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Critical Development for CDP Responders in 2018 & 19: CDP Introduces Additional Alignment With FSB Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures Recommendations

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By Hank Boerner – Chair & Chief Strategist, G&A Institute

Corporate ESG Data, Data, Data – it’s now everywhere and being digested, analyzed and applied to corporate equity analytics and portfolio decision-making.

Whether your public company participates in the annual round of organizing responses to the ever-more comprehensive queries from leading ESG / sustainability / CR rating agencies or not, there is a public ESG profile of your company that investors (asset owners, managers and analysts) are examining and applying to their work.

If you don’t tell the story of your firm’s progress in its sustainability journey, someone else will (and is).  And if you have not embarked on the journey yet…and there is not much to disclose and report on…you are building the wrong kind of moat for the company.  That is, one that will ever-widen and impair access to capital and affect the cost of capital.  And over time, perhaps put the company’s issues on the divestiture list for key investors.

This sounds a bit dramatic, but what is happening in the capital markets these days can be well described as a dramatic shift in focus and actions, with corporate ESG strategies, actions, programs, achievements, and disclosure becoming of paramount importance to a growing body of institutional and retail investors.

Consider these important developments:

  • The influential Barron’s editors, reaching hundreds of thousands of investors every week, beginning in Fall 2017 made coverage of corporate sustainability and sustainable investing a mainstay of the magazine’s editorial content.
  • Morningstar, the premier ranker of mutual fund performance, added sustainability to the analysis of funds and ETFs with guidance from Sustainalytics, one of the major ESG rating firms (and Morningstar made a significant investment in the firm).
  • SustainableInvest, headed  by Henry Shilling, former leader on sustainability matters for Moody’s Investor Service, noted that in 2Q 2018 as the proxy season was ending, 2018 voting was notable for the high level of “E” and “S” proposals, some achieving majority votes in shareholder voting at such firms as Anadarko Petroleum, Kinder Morgan and Range Resources.  Assets in 1,025 sustainable funds analyzed added $14 billion during 2Q and ended in June at US$286 billion; more than $1 billion was new net cash inflows, demonstrating investor interest in the products.

Significant:  according to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulations, two-thirds of investor-submitted proxy resolutions focused on having the company follow through on the 2-degrees scenario (testing) were withdrawn and company boards and managements agreed to the demand for climate risk reporting.

The FSB TCFD Impact on Corporate Sector and Financial Services Sector

The Financial Stability Board, an organization founded by the central bankers and financial leaders of the G-20 nations, created a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (“TCFD”) to develop climate-related financial disclosures for adoption by financial services sector firms and by publicly-traded companies in general.

The 32-member Task Force, headed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced financial recommendations for companies and investors in June 2017.

The essence of the recommendations:

  • Corporate boards and managements should focus on the risks and opportunities present and in the future taking into account a global temperature risk of 2-degrees Centigrade (3.5-F), and in the future, 4-C and even 6-C global temperature rises.

The risks (presented are not just to the affected companies but to the financial sector institutions investing in the company, institutions lending funds to the company, carriers insuring the company, etc.).

The risks and opportunities related to climate change should be thoroughly analyzed using the scenario testing that the company uses (an example would be projecting future pricing, regulations, technologies, and “what ifs” for an oil and gas industry company).

The company should consider in doing the scenario testing and analyzing outcomes the firm’s corporate governance policies and practices; strategies for the long-term; risk management policies and resources; establishing targets; and, putting metrics in place for measuring and managing climate risk.  Then, the next step is disclosing this to investors and other stakeholders.

Key Player:  CDP and its Wealth of Corporate, Institutional and Public Sector Data

The CDP – formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project – was founded almost two decades ago (2000) as a United Kingdom-based not-for-profit charity at the urging of the investment community, to gather corporate “carbon” data.

Timing:  soon after the start of meetings of the “Conference of the Parties” (or “COP”), organized by the United Nations as the Climate Change Conferences. (The “UNFCCC”.)

In the mid-1990s, the Kyoto Protocol emerged that legally-bound nations to their pledge to reduce Greenhouse Emissions (GHGs).  The U.S.A. did not sign on to the global protocol during the tenure of President George W. Bush, and the agreement reached in Paris at the COP meeting in 2015 was finally agreed to by President Barack Obama.

And then began the process of withdrawal under President Donald Trump.  The U.S.A. is now the prominent holdout (among the community of 197 nations signed on) in the global effort to address global warming before the danger point is passed.  In Paris, the COP agreed that the threshold was 2-degrees Centigrade.

Today, a growing universe of investors and many other stakeholders are increasingly focused on the role of carbon emissions in the framing of questions about what to do as scientists charted the warming of Earth’s climate.

And so — ESG / environmental data is critical to the mission of determining “what to do” and then implementing measures to address climate change challenges.

The Critical Role of CDP 

CDP over almost two decades since its founding has become the premier repository of corporate data related to climate change – with more than 6,000 companies’ data collected and shared in organized ways with the investment community.  (That includes the ESG data of half of the world’s public companies by market cap.)

The CDP emissions data focused has broadened over 16 years to now include water, supply chain, forestry (for corporates) and environmental data from more than 500 cities and some 100 states and regions available to investors.

Key user base:

  • 650-plus institutional investors with US$87 trillion in Assets Under Management.
  • Corporate Supply Chain members (such as Wal-Mart Stores) that collect data from their suppliers through CDP—a universe of 115 companies with over $3.3 trillion in combined purchasing power.

When the TCFD recommendations were being developed, CDP announced a firm commitment to align with the task force recommendations.

Following their release of the Task Force recommendations in July 2017, CDP held public consultations on a draft version of the TCFD-aligned framework. The current 2018 Climate Change questionnaire that corporations received from CDP is fully aligned with the TCFD recommendations on climate-related disclosures related to governance, risk management, strategy, and metrics and targets.

The TCFD recommendations are already aligned with the majority of CDP’s longstanding approach to climate change disclosure, including most of the recommendations for climate-related governance, strategy, risk management as well as metrics and target disclosure.

However, this year CDP has modified some questions and added new ones — the most impactful being on climate-related scenario analysis to ensure complete alignment.

Some modifications include:

The Governance section now asks for more information about oversight of climate change issues and why a company doesn’t have board-level oversight (if applicable). CDP also requests information about the main individual below the board level with the highest responsibility — and how frequently they report up to the board.

Next, in the risks and opportunities section, CDP now asks for the climate-related risk & opportunity identification, and assessment process.

As in past years, questions are posed in the Business Strategy module to allow companies to disclose whether they have acted upon integrating climate-related issues into their strategy, financial planning, and businesses.

CDP has also added a question for high impact sectors on their low carbon transition plans, so data users can gauge and further understand the sustainable and strategic foresight that these companies aim to achieve.

CDP also added a new question on scenario analysis, explaining that scenario analysis is a strategic planning tool to help an organization understand how it might perform in different future states.

A core aim of the TCFD recommendations is for companies to improve their understanding of future risks and develop suitable resilience strategies.

Finally, the TCFD recommendations highlighted five (5) sectors as the most important. In 2018, CDP rolled out sector-specific questions for the four non-financial sectors that the TCFD highlighted (they are energy, transport, materials, and agriculture).

TCFD also highlighted the financial sector – looking forward, in 2019, CDP is planning to release a financial sector-specific climate change questionnaire.

The TCFD resources for investors and corporate managers are embodied in three documents – (1) the Main Report; (2) an Implementation Annex; (3) the Technical Supplement for Scenario Analysis.  These are available at:  www.fsb-tcfd.org

G&A Institute Perspectives:

Our team has been assisting corporate managers in organizing the response to the CDP annual survey and we’ve tracked over the years the steady expansion of information requested of companies.

Our advice to companies not reporting yet:  get started!  The CDP staff members are very cooperative in assisting new corporate reporters in understanding what data are being sought (and why) and providing answers to questions.

CDP’s founding CEO Paul Simpson cautions:  “Big companies:  get better at telling those who hold the purse strings how climate risks could affect your bottom line.”

And so, our mission at G&A includes helping corporate issuers tell a better sustainability and ESG story, including the story told in the data sets communicated to 650-plus institutional investors by CDP!

CDP data is everywhere, we advise clients, including for example being part of the volumes of ESG data sets that Bloomberg LP shares on its terminals (through the terminal ESG Dashboard).

On the supply chain side, we point out that more than US$3 trillion is the collective spend of companies now addressing their supply chain sustainability factors and environmental impacts (customers see suppliers as part of their own CDP footprint).  Corporate leaders in this effort include Apple, Honda and Microsoft, CDP points out.

Resources:

CDP’s Technical Notes on the TCFD are available at: https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/guidance_docs/pdfs/000/001/429/original/CDP-TCFD-technical-note.pdf?1512736184

The “A” List of CDP naming the world’s business leaders on environmental performance (160 firms) is at: https://www.cdp.net/en/scores-2017

The CDP USA Report 2017, focused on key findings on Governance, ESG and the Role of the Board of Directors is available at: https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/891/original/CDP-US-Report-2017.pdf?1512733010

There’s an excellent interview with CDP CEO/Founder Paul Simpson at: http://www.ethicalcorp.com/disruptors-paul-simpson-atypical-activist-who-woke-c-suites-climate-risk

You can check out Henry Shilling’s SustainableInvest.com at: https://www.sustainableinvest.com/second-quarter-2018-sustainable-funds-investing-review/

 

Feeding 9 Billion People in 2050? Challenging!  – A Leading U.S. CEO in the Food & Agriculture Business Has Important Perspectives to Share

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by Hank Boerner -Chair, G&A Institute

The CEO of one of the nation’s leading food and agriculture companies has important messages for us:  “To move the planet forward, farmers must lead the charge. But they cannot do it alone. Coordinated action on sustainability across the food supply chains is the only way to achieve lasting progress.”  He tells us how and why in his commentary in a Top Story in our Sustainability Highlights newsletter.

Background:  The Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat in the 2017 revision of the World Population Prospects (the 25th version of this report) says: the current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100.

More than 80 million people are added to the world’s population each year. One of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) is to end poverty and hunger – how do we achieve this will depend in large measure on the success of growers in the USA and many other lands.

Looking at global agriculture moving towards 2050, there are serious challenges posed; the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2009 described some of these:  much more food and fiber must be produced; there will be a smaller rural labor force to help do this; there will be increased demand for more feedstocks for a potentially huge bioenergy market; adapting to climate is  necessary; and, ag producers must be more efficient and sustainable.

Demand for cereals, as example, could almost double from today’s production (for animal feed and human food). Almost all of the land expansion for ag could be in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

The CEO of Land O’Lakes, Chris Policinski writing in Agri-Pulse explains that while the discussion about climate change and other challenges seems to be focused on developments being a generation away, American farmers are dealing right now with such things as harsh drought, severe weather and more pests…the challenges to the food supply are happening right now.

And it is time to start talking about sustainability differently…to include (for example) the reality of what farmers face, acre-by-acre/field-by-field. And then, “farm-to-fork” issues.

Bringing together big-picture, company-level sustainability commitments and acre-by-acre conservation efforts makes both more effective. The great example used by the CEO is Wal-Mart’s Project Gigaton, which aims to remove one billion metric tons of GhGs from the company’s supply chain by 2030.  (Land O’Lakes was one of the first supply partners to sign on.)

There’s much more for you in the Land O’Lakes CEO’s message in one of our Top Stories this week.  There are related items “up top” for you – this week we have ag and food in focus in the Highlights.

Note:  Land O’Lakes, Inc. is a member-owned cooperative agribusiness and food production company based in Minnesota, with $13.7 billion revenues in 2017. The cooperative is almost 100 years in operation and ranks #215 on the Fortune 500® roster.

Top Stories – Ag & Food In Focus

Opinion: To Move Our Planet Forward, Food and Agriculture Must Think about Sustainability Differently
(Friday – April 06, 2018) Source: Agri-Pulse – In many ways, the sustainability story of the American farmer mirrors that of every other American. Farmers genuinely care about doing their part to protect our planet, for all the same reasons as anyone else. They want to leave…

Smallholder farmers are key to making the palm oil industry sustainable
(Monday – April 02, 2018) Source: Eco-Business – Smallholder farmers play an increasingly prominent role in Indonesia’s growing palm oil industry and could be the vanguard of sustainability, say WRI researchers.

A few surprising industries affecting the concept of sustainability in a positive way
(Tuesday – April 03, 2018) Source: Augusta Free Press – In the last ten years, sustainability has become a very important element in the business processes in many industries. For instance, all-natural and organic have become trendy terms in the food industry. Companies which are part…

Opinion: To Move Our Planet Forward, Food and Agriculture Must Think about Sustainability Differently
(Friday – April 06, 2018) Source: Agri-Pulse – In many ways, the sustainability story of the American farmer mirrors that of every other American. Farmers genuinely care about doing their part to protect our planet, for all the same reasons as anyone else. They want to leave…

Don’t Believe In Global Warming? Just Ask A Tuscan Winemaker
(Wednesday – April 04, 2018) Source: Forbes – “Have you seen the effects of climate change and global warming in your region?”

Hershey is investing in more sustainable cocoa for its chocolate treats
(Wednesday – April 04, 2018) Source: LA Times

They Are Beginning Now – the Long-Awaited Corporate Disclosures on Ratio of CEO Ratio – CEO Pay-to-Median-of-Workforce Pay

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by Hank Boerner – Chairman & Chief Strategist, G&A Institute

The big-deal and long-waited corporate announcements / disclosures are beginning in 1Q 2018. 

Way back when…after the 2008 financial crisis when the Dodd-Frank capital markets reform legislation was passed (in 2010)…one of the requirements was that public companies must develop a ratio and disclose this publicly: how much does the CEO earn, and what that is that compared to the median compensation of the employee workforce? (Half below/half above is the median level to be arrived in an analysis for public filing.)

This is the Ratio, CEO Pay-to-Median-Worker-Pay disclosures.

The Securities & Exchange Commission finally issued its guidance on all of this in September 2017 (companies and their trade associations had steadily pushed back on the 2010 disclosure mandate and the SEC struggled with the “how-to” rulemaking / or more “gentle” guidance, causing delays in applying the law).

So – today the CEO-Employee Pay Ratio is upon us – and the first important disclosures are coming out now – including the first filing for a S&P 100 firm.

Bloomberg Markets News reports that Honeywell International Inc’s filing shows that CEO Pay is 333 Times More Than Median Workers. CEO Darius Adamczyk’s pay package was $16.5 million in 2017; the median employee pay (for the company’s 130,000 workers) is $50,296.

The Honeywell CEO package for 2017 is 60% more than for the prior year (when he moved into the job).

Earlier this month Teva Pharmaceutical Industries disclosed a pay ratio of 302-to-1 ($19.4 million for the CEO, median worker $64,081).

The AFL-CIO projected a 347-to-1 ratio (CEO: $13.1 MM; workers, $37,000).

When the SEC guidance was firmed up in 2017, some market observers said this was a “local newspaper headline” and not something that serious investors would pay attention to.

The Los Angeles Times – both a regional newspaper and one with national reach and influence – now features this headline: “The First Official Report on CEO-Worker Pay Ratios Shows and Enormous 333-1 Gap at Honeywell”

LAT’s Pulitzer Prize-winning financial commentator Michael Hiltzik used words like “…obscene…raw figures…economic inequality…the 1%…telling…massively embarrassing..”

Sam Pizzigati, the prominent author and social commentator at the Washington DC think tank Economic Policy Institute, was quoted in the LA Times article:

“This is a confirmation of research done up to now,” Sam Pizzigati, a fellow at EPI, says of the Honeywell data. He expects some corporations to show much larger discrepancies. That could show up especially in the retail sector, where median earnings are likely to be well below the $50,000 level of Honeywell’s heavily professional workforce.

Walmart, for instance, says its average hourly pay for full-time workers was to reach $13.38, following a company-wide wage increase in 2016. That’s about $27,800. Its CEO, C. Douglas McMillon, was paid $22.4 million last year. That would create a ratio of about 805-to-1 based on hourly wages alone.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek writer Anders Melin published a piece in January – “Why Companies Fear Disclosing CEO-to-Workers Pay” — noting:

“U.S. companies must soon begin disclosing what many would rather keep secret: The ratio between the CEO’s compensation and the paycheck of the company’s median worker. The mandate was included in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to shed light on the growing income gap between executives and workers. Opponents say it’s only meant to embarrass executives and won’t be useful to investors. One critic called it an example of bigotry against the successful.”

And: The disclosures will provide a first-ever glimpse into how thousands of U.S. companies compensate their workers, plus a more accurate sense than ever before of the CEO-to-worker pay gap.

A year ago, Alex Edmans writing in The Harvard Business Review said “…the numbers are striking…the idea is that a high pay ratio is unfair…I strongly believe that executive pay should be reformed…[but] the pay ratio is a misleading statistic because CEOs and workers operate in very different markets…”

His commentary is at:

https://hbr.org/2017/02/why-we-need-to-stop-obsessing-over-ceo-pay-ratios
(He is a professor of finance at London Business School.)

Our new “G&A Institute’s To the Point!” management brief platform has background on the CEO-Worker Pay Ratio, published for guidance in September 2017 as the SEC published its guidance:

IT’S H-E-R-E NOW: SEC Guidance on CEO-Employee Pay Rule Clarified in Interpretive Guidance. Your Company Should Be Prepared for First Quarter 2018 Disclosures and Beyond!

The information is at:
https://ga-institute.com/to-the-point/its-h-e-r-e-now-sec-guidance-on-ceo-employee-pay-rule-clarified-in-interpretive-guidance-your-company-should-be-prepared-for-first-quarter-2018-disclosures-and-beyond/

I have a chapter in my book (“Trends Converging!”) about the pay rule (Chapter 9) – the entire book is available for you with my compliments at:
https://www.ga-institute.com/research-reports/trends-converging-a-2016-look-ahead-of-the-curve.html

We’ll continue to bring you news of the CEO-Worker Pay Ratio corporate disclosures in 1Q 2018– company announcements and the public response to same.

Attention Boards & CEOs: The Conference Board Has Important Insights to Share To Help Your Company…Survive and Succeed!

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by Hank Boerner – Chairman, G&A Institute

The Conference Board is one of the most prestigious and important (for corporate managements) of our membership business associations, as well as credible research think tank on management issues and topics. The Board has long had corporate governance in focus and has been a major factor in helping to advance effective, responsive, accountable governance in the USA.

The Conference Board was one of the early organizations serving boards, C-suite and key functional managers to expand the governance research and advisory services to include social and environmental issues & topics: ESG is on the of the agenda for many aspects of Board operations.

Members of boards and CEOs and C-suite-ers receive Director Notes on key topics and issues with practical advice needed to improve performance and better serve society.

Today’s issue of Director Notes is worthy of close reading — and re-reading — by sustainability professionals: “Navigating the Sustainability Transformation.” The introduction is bold:

“CEOs and Directors making key business decisions regarding the company’s strategy for the year ahead and beyond would be well-advised to change the current boardroom conversation. Driven by factors tied to sustainability, over the next 15 years, every company in every industry sector will need to transform itself to survive and succeed. Board members, CEOs and he executives advising them need to ask: “How should we plan for this major transformation?” (emphasis mine)

The report describes a four-stage model for companies to progress from engaging initially with sustainability to accelerating, leading, and ultimately transforming their business.”

Addressing the practical aspects of corporate sustainability (board style), the report focuses attention on a host of corporations that are embracing sustainable strategies, actions, programs, engagements.  These include “new brands” such as Airbnb, Google, Tesla, and Uber — all of which have disrupted old business models and achieved leadership – fast! — in their categories (Airbnb vs. the hotel business, Tesla vs. old line auto manufacturers, etc.).

Established companies — some dating back a century or more — are featured in the report, with explanations of how they have achieved success (and frankly, heartily survived) in a business environment (and investment mindset) where disruption is prized over proven models.  These old-line companies have succeeded by being transformation, often disrupting their own cash cows!

Examples include:  3M; General Electric (with its Eco-magination); BMW; DuPont; Dow; Unilever; Michelin; HP; SC Johnson; Nike; Kimberly Clark; McDonalds; Wal-mart Stores; Starbucks; NRG Energy; Newmont Mining; Coca-Cola Company; IKEA; Interface; Sony; BT; Tesco; Azko Nobel; Xcel Energy; and Waste Management;.

Waste Management’s transformation from a traditional waste hauler to strategy and service provider to corporate customers is one highlight of the report.

Sustainability professionals will want to read The Conference Board report’ views on the 4 stages of progression for companies. I think this could become a top-of-agenda discussion in board rooms and C-suites in the weeks ahead.

The stages are (1) engagement with sustainability; (2) accelerating progress; (3) leading (sector, industry, peers, etc); (4) transforming.  There are many companies at stages 1 and 2, a few moving on to 3, and very few to point to as stage 4 (yet).  Many companies exhibit characteristics of stages 1 and 2 — these are examples in the report.

Moving into the transformation stage is challenging, of course. Given the dramatic upheaval in so many businesses, in such a short period of time, will make looking ahead 10 or 15 years to the critical period to 2030 and beyond…daunting, for sure.

But there are practical, realistic things going on in our world that make such exercise ( closely examining where your company is in the 4 stages of sustainability) necessary.  Natural resources (“natural capital to many) grows more scarce in many parts of the world.  It looks like there will be stranded assets on many corporate balance sheets (and in investment portfolios) as we shift away from fossil fuels. (We won’t always have plentiful, easy-to-access USD$48 crude oil available!)

The Conference Board report found a few examples of what could pass for stage 4 companies: “Few companies today are solidly at 4, but a growing number of leaders have one or more stage 4 attributes.  Airbnb, Google and Uber are ‘sharing economy’ companies; DuPont, Novelis, Unilever, and Waste Management are examples of long-established enterprises…”:

The 4-Stage Model is explained in the report.  We can see this having a powerful impact, similar to Professor Michael Porter’s work with Mark Kramer: “Creating Shared Value” (Harvard Business Review, January 2011).

the Conference Board makes the report(s) available for your reading — information is at:  https://www.conference-board.org/publications/publicationdetail.cfm?publicationid=2885

* * * * * * * *

The Director Notes are a series of publications the Board engages experts from various disciplines to contribute to, including experts in leadership, corporate governance, risk oversight, and sustainability.

The current issue was authored by Gilbert (Gib) Hedstrom, principal of Hedstrom Associates.  Content includes excerpts from his coming book, “The Sustainability Scorecard TM Handbook/”  Hedstrom is director of the Conference Board’s Sustainability Council.  He invited me to be guest presenter on corporate sustainability reporting and related topics at a recent Council meeting in Washington, D.C.

Matteo Tonello is managing director for corporate governance at The Conference Board; he is editor of the Director Notes series.

Melissa Aguilar is a researcher in the corporate leadership department of the board and is executive editor of the series.

Conference Board information is at: http://www.conference-board.org/

Philanthropy Over Policy Equals Plutocracy

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LarryChecco_Photo_LargeGuest commentary by Larry Checco

Philanthropy verses policy. What’s at stake? In the United States of America, perhaps our entire democratic process.

At a recent Brookings Institution event that focused on income inequality, John Prideaux, Washington correspondent for The Economist, was asked what a “good unequal society” would look like.

Prideaux replied that “a lot of the things we think are public goods would be provided for privately…in a sort of philanthropic way.” He added that this would entail a revival “of the 18th century idea of the obligation of those at the top of the income spectrum towards those at the bottom. (my emphasis)”

Prideaux gave an off-handed example of how the Gates Foundation perhaps — his fingers crossed — could provide better “welfare” to the people than “any government bureaucracy.”

Fast forward to a recent op ed piece in The Washington Post, written by a husband and wife team of obvious affluence, influence, and good will.

John and Carol Saeman, both devout Catholics, give generously of their time and treasure to the charitable works of their church (John is president of an investment and management company), as well as to other more laic (nonclerical, lay) organizations, including those run by people such as the billionaire Koch Brothers.

“Helping the poor…requires a fundamental change in how our society—and government—understands and seeks to address poverty,” they say in their op ed piece. “For us, promoting limited government alongside the Kochs” is in keeping with “Pope Francis’ call to love and serve the poor.”

The Koch organization that the Saeman’s ardently support is called Freedom Partners, a nonprofit organization composed of around 200 members, each paying a minimum US$100,000 in annual dues.

In 2012, Freedom Partners raised $256 million, making grants worth a total of $236 million to conservative organizations prior to the midterm elections, including Tea Party groups and organizations opposed to The Affordable Care Act. Your average middle class guy is probably not a member.

Regardless of the politics they embrace, wittingly or unwittingly, both Prideaux and the Saeman’s put forth the perfect scenario for a plutocracy—namely a society where wealthy people like the Koch brothers, the Gateses and others should determine and finance the common good verses employing the democratic process of the people.

In short, they are advocating philanthropy over policy, which leads us down a very slippery slope, folks.

When government works, policy reflects the will of We, the People. We elect political leaders whose job it is to pass laws and appropriate funds that promote the common good. If we don’t like the laws they pass or the funds they appropriate we have the opportunity, privilege and right to vote them out.

When it comes to philanthropy, as someone who has worked in the nonprofit sector for the better part of four decades, I can say with great confidence we run the real and great risk of relying on the kindness—and whimsy—of strangers.

If a huge philanthropic organization like the Gates Foundation decides to change course, what recourse do we, the people, have? Nada.

As imperfect and dysfunctional as our government is, I’m not willing to hand it over to the rich, regardless of their noble and good intentions—especially when it comes to defining the common good. Over the past 30 years or so, we’ve witnessed how that good has often translated into less taxes for them and less good for the rest of us.

One last point.

In their op ed piece, the Saeman’s make the argument that our welfare system encourages dependency and denies dignity to the poor. They leave out the fact that many people who work 40 hours a week at minimum wage for major corporations like Wal-Mart, McDonalds and many other large, well-heeled corporations lose dignity by having to rely on government programs to make ends meet, including food stamps.

BTW– in 2012, Forbes reported that just six Walmart heirs have as much wealth as 42 percent of all Americans. Say what!

Want to give people dignity? Rather than philanthropy, let’s pay hardworking folks a wage they can live and raise a family on. I guarantee you that people like the Waltons, Kochs and others in their economic stratosphere won’t miss a meal by doing so—and we won’t have to rely as much on their philanthropy.

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Larry Checco is principal of Checco Communications, a consulting firm that helps organizations define who they are, what they do, how they do it–and why anyone should care. Contact:  www.checcocomm.net

Contents © 2014 by Larry Checco – All Rights Reserved