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November 30, 2001
SIF Reports on Socially Responsible Investment Growth in the U.S.
by William Baue
In its biennial report, the Social Investment Forum documents modest gains in socially responsible
investments.
SocialFunds.com --
Overall socially responsible investing increased by eight percent from 1999 to 2001, according to
the 2001 Report on Responsible Investing Trends in the United States released Wednesday by
the Social Investment Forum. SIF points
out that nearly one of eight dollars under professional management in the United States is now
invested employing one or more of the three strategies that define socially responsible investing:
screening, shareowner advocacy, and community investment.
 Overall U.S. investment through professional
managers amounted to $19.9 trillion as of December 31, 2000, according to the most recent available
statistics in the 2001 Nelson’s Directory of Investment Managers. SIF conducted its
own research over the first half of 2001, commissioning independent assistance from
HostedSurvey.com, an online survey firm, and the Hastings Group, a public relations firm, among
others. SIF determined that $2.34 trillion is invested in the U.S. in a socially responsible
manner. Thus socially responsible investing accounts for 11.75 percent of all U.S. investing.
This percentage dropped slightly since SIF’s last study, released in 1999, which
reported more than one in eight dollars invested with social responsibility in the U.S. Social
investing in the U.S. totaled $2.16 trillion in 1999, according to SIF’s previous report.
That year, overall U.S. investing amounted to $16.3 trillion, according to Nelson’s.
Thus socially responsible investing accounted for 13.25 percent of all U.S. investing in 1999.
SIF breaks down the results for socially responsible investing into categories according
to the three strategies of socially responsible investing: $1.4 trillion of socially responsible
investments employ screening only; $305 billion employ shareowner advocacy only; and almost $8
billion represent community investing. As well, SIF includes a category for investments that
employ both screening and shareowner advocacy, which amounted to $601 billion.
Comparing
these numbers to SIF’s 1999 results, investments employing screens alone grew by almost 17
percent, from $1.2 trillion in 1999; investments employing shareowner advocacy alone fell by
almost 54 percent, from $657 billion; and community investing rose by almost 41 percent, from $5.4
billion. Investments combining screening with shareowner advocacy rose by 36 percent, from $265
billion in 1999.
The report’s Executive Summary and SIF’s Press Release
highlight this last statistic, noting that it represents an increase of 1.5 times the growth
experienced by overall U.S. investments, which rose by 22 percent from 1999 through 2001. However,
this growth represents not so much new investments, but predominantly the shifting of existing
investments from one category, shareowner advocacy alone, to another, advocacy and screening
combined.
“What we’ve seen over time is that money that gets involved in one
of the SRI [socially responsible investing] strategies tends to embrace the other strategies over
time,” said SIF spokesperson and President of First Affirmative Financial Network Steve
Schueth. “What we saw here was a lot of money that was involved in advocacy in previous
years is now involved in screening as well,” he explained, characterizing this as a natural
progression.
Other results reported by SIF: community investing experienced a 41 percent
increase, from $5.4 billion in 1999 to $7.6 billion in 2001. Considered as a percentage of overall
socially responsible investment, community investing rose from a quarter to a third of a percent
between 1999 and 2001. This growth supports SIF’s “One Percent in Community
Campaign,” an initiative seeking to increase community investment to one percent of all
socially responsible assets.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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