Target 17.17: Public, public-private, and civil society partnerships
Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Public-private and civil society partnerships depend on companies choosing to engage. The UN Global Compact's more than 20,000 corporate participants commit to principles on human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption. Shareholder campaigns show civil society and investors jointly changing corporate practice, as with Proxy Impact's child safety resolutions at Meta, four of which won a majority of the non-management-controlled vote. When owners vote alongside a trusted civil society organization, the vote is itself a form of the civil society partnership this target promotes, and corporate willingness to partner is a necessary input. The target is nonetheless addressed to governments encouraging and resourcing partnerships, which owners cannot do, and lobbying is immaterial. Owners supply a necessary input, and governments must act to encourage and resource the partnerships.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files annual child safety shareholder proposals at Meta on behalf of Lisette Cooper, with faith-based and institutional co-filers, asking for child safety risk reporting and metrics and, in 2026, a link between executive pay and child safety.
Publicized the 2024 Meta child safety proposal led by Lisette Cooper of Fiduciary Trust International ahead of the May 29, 2024 vote.
3 campaigns on record
Adopt targets and publish an annual report with quantitative metrics appropriate to assess whether Meta has improved its performance globally on child safety impacts and actual harm reduction to children on its platforms.
With Durocher Fund, Providence St. Joseph Health, the Lisette Cooper 2015 Trust, the Linda C. Wisnewski Trust
Result: Proposal Eleven at the annual meeting of 29 May 2024, not approved: 925,650,012 votes for, 4,088,656,336 against, 10,232,329 abstentions and 204,808,280 broker non-votes.
About 18.5 percent of the shares voted for and against, the highest this ask reached at Meta, which Proxy Impact puts at 59.1 percent of the non-management controlled vote. The proponents value the 925 million shares voted for it at more than 439 billion dollars at the closing price on the day of the meeting, more than the combined holdings of Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity and State Street.
Adopt targets and publish an annual report with quantitative metrics appropriate to assess whether Meta has improved its performance globally on child safety impacts and actual harm reduction to children on its platforms.
With the Durocher Fund, the Lisette Cooper 2015 Trust, the Linda C. Wisnewski Trust
Result: Proposal Eleven at the annual meeting of 31 May 2023, not approved: 817,020,915 votes for, 4,202,589,505 against, 15,619,333 abstentions and 223,805,267 broker non-votes.
About 16.3 percent of the shares voted for and against, which Proxy Impact puts at 53.8 percent of the non-management controlled vote, Meta's dual class shares giving its chief executive ten votes a share. The first year of the broadened child safety ask, after three years of resolutions confined to encryption and child sexual abuse material.
Report by February 2023 assessing the risk of increased sexual exploitation of children as the company develops and offers additional privacy tools such as end-to-end encryption, addressing the adverse impacts on children and on the company's reputation and the effect of limits on detection technologies.
With Congregation of St. Joseph, Dana Investment Advisors, Providence St. Joseph Health, Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Linda Wisnewski
Result: Proposal Eleven at the annual meeting of 25 May 2022, not approved: 910,386,444 votes for, 4,358,740,887 against, 18,979,089 abstentions and 244,034,088 broker non-votes.
About 17.3 percent of the shares voted for and against, which Proxy Impact puts at 56.7 percent of the independent vote, Meta's dual class shares giving its chief executive over 60 percent of the voting power. The third year of this ask at the company, and the last before the proponents broadened it from encryption to child safety generally.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.