Investing with Your Values (Conscientious Commerce) [Paperback]

Hal Brill (Author), Jack A. Brill (Author), Cliff Feigenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000 | Series: Conscientious Commerce

Investing with values . . . . is a trillion dollar, growing industry. Investing with Your Values offers a rare combination: the pragmatic tools of disciplined investing with a thoughtful methodology for melding difficult financial decisions with fundamental and cherished personal values.-Joan Shapiro, Former Executive Vice President, South Shore Bank

The fact is that you can make money and make a difference at the same time! Now in paperback, this step-by-step guide answers all the financial basics and makes it easy to link your money with your values in a high-performance portfolio.

Includes:

o The philosophy and fascinating history that built SRI (socially responsible investing)

o An explanation of the visionary new framework of "Natural Investing"

o How to outperform the market and be a force for social change

o Shareholder activism and community investing

o Detailed information on socially responsible stocks, mutual funds, and bonds

o Stories, lists of funds and companies, worksheets, and scores of resources

The authors are dedicated financial activists who have had a long involvement with SRI.

Hal Brill and Jack Brill have been values-based investment consultants for ten years.

Cliff Feigenbaum is the editor of GreenMoney Journal. Hal Brill lives is Paonia Colorado; Jack Brill lives in San Diego, California; and Cliff Feigenbaum lives in Spokane Washington. All three authors have been interviewed extensively on radio, TV, and print.

Bloomberg's 1999 hardcover edition of Investing with Your Values received outstanding coverage in all media including NPR's "Marketplace", CNBC News, Utne Reader, Money Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
Marketing for Investing with Your Values:
National advertising campaign
National radio interviews
National direct mail campaign
Co-op money available

Also available in the Conscientious Commerce series:
The Natural Step for Business
PB $16.95, 0-86571-384-7 USA
Cannibals with Forks
PB $21.95, 0-86571-392-8 USA
In Earth's Company
PB $16.95, 0-86571-38

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If you want your money to make money and to make a difference...then this book is for you." -- Martin Rutte, Coauthor of Chicken soup for the Soul at Work

About the Author

The authors are dedicated financial activists who have had a long involvement with SRI. Hal Brill and Jack Brill have been values-based investment consultants for ten years. Cliff Feigenbaum is the editor of GreenMoney Journal. Hal Brill lives is Paonia Colorado; Jack Brill lives in San Diego, California; and Cliff Feigenbaum lives in Spokane Washington. All three authors have been interviewed extensively on radio, TV, and print.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: New Society Publishers (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865714223
• ISBN-13: 978-0865714229
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,251,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great handbook, weak bible, December 9, 2000

By 

Lance Wilcox (Lombard, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Investing with Your Values (Conscientious Commerce) (Paperback)

Brill, Brill and Feigenbaum's "Investing with Your Values" has been greeted with three cheers from the Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) community. It deserves perhaps two of the three. It aspires to be both a pragmatic handbook for SRI and the bible of the movement. As a handbook it is excellent. As a bible it is weak.

The book is divided into four large sections, of which the second and third are the most valuable. In Section II, the authors do an excellent job of describing the entire range of SRI activities: avoidance screening, affirmative screening, shareholder activism, and community investing. They lay out the strategies of each, explain the thinking behind them, and discuss issues readers should consider concerning them. For most people, SRI means little more than avoidance screening: refusing to own stocks in tobacco, alcohol, gambling, weapons or nuclear energy companies. The other approaches - all, if anything, more politically productive - have never, to my knowledge, been as fully and usefully presented as they are here.

The authors also do an excellent job of debunking the myth that investing along ethical lines lowers returns. Nobody who invested in the Pax World Fund, the Domini Social Index, or the Citizen Funds over the past several years will be found wringing their hands over missing gains. Socially screened funds have matched or outrun their unscreened competitors consistently. It's nice to see this myth laid to rest with a systematic barrage of pertinent research.

Section Three covers different kinds of investments: mutual funds, closed-end funds, stock, bonds, annuities, etc. The section also includes a catalog of socially screened mutual funds, complete with expense and performance data. This section, along with the many appendices, makes the book an excellent reference for the Responsible Investor.

In Sections II and III, the authors are writing within their expertise. Throughout the book, however, the authors slide from finances and investing into pure discussions of politics, ethics, and spirituality, and the results are always disappointing. When they're discussing SRI, they qualify as lucid, informed experts; when they discuss philosophy, theology, and politics, they're amateurs at best. Section IV spirals deep into New Age pretension and silliness. Even their preferred term for the SRI movement, "Natural Investing," is trendy, ill-conceived cant. (The English and Canadians call it "Ethical Investing," which is less coy and more accurate.) The authors pay lip service to the ancient roots of SRI, but they try to create new roots for it in New Age "spirituality." This tendency reaches its nadir when they rename the "voluntary simplicity" movement "voluntary abundance." Henry David Thoreau and John Woolman would cringe at the smarmy hypocrisy of the term.

Despite the weakness of their philosophizing, however, the book deserves applause for the amount of information on Ethical Investing it presents and the clarity with which it's presented. Despite its flaws, Responsible Investors should buy, read, and keep the book on hand. Or lend it around. Or put a copy in your church library and tell people it's there.

In a future revision, the authors should drop Section IV in its entirety and beef up Section III, on personal finance. They could write an excellent general introduction to personal finance - a "how-to" for nervous, well-meaning beginners - set in the context of SRI. These authors could improve an already fine book if they would take up this challenge.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The positive/ the negative, November 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Investing With Your Values: Making Money and Making a Difference (Hardcover)

Investing with Your Values does an admirable job of covering all the various aspects of socially responsible investing, but unfortunately it's not that fun to read. Enthusiasm is great, but the book has a gee-whizish tone, which I found grating (call me a sourpuss). I preferred The Mindful Money Guide, which covered most of the same material more succinctly and gracefully while also making me laugh. Still, if you're looking for comprehensive coverage of socially responsible investing, Investing with Your Values is a good reference.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars investing, May 9, 2005

By 

Michael F. Bocchinfuso (brooklyn, ny USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Investing with Your Values (Conscientious Commerce) (Paperback)

This is an eazy to understand book. Wish it had more info for the very small investors. It needs to be updated since alot has happen in the last 5 to 6 years. Otherwise I would recomend it.