Investing in Your Values

As the demand for an American-style qual­ity of life con­tin­ues to spread around the world, the demand for nat­ural resources such as forests, oil, coal, etc. are also con­tin­u­ing to rise. The result — dwin­dling ecosys­tems, an increase in world con­flicts and mil­i­tarism, and a rapidly widen­ing gap between the ultra-rich and the very poor. Not to men­tion the increas­ingly dicey state of the world’s invest­ment markets!

In such times, how can you avoid fund­ing mil­i­tarism, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, or eco­nomic exploita­tion with your invest­ment port­fo­lio? For­tu­nately, there is a way…socially respon­si­ble invest­ing, a well-established con­cept that is grow­ing in popularity.

A grow­ing num­ber of invest­ment bro­kers are mak­ing it their busi­ness to iden­tify safe invest­ments… not only com­pa­nies who use the high­est prin­ci­ples in their book­keep­ing, but also in their busi­ness ethics: no sweat­shops, no mil­i­tary con­tracts, no envi­ron­men­tally risky prac­tices. Not only this: these bro­kers give you a stronger voice in deter­min­ing the poli­cies of com­pa­nies in which you hold stock.

With SRI, you have the power to use your invest­ments to influ­ence pub­licly held com­pa­nies or to sup­port com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions and com­pa­nies that sup­port human­i­tar­ian or envi­ron­men­tal val­ues. Gen­er­ally, socially respon­si­ble investors and bro­kers use three meth­ods to do this:

• Includ­ing or exclud­ing secu­ri­ties from a port­fo­lio based on social/environmental standards
• Using sig­nif­i­cant shares in a com­pany to fos­ter respon­si­ble cor­po­rate decisions
• Invest­ing in peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions who might oth­er­wise not be able to obtain money from main­stream lend­ing sources

The fol­low­ing orga­ni­za­tions offer infor­ma­tion and ser­vices to help you as a socially respon­si­ble investor…

One Socially Respon­si­ble Invest­ment Firm’s Response to Occupy Wall Street…

SocialFunds.com pro­vides detailed infor­ma­tion about spe­cific social mutual funds, com­mu­nity invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and share­owner action, as well as daily news and invest­ment advice.

Money Wis­dom is an infor­ma­tion site that offers an excel­lent primer on the prin­ci­ples behind SRI. They offer a four-point method for estab­lish­ing a portfolio:

• Neg­a­tive screening
• Pos­i­tive screening
• Global diver­sity
• Per­sonal vision

Calvert Invest­ments offers oppor­tu­ni­ties to invest in com­pa­nies demon­strat­ing envi­ron­men­tal effi­ciency and aware­ness, work­force diver­sity, prod­uct safety and qual­ity, inno­v­a­tive per­son­nel poli­cies, and pos­i­tive cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship. Calvert also offers two off­shoots ded­i­cated to com­mu­nity development:

• Calvert Foun­da­tion is ded­i­cated to com­mu­nity invest­ment, direct­ing investors’ funds to com­mu­nity devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tions in the United States and around the world.
• Calvert Giv­ing allows you to ded­i­cate gifts to the char­i­ties of your choice through “a per­sonal phil­an­thropic account. Your funds remain in the account, but are directed toward invest­ments with “high social and envi­ron­men­tal impact.”

Green Amer­ica offers a wide range of ser­vices and prod­ucts that sup­port human­i­tar­ian efforts. One of these is SocialInvest.Org, which pro­vides infor­ma­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ties for socially respon­si­ble investments.