The Responsible Endowments Coalition (REC) works to build and unify the college and university-based responsible investment movement, both by educating and empowering a diverse network of individuals to act on their campuses, and by fostering a national network for collective action. We empower young people to defend human rights and the environment while making both corporations and universities accountable to global stakeholders. Our goal is to foster social and environmental change by making responsible investment common practice amongst colleges and universities, and to support the next generation of activists with a new and powerful toolkit.

What We Do

REC fosters social and environmental justice by transforming the way universities invest. We empower students, administrators, trustees, and alumni to help their institutions of higher education invest more responsibly. We provide university stakeholders with the tools they need to integrate environmental, social, and governance issues into university investment policies through shareholder engagement, community investment and a broader understanding of financial analysis. By supporting universities once these policies are implemented, we ensure that “responsible investment policies” translate to real-world environmental and social justice.

• Visit schools to present about responsible investment, help engage with decision-makers, or just share ideas.
• Host a national conference with presentations and workshops led by students and professionals in the movement.
• Provide access to template documents based on successful materials at other schools.
• Propose edits to proposals, letters, and other documents to help effectively frame responsible investment issues on campus.
• Coordinate joint efforts across campuses.
• Connect students with responsible investment professionals.
• Provide information, technical assistance, and connections to ally organizations and student activist networks.

• Provide advice and support on integrating responsible investment into endowment management.
• Publish and provide resources about implementing responsible investment that are specifically for administrators and trustees.
• Establish and strenghten networks between administrators/trustees and members of the responsible investment industry.

History

The Responsible Endowments Coalition was founded in 2004 by student activists from Barnard College, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College and Williams College who were interested in using their schools' endowments to positively change corporations. These students recognized a need for a source of information and support for student activists regarding responsible investment. They hoped to encourage new campaigns that would ultimately change the way universities consider the social and environmental impacts of their investments. Within a few months, the founders assembled a coalition of 40 schools with combined endowments of more than 102 billion dollars.

Led by this group of students, REC received its tax-exempt status as a non-profit corporation in September of 2005 and received its first major grant in March of 2007 from the Panta Rhea Foundation. With this support and that of other funders, REC has made significant progress in making responsible investment an important issue on college and university campuses.

As of 2010 the coalition has helped to catalyze the formation and improvement of 40 Committees on Investor Responsibility (CIR) which have the responsibility of overseeing the social and environmental impacts of their endowment and voting on corporate proxy resolutions (resolutions shareholders propose to corporate boards, often to increase their sustainability and social and environmental responsibility) and engaging with corporations that the university holds stock in. Since it's inception REC has worked with over 100 institutions of higher education, and our coalition includes approximately 100 active schools.  Currently 7 of the top 10 universities and 8 of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the country, based on US News and World Report, have active CIRs.

Founders

Morgan Simon, Founding Executive Director & Strategic Advisor

In 2002, as an undergraduate at Swarthmore College, Morgan led the filing of the first student-led shareholder resolution since the apartheid era, successfully convincing Lockheed Martin to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy and give domestic partner benefits. She has also led similarly successful efforts at FedEx, Dover and Masco. She has led trainings on responsible investment for hundreds of students across the country, in addition to working regularly with administrators and trustees. She was a Social Venture Network Innovation Award winner in 2007, and her work has been followed by national media such as the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. After Morgan's tenure as executive director, she continues involvement in the responsible investment and social and environmental justice movements by serving on the boards of Antim Sanskar, La Pena Cultural Center and SJF Advisors.

Lillie discovered responsible investment her freshman year at Duke when students launched a campaign calling for divestment. She wanted more information and so interned in the social research department at Trillium Asset Management. As a sophomore Lillie worked with several Duke student activist organizations to advocate for student participation in investigating and mitigating negative impacts of Duke's endowment investments. Duke University has since approved a socially responsible investing policy. Lillie is originally from Lexington, MA and is now living in Amman, Jordan, working in the fields of communications and program design. Lillie continues to serve on the REC Board of Directors.

Ryan Burg

Ryan got fired up about responsible investment in 2001 as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. It took two years to convince the Penn trustees to involve students and faculty in endowment responsibility issues, but with the help of some great activists the Social Responsibility Advisory Committee formed in late 2003.  Ryan served on that committee for five years and continues to advocate for responsible business practices.  He is currently finishing a PhD in Sociology and Business Ethics at The Wharton School of Business.

Gretchen Collazo

Gretchen's involvement in socially responsible investing began during her freshman year at Barnard, when she and the other members of the Columbia/Barnard environmental coalition investigated Columbia's environmental footprint and discovered that Columbia had no standards to govern or measure the impact of its investments on the environment. This discovery spurred her and other students to initiate a campaign dedicated to ensuring that the investment policies at both Columbia University and Barnard College reflected their mission statements, which resulted in the adoption by each school of a committee on SRI. Gretchen then teamed up with student activists from around the country to create a unified movement for ethical investing at educational institutions, leading to the birth of REC. REC remains an inspiration for her as she watches new generations of students collaborate to promote sustainable investing at their schools. Gretchen is currently working as a finance attorney in New York.

Mark Orlowski

Mark became involved with the fields of sustainability and investor responsibility while a student at Williams College. At Williams, he served on the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and chaired the Campus Environmental Advisory Committee. As part of a Williams research grant in 2003, Mark interviewed more than two dozen leaders in the investor responsibility field including the other four REC co-founders, which is how the the co-founders initially connected. In 2004, Mark became the first executive director of REC and in 2005 moved on to found the Sustainable Endowments Institute. Mark is now the Founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a Cambridge-based nonprofit organization engaged in research and education to advance sustainability in campus operations and endowment practices.

The Life and Times of REC
with REC Founder and former Executive Director Morgan Simon
The history of REC - learn how five students started a movement that has spread to over 1,000 students on 95 campuses.