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

Eastman Kodak sees the situation differently, crediting its "steady improvements over 17 years" to expanded federal requirements, not shareholder activism. "We don't make our decisions on emissions reductions based on the filing or lack of filing a resolution," says company spokesman James Blamphin.

Nevertheless, the CEC is developing a strategy to court support from religious pension funds and endowments. Though the group would have no standing to speak of as a constituent, Mr. Schade hopes the cause of environmental justice might resonate with those charged with investing the faithful's savings.

"When faith-based organizations get involved, they're able to take a moral high ground that others can't," Schade says.

Cultivating partnerships with institutional heavyweights isn't always easy or quick. Just ask the Minnesota Senior Federation, which for a decade has been lobbying lawmakers and drug manufacturers in an attempt to lower prices of prescription drugs. After trying many approaches, the group eventually got a hearing with the Minnesota State Board of Investment, which last March resolved to call on drug manufacturers to lower domestic prices and stop what the seniors' group called an intentional effort to limit supply to Canadian pharmacies that sell to Americans.

A pharmaceutical industry spokesman would neither affirm nor deny the allegation. But that outcome wouldn't have happened had the federation not spent years collaborating with state lawmakers and groups of state employees whose pensions were at stake, says Peter Wyckoff, the federation's executive director.

"You need to be able to persist," Mr. Wyckoff adds. "You need to be able to speak to both sides of the aisle, to both free-marketers and traditional liberals" before the state board regards a petitioner as a credible voice.

But from one institution to the next, certain principles always seem to apply. Every board overseeing an institutional fund has a fiduciary responsibility to the fund's contributors. This means oversight boards meet periodically with their core constituencies, whether these are union members, college donors, retired ministers, or others. Bringing an issue to light through one of these constituencies can lay the groundwork for an investment policy governing where billions of dollars go or don't go.

Nevertheless, those boards often receive minimal input on the social or environmental effect of their investments. Wellesley College in Massachusetts, for instance, relies on a subcommittee of its board of trustees to study proxy issues. Yet no campus constituency has come forward with proposals for debate, says spokeswoman Arlie Corday.

A similar situation exists with the board of trustees for the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System. Board members in January began reviewing a set of proposed proxy voting guidelines for the first time. While state troopers care deeply about labor issues, they have never asked whether the companies they own through their pension funds use union labor, says Morris Krome, who reports to his fellow troopers on board activity.

"It hasn't gone to the level of becoming policy," Major Krome says. "The concern is, 'Are we getting our benefits ... and are you handling the money as you should.' "

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