Sustainable and Socially Responsible Investing

Welcome to Socially Responsible Investing! Do you want the companies of tomorrow to be dumping toxic wastes into your rivers and streams or to be developing alternative energy that can help build a sustainable future? Do you want the companies of tomorrow to be paying their CEO's outrageous salaries while their workers get poverty wages or to be treating their employees fairly and paying a living wage? These are the types of choices you are making with every dollar you have to invest.

So what is Socially Responsible Investing (SRI)? According to the Social Investment Forum, SRI is a broad-based approach to investing that now encompasses an estimated $2.3 trillion out of $24 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today. SRI recognizes that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are valid parts of investment decisions. SRI considers both the investor's financial needs and an investment's impact on society. SRI investors encourage corporations to improve their practices on environmental, social, and governance issues. You may also hear SRI-like approaches to investing referred to as mission investing, responsible investing, double or triple bottom line investing, ethical investing, sustainable investing, or green investing.

As a result of its investing strategies, SRI also works to enhance the bottom lines of the companies in question and, in so doing, seeks to deliver more long-term wealth to shareholders. In addition, SRI investors seek to build wealth in underserved communities worldwide. With SRI, investors can put their money to work to build a more sustainable world while seeking competitive returns both today and over time.

Socially responsible investors include individuals and also institutions, such as corporations, universities, hospitals, foundations, insurance companies, public and private pension funds, nonprofit organizations, and religious institutions. Institutional investors represent the largest and fastest growing segment of the SRI world.

Below you will find links to a few of the reports that discuss investment performance and Socially Responsible Investing - including some of the Moskowitz Award winners Joshua Humphreys. "2007 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States." 2007. Click here to read full report.

Statman, Glushkov. "The Wages of Social Responsibility." December 2008. Click here to read full report.

Stone, Guerard, Gultekin, Adams. "Socially Responsible Investment Screening: Strong empirical evidence of no significant cost for actively managed value-focused portfolios". June 2001. Click here to read full report.

Dowell, Hart, Yeung. "Do Corporate Global Environmental Standards Create or Destroy Market Value?" Management Science. 2000. Click here to read full report.

Alex Edmans. "Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices." August 12, 2009. Click here to read full report.

William Donovan. "Do Socially Responsible Mutual Funds Charge Higher Expense Fees? Click here to read full report.