The Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund (DHSRI) Advances Social Impact through Ethical Finance

The Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund (DHSRI) manages $200,000 of the Dwight Hall endowment. Founded in 2008, DHSRI is the oldest and largest undergraduate-led socially responsible investment (SRI) fund in the country. According to the DHSRI website, “[w]ith over $200,000 in assets under management (AUM), our portfolio targets an allocation of 35% domestic equity, 30% foreign equity, 25% alternatives, and 10% fixed income.” While the fund seeks to exceed market benchmarks, its primary goal is to maximize social impact and to test how financially viable socially responsible investments are. 

DHSRI is organized into three collaborative teams: the Portfolio Team, the Shareholder Engagement Team, and the Community Investment Team.  

The Portfolio Team ensures that each investment within the fund fulfills part of the mission of Dwight Hall, allocating assets based on social impact criteria while maintaining financial returns. The Shareholder Engagement Team invests strategically to exercise shareholder rights and drive companies toward socially responsible practices. The Community Investment Team directly supports the New Haven community by distributing $8,000 in annual grants to local nonprofits. This year, the Community Investment Team is expanding to offer free support to nonprofits writing grant applications. 

Caleb Xiao ’27, the president of DHSRI, explained that the central purpose of DHSRI is to invest in companies that fulfill the Dwight Hall mission statement. “Our mission is about testing a hypothesis that we have about whether these portfolios that are mission-driven can hold their weight within the larger investment space,” Caleb shared. 

Another key aspect of DHSRI’s work is shareholder engagement. “[At] every publicly traded company’s annual general meeting, companies must hear the insights and thoughts of their shareholders. One way this happens is through shareholder proposals,” Caleb explained. Shareholders can pool their stocks, and if they reach a certain percentage of the company’s value, they can file a proposal asking the company to address their concerns. Shareholders then vote on these proposals, and if they reach a certain vote threshold, the company faces sufficient pressure to address the proposal. These proposals can be about any company policy; however, DHSRI’s shareholder engagement focuses on proposing socially responsible reforms within companies. 

“Given that we manage $200,000, we will often file alongside a larger entity, which in recent years has been Investor Advocates for Social Justice [IASJ],” Caleb shared. IASJ advocates for a wider community of faith-driven investors pushing for socially responsible actions from the companies they invest in. “We help them with drafting [proposals], internal research for these proposals, [and offer] supporting statements,” Caleb explained. In 2024, for example, DHSRI led the research for a proposal to Hershey focused on responsible supply chain management, including eliminating child labor and ensuring livable wages for farmers. That same year, DHSRI also filed a proposal urging Amazon to measure and disclose carbon emissions across its full value chain. 

DHSRI has also taken leadership in direct shareholder advocacy. In 2017, DHSRI filed a proposal directly to ExxonMobil with the United Steelworkers Union asking the company to address its impact on climate change. “To date, DHSRI is the only student-run fund to co-file a shareholder resolution with a public company,” according to the DHSRI website. During this time, Yale was considering divesting from fossil fuels. “This proposal [showed that] Exxon clearly didn’t want to address its effect on climate change… therefore violating one of the regulations in Yale’s white paper [the 1972 “The Ethical Investor”], which requires that a company at least have the intention of doing good for Yale to invest in it,” Caleb shared. In 2021, Yale’s endowment formally divested from fossil fuels. 

As a preprofessional student group, DHSRI is delivering social impact through its investments, grants, and shareholder proposals and by training Yale students to view finance through a different lens. By engaging directly in ethical investing, students gain a deeper understanding of finance as a tool for social change. “Investors often don’t know that they can be shareholder activists or have this power in their votes,” Caleb shared. 

Nearly two decades ago, with the help of student interest and research, the Trustees of Dwight Hall created a separate fund within the Dwight Hall endowment focused on Socially Responsible Investment. The Investment Committee of the Dwight Hall Board continues to exercise fiduciary oversight by meeting regularly with the DHSRI student leaders and coaching them on analysis.

DHSRI’s work and the Dwight Hall experience embody the Grow pillar of Dwight Hall’s Engage, Grow, and Advance program delivery model, developing students’ intellectual, moral, civic, and creative capacities to the fullest with experiential learning, internships, fellowships, mentorships, and training. 

To learn more about DHSRI, visit its website here.