Some of our clients wish to invest in socially or ethically screened stocks. Social responsibility investment (”SRI”) mutual funds is one answer.

However, to be commercially viable, SRI funds must paint with a fairly wide brush. That is often not sharply focused enough for individual investors who have specific screening objectives, and who are comfortable owning individual stocks instead of funds.

We think a good place to begin looking for individual stocks for a personal SRI portfolio is within the portfolios of SRI funds themselves. That list is a much smaller list that the whole world of stocks, and research teams have done a lot of pre-work to narrow the field. The SRI investor can probably find what they need from there.

To make that job even easier for the do-it-yourself investor, we have compiled a merged list of 584 stocks from 6 leading SRI mutual funds:

Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive (NBRSX)
Ariel (ARGFX)
Ariel Growth (CAAPX)
Winslow Green Growth (WGGFX)
Domini Social Equity (DSEFX)
Vanguard FTSE Social Index (VFTSX)

You can download that list of 584 SRI screened stocks here. It’s a straight list with no evaluation of the merits of the stocks, but it will save you a lot of time. An image of the PDF file pages looks like this:

We selected the 6 SRI mutual funds from 22 SRI funds covered in a US SRI funds study we published in March 2007.

That document is also available for download here.

The “Summary” for that report said.

“We identified 22 social responsibility investment funds with approximately $100 million or more in assets and at least 5-years of operations. Of those, 16 outperformed the S&P 500 proxy SPY over five years, indicating that values-based investing does not necessarily compromise potential returns. We also found that 6 of the 22 funds performed in the top ½ of the group for each of 3, 5, and 10 years, or 1, 3 and 5 years. Of those, one fund stands out as the best overall investment choice with good returns, a moderate expense ratio, and a small enough asset size that it can effectively take positions in smaller companies that larger funds cannot. That fund is Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive Fund (NBSRX).”

If you manage your own socially screened portfolio, this information should be helpful to you. If you want an individualized SRI portfolio, but need help putting it together or want one designed and managed for you, we stand ready to help.