Scope
Ethics VC is a nonprofit research and policy organization. Ethics VC assesses any entity operating within the venture capital and private markets ecosystem — VC firms and fund managers, portfolio companies, institutional investors, and individual principals. There is no minimum size threshold: early screening considers potential exposure before a fund or company scales or enters broader institutional portfolios.
Assessments are initiated by referral from LP governance bodies, pension trustees, or civil society organizations; by identification of government contracts or procurement records; by published findings from UN bodies or international courts; by media coverage or public controversy that warrants independent, evidence-based review; or by proactive screening of new fund launches and endowment portfolio disclosures.
We assess how venture capital and private-market investments intersect with human rights and civil rights — across both international human rights and humanitarian law and domestic civil-rights, privacy, and due-process protections. The conduct we assess is the same whether it arises abroad, at home, or both.
Six-Principle Framework
The six Ethics VC principles define what conduct is incompatible with ethical investment and drive every assessment we undertake. Every subject is assessed against all six principles. The depth of investigation into any given principle is determined by the evidence, not the principle’s position in the list. The principles are not a checklist to be satisfied and set aside — they are a continuous frame of analysis throughout the life of an assessment.
The six principles cover: apartheid and occupation; genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; weapons development; manufacturing consent for crimes against humanity; complicity in crimes against humanity; and the economies that sustain crimes against humanity.
The principles draw on international humanitarian and human rights law and on domestic civil-rights, privacy, and due-process protections for their normative content, but they are defined by conduct, not geography. The same conduct is incompatible with ethical investment wherever it occurs — in an armed-conflict or occupation context abroad, or in a domestic civil-rights, surveillance, or enforcement context at home. Surveillance technology that enables discriminatory control breaches the standard whether it is deployed in an occupied territory or in domestic policing and immigration enforcement.
The full criteria for each principle are published in our Principles and Criteria document.
Two-Layer Model
Formal Ethics VC assessments operate in two layers. Layer 1 evaluates each subject against the six Ethics VC principles; subjects with no concerns identified receive no adverse grade. Layer 2 applies only when a concern is identified under a principle, examining how the underlying conduct relates to applicable regulatory and policy frameworks and what fiduciary exposure may arise for institutions that invest in or partner with the subject.
Evidence Sources and Verification
Ethics VC prioritizes primary government and legal records, including SEC filings, IRS disclosures, procurement records, court documents, and corporate registrations. Research also draws on official international and regulatory findings, audited financial disclosures, and subjects’ own publications. Journalism and commercial databases provide supplementary context and research leads, with underlying primary documents reviewed wherever available.
Each factual claim is checked against its supporting documentation and cross-referenced for corroboration and material inconsistencies. Published assessments provide full citations, distinguish documented facts from Ethics VC’s analytical conclusions, and identify material limitations in the available evidence.
Proximity Architecture
Each triggered principle is assessed for proximity — how direct and material the subject’s connection is to the flagged conduct. Four tiers apply: Direct (Tier 1), Enabling (Tier 2), Indirect (Tier 3), and Incidental (Tier 4).
Recommendation Categories
Entities reviewed are assigned to one of four categories: Immediate Concern, Enhanced Monitoring, Conditional Clearance, or Cleared. These categories reflect defined evidence and proximity criteria.
Why It Matters to Institutions
Institutional investments in private equity and venture capital can leave trustees and oversight teams with limited visibility into underlying companies, counterparties, and human rights impacts. That visibility gap is not only an ethical problem. It is a legal and financial one.
Gaps in oversight can leave institutions less prepared to assess reputational, legal, and financial risks associated with their holdings. Institutions cannot act on headlines. Investment committees, trustees, and compliance teams require documented findings, structured against recognized legal and governance standards, presented in the language of fiduciary decision-making. That is precisely what Ethics VC produces. We exist to close the gap between public concern and institutional action.