The Oxford Sustainable Finance Group and ShareAction are organising a one-day symposium on Monday 27 June to exchange learning between the civil society and institutional investment sectors and to strengthen links between them.

The civil society sector has decades of hard-won experience in driving change on social and environmental agendas. The best civil society campaigns involve multiple ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ track strategies, each with clear theories of change. There are clear campaign goals and intermediate targets to track progress towards them. They often start organically from the bottom-up but can also be initiated and driven by determined and well-resourced individuals and philanthropic organisations from the top-down. They can create their own momentum and action is often maintained over years if not decades, thus requiring well-motivated individuals and organisations with a medium to long term strategy. Campaigners in civil society have become increasingly sophisticated in the use of monitoring, evaluation, and learning techniques to capture and achieve results.

Clients and beneficiaries are increasingly demanding that investors managing their assets make a positive difference. So what opportunities exist for investors to make a difference and how can they turn this growing client driven desire into reality? What insights can they gain from professional campaigners? On the other hand, how can the power and influence wielded by major investors be an asset to civil society in its work to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement, to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, and to achieve social justice?

We will attempt to unpack what impactful civil society campaigns look like, analyse the factors and components that led to their successes, identify lessons that financial institutions could draw from these campaigns, and apply these to real life case studies. The learnings from this symposium will inspire and inform innovative practices, particularly in investor stewardship, and academic research.

Join us for a frank discussion to explore the lessons, linkages and challenges to their implementation.