struggling with my morals

the government passed a new law that requires our company's retirement plan to be handled by an administrator. at first, this was only moderately annoying. although i am not a huge fan of vanguard, it allowed me to handle everything online and i could make changes to my contributions and portfolio whenever i wanted. and it offered a few sri options (socially responsible investing, penny nickel describes it well here). the sri fund i chose was not ideal (more on that later) but it was better than nothing. plus, it was cheap because they let me manage it myself. so i was content.

well, this past week we had to enroll with the standard, our new plan administrator. we can still do it online, but i think that is the norm for this type of thing now. they gave us a list of 15 available funds plus target retirement funds (where it diversifies based on your target retirement year). i know that everyone has different goals, but one of the most important things to me is what companies/industries my money is invested in. yes, i'd like a decent rate of return. but i would rather earn a few % less and feel good about what my money is doing. so as i am considering each of the funds, i look at the objective and the fund's top 10 holdings. and what do i find? every single fund offered has at least 2-3 of the following as their 10 ten holdings: wal-mart, proctor & gamble, exxonmobin, phillip morris, johnson & johnson, mcdonalds, and ge. and the other holding companies aren't much better, i only listed some of the most bothersome.

i contacted the standard, and they said while they have sri funds available, my company did not choose any as options for our retirement plan. they were unable to give me details on the financial cost associated with having one of these sri funds available, and advised me to contact our human resources department. considering i work at a fairly liberal nonprofit, i thought that i may get some support from the administration. i spoke with our ceo about my concerns about having no sri options. he said he understood my dilemma, but that he had already spent extra money ensuring we had more than 6 funds to choose from and he didn't think he could justify spending more money on our retirement fund. i asked him if he knew how much it would cost, but he said no. i approached our human resources department and explained my interest in sri. she said she would look into it. but based on my ceo's response, it doesn't sound promising.

so as of now, i have not signed up with the new retirement plan. well, i have signed up, but am not contributing any money. if i contribute at least 1% of my salary, my company will contribute 5%. i can't in good conscience support these companies through my investment dollars, but am i really willing to give up free money? in addition to looking at adding an sri fund to our retirement options, i have contacted the standard to see how often i would be able to roll money from their account to an ira without a fee. but so far it isn't an option.

i am so frustrated.