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We are suspending the activities of the Social Choice for Social Change (SCSC) effort. We accomplished most all of our goals over the many years of getting a socially responsible fund started and improved at TIAA-CREF (TC). The one concern we have decided not to pursue further is the addition of social venture capital (SVC) to that fund, the Social Choice Account (SCA). (money directly invested into companies pioneering socially and environmentally responsible products and services--not purchase of stocks).

TIAA-CREF will likely be moving ahead with such investment in another of their funds in the future. And we are still hoping that SVC will be added to the Social Choice account at some point, when it seems more feasible for TC to do so. But we will no longer actively lobby them and ask them about that concern.

They will also be adding other new socially responsible proactive investment aspects to the SCA--and elsewhere in their system. It was only through our continued lobbying of various sorts that socially responsible investing (SRI) became institutionalized within the TC pension system. So we feel good about our accomplishments over the years.

Click here to visit the Make TIAA-CREF Ethical website (detailing the concern we are still focusing on to improve their SRI operations).

Campaign success: TIAA-CREF adds community and environmental investment to its socially responsible fund. Read More...

TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund) is the nation's largest pension system. It manages over $400 billion in assets for 3 million employees principally in higher education.

These pages describe a campaign to call TIAA-CREF to invest a small percentage (still hundreds of millions of dollars) of Social Choice Account assets in companies and other institutions that are models of social and environmental responsibility. The $8 billion Social Choice Account is TIAA-CREF's socially responsible fund that took five years of lobbying before it was established. Since then we have lobbed for and made other improvements in the funds. Now we are trying to improve the fund. Click here for our CALL TO ACTION - background information and listing of ways to help.

There is also some informative correspondence between TIAA-CREF and ourselves that deals with ways they have not fulfilled promises they had made to us back in March, 2004 and since. Click here to first see a letter we received from TIAA-CREF in May, 2004 in which they describe certain commitments to us. Then, click here, to see the letter from April, 2005 in which we note the non-fulfillment of further promises made and the restarting of our campaign. Then, click here, to see two letters of theirs in response. And, finally, click here, to view our final major  statement regarding these concerns. Since then we have had further communication but their stand has not changed.

Campaign updates for the last several years - click here. To receive updates every two to four weeks, please e-mail nwollman@bentley.edu to be added to the list.

To learn more about gaining group endorsements for the campaign and see which prominent individuals and national organizations (over two dozen) have already endorsed - click here.

Click Here to download TIAA-CREF two-sided "socially responsible money" you print out on a green sheet and cut so they are approximately the size of real money. They are good to distribute to advertise the effort (at conferences, to mail to colleagues, at events at which TC has presence, etc.)

If you want to get updates for the work of the coalition click here.

Click here to learn more about "Make TIAA-CREF Ethical," a coalition of national activist groups interested in seeing TIAA-CREF invest in certain companies and divest from others tied to human rights, environmenatal, or other negative abuses.

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* The Social Choice for Social Change is a project of the Peace Studies Institute of Manchester College

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A pledge for college graduates. The pledge reads: "I _____________ pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work." Click here for more on the Graduation Pledge

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