Yesterday I talked about the basics of faith-based investing – investing in a way that is consistent with the principles of your faith. With investing comes great moral responsibility. For most faith-based investors – how you profit is more important than how much you profit. This does not mean faith-based investors do not seek competitive returns, they just attempt to do so without compromising their values, morals, and beliefs.

Side Note: I was interviewed by a reporter at www.thestreet.com this morning about faith-based investing and how performance is important and that there is no proof that screening out certain companies will affect your performance negatively over the long-run. They will feature my interview on their site that goes out to millions of investors next week. I will post the link when it’s available.

Investors buying stocks need to know what the stock is really worth, how risky the stock is, and when to buy, sell, or hold. There are many ways investors can analyze stocks to determine this information. There is no single way that works for all investors. In fact, many investors use a combination of methods to analyze stocks. First it starts with know which companies you want to avoid.

Moral & Social Analysis

Here are a few tools for faith-based investors (some are free, others require a monthly or annual fee):

www.moralmoney.com
Moral Money is a site dedicated to expanding the awareness of Biblically Responsible Investing and helping people grow closer to Christ by illuminating the Biblical insights of investment stewardship. Biblically Responsible Investing is the act of building an investment portfolio consisting only of companies that do not participate in or promote lifestyles that are offensive to Christian values. These values include the manufacture or distribution of such products as tobacco, alcohol, abortion services, anti-marriage lifestyles, pornography, and products or media that mock the Christian lifestyle.

www.iwfinancial.com
IW Financial draws on its own proprietary research and leading independent third party services to provide impartial and comprehensive global coverage of environmental, social, and governance issues. Their issue coverage is comprehensive–each company in their universe is covered across all issues, not just those that can be captured by identifying industry involvement. In-house research at IW covers over 3,000 publicly traded U.S. companies across more than 75 issues, allowing faith-based investors to make more informed investment decisions. Among the issue categories tracked by IW Financial research are Environment, Governance, Human Rights, Adult Entertainment, Labor Relations, Alcohol, Gambling, and Tobacco.

www.briinstitute.com
BRII’s mission is to provide Christian investors with the high quality information they need about the activities of public companies so that they can make good stewardship decisions about how to properly invest the money the Lord has entrusted to them. Using biblical standards, BRII has identified over 50 activities that are of concern to Christians and has built an extensive database that catalogues corporate violations of these Biblical principles. It is our desire that BRII will help make it simple for Christian investors to align their investment portfolios with their faith. Additionally, BRII hopes to actively engage corporations in order to not only offset the extensive influence of groups that are seeking to promote sinful behavior but also to actively promote adoption of biblically-based measures that will cause corporations to be a blessing to our communities.

BRII’s database currently has information on over 2,000 public companies including many foreign companies. We currently have data on corporate involvement in Alcohol, Abortion, Anti-Family Issues, Bioethics, Gambling, Homosexuality, Human Rights, Tobacco and Pornography. We also seek to identify activities of companies that a blessing to our communities such as those that produce edifying entertainment programs.

These three tools will help you sort through issues important to you and make sure your values are not violated when you invest. Tomorrow, we will look at the process of faith-based investing and how you can assemble a faith-based investment portfolio