1 Primary business involvement includes production and manufacturing; secondary business involvement includes retailing and supplying. For cannabis, companies are screened for primary involvement only for equity indexes and not screened at all within fixed income indexes because of data limitations with the index providers. The cannabis screen for our equity products is defined by Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB). For fossil fuels, companies will be screened based on revenue-based thresholds for some activities and ICB classification for others.
2 Our fixed income ESG indexes use a 10% aggregate revenue tolerance across all secondary involvement for both alcohol and adult entertainment categories (e.g., if a company earns 7% of its revenue as an alcohol retailer and 3% as a supplier, the aggregate 10% revenue would result in the company being excluded from the index). This nuance exists because of data limitations of the index providers.
3 Vanguard and Morningstar, as of March 31, 2022.
4 Vanguard is investor-owned, meaning the fund shareholders own the funds, which in turn own Vanguard.
For more information about Vanguard funds, visit vanguard.com or call 800-662-2739 to obtain a prospectus or, if available, a summary prospectus. Investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and other important information are contained in the prospectus; read and consider it carefully before investing.
Vanguard ETF Shares are not redeemable with the issuingfund other than in very large aggregations worth millions of dollars. Instead, investors must buy and sell Vanguard ETF Shares in the secondary market and hold those shares in a brokerage account. In doing so, the investor may incur brokerage commissions and may pay more than net asset value when buying and receive less than net asset value when selling.
All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest. Be aware that fluctuations in the financial markets and other factors may cause declines in the value of your account. There is no guarantee that any particular asset allocation or mix of funds will meet your investment objectives or provide you with a given level of income. Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.
Investments in bonds are subject to interest rate, credit, and inflation risk.
Investments in stocks issued by non-U.S. companies are subject to risks including country/regional risk and currency risk. These risks are especially high in emerging markets.
ESG funds are subject to ESG investment risk, which is the chance that the stocks or bonds screened by the index provider for ESG criteria generally will underperform the market as a whole or, in the aggregate, will trail returns of other funds screened for ESG criteria. The index provider’s assessment of a company, based on the company’s level of involvement in a particular industry or the index provider’s own ESG criteria, may differ from that of other funds or of the advisor’s or an investor’s assessment of such company. As a result, the companies deemed eligible by the index provider may not reflect the beliefs and values of any particular investor and may not exhibit positive or favorable ESG characteristics. The evaluation of companies for ESG screening or integration is dependent on the timely and accurate reporting of ESG data by the companies. Successful application of the screens will depend on the index provider’s proper identification and analysis of ESG data. The advisor may not be successful in assessing and identifying companies that have or will have a positive impact or support a given position. In some circ*mstances, companies could ultimately have a negative impact, or no impact.
The FTSE4Good US Select Index, FTSE Global All Cap ex US Choice Index, and FTSE US All Cap Choice Index exclude the stocks of companies that FTSE determines engage in, have a specified level of involvement in, and/or derive threshold amounts of revenue from one or more of the following activities: (i) produce adult entertainment; own/operate adult entertainment establishments; distribute adult entertainment materials; (ii) manufacture alcoholic beverages; supply alcohol-related products/services to alcoholic beverage manufacturers; involved in distribution and/or retail sale of alcoholic beverages; (iii) manufacture tobacco products; supplytobacco-related products/services; involved in distribution and/or retail sale of tobacco products; (iv) engage in cannabis cultivation, cannabis distribution, the processing and distribution of cannabis plants, and the creation of cannabis derivative products per the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB) standards; (v) own and/or operate a gambling establishment; manufacture specialized equipment used exclusively for gambling; provide supporting products/services to gambling operations; (vi) produce chemical or biological weapons and their components; (vii) produce (or produce specific and critical parts or services for) cluster munitions; (viii) produce (or produce specific and critical parts or services for) anti-personnel mines; (ix) produce nuclear weapons or their components; (x) manufacture military weapons systems and/or integral, tailor-made components of these weapons; provide tailor-made products and/or services that support military weapons; providenon-weapons-related tailor-made products and/or services related to the military or defense industry; (xi) produce and sell assault weapons or small arms to civilian customers; produce and sell key components of small arms; involved in the retail and/or distribution of assault weapons or small arms; (xii) involved in the operation and supply of nuclear power generation, that harnesses the energy present within atomic nuclei or their components; engaged in the development, processing,production, and distribution of equipment and facilities that are specifically designed for and critical to the generation of nuclear power; (xiii) own proved or probable reserves in coal, oil, or gas; (xiv) any company that FTSE determines per the ICB standards: (a) engages in the exploration for and drilling, production, and supply of crude oil on land or in offshore areas; (b) primarily engages in the refining and marketing of petroleum products; (c) supplies equipment and services to oil fields and offshore platforms; (d) operates pipelines carrying oil,gas, or other forms of fuel; (e) engages in all three fields of petroleum production: extraction (upstream), transportation (midstream), and refining 6 and marketing (downstream); or (f) mines,processes, and markets coal per the ICB standards; and (xv) generate electricity from oil and/or gas, or thermal coal. The level or type of involvement in, or amount of revenue earned from, certain activities or business segments that lead to exclusion by FTSE can vary from one activity or business segment to another. The Index methodology also excludes the stocks of companies that, as FTSE determines based on its internal assessment, do not meet certain labor, human rights, environmental, and anti-corruption standards as defined by the United Nations Global Compact Principles, as well as companies that fail to meet two of the following three diversity criteria: (1) at least one woman on the board; (2) diversity policies in place; and (3) diversity management systems in place. FTSE uses internal methodologies to analyze various factors in determining whether a company meets the foregoing criteria and/or falls within a particular industry, including whether the company has a certain amount of revenue derived from an industry, the company’s level of involvement in an industry, and the severity of certain controversies (as determined by FTSE), which can vary from one company to another and from one activity to another.
The Bloomberg MSCI US Corporate SRI Select Index excludes the bonds of companies that the Index provider determines engage in (which may include manufacturing, owning, and operating), have a specified level of involvement in, and/or derive threshold amounts of revenue from one or more of the following activities: (i) production, distribution, and retail of adult entertainment materials; (ii) production, distribution, retail, and supply ofalcohol-related products; (iii) involvement in certaingambling-related business activities; (iv) production, distribution, retail, supply, and licensingof tobacco-related products; (v) manufacture of nuclear weapons or key nuclear weapons components; (vi) manufacture of biological and chemical weapons or key biological and chemical weapons components; cluster munitions whole weapons systems, components, or delivery platforms; landmines whole systems or components; or involvement in the production of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, ammunition, and armor; (vii) production of conventional weapons and components or involvement with conventional weapons support systems and services; (viii) production and/or distribution (wholesale or retail) of firearms or small arms ammunition intended for civilian use (companies that cater to the military, government, and law enforcement markets are not included in the foregoing); (ix) ownership or operation of nuclear power plants or active uranium mines; involvement in uranium enrichment and processing; involvement in the design and engineering of nuclear power reactors; or supplying nuclear power activities; and (x) have an industry tie to fossil fuels (thermal coal,oil, and gas), in particular, reserve ownership, relatedrevenues, and power generation (companies providing evidence of owning metallurgical coal reserves are not included in the foregoing). The level or type of involvement in, or amount of revenue earned from, certain activities or business segments that lead to exclusion by the Index provider can vary from one activity or business segment to another. In addition, the Index methodology excludes the bonds of companies that, as determined by the Index provider, do not meet certain standards defined by the Indexprovider with respect to an ESG controversies assessment or do not have an ESG controversy assessment score. The ESG controversies assessment measures a company’s involvement in major ESG controversies and how well they adhere to international norms and principles. The Index also excludes bonds of companies that fail to have at least one woman on their board of directors and companies for which the Indexprovider does not have board diversity data. The screens for ESG criteria described above do not apply to government-issued bonds (e.g., U.S. Treasury securities), asset-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities, and commercial mortgage-backed securities, nor do they apply to bonds issued by companies that are not researched by the Index provider.
