Sustainable investments take into consideration environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. What is a company's carbon footprint? How diverse is its management team? What efforts does it make to promote gender equality in the workforce? All of these – and so many more – are questions that ESG attempts to answer for investors. 

But such queries are not easily answered without lots of data, which begs an even bigger question: What ESG tools are available for individual investors to evaluate investments – in both stocks and funds – based on their sustainability practices?

The good news is that with the growing demand for sustainable investment options is an increasing number of companies providing ESG tools and research to help investors find the strategies they seek. Although most data sets are costly and designed for institutional investors, there are a number of free or limited data sets available to individual investors.

As a national non-profit for shareholder advocacy, As You Sow offers one of the most comprehensive SRI/ESG tools available to investors. On its site InvestYourValues.org, investors can evaluate the social responsibility of 3,000 mutual funds and ETFs, from their fossil fuel impact to gender equality and racial justice through the companies' relationships with private prisons.