Hi Risker,
I am speaking of all of them, and I suppose our mission also, although in ways that are broadly interpreted.
For example, as an organization that values freedom and transparency, and is for the purpose of public education for the benefit of all people, I feel that we should avoid investing in organizations or governments that 1. likely tolerate or profit from sweatshop labor, 2. contribute notably to environmental hazards that may harm people, 3. contribute to the repression freedom of expression, 4. conceal government-authorized unethical activities from the public, 5. have significant or consistent problems with corruption or fraud.
Examples: 1. Some clothing manufacturers 2. Many coal-fueled power plants 3. A number of governments, and the companies that knowingly or recklessly enable or cooperate with the behavior of those governments by providing supplies or services that aid those governments' political or ideological repression of their residents 4. Governments that abusively use secret judicial or extrajudicial proceedings, and the companies that knowingly or recklessly enable or cooperate with that behavior 5. A number of large banks
Pine On Oct 14, 2014 3:18 PM, "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Which organizational values are you speaking about, Pine? The identified Wikimedia values[1] do not really speak to financial investment strategy.
Risker
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values
On 14 October 2014 14:18, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, thanks, those are relevant policies. It appears that we don't have a policy that aligns WMF's investment choices with organizational values.
For
short-term investments where the goals are liquidity and preservation of capital, I think that this alignment should be relatively easy to
achieve.
For longer term funds that have the goal of accumulating returns,
aligning
organizational values with ROI may be a little more challenging but probably not impossible. Hopefully Garfield and/or Stu will comment on
the
possibility of creating a policy about aligning investment choices with organizational values. I think WMF's donors would appreciate having a policy that they could look at, especially when considering a possible
WMF
endowment.
Pine
On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 3:23 PM, James Alexander <
jalexander@wikimedia.org
wrote:
On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Garfield,
Thanks for the update.
Is there public documentation somewhere about WMF investment policy?
Who
manages the investments, how was that firm or people chosen, and how
often
is the performance and risk of the portfolio and the investment
manager
reviewed by the Board? I am particularly interested in making sure
that
the
investments chosen are in alignment with the values of the Foundation
and
have suitable risk levels, and I hope that the Board reviews these
issues
periodically.
Hey Pine, it looks like you may be looking for
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Investment_Policy
and https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Investment_Guidance.
I will say that as someone on the internal 401k committee ( employee retirement program) mission and values driven decisions are incredibly difficult to balance well with our legal fiduciary responsibility and
so
always ended up having to be a secondary (though not ignored) issue.
That
is, however, a bit of a different case then the greater WMF investments since our main job is to make sure good 'options' are available for the staff to choose from rather then actually controlling their money.
James Alexander Legal and Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org <
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