Invest Green is a investment firm founded in 2006 that focuses on socially responsible investing. They advise customers on green investments with companies you can feel good about supporting. I recently sent a list of questions to their founder Paul Mosier to find out why he started Invest Green and what exactly his firm is all about. The following is our Q&A:
Q. When you first become a financial adviser was socially responsible investing a concern of yours?
When I entered the industry in 1999 I had the disposition to find socially responsible investing appealing, but it took a bit of time for me to understand the meaning and the impact of SRI. I suppose my thoughts have also become greener during that time period— I became a vegetarian that same year, and have become increasingly interested in and knowledgeable about issues of sustainability, as have many of us. We learn a lot from our clients, as there is a lot of information sharing amongst the people we rub elbows with, and I think we’re all interested in getting a little better in this respect with every passing year.
Q. What drove you to found Invest Green in 2006?
I had been educating potential clients about the opportunity to invest in companies screened for the issues of social responsibility since probably 2002, and found a high percentage of folks found it appealing. Probably 1/3 found it very appealing, 1/3 found it somewhat appealing, and 1/3 not at all. In 2004 I started specifically looking for people that would find SRI appealing, since I found it so gratifying giving these people what they want. It seemed to me that the industry that I belonged to was not respectfully serving green-minded, socially conscious people. But the broker-dealer I was affiliated with wasn’t so excited about it, so I founded Invest Green in early 2006, and affiliated myself with a broker dealer that thought I had an interesting idea. I then ran into a former co-worker, Mara DeFilippis, who shared my enthusiasm, and she joined me in early 2007.
Q. What criteria do you look at to determine if a investment is socially responsible and a good overall investment?
There are as many thoughts on what constitutes social responsibility as there are people thinking about it. And there are thousands of publicly traded companies consider. Fortunately there are agencies that do nothing but consider the social merits, or lack thereof, of publicly traded companies, along with some socially responsible mutual fund families and groups that think about specific issues, like PETA and Human Rights Campaign and Sierra Club. And our individual clients often have very strong opinions about specific companies on specific issues. Whether using mutual funds or ETF’s or individual stocks, I like a portfolio with a meaningful criteria, strong performance over the long term, and with reduced volatility if possible. Sometimes funds that we like will have a holding or two that we don’t like, or that our client may not like, but in terms of social responsibility we want to have at least a great improvement over a portfolio that has employed no social screening.
Q. On your website it says there are over 200 mutual funds focusing on socially responsible companies. Have many of these been around long enough to see how they’ve performed over time? How do you determine which ones might be a good investment?
Of the many SRI funds out there, a good many are too new to have much of an observable track record. And new ones appear every month, it seems. But there are some long-established funds with ten years or more since inception, that have beaten their benchmarks over their history. Sometimes we like funds with shorter histories, if we like the family or if we like the sector. For example, Winslow Green has a new offering, Winslow Green Solutions, that came about in November, and we like it because we like Winslow Green and we like the focus of the fund.
Q. How would someone that is unfamiliar with investing get started with green investing?
Of course, what we prefer is for those interested in green investing to call us and set up a time to meet! There are some resources on the web and elsewhere where one can learn about green investing, but in our experience there are very few people that do not benefit substantially from what a competent advisor can bring to the table. I have maybe 20,000 hours experience thinking about these things, and I’d hate to have to advise people with just my first 1000 hours of experience thinking about these things.
Q. What kinds of customers do you serve? Do you specialize in larger accounts? Do you work with small investors?
We help investors large and small. Helping people with lots of money helps us make a living and has a bigger impact, but it would go against every philosophical grain in my body to have a minimum. Every voice counts. It takes us 3 years to break even when we open up the smallest new IRA accounts, but we find it rewarding in other ways. Never will we present an obstacle for someone wanting to do something smart and green just because they’re not made of money. We also can help people with college savings, life insurance, and green retirement plans for businesses.
Q. I have an 401k that needs to be rolled over. Could I take it to you and roll it into a green IRA with your company? What options do I have?
You certainly can roll an IRA over to us, and we love doing it. It’s great to see how people often become much more enamored of their investmnts once they start to reflect their concern for the environment and humanity. What we invest in, what we recommend, depends on how much money it is, what the risk tolerance is, what the client’s interests and concerns are, and when they’ll use the money. We don’t have two brokerage accounts with the exact same allocation. We are very fond of using the fee-based account where there is an annual asset-based fee in lieu of sales charges and commissions, though that account has a $50,000 minimum. We don’t have a minimum, but some of the investments and platforms that we use do.
Q. Do you work with any employers to offer a Green 401k? If not, could this ever be a possibility?
We can work with employers to build a green, or greenish, 401k. Since we have to use the existing universe of 401k wholesalers, who don’t really seem to believe us when we insist that there are companies that want an all-green 401k, we do the best we can. A huge company with lots of assets can get whatever it wants in terms of a 401k. A small company can at least get one socially responsible investment option in a 401k. none of the green funds do a 401k, but their funds may be added to a 401k offered by another institution or fund family.
Q. With my current IRA (not with Invest Green) it seems like I get tons of fund prospectuses in the mail which seems really wasteful. Is there a way to have this done electronically instead?
Almost everyone in the industry now offers the option to receive statements and prospectuses electronically, though if you have been enrolled a while you may have to ask them about it. We try to bully all of our new clients into this. They’re almost always as interested in being paperless as we are. Even so they get a certain amount of paper from the broker-dealer and the clearing firm. But if we can reduce it by 90% that’s huge. So call the service center of your 401k provider or check the website to see about that option!
Q. Are there any plans to expand Invest Green beyond the Phoenix area?
We’d like to expand outside of Phoenix, but there are a few tactical considerations. I have been doing a lot of business in the Los Angeles area, Santa Monica and the surrounding area. We have done events in Northern Arizona. We have to balance our desire not to pile up our carbon points with huge amounts of travel, and the need to have supervision of advisors in other locales, with our desire to serve investors that have not been served well that reside outside our area. I try to limit my trips to California and once there I don’t use a car. I use the bus when I need a ride, and it’s a pretty condensed, green area that I serve there. I don’t want to fly out there any more often than I can avoid. We do recognize that what we do has a positive impact on the issues that we are concerned with, but we don’t want to be too big a part of the problem in the meantime. We also have considered other ways to address our concerns of the impact of our doing business, such as exploring planting trees for every new client. I’m looking into the best avenue for that. But we do want to expand, with more advisors and more areas served, but slowly and thoughtfully.
Q. Is there anything else I didn’t bring up that you think is important for people to know about Invest Green?
I guess the most important thing to know about investing green is that it has an important impact. I am a big critic of capitalism, as I think that it has chewed people up and spit them out, and trampled thoughtlessly on the planet. But it’s our fault as shareholders, because we have a voice. We need to use our voices, raise our voices, by demanding better behavior of the companies we own, and avoiding the companies that are seemingly beyond redemption. If there is a company that you disapprove of greatly, and many share your view, and all who share your view consciously avoid investment in that company, the share price will be punished by reduced demand, which will make the major shareholders, the decision makers, have another, perhaps more personally compelling reason to consider the criticism of their detractors. Every green voice counts!
Head over to investgreen.org to learn more and start investing green.
James Towner | 
05 9th, 2008| 
by Brad Lancaster. He lives in Tucson Arizona and has done amazing things with his yard and neighborhood all without irrigating with tap water. Check out his website for some great before and after pictures of his yard [
We decided to go there on a whim, wanting to try something new and environmentally friendly. Not knowing what to expect and seeing their prices were moderately steep we got gussied up and headed to Tempe. Their menu is vegan/vegetarian friendly allowing for substitutions of tofu for any of the meat dishes. They specialize in beautiful salads and sandwiches, vegan desserts and some darn good smoothies! As we were seated we were each greeted with a shot of their strawberry-peach-mango smoothie, or ‘Karmic Colada.’ It was so great we ordered a full sized version along with the banana-blueberry-spirulina. The banana one was far sweeter and I liked knowing I was getting all of the nutrition from the spirulina but while it was really yummy I preferred the strawberry. I was so impressed with their smoothies I will make a point of returning just for them.
Our meal started with the baked organic coconut tofu and blackened organic tempeh tower. Not only was this sculpturesque creation beautiful, it was delicious, nutritious and environmentally sound! Reminiscent of Jamaican jerk-spices with a twist of grapefruit-yuzu, this kicked off our special occasion with style and taste. Next up was the main meal… after smoothies and protein packed appetizer we were pretty full but the incredible presentation and scent was more than enough to lure us into gluttony.
What makes The Center a green place to go? They are mostly organic, so what? When we eat organic foods not only are we avoiding ingesting the potentially harmful pesticides and herbicides that go into conventional crops, we are supporting sustainable agricultural practices. Organic farming promotes better treatment of the soils which means they will be healthy and supportive of tomorrow’s crops for our kids and theirs. It is also important that they have a focus on vegan options. The meat and dairy industries, particularly from the factory farming practices due to their highly concentrated population of critters, contribute a huge amount of methane (a green house gas) not to mention the requirement for huge amounts of water, land, and crops to feed them (and the water and land required for those crops!) and the fuel to truck them, living and dead, across the country. 
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