These tools let you see how much of your University of Washington retirement money sits in companies flagged by independent ethical-investing screens — and how much of the whole UW plan does. The answers below explain how the tools work, where the numbers come from, and what they do and don’t claim.
This site is an independent transparency project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the University of Washington or TIAA. It is not investment advice. Nothing you enter is stored — every calculation happens in your own browser.
1. What does See Your Share do?
See Your Share is the personal view. You pick your TIAA fund, enter your balance, and choose which ethical-investing screens to apply. The tool then estimates how many of your own dollars are invested in companies those screens have flagged.
The math is simple: your balance × the share of that fund held in flagged companies. You can toggle screens on and off to see how each one changes the picture. Everything runs locally in your browser — your balance never leaves your device and is never saved.
2. What does See Our Share do?
See Our Share is the collective view. It applies the same method to the entire UW Retirement Plan — about $12.34 billion across the plan’s fund lineup — instead of to one person’s balance.
It’s the same project from a different angle: instead of “how much of my money,” it answers “how much of all of ours.” Across the four screens combined, at least $1.55 billion — about 1 in 8 dollars (12.5%) of the plan sits in flagged companies. That figure is a floor, not a ceiling (see Q7).
3. What are the ethical investing screens?
The tools apply four independent screens. Each is a published list of companies, maintained by an outside organization or grounded in a standard UW itself adopted. You can turn any of them on or off.
- AFSC divestment shortlist — from the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker peace organization founded in 1917), via its Investigate project (investigate.info/divest). It flags companies tied to occupation, apartheid, and state violence. This is the narrowest and most conservative of the four lists.
- Weapons — Weapon Free Funds, from the nonprofit As You Sow (weaponfreefunds.org). It flags makers of military, nuclear, and controversial weapons.
- Prison industry — Prison Free Funds, also from As You Sow (prisonfreefunds.org). It flags companies tied to incarceration, detention, surveillance, and border enforcement. This screen produces the largest dollar figures, because it flags some very large U.S. technology and retail companies that are common in index funds.
- Class C (UW Faculty Senate) — this screen operationalizes UW’s own Class C Resolution, passed by the UW Faculty Senate on May 30, 2024: “Ethical Divestment from Weapons and Technology Companies Contributing to Violations of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.” Its company list (41 companies) is drawn only from the sources the resolution’s own standard names — the UN OHCHR settlement database, forensic findings from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and the UN Special Rapporteur where independently corroborated by Amnesty or HRW. It is the only screen grounded in a standard UW itself adopted.
Together, the four screens name 444 companies; 379 of them are held somewhere in UW’s plan. When more than one selected screen flags the same company, that company is counted only once, so the combined total is never double-counted.
4. Why these screens and not others?
We chose published, independent screens that a UW employee can check for themselves, rather than building a list of our own.
- AFSC is included because it is rigorous, well-documented, and deliberately narrow — the most conservative starting point.
- Weapons and Prison industry come from As You Sow, a long-established shareholder-advocacy nonprofit whose fund screens are widely used. They cover concerns — weapons manufacturing and the incarceration/surveillance industry — that many UW employees have told us they care about.
- Class C is included for a distinct reason: it is the only screen grounded in a standard UW itself adopted. When the Faculty Senate passed the Class C Resolution in May 2024, the University established its own ethical-divestment standard. This screen simply asks: which companies in the plan would that standard flag? To keep it defensible, its list is sourced only to the bodies the resolution itself points to (the UN OHCHR database and Amnesty/HRW findings), and contested or single-source names were deliberately left off.
The screens reflect different values and produce very different numbers; that’s the point. By letting you toggle each one, the tools let you decide which concerns matter to you, rather than handing you a single verdict.
5. Is this financial or investment advice?
No. These tools are for transparency and awareness only. They show you where the money in the plan is invested against a set of published ethical screens — they do not recommend any fund, any trade, or any course of action, and they make no claims about investment performance, risk, or returns. For decisions about your own retirement savings, consult a qualified financial professional.
6. Do you collect or store my information?
No. Every calculation happens entirely in your browser. Your balance, your fund selection, and your screen choices are never transmitted to us or to anyone else, and nothing is saved after you close the page. There are no accounts, and we don’t ask for any personal information.
7. How accurate are the numbers?
Every dollar figure is a floor, not a ceiling — a conservative estimate of disclosed holdings only.
The figures are built from the holdings each fund publicly reports for the most recent quarter-end, primarily from funds’ SEC filings. We screen what those filings disclose: company stocks and corporate bonds, plus State of Israel sovereign bonds. We do not screen what isn’t itemized by company — U.S. Treasuries, agency mortgage-backed securities, cash, and a handful of accounts (like TIAA’s guaranteed Traditional account) that don’t publish security-level holdings. Where a fund holds another fund — like the target-date funds — we look through to the underlying holdings.
About 82.2% of the plan ($10.14 billion across 37 of its 43 funds) can be screened this way; that’s the screenable ceiling. The remaining ~18% genuinely can’t be — there are no published holdings to look at. Because of all this, the real exposure is somewhat higher than what the tools show, never lower. We name every source so you can check the underlying lists yourself.
8. I opted into the “socially responsible” or ESG option — why does it still show flagged companies?
Because “ESG” and “ethical divestment” are not the same thing. ESG-screened funds typically weight or tilt toward companies with better environmental, social, and governance ratings — but they usually still hold large weapons makers, surveillance and prison-linked companies, and other names these screens flag. In the UW plan, even the explicitly “social” and “responsible” options still hold flagged companies, often substantial amounts. An ESG label is a different standard, not the screens applied here.
9. Why does the percentage look high?
A few large companies do most of the work. Broad index funds hold the whole market, which means they hold the very largest U.S. companies in big proportions — and several of those (for example Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon) are flagged, mostly by the Prison industry screen because of ties to surveillance, data, and border-enforcement contracts. A single megacap at a few percent of a fund can move the flagged share substantially.
That’s also why the Prison screen produces bigger figures than the others: it catches common index-fund staples, not niche companies. The combined floor across all four screens — about 1 in 8 dollars in the plan — reflects how concentrated index investing has become, as much as anything specific to UW.
10. Is this affiliated with the University of Washington or TIAA?
No. This is an independent transparency project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the University of Washington, TIAA, As You Sow, or the American Friends Service Committee. We use UW and TIAA names only descriptively, to identify the plan the tools analyze. The screen lists belong to the organizations named, and the Class C standard belongs to the UW Faculty Senate; this site simply applies them to publicly disclosed holdings.
11. How can I support ethical investment standards if I’m on the UW Retirement Plan (UWRP)?
Start by seeing where your own money is, using See Your Share, and the plan as a whole, using See Our Share. Understanding the picture — and being able to point to specific, sourced numbers — is the foundation for any conversation about it.
From there, you can share these tools with colleagues, talk with your department and faculty governance about the issue, and raise it through the channels that already shape the plan. UW has a documented history of acting on divestment concerns when faculty and staff press the case (see Q12).
12. Is there any precedent for ethical divestment at the UW?
Yes — repeatedly. Over the decades UW has divested in response to ethical concerns, including:
- South Africa / apartheid (1986) — the UW Faculty Senate passed a resolution urging TIAA-CREF to divest from companies operating under apartheid, by a vote of 67 to 2.
- Tobacco (2000)
- Sudan / genocide (2006)
- Coal (2015)
- Fossil fuels — UW committed to fully divesting by 2027.
The 1986 resolution is especially relevant here: it is direct precedent for UW faculty asking TIAA-CREF — the same retirement system — to align its investments with the University’s stated values. The 2024 Class C Resolution continues that tradition.
13. Is there any precedent for focusing on our retirement money?
Yes. One of the 1986 apartheid resolutions was aimed squarely at TIAA-CREF, the retirement system. Faculty have long recognized that retirement assets are part of how the institution’s money is invested, and that they are a legitimate place to ask whether investments match stated values. These tools bring that same focus up to date with current holdings.
14. What if I’m not on UWRP?
The same questions apply, even if the specific funds differ. Many UW employees are instead on a plan managed by the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) — see Q15. If you’re on another plan entirely, the screens and the general approach still illustrate the kinds of exposures common to broad, market-tracking investments; the specific fund-by-fund figures in these tools, though, are calculated for the TIAA-administered UW Retirement Plan.
15. How can I support retirement transparency and ethical investment standards if I’m on a WSIB-managed plan?
If your retirement money is managed by the Washington State Investment Board, the lever is public and legislative rather than personal fund selection. WSIB invests on behalf of state employees under state law, so change there runs through transparency and policy — for example, the Washington Responsible Investment Act, which addresses how the state’s public funds account for responsible-investment considerations.
You can support that work by learning how your plan is invested, sharing these tools to show why disclosure matters, and engaging with the legislative and public processes that govern WSIB. The core idea is the same across both systems: the people whose retirement is being invested deserve to see where the money goes.
Figures as of the most recent quarter-end disclosures (fund holdings 12/31/2025; plan assets 3/31/2026). Every dollar figure is a floor based on disclosed holdings only. This site is an independent transparency tool — not investment advice, and not affiliated with UW or TIAA. Nothing you enter is stored.