I searched the internet, and found a number of investment firms that include climate or socially responsible investment in their promotion. For suggestions in searching, I also browsed Green America, Third Act, As You Sow, and other websites, and in this way located more investment firms. However, I excluded firms that:
- only offered to advise you or manage your money for you, not offering a fund for you to buy;
- did not include shareholder advocacy for the environment as part of their mission;
- presented profit (“using our highly skilled analysts to beat the averages”) as their number one goal, with environmental concerns as something of an afterthought;
- focused primarily on social benefits other than climate change, such as bond funds that concentrate on community development;
- charged a “load,” a percentage fee either to purchase or sell shares of the fund, unless the load was very small.
These were personal decisions, to focus on investment that addresses climate change while keeping the list of firms to a reasonable length. I was left with a very small number of funds, described below. Clicking on a fund's name on this page will take you to the fund's site on the internet. For a concise summary of my findings go to the next page, where you can click for limited information about the funds.
I found three firms that offer no-load fossil-free (or nearly fossil-free) mutual funds that actively advocate for environmental causes,
I found two more that charge a very small load (0.25%) for selling; they are
Domini and
Impax Funds (formerly Pax World Funds).
These two funds address the full range of ESG concerns, not just climate change. I also found two firms that are not fossil-free, but which try to work inside each company it owns to seriously address climate change. (For a short discussion of this, see FAQ triage.) These are
Finally, for comparison only, I also looked at one widely-used firm,
which offers several ESG no-load index funds but almost always votes following the recommendations of management rather than for transformation.
I could have overlooked something, and would eagerly welcome suggestions and corrections at cory@greenIRA.org. Also, more such funds are being created, but for now (2021 through early 2023) these are the firms that I investigated. Details of these investigations are given next.