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WHAT IS SRI >> A Brief History
The following text was excerpted from Investing with Your
Values
New Society Publishers, 2000
By Hal Brill, Jack A. Brill and Cliff Feigenbaum
The 1970s
and 1980s saw SRI--Socially Responsible Investing--launched
as a movement. During the height of the Vietnam protests
in 1971, peace-oriented Pax World became the first mutual
fund to offer screened investments on a broad range of
social issue. Soon Dreyfus Third Century, Calvert, Working
Assets,
New Alternatives, and Parnassus joined the pack.
South
Shore Bank in Chicago pioneered community banking, while
the Institute for Community Economics and the E.F.
Schumacher Society developed tools for job creation and
affordable housing using community loan funds and land
trusts. Trillium
Asset Management was founded by Joan Bavaria in 1982
to stimulate shareholder activism as part of social money
management.
The Social Investment Forum (SIF), a trade association
of SRI professionals, was incorporated in 1985. Several
research
organizations, including the Council on Economic Priorities,
took up the critical task of monitoring corporate behavior.
Investment firms like First Affirmative Financial Network
and Progressive Asset Management discovered a large,
untapped
market of investors eager to include their values. Co-op
America brought attention to consumer boycotts and developed
a network of socially conscious businesses.
The 1990s
saw SRI gain widespread acceptance in the mainstream. Much
of its growth is now client-driven. Simply put,
an ever-growing number of investment houses are managing
socially
responsible
portfolios because investors, both individual and institutions,
are demanding it. Doubts about performance have been
put to rest and a new awareness is dawning that companies
managed
with an eye toward environmental and social health
might actually make better investments. As Peter Kinder puts
it, "We
knew something was up when the phone started ringing
off the hook. Mainstream investors, who had no real interest
in social issues, were calling us for social research
because
they knew we were on to something. They felt that our
methods could help identify better performing stocks."
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