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Investing More Than Your Money | Transformative Investing | A Growing Trend in Investing | Profiting From a Conscious Choice | Investing with Your Values in Mind | Sustainable Investment Solutions™ | Your Professional Adviser | Doing More with Our Industry Partners | Putting Ideas into Action | We Believe | Our Goals

Investing More than your Money
When you choose to invest with First Affirmative, your money works to achieve two distinct yet highly compatible objectives. Aligning your investments with your values can provide a means to achieve your financial goals and secure your financial future, while encouraging the development of a better future in which to enjoy that security.
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Transformative Investing
You can make a meaningful difference by consciously directing your investments toward enterprises that contribute to a clean, healthy environment, treat people fairly, embrace equal opportunity, produce safe and useful products, and support efforts to promote world peace. There are many opportunities to make sound investments that have a positive social impact.

• Avoid investing in companies with objectionable practices.
• Seek out companies that are operating in ways that reflect your values and priorities.
• Get involved in the shareholder resolution and proxy voting process—encourage more responsible corporate citizenship.
• Direct some of your investment capital to low-income communities for affordable housing and small businesses.
• Support new businesses and technologies making a positive contribution to society.

A Growing Trend in Investing
If you are interested in making your money do more, you are not alone. According to the Social Investment Forum*:

Profiting from a Conscious Choice
You no longer need to separate good fortune from good will. An impressive body of academic evidence plus real-world results have effectively refuted the contention that social screening will automatically result in underperformance.††

You can make money and make a difference. The broad range of competitive socially responsible investments permits the development of a diverse, well-balanced portfolio for nearly every socially conscious investor. Of course, past performance is never a guarantee of future results.†
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Investing with Your Values in Mind
We know that the quality of your future depends upon more than simply how much money you have. We respect your values and goals and will help you to use your money now to positively influence the future that you, your children and their children will enjoy.

We will work closely with you to develop investment objectives and policies that fit your values and goals. We understand that quality of life depends upon a great many factors, and that sometimes they can become very personal. Typical issues of interest and/or concern to our clients include:

We will support your social screening requirements whenever possible. We will work with you to integrate shareholder advocacy efforts into your investment strategies. We will encourage you to consider putting a small portion of your investment assets to work in at-risk communities.
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Sustainable Investment Solutions™
First Affirmative believes that in addition to the benefits of ownership, investors bear responsibility for the impact our money has in the world. We believe that integrating money with values can be both prudent and rewarding. We have combined these core beliefs with years of custom consulting and portfolio management expertise. The result is a unique investment strategy called Sustainable Investment Solutions™.

The Sustainable Investment Solutions process begins with a Confidential Client Questionnaire. Information is gathered on financial goals, time horizon, risk tolerance and societal priorities. An asset allocation strategy is tailored to meet your needs and an Investment Policy Statement is developed to guide discretionary management of your account. Assets may be invested in one or more of First Affirmative’s four proprietary managed account programs:

• Efficiencies is a strategic asset allocation solution utilizing socially responsible mutual funds as the underlying investments. Designed for investors with a long-term orientation, Efficiencies emphasizes efficient diversification by blending multiple asset classes, investment styles and money managers.
• Dynamics is a tactical asset allocation solution utilizing socially responsible mutual funds as the underlying investments. Dynamics managers seek to overweight client portfolios in the asset classes that show the best potential for superior performance and to invest in the top performing funds in each asset class.
• Generations is a Unified Managed Account (UMA) solution. Customizable to meet specific screening and tax management needs, Generations allows for ownership of up to seven model folios in a single account, each of which can hold up to 100 individual stocks and/or mutual funds.
• Fairways is an investment management consulting solution designed to meet the needs of high net worth individuals and institutions. Fairways features third-party SRI-capable separate account managers. Personal ownership of individual securities facilitates a variety of custom portfolio management strategies.

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Your Professional Adviser
Many network advisers are qualified to offer a full range of investment services including mutual funds, insurance, stocks and bonds, real estate, certificates of deposit, limited partnerships, government securities, and community investment programs.‡

Your adviser can provide assistance with many of your special financial needs including college planning, charitable giving, retirement, estate and tax planning, business consulting, inheritance, and personal financial coaching.

From the initial consultation to online account access to detailed performance reports, we make it easy for you to monitor progress toward your financial goals.

First Affirmative’s fees are based on assets under management in your portfolio, so our motivation to retain you as a client is aligned with your desire to receive excellent ongoing investment management services.
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Doing More with Our Industry Partners
We know that offering our clients the current range of responsible investment options is not enough. We also work closely with other organizations that make it easier for businesses to do the right thing.

• Social Investment Forum: We work through the industry's nonprofit trade association to educate investors, advisers and organizations about socially and environmentally responsible investment strategies and benefits.
• SRI in the Rockies: We produce the largest annual conference for social investment industry practitioners in the U.S. This event serves to educate and inspire, spawns new products and services, and focuses shareholder advocacy efforts.
• Co-op America: We have collaborated with Co-op America on scores of projects over nearly twenty years focused on raising awareness and educating the public about practical actions everyone can take to help create a more responsible, just, and sustainable economy.
• CERES(Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies): As one of the first companies to endorse the CERES Principles, we encourage transparency and promote full disclosure of corporate environmental impacts.

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Putting Ideas into Action
First Affirmative strives to act in ways we admire most in the companies we believe set the standards for responsible business. We vote all proxies our clients authorize us to vote according to social responsibility guidelines. We have exceeded the 1% in Community Investing goal embraced by the social investment industry. Plus, we do all the day-to-day things, like recycling and using 100% recycled paper whenever possible.
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We Believe

• Every person has a core set of values that governs his or her actions.
• Fair-minded people respect and tolerate the values and priorities of others, even when different from their own.
• Given an alternative, many thoughtful people choose not to profit from behavior in others that they find objectionable in themselves.
• It is both prudent and rewarding to reflect personal values in financial and investment decisions.
• Aligning personal values and financial decision-making can powerfully influence others and encourage behavior that enhances quality of life for all.

Our Goals

• To actively promote the direct relationship between financial decision-making and the common good.
• To provide the highest quality of investment choices, social research and specialized assistance available.
• To nurture and maintain a culture of respect.
• To always embrace the highest ethical and fiduciary standards.
• To encourage and develop a high level of professional conduct among network advisers.

* Source: Social Investment Forum (SIF) 2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States The SIF is the nonprofit trade association for the socially responsible investment industry. A First Affirmative officer serves on the SIF Board of Directors.
† We strongly recommend that you consult a financial professional for investment advice specific to your situation.
‡ Network advisers may offer securities through various broker-dealers and may charge commissions for certain transactions that are not shared with First Affirmative. All fees and commissions will be clearly disclosed.
†† Numerous studies may be found at http://sristudies.org/html/sixteen_studies.html