Making The Environment A Stakeholder

Dear Conservationist & Sustainability Stakeholders,

In 1995 Stuart Williams was blessed to meet a pioneer in Socially Responsible Investing, Ms. Susan Davis. Together they developed the wildly successful conference “Making A Profit While Making A Difference” which, during the ten years it ran became one of the catalysts that brought SRI into mainstream investing. 

Today, Stuart and his team are focused on promoting the irrefutable evidence that investing in sustainable companies benefits conservation and the environment. This is an imperative because 99% of current US philanthropic donations are targeted at humanitarian focused organizations and only 1% to conservation. Although both are vital to the future of our plant and the human race in general, it is fair to say that without an environment there will be no people. Accordingly, and before it is too late, it is time we all focused on making the environment a Stakeholder in everything we invest in and hence the genesis of the "Save Me" series of exclusive conferences starting with "Save Me Americas". 

At the top of the pyramid of charitable donations and large block purchases of public securities are plan sponsors, institutional investors, endowments, foundations, large corporations and private family offices and these institutions will remain vital in the quest to conserve the environment becomes a stakeholder in everything we do. However, we cannot leave it to the integrity and generosity of those at the top of the pyramid because as the pyramid broadens, there are hundreds of millions of people who can vote with their own capital. No matter how large or small the investment or donation, we must create an investment mandate where 1.4% of the global population (+/- 100,000,000 people) target a larger portion of their annual investments into sustainable companies and at least 30% of their charitable donations to conservationism. To put this in perspective if 100,000,000 people invested $2400 dollars per year (even through 401k’s etc) into sustainable companies and donated $500 per year to appropriate conservation efforts that would equate to $240Billion and $50Billion in annual investments and donations respectively. This is the goal of the "Save Me" team over the next 20 years, 100,000,000 people investing and contributing $290,000,000,000 annually to Making the Environment a Stakeholder.

For this to happen we need to develop a global message that must include the following:

1. Investing in sustainable companies can outperform or at least mirror appropriate market benchmarks

2. Investing in sustainable securities provides triple bottom line returns

3. Independent ratings of companies sustainability practices are in fact independent and that the rankings correlate to tangible positive impacts on our environment

4. Sustainable companies allow for transparency within their sustainability practice areas

5. Globally recognized conservationists are rated on numerous factors not the least of which are how much of each dollar of donation is applied “in the field” and what positive impact is the conservationist making to the environment

6. The corporate, institutional and UHNW sectors get far more vocal about their support for this movement

7. The world’s largest asset and wealth management firms along with the largest mutual funds and insurance become more focused on directing their clients capital into securities of sustainable companies 

8. Private equity, hedge and venture funds use sustainable screens as an indicator of enhanced (Alpha) returns

Thank you for your support in Making The Environment A Stakeholder