The social responsible mutual funds are those mutual funds that invest in companies’ which have good track record in a variety of areas like global warming avoidance, good practices of the labor laws and the child labor and have good corporate governance practices. That said the total number of SRI mutual funds that are out there is only 221.

On the other there have been such great companies like the Calvert and the Domini which have helped bolster the move towards the ethical investing. I would suggest that you should make sure that you go for the best mutual funds in which there is scope for greater returns and these are the fund which have been there for the benefit of the society at large.

A lot of SRI mutual funds give out some part of their money to the benefit of the community and that is known as community investing. In the case of community investing the best part is that the community gets the money that is needed which they would not have got from the regular banks and then the mutual funds give their management insights about how to use those monies and in return when they collect their money back they would have gained something on that money. The whole operation is not easy and needs to have considerable management oversight and that is precisely why most people who invest in ethical mutual funds would know that the rate and the expense of these mutual funds are very high and in fact they are among the highest. But if you need to do some good for the society then there are definitely some costs attached to it.

Some of the good Sri mutual funds to invest are the

Vanguard’s FTSE Social Index Fund

Domini European PacAsia Social Equity Fund

Winslow Green Growth

Calvert Large-Cap Growth

Calvert Social Bond

Portfolio 21

Women's Equity

The way to invest in these funds is to make sure that they match your ethical and moral values. In a lot of cases they may have differing view that you would think on investing. That is why it is important to read the prospectus of the funds before you make any decision. In that the bets way is to make sure that you invest some time and energy in researching the companies in which they are investing. You can then directly buy into the stocks of these companies. The negative point here will be that you all alone by yourself cannot generally force a company into adopting good practices whereas the companies like Calvert’s’ can do a lot more.

Another challenge is since the number of funds is less you will be forced to accept lower returns which may hamper your investment portfolio so you will have to make that decision about ethical investing versus making money.