Welcome to Talk Divest! Here’s how you get started:
1. Read through the guidelines below.
Seriously, please read them *before* you contact a mentor. Mentors want to help accelerate the success of your campaign, and these guidelines will help you work with them productively and efficiently. Click here to download the Talk Divest Student Guidelines as a pdf.
2. Find a mentor on the map.
If you live in a dense urban area where there may be more than one Talk Divest mentor, make sure to zoom in. Available mentors are marked in green. Mentors who are currently too busy assisting other campaigns or with their own businesses are marked in red.
3. Email your mentor to set up a first meeting.
Once you’ve found an available mentor in your area, use the email provided to set up an in-person meeting. Here’s a template you can use for your introductory email.
Let us know if you have questions at talkdivest@gofossilfree.org.
Guidelines
Given the grassroots nature of the fossil fuel divestment movement, and the diversity in specific campaigns across the nation, mentors will need to learn a lot about how you have defined your campaign in order to support you. We at As You Sow, 350.org, CSSC and Responsible Endowments Coalition have done our best to “set the tone” so that mentors know that they are supportive, non-controlling actors who volunteer time and research to help you be well equipped, informed campaigners.
Prepare questions and an agenda, and send them to your mentor ahead of time. Example questions: Will divestment hurt our returns? Can we still have a safe, diversified portfolio without the energy sector? How long will divestment take? Then, work through answers and supporting data with your mentor.
Another option is to report questions and comments that the campaign has received from the administration to your mentor, and prepare responses which you will discuss with your mentor.
Your mentors can also help review reports and prepare data for presentations.
Some of the mentors may be working with several divestment groups. Please be appreciative of their time so they are energized for the next group.
Please give back to the network by sharing your campaign deliverables on the group drive linked on the Talk Divest webpage. In this way, your campaign can help the network can grow exponentially and prevent campaigns from “reinventing the wheel”.
Do mentors commit to any rules ahead of time?
There are a few red flags you should look out for in your engagement with mentors.
Don’t let your mentor talk you out of divestment. Shareholder engagement sometimes suggested as an alternative to divestment. It is an important tool and a historically important shareholder responsibility. In the case of fossil fuel divestment, shareholder engagement is a time and progress eddy – a mechanism to delay the inevitable conclusion that fossil fuel companies cannot be talked out of burning fossil fuels.
Mentors are required to support divestment to be admitted to participate in Talk Divest. If yours doesn’t, raise it with them, but if an understanding is not found, contact Talk Divest for a new mentor assignment.
No selling. Don’t let your mentor talk to you extensively or specifically about their firm’s products. Although your mentor might have a helpful investment strategy or fund which your endowment or pension could utilize, it is inappropriate for them to push services through your campaign, or to use your campaign to gain access to your campaign’s target institution for selling. Please report such behavior through the Talk Divest website so that we can take steps to address the problem.
Also, be aware that your mentor might have to go through a screening process with their firm before a meeting can be arranged. This is not always an issue, but bigger firms may want to screen your campaign’s questions and approve your mentor’s participation in Talk Divest beforehand. This process, in which a financial firm’s legal team approves various aspects of the activities of the firm’s employees is called “compliance” and is very common in finance, which is a risk averse area of business. Please consult with your mentor on this issue and build in extra time if the compliance process is slow-going. If you are uncomfortable sharing campaign information with your mentor’s firm, seek reassignment to a mentor not faced with compliance restrictions.