New 2025 As You Vote Proxy Voting Guidelines Reaffirm Commitment to Climate, Diversity and Sustainable Growth
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Ryon Harms, ryon@asyousow.org, 310.730.9407
2025 As You Vote Proxy Voting Guidelines Reaffirm Commitment to Climate, Diversity and Sustainable Growth
Updated guidelines are in stark contrast to ISS’s politically-pressured rollbacks on board diversity
EL CERRITO, CA—April 10, 2025 —Today, As You Sow and Proxy Impact released the As You Vote, a leading resource for investors who want to follow a responsible voting policy to reduce risk for all stakeholders and enhance long-term sustainable growth. As You Vote provides this proxy voting policy for institutional investors through the Broadridge ProxyEdge platform and for individual investors through iconik.
Since 2015, As You Vote guidelines have raised the bar for voting on material shareholder concerns including climate change, workforce composition, biodiversity, executive compensation, board accountability, shareholder rights, and board diversity.
Amid the ongoing political attacks on workforce diversity, As You Vote’s guidelines recommend a vote against board nominating committees unless the board has a 40% minimum racial and/or ethnic diversity and a 50% gender balance. The recommendation is in sharp contrast to Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the world’s largest proxy voting service, that recently stated they would no longer consider diversity in making board director recommendations, despite data showing that greater diversity leads to financial outperformance.
“At a time when other proxy advisors have folded under intense political pressure, As You Vote offers recommendations aligned with justice and a livable planet that address key material risks to all stakeholders,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow. “Already this year we have seen more than 98% of shareholders vote at Costco, Apple, Deere, and Disney to endorse management’s current diversity workforce programs. Shareholders are sending a clear message that it’s time to base business decisions on data, not politics.”
The As You Vote guidelines also take a strong stand on executive compensation, voting against about 80% of Say-on-Pay ballot items, which also automatically triggers a vote against the board compensation committee. Key recommendations include pay disparity and inflated pay. The average ratio of CEO to typical worker compensation was 290:1 in 2023, up from 61:1 in 1989, and the guidelines recommend applying a 100:1 CEO-to-median worker pay ratio guideline. As You Vote also recommends a vote against CEO pay that is greater than the 75th percentile of company peers as artificially inflated levels of pay are common due to the practice of basing executive compensation on peer-to-peer comparisons instead of company performance.
“The current system of executive compensation is broken,” said Michael Passoff, CEO of Proxy Impact. “The exponential growth of CEO pay has been influenced more by matching what the competition is paying than by actual performance. Inflated CEO pay ignores the contribution of other executives, workers and political and economic factors that significantly impact the company and help produce the results that the CEO is being rewarded for supposedly achieving.”
The 2025 Guidelines also address new shareholder resolutions described in Proxy Preview 2025, which reports on over 355 ESG resolutions submitted by shareholders so far. Proposals filed this year have climate risk and the environment as chief concerns, closely followed by social issues including corporate political influence, workplace diversity, equity, inclusion, human rights, and labor rights. New resolutions on biodiversity loss, artificial intelligence, and clean energy are also covered in As You Vote’s guidelines.
“Every share of stock has property rights including that the board reports to us,” added Behar. “We have ultimate oversight and responsibility for the companies in our portfolio. It’s time for all shareholders to take our responsibility seriously and use our power to make sure long-term sustainable growth is paramount.”
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As You Vote provides environmental, social and sustainable governance (ESG)-aligned proxy guidelines and voting services to institutional investors through the Broadridge Proxy Edge platform, for through Iconik. Fees support shareholder advocacy on climate risk, social justice, human rights, and other critical issues
As You Sow is the nation’s leading shareholder representative, with a 30-year track record promoting environmental and social corporate responsibility and advancing values-aligned investing. Its issue areas include climate change, ocean plastics, pesticides, racial justice, workplace diversity, and executive compensation. Click here for As You Sow’s shareholder resolution tracker.
Proxy Impact provides shareholder advocacy and proxy voting services that promote sustainable and responsible business practices. It engages companies on issues of gender and racial pay gaps, workplace diversity, child sexual exploitation online, climate change and corporate lobbying.