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May 04, 2000
Calvert Launches New Social Index
The Calvert Social Index provides a valuable benchmark for social investors using the broad-based
screens of a veteran fund family.
SocialFunds.com --
Social investors rely on screened indexes to serve as a proxy for choosing socially responsible
investments and as an alternative benchmark for the performance of those investments. A new social
index from Calvert Group gives social investors a fresh outlook on the industry.
 On May 1, the Calvert Social Index was
launched by Calvert Group, a leading mutual fund family known for its socially responsible funds,
with $6.5 billion under management. The new index is a broad-based, rigorously constructed passive
benchmark of large, U.S.-based socially responsible companies.
"The Calvert Social Index
is an important representation of today's socially responsible companies," said Barbara J.
Krumsiek, President and CEO of Calvert Group. "By giving the public a closer look at the social
practices of the Index companies, we are providing guidelines and helping companies strive toward a
higher level of social responsibility."
The Calvert Social Index consists of 468
companies, weighted on a market capitalization basis, that were objectively screened from a base of
approximately 1,000 of the largest companies in the United States. Calvert's seasoned Social
Research Department analyzed each company using its proprietary social criteria.
Companies
in the index meet Calvert's standards in the environment, workplace issues, product safety,
community relations, military weapons contracting, human rights, and respect for the rights of
indigenous peoples. In addition to using exclusionary screens for tobacco, firearms, alcohol,
gambling, and nuclear power, the Calvert Social Index includes companies that stand out positively
in their environmental policies, progressive workplace practices, and product safety.
Calvert Group asserts that their index is distinctly different from other socially screened
benchmarks, employing a passive screening process to select from a discrete universe of the 1,000
largest companies.
"There will be no substitution of companies," said Elizabeth
Laurienzo, Director of Corporate Communications at Calvert. "We're not modeling the Calvert Social
Index after any other established index. What we get after applying the screens is what we get."
The only restriction applied was a 40 percent limit on the technology sector.
The top
companies in the Calvert Social Index will be familiar to social investors, including CISCO
systems, Intel, IBM, Pfizer, and Merck. Quarterly changes to the index may be made to reflect
company changes based on social criteria, and the index will be reconstituted once a year based on
a revised list of the 1,000 largest companies.
In April, Calvert filed a registration
statement with the SEC for the Calvert Social Index Fund, a fund that will be designed to track the
performance of the Calvert Social Index. The new fund will follow the shareholder activism lead of
the Domini Social Index Fund, by making public its proxy analysis and voting intentions for Calvert
Social Index companies, starting with the 2001 proxy season.
Calvert will review each
company's individual proxy and publish its position on issues relating to its social criteria,
along with the rationale, on its web site, bringing even more transparency to the shareholder
activism process.
Calvert's imminent new index fund is not to be confused with the
Calvert Social Investment Fund Managed Index Portfolio, an actively managed fund designed to track
the Russell 1000. The new fund will employ the same passive management as the Calvert Social Index,
providing a fresh start for social investments to measure up to.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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