Brethren Benefit Trust’s Board of Directors maintains investment guidelines for all BBT funds. These guidelines exclude companies that generate 10 percent or more of their revenues from weapons and their components, abortion, alcoholic beverages, defense, gambling, tobacco, or pornography. Companies engaging in human rights violations (including slavery and child labor), as well as companies that consistently violate environmental regulations, are also screened. In addition, the guidelines exclude the 25 largest publicly traded U.S. defense contractors. Through these exclusions, BBT avoids investments in businesses that are in conflict with the social values of the Church of the Brethren as expressed by Annual Conference actions. Investment managers are responsible for ensuring that their own portfolios are in compliance with these guidelines at all times. BBT’s Investment Committee monitors this compliance.
Read more about BBT's Investment Guidelines here.
Department of Defense Screens
Each year as part of its Brethren values investing initiatives, Brethren Benefit Trust 's Board of Directors adopts two lists of companies that earn significant revenue from U.S. military operations. One list identifies the top 25 publicly traded defense contractors based on the size of contracts awarded by the Department of Defense, and the other list includes all publicly traded companies that generate more than 10 percent of their revenue from Department of Defense contracts. The firms on the lists are screened from BBT’s investment portfolios by all of our investment managers, and the organization avoids being a customer of any of these companies.
2017 Department of Defense top 25 list
2017 Department of Defense 10 percent list
