Investing With Your Values: Making Money and Making a Difference [Hardcover]

Hal Brill (Author), Cliff Feigenbaum (Author), Jack A Brill (Author), Hal Bril (Author), Amy L Domini Investments (Foreword), Jack A. Brill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999 | Series: Bloomberg Personal Bookshelf

Investing With Your Values presents compelling evidence that values-inclusive investors can actually outperform the market and be a force for social change. The book's central concept of Natural Investing is a visionary practice that enables people across the entire philosophic and economic spectrum to identify their values and bring them into the financial arena.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[A] comprehensive and inspiring handbook for all investors. It belongs on the bookshelf of every person who owns a mutual fund, opens a bank account, or invests in a retirement plan. -- Barbara Krumsiek, President & CEO, Calvert Group

[A] succinct, informative guide providing practical advice on social investing. The book provides easy-to-understand answers to the financial basics and presents a thought-provoking view of the social issues. -- Janet Prindle, Fund Manager, Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive Fund

[Y]our step-by-step guide to manifesting your values in the real world of business. It is a godsend. -- John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, co-authors of "Megatrends 2000"

About the Author

Brill is a financial consultant who has specialized exclusively in values-based investing for over ten years. He is a member of the Social Investment Forum and cofounder of Natural Investment Services.

Feigenbaum is editor of GreenMoney Journal, a quarterly newsletter & Web site that has emerged as the leading source of in-depth information on socially responsible investing.

Domini is one of the foremost voices in socially responsible investing. She has been cited by Barron's as one of the mutual fund industry's 25 most influencial people of the century. She is a visionary on Wall Street.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Bloomberg Press; 1St Edition edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576600262
• ISBN-13: 978-1576600269
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #914,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 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.