If you own shares, you can grant the proxies to other volunteers as part of the proxy transfer trials. They don't have to be shares of corporations. They could be shares of mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, American depository receipts or other investment vehicles. We want to perform proxy trials for all these.

Proxies can be assigned for various purposes, say to have a representative attend the annual shareholders meeting on your behalf, or to submit a shareholder proposal on your behalf.  If you have never assigned a proxy before, you probably want to start with just assigning a proxy so someone can attend and vote at the shareholder meeting on your behalf. This webpage explains how.

To get started, we first need to match your individual stock holdings with volunteers who will serve as proxies. Indicate share holdings for which you would like to assign proxies by filling in a spreadsheet. Right click on the following link to download that spreadsheet to your hard drive.

proxy_trials.xls

Right now, the spreadsheet consists of just a few column headers, but you can fill it in by entering information on each of your holdings. Here are detailed instructions.

Starting with row 2, enter your holdings, with one holding per row. There are six pieces of information you need to enter for each holding:

Company Name: Enter the name or the corporation, mutual fund or other entity whose shares you own. For an investment fund, also indicate the firm that manages it, e.g. "Spartan 500 Index Fund - Investor Class (Fidelity Investments)."

Number of Shares Held: This information is important because certain actions that we may ask proxies to perform—such as submitting shareholder proposals—require that a minimum number of shares be held.

2008 Meeting Date: Enter the date of the annual shareholder meeting in mm/dd/yyyy format. The date likely appears on the first page of the proxy materials you should have received. Proxy materials are usually also downloadable from the investor relations section of the issuer's website. If all else fails, call the issuer's investor relations department and ask them. If the meeting date has not yet been scheduled, ask the investor relations department generally when the meeting will be held, and enter this information in the spreadsheet (e.g. "July 2008" or "Fall 2008").

2008 Meeting Location: Enter the city where the annual shareholder meeting will be held, e.g. "Seattle, WA" or "Sydney, Australia." This information can be found in the same manner as the meeting date.

Deadline for Shareholder Proposals: For US-based issuers subject to SEC regulations, enter the deadline for submitting shareholder proposals. This can usually be found in the proxy materials distributed for the preceding shareholder meeting— often on one of the last pages.

Assignee Instructions: You can instruct a proxy on what actions to take on your behalf, or you can leave that to the discretion of the proxy. For the proxy trials, we recommend not providing any instructions. However, you have the option to do so. Enter in this portion of the spreadsheet an indication if you have instructions. Don't give details at this point. You can provide them directly to the proxy later. For now, just indicate the nature of the instructions, e.g. "voting instructions" or "read a statement for me at the shareholder meeting."

Once you have completed the spreadsheet, save it to your hard drive and e-mail a copy to Glyn Holton at glyn@isuffrage.org. Glyn will integrate your information into a master spreadsheet listing everyone's holdings. That master spreadsheet is available to volunteers who want to serve as proxies. Using the spreadsheet, they choose opportunities they are interested in and contact Glyn about those opportunities.

When a volunteer contacts Glyn about serving as proxy for one of your holdings, Glyn will pass the information on to you. Get in touch with the individual. Explain instructions, if any, you want them to carry out (e.g. how you want them to vote the shares, etc.). You don't have to accept the individual as your proxy, so make sure both parties are comfortable with the relationship. If you decide to move forward, your next step is to legally assign the proxy. Here is how.

First of all, brace yourself. While assigning a proxy may be easy in some cases, it is likely that you will encounter roadblocks and misinformation in others. This is why we are conducting proxy trials! The whole system is in disrepair, and proxy trials are the first step toward fixing it. You will want to be patient, persistent, cordial but insistent, as appropriate, along the way. If a broker says he can't help you, say "then let me speak to your manager." If the manager refuses to help, say "I have a legal right to appoint whomever I want as my proxy." If that doesn't work, call the legal department and complain that you are "being disenfranchised." Avoid threats, and always be professional. Don't mention the Investor Suffrage Movement—you don't want special treatment because there is an activist group standing behind you. For now, you are just an individual trying to appoint a proxy of your choosing. If all your efforts fail, let us know, and we will work with you to determine an appropriate course of action.

We can't tell you exactly how to appoint a proxy. To some extent, the proxy trials are about finding out how. Here is some general guidance.

For corporate stock, there are two ways your ownership interest may be recorded, and this will determine how you appoint a proxy. You may be the owner of record. This means that, in the corporation's official list of shareholders, your name appears. If this is the case, you should contact the corporation's investor relations department and ask them how you go about appointing a proxy. On the other hand, you may own shares in street name. This means that your broker is the owner of record, and they hold the stock on your behalf. In this case, the broker has the legal right to appoint a proxy, but you have the legal right to tell them whom to appoint. Accordingly, if you hold shares in street name, work with your broker to appoint a proxy. Note that the broker will likely have procedures in place to appoint you the proxy. This is fairly routine, as shareholders sometimes want to attend a shareholder meeting, and the broker (if it is the owner of record) must assign the proxy to them so they may do so. This is not what you want. You want the proxy assigned to a third party. The broker may not have experience doing this, so be patient with them. To find out whether you are the owner of record or hold shares in street name, call your broker.

For shares of a mutual fund or other investment vehicle, there are also two possibilities. You may have purchased the shares directly from the mutual fund. In that case, contact the mutual fund company. Otherwise, you may have purchased the shares through an investment advisor. If that is the case, start with the investment advisor. In either case, don't hesitate to contact the mutual fund company's legal department for help. If an investment advisor works for a brokerage or other financial institution, you may also contact that firm's legal department.

When you make the proxy assignment, specify that it be for three months (or long enough to include the annual shareholder meeting, if the meeting is more than three months away.) Throughout the process, keep in touch with your would-be proxy. Let him or her know when (if) the proxy assignment is complete, and provide whatever documentation your proxy will need of the assignment.

Throughout the process, maintain careful notes. Record names, titles and phone numbers. If legal roadblocks are thrown up, ask that these be explained to you in laymen's terms, and record what you are told. Ultimately, the notes you keep are the goal of the proxy trials. They will inform us and help us plan next-steps as we try to repair the proxy machinery.

Your last step is to report back to us. The best time to do so is as soon as the proxy assignment goes through (or you give up trying). Compile your notes into an e-mail, and send it to Glyn. Include an account of what transpired—what worked and what didn't. Describe any lessons you learned that will be helpful for future attempts to grant proxy rights. What laws or applicable regulations did you learn about? Also, what aspects of the process did you find most frustrating or in need of fixing? We will be filing shareholder proposals later this year to streamline the proxy process at certain corporations. Do you have ideas about what aspects of the process we might try to fix through those proposals?

Thanks for your participation!

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