The amount of money invested in so-called socially responsible mutual funds continues to grow. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports, they’re still a small part of the big picture:
Transcript
The amount of money invested in so-called socially responsible mutual funds continues to grow.
But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports, they’re still a small part of the
big picture:
A report from the trade group the Social Investment Forum says holdings in socially responsible
mutual funds grew by eleven percent over the last couple of years. The amount now stands at
151 billion dollars. Todd Larsen is a spokesperson for the Forum. He says the industry has
grown dramatically since the group first added up the investments eight years ago.
“In our first report, we found there were 12 billion dollars in assets in socially responsible mutual
funds.”
Larsen says socially responsible funds have a variety of approaches. Some screen out entire
sectors of the economy.
“For example, perhaps, the oil industry might be screened out. In other funds, they’re doing a
best of class approach. So they’ll look at each industry and see which companies are the best within
that particular industry, and they’ll hold those companies.”
Even with the growth, socially responsible mutual funds are still only a tiny percentage of the
trillions of dollars invested in all funds.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.