Social investors recognize that every financial transaction has social implications as well as financial ones. While traditional investing is aimed exclusively at maximizing financial value, social investing takes account of both financial and social bottom lines.
      Socially responsible investing can be a catalyst for positive social change or merely a way to help the investor sleep better at night. In its ideal, it is investing that does not exploit human, environmental, or capital resources, but rather directs financial resources for positive social benefit.
      In recent years, the SRI field has been grouped into five broad areas:

1. Screening: Avoidance and Positive
2. Community Investing
3. Proxy Activism
4. Social Venture-capital Investing
5. Mission-related Investing

      At Clean Yield, we are committed both to maximizing financial return and promoting a better society, or, at minimum, avoiding social and environmental harm. We specialize primarily in the first SRI area, screening, and the third, facilitating proxy initiatives on behalf of "activist" clients. Clean Yield encourages our clients' involvement in the other SRI areas by providing information and referral.