Ask HN: Any advice or resources for socially responsible investing?

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.

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.

Vanguard has a social responsibility fund.

Which area you are interested in?