This week, the biggest endowment consultant in the U.S. announced that they would support universities and other institutions interested in divesting from fossil fuels. This is big news!

The announcement from Cambridge Associates has already been covered by publications on the Swarthmore and American University campuses, and we’ll have more information soon.

For those of you who need clarity and specific language from Cambridge Associates themselves, here are the points of commitment they produced and made public:

“Climate change is on the minds of many institutional investors, including endowments. Fortunately, there are a number of avenues institutions can elect to pursue to act on their concerns, from a focus on alternative energy and fossil-free investment managers, to various degrees of divestment within a portfolio. Cambridge Associates stands ready to help institutions pursue any of these paths.”
– Cambridge Associates, an institutional investment advisor that serves endowments.

Cambridge Associates, the global investment advisor to institutional investors, has articulated the four key points of its current commitment to institutional investors, including university endowments, interested in building environmentally sensitive investment portfolios.

Cambridge Associates said it is…

  • Incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) screens and inquiry into its research on all investment managers that it might recommend to clients.
  • Making an investment in technology to include the ESG information in its databases of investment managers.
  • Encouraging investment managers to create more environmentally sensitive products, including fossil-fuel free funds, to broaden the choice institutions have if they are seeking to incorporate ESG into their investing approach.
  • Providing to institutions the names of managers that are able to create fossil-free portfolios and those that have an investment screening process that is environmentally friendly.

More soon…

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