From Ethical Insight published by http://www.maplecroft.com/

The US 2008 proxy season has seen shareholders file 54 climate-change related resolutions, around twice as many as in 2006, according to Ceres. The resolutions mostly concern companies in power generation, oil, coal, aviation and construction, which shareholders considered as not giving sufficient consideration to future climate-change business impacts. Such impacts include: future regulation and increasing demand for low-carbon technologies. One of two resolutions filed with ConocoPhillips requested an assessment and disclosure on the potential environmental damage from exploitation of the Canadian tar sands, in which the company is the largest participant. ExxonMobil received three resolutions: to develop greenhouse gas reduction targets, to adopt a renewable energy research and development programme and to “disclose how it will lead in developing technologies to create US energy independence.”

Fourteen of the 54 resolutions were subsequently withdrawn as firms agreed to greater disclosure. Many of the investors filing climate-change-related resolutions are members of the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a group of 60 investors with a total of US$5 trillion in funds under management. Leslie Lowe, director of the Energy and Environment Program at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said: “Finding solutions to the climate challenges ahead is an economic imperative for every company in every sector of the economy, whether it’s making cars and power plants that use less fossil fuel or designing buildings and appliances that are more energy efficient.”

For companies with long and complex value chains, Maplecroft offers over 20 off-the-shelf best practice policies, with guidance and tools for implementation, in areas such as environmental management, health and safety, human rights and corporate governance.

Social Capital Markets 2008 (SoCap08) is a new event designed to bring together all of the people and organizations with a similar deep passion to change the world through sustainable businesses. http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/wordpress/

Why is SoCap08 so important? We’re at the cusp of a massive sea-change in the ways that businesses can impact global and local problems. In the past, startup profit-motivated businesses were funded by risk capital, and socially-focused organizations were supported by philanthropy. The profit-oriented were rarely allowed to let a social mission intrude, and the socially-oriented were discouraged from building sustainable businesses. But a new breed of entrepreneurs – and a new mentality of those who fund them – is changing the landscape of business, investing and philanthropy.

Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism by Michael Edwards

From: Nonprofit Quarterly

Every now and then a fad/innovation (choose one) takes off in philanthropy and all of us must learn a new lexicon and listen to a lot of excited presentations where we are promised the moon in return for getting fully on board

Of late, we are beset by discussions of (mix and match) social ventures, venture philanthropy, social venture capital, social enterprise all of which attempt to embed the principles of capitalism in efforts to transform and better society.

There have been few outright challenges to this line of thinking so when we saw Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism by Michael Edwards we were struck with it’s honest appraisal of the whole proposition. Edwards is the director of the governance and civil society unit at the Ford Foundation though this was written on his own time.

NPQ has linked a brief introduction, largely drawn from the book itself. The full book is available as a PDF download.

More on this at the Nonprofit Quarterly’s: home page

How Nonprofit Journalism Pays Off

By Nathalie Applewhite, Associate Director, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Her full article can be found at : http://pulitzercenter.typepad.com/news_points/2008/02/how-nonprofit-j.html

In the shifting landscape of today’s news media, nonprofit journalism has been gaining significant attention as a potential solution. In the past few months the Columbia Journalism Review and the American Journalism Review have each featured stories about the growing importance of foundation sponsored journalism. And it should come as no surprise. As Charles Lewis suggests in CJR’s “The Nonprofit Road,” nonprofits have long played a critical role in providing quality journalism to the American public.

One nonprofit that has asked this question is the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which seeks not to replace traditional or new media, but to build on the existing strengths of both and fill in the gaps where needed. It’s not the only answer, but it’s a model that is already delivering a promising ‘Return on Investment.’ Founded just two years ago, the Center is forging a model of journalism dedicated to raising the standard of international reporting in the United States. The Center’s model combines quality reporting, comprehensive media dissemination and educational initiatives to raise awareness of critical global issues that have been largely ignored in the American media. We work across media platforms and embrace the promise of pro-am collaborations as reflected in our recent partnership with helium.com. By reaching out into schools we hope to inspire the next generation of news consumers to ask for better information and engage in the news gathering process more directly.

As a small, nimble organization built on principles of collaboration over competition and on long-term change over short-term fixes, we’re able to achieve significant impact without looking to monetary profit to measure our success. Pulitzer Center-supported reporting spanned more than 20 countries in 2007, including a 14-month investigation of factory working conditions in China, pioneering work on human rights abuses in Ethiopia, environmental challenges across the globe including Peru, Rwanda and Alaska, the HIV/AIDS crisis in the Caribbean, rehabilitation efforts with former child soldiers in Liberia and the U.S., and in-depth reporting that challenged official U.S. optimism on the “surge” in Iraq.

Jon Sawyer, the Pulitzer Center’s executive director, is at WeMedia this week actively seeking new partners who, like us, believe the benefit of quality information can not be measured in dollar signs.

For more about the Pulitzer Center see: “Funding for Foreign Forays,” by Carol Guensburg. AJR, February/March 2008

This blog entry is also posted online by We Media, an organization striving to use the power of media as a tool for social change.

The IBM Institute for Business Value’s new study “Attaining Sustainable Growth through Corporate Social Responsibility” uncovers three dynamics for companies to understand and act upon in dealing with the threats and opportunities of CSR:

• Impact - from cost to growth
• Information - from visibility to transparency
• Relationships - from containment to engagement

To read the full report, download the PDF file at:

 http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/gbs/a1029293

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is accepting research grant proposals for a $100 million global health initiative focused on infectious diseases, drug resistance, HIV infection and latent tuberculosis infection. The foundation’s new Grand Challenges Explorations program plans to award $100,000 to about 60 open-ended, innovative project ideas. Yahoo!/Associated Press

Ashoka’s Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship has recently
developed a “Social Entrepreneurship Teaching Resources Handbook”.
The handbook is an excellent reference guide, and can be found in PDF
format here:

http://www.universitynetwork.org/files/Social%20Entrepreneurship%20Handbook%20010508.pdf

The plethora of resources includes a mapping of over 250 professors
who are actively teaching or researching in social entrepreneurship
from more than 35 countries, with 29 different competitions, over 800
different articles and 200 cases used in social entrepreneurship courses.

Sections include:
- Social Entrepreneurship Programs, Courses, Cases, Articles and other learning resources
- Profiles of Social Entrepreneurs, Support Organizations, and Competitions
- Social Entrepreneur Networks, Conferences and Events

With special thanks to Karim Harji of Aperio
Fostering Social Sector Innovation  www.aperio.us

Studies have shown U.S. students are woefully unprepared to meet the challenges of an increasingly interconnected world. The Class of ’08 will live and work globally. For them and all who follow, in-depth knowledge of the rest of the world is no longer a luxury, it is essential.

For the past five years The Asia Society & the Goldman Sachs Foundation have been awarding Prizes for Excellence in International Education.

The Prizes recognize and encourage U.S. schools to meet these challenges and identify the best of the growing number of examples of international education around the country. For five years now, the prizes have garnered considerable interest across the U.S. and around the world, bringing national attention to the critical need for investment in this field, and providing for a thriving growing network of model internationally-aware schools.

These schools are changing the way that American children are educated and the way that we think about education. This isn’t about language classes; it’s about doing science with a focus on international issues.

This year’s winning schools, which will each receive $25,000 at a luncheon ceremony to be held at Asia Society’s New York City headquarters on March 10, 2008, are:

State: Ohio’s State Board of Education is the first in the country to engage in a systematic international benchmarking study.  The state’s Creating a World Class Education System in Ohio compares its educational system to others globally and makes recommendations for policy changes.  The Board has also revised its state curriculum standards to increase the amount of international content in which students are expected to demonstrate proficiency. 

Elementary/Middle School: Sunset Elementary School in Miami, Florida is an urban magnet and neighborhood school that, for the past 20 years, has offered a unique International Studies magnet program to its diverse student population. The program offers an inquiry-based, global curriculum focused on the topics of civic responsibility, cultural and environmental awareness, and knowledge of the global economy. The International Studies program is delivered in alignment with the curricula of the Ministries of Education of Spain, France, and Germany, and students are assessed through both state and international tests of academic achievement and language proficiency.  In addition to these languages, Sunset began to offer courses in Mandarin in 2007.  

High School: Eugene International High School in Eugene, Oregon is a teacher-developed school-within-a-school across three high school campuses in Eugene, Oregon.  The required curriculum centers around culture, history, political systems, economic and belief systems. Each grade focuses on a particular world region.  In the 10^th grade, for example, students study the Middle East in Global History, the evolution of Islam, Judaism and Christianity in Comparative Religion. Graduates of Eugene International High School describe the school as being a turning point on their development, inducing a lifelong interest in and comfort with international affairs.

Media and Technology: Reischauer Scholars Program, Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).  The Reischauer Scholars Program is a college-level distance learning course aimed at high school students who don’t have access to international education. The program provides a broad overview of contemporary Japan including literature, religion, art, politics and economics, education and U.S.-Japan relations.

West Conshohocken, Pa. – The John Templeton Foundation has named Gary Rosen to the newly created position of Chief External Affairs Officer. He arrives at the Foundation after more than a decade as an editor at Commentary, one of the country’s foremost intellectual magazines.

In this new role, Rosen will lead a global effort to raise awareness of the Foundation’s leadership in scientific and academic research and philanthropy. He will direct a strategic communications effort using the Internet, traditional media, in-house publications, conferences and events to raise the visibility and reach of the Foundation and its programs. Rosen will also work to establish the Foundation’s website (www.templeton.org) as an on-line destination and world-class forum for opinion and research on the Foundation’s broad spectrum of “core themes.”

Rosen brings to the Templeton Foundation both a formidable academic background and a track record of success at the highest levels of opinion journalism. While serving as an editor at Commentary, where he wrote on a range of subjects, Rosen also contributed regularly to the top opinion forums in the country, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He has appeared frequently on radio and TV, including MSNBC, Fox News, the BBC, C-SPAN, The History Channel and The Colbert Report. Rosen is the author of American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding (1999) and the editor of The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq (2005). A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a graduate of Stanford University, he received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1996.

About the John Templeton Foundation

Established in 1987 by renowned global investor Sir John Templeton, the mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions. These questions range from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. Our vision is derived from John Templeton’s commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The Foundation’s motto “How little we know, how eager to learn” exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress and breakthrough discoveries. For more information, visit www.templeton.org