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July 05, 2000
Calvert Social Index Goes Live
by Philip Johansson
The recently launched benchmark of socially responsible companies is now available for real time
distribution by news services.
SocialFunds.com --
Two months ago, Calvert Group made strides in the development of social investment by introducing
the newest socially responsible market index. Now the Calvert Social Index is being calculated real
time, providing up-to-the-minute data on performance to investors through news agencies and
financial services companies.
 Calvert Group, based in Bethesda, Maryland, is
a leading mutual fund family known for its socially responsible funds, with $6.5 billion under
management. On June 30th Calvert Group announced that the Calvert Social Index (Ticker Symbol:
CALVIN), a broad-based benchmark of large, socially responsible companies in the U.S., would be
distributed by the Chicago Board of Trade.
"The Calvert Social Index gives investors the
opportunity to see how companies that have adopted sound corporate practices perform in the
marketplace on a real time basis," said Barbara Krumsiek, Calvert Group President & CEO.
The Calvert Social Index consists of 468 companies, weighted on a market capitalization basis,
that were socially and environmentally screened from a base of approximately 1,000 of the largest
companies in the United States. The broad-based, socially screened benchmark represents stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ-AMEX.
Calvert employs its proprietary
screening process and social research department to screen the stocks included in the Calvert
Social Index on a variety of issues. Screens include those for environmental concerns, workplace
issues, product safety, community relations, military weapons contracting, international operations
and human rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Calvert created the Index after
recognizing the market's need for a passively constructed index of socially responsible companies.
Vanguard Group, the nation's second largest mutual fund company, launched the Vanguard Calvert
Social Index Fund based on the Index in May, and Calvert plans to launch their own product tracking
the Index soon.
The announcement that Calvert is providing a real-time calculation for its
index comes just weeks after Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini (KLD) added a live feed for their own
Domini Social Index (DSI). The availability of these real-time social index values is a major step
in the accessibility and mainstreaming of social investments.
"Just as you check the
other major indexes for a read on the market," said Krumsiek, "the Calvert Social Index provides
the growing group of American investors interested in good corporate citizenship with a real time
benchmark against which to review the performance of socially responsible companies."
Calvert's new real-time value of the Calvert Social Index value can be accessed through the
Chicago Board of Trade, as well as several news and financial organizations including Bloomberg.
Calvert also plans to add the real-time calculation to its own web site.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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