How it works

Weapon Free Funds sources financial data on equities and mutual funds from Morningstar. Our database contains information on thousands of U.S. open-end and exchange traded mutual funds, some of the most common funds held in 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and other retirement plans.

Search for mutual funds using name, ticker symbol, or asset manager. Use the search page to filter funds by investing style, fund family, and more. When you find a fund you're looking for, click on it to see the full results.

We don't have everything in our database — we only screen mutual funds that are at least 50% invested in stock investments, and our data license restricts us to displaying only 3,000 portfolios.

Looking for your favorite fund and can’t find it? With more resources, we could include more funds — make a gift today to make a difference.

Our analysis checks funds for direct stock investments in military contractors. This list includes two sub-categories: manufacturers and servicers of nuclear weapons; and current and recent manufacturers of controversial weapons, such as cluster munitions, anti-personnel landmines, incendiary weapons, and depleted uranium.

To build these exclusion lists, we used data from over 20 sources, including investment firms and pension funds with ethical investment guidelines; data from industry news outlets; and research from non-profit advocacy groups.

The full lists of flagged companies are below. Click a company name to see the source data we used to include the company on that list.

Military contractors — Arms manufacturers and military contractors fuel global warfare through the international arms trade. Concerns about social impact, human rights, reputation risk, and regulatory risks are just a few of the reasons companies like these are avoided by sustainable investors.

Nuclear weapons — The financing of companies contributing to the build-up and modernization of nuclear arms undermines efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament. Any use of nuclear weapons would violate fundamental rules of international law and have catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.

Controversial weapons — Weapons like cluster munititions, anti-personnel landmines, incendiary weapons, and depleted uranium are considered particularly controversial because of their indiscriminate impacts. Unexploded cluster bomblets and landmines kill and maim civilians for years after conflicts end. The use of depleted uranium ammunition is linked to increased cancer rates and birth deformities. These weapons are banned by hundreds of countries under various treaties.

Mutual funds can have a varying number of holdings, from less than one hundred to several thousand. We calculate the total number of flagged holdings in the fund, and the total amount and percentage of the fund’s assets that are invested in those companies.

We only look for direct stock holdings in weapon companies. That means that holdings that are not stocks, like cash holdings or bonds, are not rated. In the fund's investment profile, we show a "Percent Rated" metric, equivalent to the percent of the fund that is invested in stocks. The higher a fund’s Percent Rated value, the more holdings we were able to examine. A fund with a lower Percent Rated value may have hidden weapon-related investments that our tool cannot account for, in the form of bond holdings or other asset types.

Based on the fund's military weapon exposure, it earns one of five military weapon grades.

Along with the military weapon grade, we show details on the fund portfolio's flagged holdings.

The number of flagged holdings, the amount invested by the fund, and the percent of the fund's portfolio those holdings make up are shown. The same figures are available for the sub-categories of nucler weapons and controversial weapons, and for each individual flagged holding.

Clicking on any flagged holding will show the source data used to include that company on the military weapons company list.

We use Morningstar's "sustainability mandate" indicator to determine which funds are displayed as sustainably-mandated. Sustainably-mandated funds make investment decisions based on issues like environmental responsibility, human rights, or religious views. A sustainably-mandated fund may take a proactive stance by selectively investing in, for example, environmentally-friendly companies, or firms with good employee relations. They may also avoid investing in companies involved in promoting alcohol, tobacco, or firearms, or in the defense industry. Look for this symbol to find funds that are designated sustainably-mandated.

The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment is a group advancing sustainable, responsible, and impact investing. Asset managers who are members of US-SIF often have policies to exclude or restrict investments in companies involved in the production, licensing, and/or retailing of weapons. Look for this symbol to find funds that are members of US-SIF.

When you're done looking up funds and finding the data you need, what's next? You can learn how to make a change and move your money with our weapon free action toolkit. Whether you’re an individual investor or if your investments are in your employer-sponsored plan at work, our step-by-step toolkit can help. There's an in-depth guide to responsible investing, links to external resources, a sample letter to send to your employer 401(k) manager, and more — everything you need to make a change and get started investing your money weapon free.

Mutual funds and ETFs are offered by fund managers. These companies manage anywhere between one and several hundred fund portfolios, offered to investors as vehicles to save for their futures.

To rate fund managers, we take all the funds in our research universe offered by that fund manager and combine them, treating them as one big portfolio. We then apply the same grading system used for individual funds to this set of combined holdings. What we've found is that the largest fund managers are heavily invested in arms manufacturers, including nuclear and controversial weapons. But sustainable and socially responsible fund managers - firms that have at least 50% of assets invested in funds with a sustainable investing mandate, per Morningstar - often have less weapons exposure, with many having no investments in nuclear weapons, and almost all avoiding investments in controversial weapons. See our analysis of fund managers here.