What makes a socially responsible investment?
When looking for SRIs, you need to perform either a negative or positive screen to find your sample list of companies. A negative screen eliminates companies that have bad products, practices or services and generally are a negative influence on the world. Positive screens select companies that are contributing to society in some tangible way. This type of screen has become increasingly popular with investors who have chosen to support companies that stand for something good, rather than not doing anything bad. It’s a clear distinction. The difficult part of this screening process is the detailed research you need to do to determine if these companies are socially responsible, based on the criteria of the screen itself. It’s a complicated process. As a result, most investors tend to invest in mutual funds that do this for them. At last count there were close to 200 funds using one or more social criteria to choose their investments. In addition to positive and negative screens, some mu
