Artrice Love-Collins with husband Derek Collins and daughter Kiera.

Flip side: If not nice, vice?

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More and more corporate executives — including big-name money managers — have fouled their nests.

Not surprisingly, more and more ordinary investors are looking for sanitized incubators for the nest eggs.

That's why socially responsible investing is going through a boom cycle.

More money is pouring into mutual funds and managed accounts that apply ethical screens to their investment choices. More retirement plans, 401(k)s and the like have added a socially responsible mutual fund to the choices given to employees.

That helps explain why more of the well-known mutual fund management companies — Vanguard, TIAA-CREF, American Funds and Smith Barney, for example — now have ethics-based mutual funds.

Among individuals, 34-year-old Artrice Love-Collins of Newnan is one of millions of ethical investors. Where she grew up, drinking and smoking got people into trouble.

"I choose not to put my money into them," she said. "I'm a Christian, No. 1, and you learn that if you have anything to do with tobacco or alcohol, it'll ruin you."

Beyond religious motivations, which are the bedrock of the socially responsible investing world, ever-expanding scandals have boosted the field, said Timothy Smith, president of the Social Investment Forum. "People are outraged," he said. "It goes from moral outrage to how this is affecting their pocketbooks."

Improved financial rewards make a difference, too. In years past, the rap on ethical investments was that if you insisted on higher standards, you had to take lower returns.

But in recent years, a number of academic studies have shown that ethics-based mutual funds perform about as well as unscreened funds.

One recent study suggests that ethical fund managers have successfully scaled the learning curve: Young funds haven't done very well, but more mature ones do just as well as conventional funds.

Another factor is the increased variety of ethical funds. A large percentage of them still invest in large, established companies. But now you can find funds that invest in midsize companies, small ones, foreign companies, even technology firms and utilities.

As usual, there are practical factors to consider.

• Performance. Ethical funds tend to buy and hold, which means portfolio turnover is relatively low. Still, the stock-picking skills of the managers can make a difference. To check performance records, go to www.socialinvest.org and click on "SRI Mutual Funds."

And bear in mind that bad things can happen to good funds. Amy Domini, a pioneer in the field and boss of the Domini Social Equity Fund, recalls what happened after the abrupt stock market decline in 2000. "The only stocks that did relatively better than the market were armament companies, big tobacco, big chemicals, big agriculture, all the big polluters," she said. "I was in the market except for the things that went up. I'm still struggling to get back from that year."

• Investment costs. Operating expenses are all over the ballpark. A number are far past the 1.5 percent average annual expense charge for U.S. equity funds. On the other hand, the TIAA-CREF Social Choice Equity Fund charges 0.27 percent each year, and the Vanguard Calvert Social Index Fund takes out 0.25 percent.

• Share classes. Some companies offer various classes of shares, including B shares, which can be very expensive for long-term investors.

• Matching your goals. The usual question is what kind of companies you want to invest in — big ones, little ones, value or growth, that sort of thing.

With ethical funds, there's also the question of just what they screen for. Check out www.socialinvest.org or www.socialfunds.com for details.

The old reliable screens are the most popular, as the chart shows. For example, tobacco is a no-no for funds that hold 82 percent of the money invested in ethical funds. It's 62 percent for alcohol.

Love-Collins can appreciate that. A registered nurse, she cares about health issues more than most. She recalls when her stock club first looked over brewer Anheuser-Busch. "In hard times, people drink," she said. "Do we really want to take advantage of that? No."