Go green without losing sleep.
Hire 401k experts to lighten your load.
You didn’t get into HR to master 401(k)s. Our expert team makes setup or switching effortless—with ERISA-compliant, sustainable plans and easy compliance tools that keep everyone sleeping soundly.
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Jason D.
Developer
“Zach and his team were able to answer the hard question and provide us the most sustainable path.”
Maleea D.
Developer
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Jason D.
Developer
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Maleea D.
Developer
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Jason D.
Developer
“Zach and his team were able to answer the hard question and provide us the most sustainable path.”
Maleea D.
Developer
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Jason D.
Developer
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Maleea D.
Developer
“I was so excited to hear about Carbon Collective because they perfectly align with my values.”
Jason D.
Developer
“Zach and his team were able to answer the hard question and provide us the most sustainable path.”
Maleea D.
Developer
How we make your job easier
Your HR team aren't 401(k) experts. That's our job. From our live onboarding session, to our quarterly finance 101 webinars and market review newsletters, our goal is for your team to feel in control of their savings.
Get the 401(k) partner you've been looking for. From advocating on your behalf, to getting on the phone, to creative problem solving, you will have a guide, translating 401k-jargon into plain english for you.
It can feel daunting to run a 401k program. But the key is documentation. We make it easy by assigning one simple compliance task per quarter and keeping the results audit-ready in your compliance vault.
Investment Choices
Your diversified employees deserve diversified investment options. That's our specialty.
We believe different employees have different investment philosophies with different risk/reward appetites. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, we want to give each member of your team the ability to choose which philosophy is best for them. Every plan we serve has three target date funds series as well as underlying funds for the following investment philosophies:
Passive
Passive funds are built to simply track overall stock and bond markets. They're the most common investment philosophy in 401(k) plans. We include a full series of low-fee index funds as well as a complete passive target date fund in all of our plan lineups. Our goal is to expand investment options, not take them away.
ESG
ESG funds emerged as a way to enable investors to diversify away some "off-balance sheet" types of risks specifically related to Environmental, Social, and Governance of a given company. While the rhetoric of ESG has shifted away from this initial goal of diversification, we believe taking these risks into account is a distinct investment philosophy with a clear rationale for why it could deliver longterm alpha.
Climate
Climate funds are for investors who believe the overall stock and bond markets are not properly accounting for the realities of climate change and the energy transition. We include our ClimateSmart target date funds in most of our plans as well as climate-focused funds for some asset classes where funds exist that meet our criteria.
On the call
What you can expect when you talk with us:
Making a change to your organization's 401(k) or 403(b) is not a decision to be taken likely.
If you're looking for a real, transparent copilot to help guide your overall plan, that's what we specialize in. We'll ask as many questions as it takes to fully understand your goals and existing systems. We'll go do homework and layout potential options (with no jargon). And once we have a direction, we'll negotiate on your behalf with other service providers.
01. Identify goals: What are you looking to prioritize?
02. Share context: What current systems are you using (payroll, etc.)?
03. Explore the future: What's coming next? Bigger team? New systems?
04. Tell our story: How have we helped solve problems like yours for other clients?
05. Align on next steps: Shall we source quotes for you? Bring on others on your team?
Fiduciary 2.0
Our ERISA fiduciary compliance program, built for 2025, not 2005.
Our Fiduciary 2.0 software is included free in
every 401(k) and 403(b) plan we serve.
Recordkeeper Options
We can work with any open architecture recordkeeper.
See what makes us different.
In our intro call, we'll go over your goals, limitations, and what's working (or not) with your existing offering.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to work with Carbon Collective as a 401k advisor?
We're pretty competitive. If you have an advisor already, our fee will be 10% less than what you're paying them. If you don't have one, come chat with us for a quote.
We also often can uncover big savings by switching recordkeepers. Our best to date was a combined 72% reduction in 401k fees.
What's the difference between a recordkeeper and an advisor?
A recordkeeper is the software portal for their 401k. Your team can change contribution rates and their portfolios. HR gets access to necessary reports and a good one will help file your form 5500 each year. We can work with any open-architecture recordkeeper that allows us to build our customized fund lineups (most do).
An advisor builds and maintains your fund lineup. But a good advisor is like a Yoda for your 401k. They will troubleshoot issues with you, educate your team, and proactively communicate in times of market instability. (Hint: we're a good advisor).
How many clients do we work with in our 401k program?
As of 2025, we proudly serve over 140 businesses and nonprofits as their advisor.
Why do we include our Fiduciary 2.0 Software for free?
Because when you hire us, we become a fiduciary too in your plan. If the plan is a mess, and documentation is poor, that's not just bad for you. It's bad for us too.
So we built our Fiduciary 2.0 software to make it easy, and honestly pretty fast, to built and maintain immutable records that we not only are doing regular investment reviews, but that you are regularly reviewing the plan's health and its service providers. In the event of an audit, no scrambling to collect docs. Export all records with the click of a button.
What is our investment review process?
Many advisors force their clients to sit through long investment review meetings as often as quarterly.
We, and our ERISA attorneys, think such reviews are not only boring, but a waste of time. As the plan sponsor, it's your job to hire an advisor like us, and then to document that you are undergoing sufficient oversight of that advisor. You don't need to spend 90 minutes every 90 days with your advisor to achieve that.
We have a standardized fund lineup, that is universal across our plans. For every fund we include, we track 3-5 alternates. We publish a quarterly report, including our watch list, that gets saved into your plan's compliance vault. We also publish a quarterly performance review for your team. Then, at the end of each year, we clear the watch list, make any changes to the fund lineup, and document our rationale. You get assigned a task to review.
This not only makes things easy for you, but if you have over 100 employees and a plan auditor, they'll love it too. All of their necessary end of year compliance docs are just a download away.
Our difference
01.
We're clear eyed.
We think financial security and climate health are directly linked.
02.
We're independent.
We're not owned by a big bank or Wall Street firm.
03.
We're real people.
You'll feel it the moment you meet us.