Got a great cause? Here’s how to build clout.

As a community organizer in the South Bronx, Elena Conte doesn’t exactly fit the profile of a Wall Street mover and shaker. To the contrary, she works daily with some of New York City’s poorest denizens to rid her neighborhood of toxic air and the nonstop stench of burning sludge.

But thanks to a recent partnership with nearby Sisters of Mercy nuns, her neighborhood’s concerns will soon get a prominent hearing at Synagro, which owns the company that turns malodorous New York sewage into fertilizer pellets. The secret? Clout, as in the kind that comes with having millions to invest, as the sisters’ Mercy Investment Program does.

"We’ve never tried anything along these lines, but we understand in other cases it’s been very effective to make the case from within" as a shareholder coalition, Ms. Conte says via telephone from her office. "We’re willing to try anything that’s legal to make this company be a good neighbor…. It stinks here."

By bending the ear of an institutional investor, Conte’s Sustainable South Bronx group has tapped into one of the most effective ways for citizens groups to influence corporations. The invested assets of institutions, such as state pension funds and college endowments, exceed $3.2 trillion. That’s more than the annual federal budget of the United States – and represents more than a 25 percent stake in the nation’s public companies.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Full Story: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0214/p13s01-wmgn.html?s=hns