff comments.

Investment and Engaging with Companies: A Guide for Faith Communities is downloadable from www.eccr.org.uk/module-htmlpages-display-pid-22.html