EcoInvest.org - Environmental Communication by Means of Independent Investment Portals

摘要

Socially responsible investing integrates social and environmental values into the investment decision-making process. It is grounded in the observation that the corporate sector fundamentally influences both communities and ecosystems. Socially responsible investors link financial and social goals, striving to deploy investment capital in a manner that is consistent with the needs of society and the natural limits of ecosystems. Substituting fossil fuels by alternative sources of energy boosts demand for capital to fund theoretical and applied research, to construct prototypes, solar power plants, wind farms, and to support related activities. This paper describes business plan and implementation of an independent Web portal for socially and ecologically responsible investments (EcoInvest.org). Major milestones were a competitive analysis, the development of a strategic marketing plan, and the implementation of a Web site prototype. Tapping the semantic and visual potential of the hypertext systems, we are striving to establish an interactive platform to meet the specific needs of private and institutional investors, mutual fund companies, producers of renewable energy, and environmental nonprofit organizations. Distributed content (academic reports, market analyses, company profiles, documents by regulatory authorities, discourse transcripts from chat rooms, etc.) and a brokerage platform for educational materials are complemented by the possibility to directly buy stocks, mutual funds, and participation units of eco-indices.