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Shareholder advocacy means using your position as an owner in a company to push for improved corporate performance. At Calvert, our social investment research analysts regularly engage in shareholder advocacy work, such as dialogue with company executives, proxy voting, and filing shareholder resolutions.
Dialogue with company executives and managers. We regularly initiate conversations with management as part of our social research process. After we've become a shareholder, we continue our dialogue with management through phone calls, letters, and meetings. Through our interactions, we learn about management's successes and challenges and try to press for improvement in specific areas of concern.
Proxy voting. As company shareholders, Calvert votes on issues of corporate governance and social responsibility at annual stockholder meetings. We take our responsibility seriously and vote each proxy in a manner consistent with the financial and social objectives of our Funds, in support of most social shareholder resolutions. Calvert's Proxy Voting Guidelines integrate corporate governance and corporate social responsibility into what Calvert calls a "sustainable governance" model that it is willingly sharing with other mutual fund companies. The guidelines are available here. Our proxy votes are disclosed here.
Shareholder resolutions. A shareholder with $2,000 of company stock, held for one year, can file a resolution calling for a company to take a particular action, such as changing a company policy. If not settled beforehand, these resolutions may come to a vote in front of all shareholders at the company's annual meeting. In 1986, Calvert Social Investment Fund (CSIF) became the first mutual fund to file a shareholder resolution - with the Angelica Corporation on labor/management issues.
Today, Calvert funds continue to propose shareholder resolutions on a variety of issues that concern us. We generally file shareholder resolutions when our dialogue with corporate managers is unsuccessful in persuading a company to take action. In most cases, our efforts have led to negotiated settlements with mutually beneficial results for shareholders and companies. Calvert filed 26 resolutions for 2005 shareholder meetings and 16 resolutions thus far for 2006 meetings. In 2005, we successfully resolved 21 shareholder resolutions in the areas of climate change, executive compensation and political contributions, and Board and employee diversity.
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