Rural women microfinance borrowers in their richly coloured saris meeting as members of self-help groups (SHGs). Photo by mckaysavage, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

In recent years, microfinance has emerged as one of the most popular forms of community investing available to sustainable and responsible investors. Microfinance organizations have multiplied around the developing world, with some of the largest microfinance lenders such as Compartamos in Mexico and SKS Microfinance in India raising hundreds of millions of dollars through public offerings.  

Some people, such as Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus have recently suggested that the increasing commercialization of microlending has led to a dramatic rise in the number of microfinance "loan sharks," who are now charging their borrowers the very same extraordinarily high rates of interest that the Grameen Bank was originally founded to eliminate. 

As a result, Yunus and others have called for increased government regulation of the microfinance industry.

In very much the same vein, forty global investors have recently signed the Principles for Investors in Inclusive Finance, which seek to encourage sustainable institutions and improve client protection.

The entire PIIF principles can be read here. 

While most of the PIIF signatories are based in Europe, two signatories are based in the United States, including Calvert Foundation, a leading sustainable and responsible community investing non-profit that has developed an innovative pooled community investment note that is used in many Goodfunds Wealth Management client portfolios. Investors earn interest (1-3%) while supporting community development financial institutions (CDFI's) who are lending money to social entrepreneurs, affordable housing developers, childcare centers etc. 

Following up on 2010's successful hydraulic fracturing shareholder resolutions, a coalition of sustainable and responsible investors (SRI) have filed additional hydraulic fracturing resolutions at nine different oil and gas companies pressing them to "disclose their plans for managing water pollution, litigation and regulatory risks that are increasingly associated with ever-expanding natural gas hydraulic fracturing operations (also known as fracking) in the United States."  

Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial practice utilized by oil and gas companies to extract natural gas from rock below the earth's surface. It involves injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the ground, potentially leading to contaminated drinking water.

For an in-depth investigative report on hydraulic fracturing, watch the video linked below, created by PBS this past fall.

Included among the coalition of SRI investors filing these resolutions were several SRI investment managers (Trillium Asset Management, Domini Social Investments, and Miller/Howard Investments) utilized in some Goodfunds Wealth Management client accounts.

To access all the details of the shareholder resolutions on toxic chemicals filed by investors, check out the Investor Environmental Health Network's online database, located here.  You will find the companies, the filers, the outcomes, and can access complete resolution texts.