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Fund Complex: Spouting Rock/Unified Series Trust 
Management Company: Spouting Rock Asset Management LLC
Funds Affected: Spouting Rock Small Cap Growth Fund*
Sustainable Investing Strategy: ESG Integration, Negative Screening (exclusions)
Summary:
The adviser considers environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) issues in its investment and portfolio construction process. The adviser seeks to invest in companies with positive performance across ESG aspects. The factors the adviser may consider include environmental impacts (responsibility), societal standards (rights and relations), and corporate governance (transparency and accountability), among others, as evidence of meeting sustainable ESG goals. The adviser may also look to external sources to evaluate the ESG performance of a company. For example, the adviser may consider the holdings in the MSCI USA Small Cap ESG Leaders Index, or other ESG indices or ratings, to gauge how a company has been evaluated by third parties. The adviser makes value judgments and may not have full or sufficient data to fully evaluate ESG policies, practices or outcomes, and holdings may have poor performance in some ESG areas. The adviser seeks to avoid investing in companies that generate a significant portion of their revenues from: alcohol, tobacco, weapons, pornography, gambling, coal and coal fired utilities, as well as corrections facilities.

*Fund announced that it will be closing effective March 20, 2019.

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Research

Research and analysis to keep sustainable investors up to-date on a broad range of topics that include trends and developments in sustainable investing and sustainable finance, regulatory updates, performance results and considerations, investing through index funds and actively managed portfolios, asset allocation updates, expenses, ESG ratings and data, company and product news, green, social and sustainable bonds, green bond funds as well as reporting and disclosure practices, to name just a few.

A continuously updated Funds Directory is also available to investors.  This is intended to become a comprehensive listing of sustainable mutual funds, ETFs and other investment products along with a description of their sustainable investing approaches as set out in fund prospectuses and related regulatory filings.

Getting started

Many questions have surfaced in recent years regarding sustainable and ESG investing.  Here, investors and financial intermediaries will find materials that describe the various approaches to sustainable investing and their implementation.  While sustainable investing approaches vary and they have thus far defied universally accepted definitions, many practitioners agree that they fall into the following broad categories:  Values-based investing, investing via exclusions, impact investing, thematic investments and ESG integration.  In conjunction with each of these approaches, investors may also adopt various issuer engagement procedures and proxy voting practices.  That said, sustainable investing approaches will continue to evolve.

In addition to periodic updates regarding sustainable investing and how this form of investing is evolving, investors and financial intermediaries interested in implementing a sustainable investing approach will also find source materials that cover basic investing themes as well as asset allocation tactics.

Inesting ideas

Thoughts and ideas targeting sustainable investing strategies executed through various registered and non-registered sustainable investment funds and products such as mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs), closed-end funds, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Unit Investment Trusts (UITs). Coverage extends to investment management firms as well as fund groups. 

Independent source for sustainable investment management company research, analysis, opinions and sustainable fund disclosure assessments