The public methodology

What we measure, how we measure it, and what we refuse to do.

This page states the rules the analysis follows and the vocabulary it uses. Where it cannot yet publish something real, it says so in that section.

The rules

Six rules for how a judgment is made and shown.

01
No composite score, ever
Each commitment is graded on its own, with its own dollars and its own receipts. There is no average and no headline number, because an average lets a strong record quietly pay for a weak one.
02
Bins for judgments, numbers for operations
Where we judge, the answer is a word. Numbers are for what is continuous — dollars, coverage, fees, tracking error.
03
Ranges, never point estimates
Anything modeled or inferred is reported as a range. A single number would imply a precision the evidence does not carry.
04
Every claim one click from its receipt
A judgment resolves to a verbatim excerpt with its source and the date we retrieved it. A derived figure opens its calculation instead. Footnotes in the printed insert resolve to the same cards on the web.
05
Weaker evidence looks weaker
A receipted fact, sector context, and a model classification are never shown as equals. Anything a model classified looks weaker than anything an issuer published.
06
Grants are who you are, never credits
Grantmaking is reported alongside the corpus, never netted against it. There is no line anywhere in this product that subtracts one from the other.
Every bin, and what stands behind it

Seven words. Here is what each one asserts, and what has to be true before we use it.

Every commitment on a report resolves to exactly one of these seven words. The word is the finding — never a rank, a letter, or a number.

What each of the seven words asserts
  • Major misalignment: The clearest conflict with the commitment’s own text.
  • Significant misalignment: A serious conflict with the commitment — a distinct word from “major,” one degree below it.
  • Some misalignment: A conflict with the commitment, at the narrowest of the three graded degrees.
  • Within commitment: No distance between what the commitment states and what the holding does.
  • Advances: The holding actively supports the commitment’s own text — not just avoids conflicting with it.
  • Cannot be graded: The evidence available does not clear the floor a judgment in either direction would need. Stated as a gap, never defaulted to neutral.
  • Counter to preference: Runs against a stated preference. A preference states no bound to breach, so this word has no degrees: more adverse evidence never escalates it.
The evidence floor a judgment about a company’s conduct has to clear

No word against a holding is said on thin evidence. Where the judgment rests on what a company did, a ratified evidence gate decides how far an adverse word may go: a Regulated source, or Researched evidence — two or more independent underlying sources, or a licensed dataset. Researched permits at most significant misalignment; only a Regulated record permits major. One credible secondary source is surfaced as a single-source observation, named and quoted on the commitment row, and never converted into a word.

A name or a sector pattern alone never produces a negative judgment. Where that is all the evidence there is, no claim that the holding works against your mission is asserted at all — the row says what is missing instead.

Source: the evidence gate in the ratified severity methodology the analysis engine reads. It is enforced in code, not only asked for in the prompt.

Not yet published here: the rulebook a word is chosen under, and a version to cite it at

A judgment is a word from a ratified vocabulary, never a number. Where your commitment carries its own bound — a dollar cap, a percentage floor — the comparison is made under the comparator your own ratified measurement spec fixes. How far the word may then go is governed by a versioned rulebook the analysis engine reads.

That rulebook is real and versioned, and it is not on this page. We do not yet publish it here, and typing its contents in by hand would create a second copy free to drift from the one your report was graded under.

The same gap closes the version question. A report state is stamped with the method version current when it was saved, where an analysis saves one. What is missing is the way back out: nothing publishes that stamp to a page like this one. So this page cannot show you a version to match against your own report, and does not claim one.

Where the evidence comes from

Every source we use, grouped by how much we trust it.

Four tiers, highest trust first. A holding’s tier is never picked by hand. It follows from which source produced the classification.

Regulated

6 sources

holdings with Regulated sources (SEC filings, AYS, PRI, BOCC, verified risk-factor database)

  • bond_impact_db
  • database_flagged
  • database_verified
  • impact_registry_certified
  • nport_enriched
  • third_party_screened

Researched

3 sources

holdings with Researched sources (web research with citations, curated fund metadata)

  • batch_web_researched
  • metadata_known
  • web_researched

Classified

6 sources

holdings AI-Classified (Haiku classification or AI inference — no external source)

  • ai_extracted
  • ai_inferred
  • classified
  • opus_escalated
  • pe_detected
  • web_researched_unverified

Unknown

1 source

holdings with Unknown source (requires additional research)

  • unknown
Not yet published on this page: a refresh cadence per source

This registry states each source’s tier — what governs how strongly a classification counts. It does not yet state how often each source is refreshed. Some sources stamp a date on each holding: a filing date, a screening vintage, a research date. None of them publish a schedule for the source itself. We will not invent one.

How provenance is labeled

Three tiers, read in order — never blurred into one line.

Cited outranks model-assessed, and model-assessed outranks unknown. Every finding on a report states which of the three it sits at.

  1. 1. Cited

    A receipt you can open — the evidence itself, complete on its own. A finding is built from this tier directly, never paraphrased into it.

  2. 2. Model-assessed

    The engine’s own classification, labeled as such. It is never blended into a cited dollar figure — a model-assessed number stays its own number, and never borrows the confidence of a receipt.

  3. 3. Unknown

    A named absence. When we do not know, the report says so — never a blank, and never a zero standing in for silence.

Honest absence

Five kinds of missing, because they do not mean the same thing.

A missing value is a finding. Collapsing all five of these into one grey dash would hide the difference between a company that declined to publish and a measure that does not apply to its sector.

Company does not disclose
We searched, not found
Not applicable to this sector
No public source exists anywhere
A fund we cannot see into
Investment alignment analysis
Visual grammar · honest absence
The honest-absence language

A missing value is a finding. There are five of them, and they do not mean the same thing.

Every cell in a report is either a receipted value or exactly one of five named absences — enforced in the data layer, not left to editorial discretion. A company’s silence, our unsuccessful search, a measure that does not apply, a gap in the public record, and a vehicle we cannot see into are five different facts about the world. Collapsing them into a single grey dash discards the most useful thing we know.

Never apologetic

These states are the analysis working, not failing. Read as a distribution, a full column of named absences is a disclosure record — often the largest single finding in a report.

The five states — each across the full component range
Company does not disclose
Reads as: their silence, on the record.
state.not_disclosed

The company publishes no such figure in any filing, report, or registry submission we searched. This is the only absence that carries weight in a judgment: a firm choosing not to publish what its peers publish is conduct, and it aggregates — "11 of 14 holdings do not disclose" is a finding, not a data problem.

Microcopy discipline. Name the venues we checked, never the inference. "Not in the 2025 10-K, proxy, or sustainability report" — not "refuses to disclose".
Company does not disclose
Does not disclose
1. Company does not disclose. Searched 2025 Form 10-K, DEF 14A and corporate responsibility report; no figure published. Retrieved 2026-07-24.
We searched, not found
Reads as: our diligence, dated.
state.searched_not_found

We searched the canonical sources for this measure and found nothing verifiable. This state is about us, not the company — so it always carries the search date and the venues searched, and it expires: a stale search is re-run rather than re-asserted.

Microcopy discipline. The date is mandatory on every surface, chip included. If you cannot show a date, you cannot use this state.
We searched, not found
We searched, not found · 07-12
2. Searched and not found. Queried EDGAR full-text, the company site and CDP on 2026-07-12; no verifiable figure returned. Re-search scheduled 2027-01.
Not applicable to this sector
Reads as: precision, not a gap.
state.not_applicable

The measure does not apply to this kind of business — a software firm has no produced-water disposal. Correctly excluded, not missing. This is the quietest state by design: it recedes almost entirely, and it is removed from every absence denominator, so it can never inflate a disclosure-gap figure.

Microcopy discipline. Name the sector rule that excluded it, in the footnote only. The rule is quiet, so the mark is a hairline — never a filled chip in a dense table.
Not applicable to this sector
n/a — sector
3. Not applicable. Excluded by sector rule SASB TC-SI; the measure is defined for extractive and utility issuers only. Outside the denominator.
No public source exists anywhere
Reads as: the world's gap, not ours.
state.no_public_source

No registry, filing or dataset covers this measure — for any company, not only this one. Matter-of-fact: nobody could answer it today. Where the commons roadmap has an answer, the state links to it, so the reader learns what would close the gap and who is building it.

Microcopy discipline. State what would close the gap when the commons roadmap has an answer; otherwise, say plainly that nobody could answer it today.
No public source exists anywhere
No public source
4. No public source exists. No mandatory or voluntary disclosure regime covers this measure in any jurisdiction as of 2026-07-24.
A fund we cannot see into
Reads as: what we'd need from your managers to see further.
state.unseen

A private fund or aggregated bond line with no public look-through. This absence is not about a company at all — it belongs to the coverage contract, sits outside every grade, and is the one state never rendered without its action: the look-through request, addressed to a named manager, with a date.

Microcopy discipline. Never rendered without the paired action — a named manager, a request, and a date.
A fund we cannot see into
Unseen · $3.4M
5. Unseen. Meridian Global Opportunities II reports holdings in aggregate only; excluded from the analyzed denominator and carried in the coverage contract.
Mixed-absence column — illustrative, by holding
A worked example of the grammar, not a session’s data.
Holding
Position
State
Illustrative holding A
$1.84M
1.12×10-K p.34
Illustrative holding B
$2.61M
Company does not disclose
Illustrative holding C
$3.07M
We searched, not found
Illustrative holding D
$1.22M
Not applicable to this sector
Illustrative holding E
$0.94M
No public source exists anywhere
Illustrative holding F
$3.40M
A fund we cannot see into

One column, six holdings, five different facts. The receipted value sits highest — a figure with a citation one hop away. Every absence below it descends in visual weight, and the two absences that are about us rather than the company carry a date or an action instead of a judgment.

Absence distribution, by issue — illustrative

Share of each issue’s measured positions, dollar-weighted. The shape of the bar is the finding.

Illustrative issue A58% receipted
Illustrative issue B31% receipted
Illustrative issue C16% receipted
Company does not disclose
We searched, not found
Not applicable to this sector
No public source exists anywhere
A fund we cannot see into
Absence-dominant issue — the absence is the finding (illustrative)

When most holdings in an issue publish nothing at all, that silence is the sector’s disclosure record — not a data problem to fix before a report can say anything.

A report never treats a wall of the same absence as a gap to fill in before it can speak. The silence itself is stated as the position the portfolio currently holds, with the proportionate next step attached — never a divestment question reached for first.

3 disclose
11 do not disclose
Denominator excludes not-applicable and unseen positions, as always.
What a single grey dash hides
N/A
No data

Four cells, four different facts, one grey dash. It hides the sector’s disclosure record, hides our own search dates, and makes an opaque fund look like a company that simply had nothing to say.

Rules this report keeps
· A cell is a receipted value or exactly one of the five. There is no sixth, and no null.
· Searched — not found cannot render without a date. Unseen cannot render without a named action and owner.
· Not applicable and Unseen are removed from every denominator; the denominator is stated wherever a share is shown.
· No absence state is styled in the misalignment tone — that tone marks a receipted contradiction, never an unknown.
Where should we look harder? — the absence states are the answer to that question, not an apology for it.
What you can change, and what you cannot

Only one band of a report is open to a committee’s correction.

Every report splits into receipted fact, your own ratified commitments, and a model’s draft classification. Only the third is open to correction — and that is the honest size of what you are asked to take on our word.

Yours to correct

  • A model-classified judgment behind any commitment row — recorded in the disagreement ledger, attributed and dated, and carried everywhere the holding appears.
  • Your own mission and IPS text, through ratification. Amending a ratified commitment is a governance act, not a silent edit, and it is recorded with attribution and a date.
  • Where a step on the ladder stands — climbed, deferred, or revised.

Not yours to change

  • A receipted fact from a public source — verbatim, dated, and not editable by anyone, including us.
  • A judgment that already clears the Regulated or Researched evidence floor — only the model-classified band of a report is open to override.
  • The methodology itself: the bin vocabulary, the evidence-class hierarchy, and the rules on this page.

Every correction is entered as its own record — attributed, dated, and never edited or removed once made. A reversal is its own new entry, not a deletion of the old one.

Changelog

A dated history of this method, prior versions included.

Not yet published on this page

This section should list every prior version of this method, dated, each still readable at its own address. It does not. The versions themselves are recorded: each report state is stamped with the method version current when it was saved, and those stamps are kept. But nothing publishes them back out, and no address serves a prior version of this page.

The disclosure block

The exact wording your compliance team would review — block DISC-3.2-A.

Not yet published on this page

A distancing disclosure block, versioned and identified as DISC-3.2-A, is part of this method’s design. It is not shown here in the exact wording a compliance reader would check. The product does not yet keep a versioned disclosure-block registry to publish it from, and a sample would create the impression of a stable, citable text we cannot yet guarantee.

The advisors page states the same gap, for the readers it most concerns.