Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
| Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) | |
 | |
| Basic facts | |
| Location: | San Francisco, Calif. |
| Type: | 501(c)(3) |
| Top official: | Robert K. Steel |
| Year founded: | 2011 |
| Website: | Official website |
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that, according to its website, aims to set "standards to guide the disclosure of financially material sustainability information by companies to their investors."[1] The board was founded in 2011.[1]
Mission
The SASB website included the following in its mission statement:
| “ | to establish and improve industry specific disclosure standards across financially material environmental, social, and governance topics that facilitate communication between companies and investors about decision-useful information.[1][2] | ” |
The SASB website identified the following as its vision statement:
| “ | global capital markets in which a shared understanding of sustainability performance enables companies and investors to make informed decisions that drive long-term value creation and better outcomes for businesses and their shareholders, the global economy, and society at large.[1][2] | ” |
Work
| Environmental, social, and corporate governance |
|---|
| • What is ESG? • Enacted ESG legislation • Arguments for and against ESG • Opposition to ESG • Federal ESG rules • Economy and Society: Ballotpedia's weekly ESG newsletter |
SASB provided the following overview of its work:[3]
- "SASB Standards enable businesses around the world to identify, manage and communicate financially-material sustainability information to their investors."
- "SASB has developed a complete set of 77 Industry Standards. In November 2018, SASB published these Standards, providing a complete set of globally applicable industry-specific Standards which identify the minimal set of financially material sustainability topics and their associated metrics for the typical company in an industry."
- "SASB provides an Engagement Guide for investors to consider questions to discuss with companies regarding financially material issues as well as an Implementation Guide (update in early 2019) for companies which explains issues and approaches to consider when implementing SASB Standards."
Leadership
As of February 2021, the following individuals served on the SASB Foundation board of directors:[4]
- Robert K. Steel, Chair
- Mary Schapiro, Vice chair
- Alan L. Beller, Senior counsel at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
- Rudi Bless, Chief accounting officer at Bank of America
- Else Bos, Executive director of De Nederlandsche Bank
- Audrey Choi, Chief sustainability officer at Morgan Stanley
- Michelle Collins, Audit & assurance partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP
- Deborah L. DeHaas, Vice chair at Deloitte
- Paul Druckman, Chair at the World Benchmarking Alliance
- Kenneth Goldman, President at Hillspire
- Janine Guillot, CEO at the SASB Foundation
- Steven O. Gunders, SASB treasurer of the board
- Robert H. Herz, Former chair of FASB
- Michael Jantzi, CEO of Sustainalytics
- Paula Loop, Assurance partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers
- James McIntire, Former Washington state treasurer
- Roy Swan, Director of mission investments at the Ford Foundation
- Laura Tyson, Director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact at the Berkeley Haas School of Business
- Matthew Welch, President of the SASB Foundation
- Jay Willoughby, Chief investment officer of The Investment Fund for Foundations
- Chuck Zegar, Philanthropist and co-founder of Bloomberg LP
Tax status
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Its 501(c) designation refers to a section of the U.S. federal income tax code concerning charitable, religious, and educational organizations.[5] Section 501(c) of the U.S. tax code has 29 sections that list specific conditions particular organizations must meet in order to be considered tax-exempt under the section. Organizations that have been granted 501(c)(3) status by the Internal Revenue Service are exempt from federal income tax.[6] This exemption requires that any political activity by the charitable organization be nonpartisan in nature.[7]
Notable events
Global ESG reporting authority announced
On November 3, at the COP26 environmental summit in Scotland, the International Finance Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation announced the creation of a new partner organization, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) which is intended to be the global ESG reporting authority. The ISSB was constructed by combining several different organizations, including the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Nasdaq reported on the announcement:[8]
| “ | Anyone who has dipped a toe in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing knows that there is an alphabet soup of reporting standards aiming to measure corporate adherence to sustainability.
Because government regulators have been reluctant to establish mandatory reporting standards, a host of mostly nonprofit groups have worked for decades to build consensus among the private sector, governments, investors, and stakeholders to build out voluntary reporting systems, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), or the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). Companies were left to pick and choose between reporting frameworks, confounding investors’ ability to compare companies across platforms – and in some cases, enabling greenwashing by companies able to cherry-pick data for a particular reporting system. Enter the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), a new effort to merge many ESG disclosure standards into one, and to encourage the uptake of these standards globally. The International Sustainability Standards Board was announced this week at the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow. Thirty-eight governments expressed support for the standards, including the U.S. The ISSB will be managed by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) body, based in Germany. The IFRS released a working draft of climate-related disclosures that will be vetted over the next few months, and released in mid- to late 2022. Erkki Liikanen, chair of the IFRS Foundation Trustees, says "Sustainability, and particularly climate change, is the defining issue of our time. To properly assess related opportunities and risks, investors require high-quality, transparent and globally comparable sustainability disclosures that are compatible with the financial statements. Establishing the ISSB and building on the innovation and expertise of … others will provide the foundations to achieve this goal.[2] |
” |
Recent news
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See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 SASB, "About Us," accessed February 1, 2021
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ SASB, "Standards Overview," accessed February 1, 2021
- ↑ SASB, "The SASB Foundation Board of Directors," accessed February 1, 2021
- ↑ Internal Revenue Service, "Exempt Purposes - Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3)," accessed January 13, 2014
- ↑ Internal Revenue Service, "Life Cycle of a Public Charity/Private Foundation," accessed July 10, 2015
- ↑ Internal Revenue Service, "Exemption Requirements - 501(c)(3) Organizations," accessed January 13, 2014
- ↑ Nasdaq, "ESG Disclosure Standards Go Global With ISSB Launch," November 5, 2021
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