Ask HN: Any advice or resources for socially responsible investing? - khyur
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brudgers
It depends on what one considers socially responsible and the forms of
spending one considers investment. I mean, endowing a medical research chair
at a university is a form of investment, but it doesn't offer cash on cash
returns to the endower.

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patio11
Given that one has a desire to purchase investment returns and purchase the
feeling of doing socially responsible things, it is highly recommended to
purchase these separately. Most products available for "socially responsible
investing" are mutual funds who use social responsibility just as a marketing
angle; they often charge 100 basis points or more higher than vanilla
offerings from Vanguard or similar. (Performance prior to fees is similar; no
definition of socially responsible investing or socially irresponsible
investing creates alpha over the market.)

I can appreciate that one might capture utility from knowing that one does not
support institutions that one thinks are odious, even in the _extremely
attenuated_ nature that beneficially owning a few shares of their stock counts
as support. That said, weigh the options here: 100 basis points drag on your
return over your investing life costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. If
your choices are a) sleep the sleep of the righteous while doing nothing of
positive value for causes you care about or b) give causes you care about
hundreds of thousands of dollars at the cost of occasionally owning ~5 shares
of a company whose operations you dislike, which sounds like a better option
to you?

Edit to add:

People might feel like I'm not being concrete enough here, so let me use an
example which (playing the percentages) is specifically chosen to gore my ox
rather than yours. Ave Maria Mutual Funds has a variety of actively-managed
and index fund products which are targeted specifically at Catholics. Specific
example: AVEMX. Their investment criteria is, basically, "US equities at any
sizes in any industries at our discretion; we promise not to invest in anyone
who supplies abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, or pornography."

People have entrusted this fund with $200 million. I will elide their
investment results, as you should assume that any fund will probabalistically
get market results going forward, and focus strictly on their expense ratio:
1.19% per year.

If you take out the Catholic angle, this firm is selling exposure to the US
stock market. A competing way to buy this exposure is through the Vanguard
Total Market fund (INT), or its ETF (VTI). Vanguard charges, for the mutual
fund, 0.16% per year (103 BPS less) or 0.05% per year (114 BPS less) if you
get their admiral shares (minimum investment: $10k).

You should reasonably expect approximately 8% average returns over the long-
run in US equities. Maybe less. If you invest $10k in the Vanguard option and
hold for 30 years, you will have $96k. (I used the more expensive of the two
options for giggles.)

If you invest in Ave Maria and hold, and Ave Maria gets market returns, you
will have $60k.

$36k could do a lot of things a Catholic might care about, which is why I am
not invested in Ave Maria, am invested in various Vanguard funds, and have an
exposure denominated in tens of dollars to e.g. IHG, a hotel chain which earns
basis points of its revenue from selling pornographic movies.

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OrwellianChild
I'm going to piggyback on this to suggest that, as Patrick says, invest your
money responsibly to make more from it... If you want to then plow some of it
back into socially responsible causes, use the same scrutiny. As a reference,
I recommend Will MacAskill's Doing Good Better.[1]

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-
Difference...](http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-
Difference/dp/1592409105/)

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malyk
Vanguard has a social responsibility fund.

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lorenzomark4
Which area you are interested in?

