Socially responsible investing allows people to use financial assets to influence how corporations and governments address a variety of social problems. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, special lending programs, and other financial tools can be chosen and tailored by investors to favor particular social issues, including tobacco-related health problems, civil rights, environmental destruction, violence, community development, and other social concerns. SRI is sometimes referred to as ethical investing, social investing, mission-based investing, and natural investing.

For hundreds of years religious groups have practiced socially responsible investing. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, believed that the use of money is an important lesson from the New Testament. The Quakers in early America and other Christian groups practiced a form of SRI called avoidance investing, when they avoided investing in companies that supported activities to which they were opposed on religious grounds, such as slavery...