3BL Media’s Posterous

Corporate Social Responsibility News: Timberland's Climate and Haiti Help Campaigns; American Cancer Society's Corporate Impact Awards

Just read an outstanding article on corporate social responsibility at Forbes.com.  C. B. Bhattacharya, a distinguished professor at the European School of Management and Technology and Boston University, really hits some important CSR insights spot on.

Despite CSR’s increasing importance in board rooms and among C-level executives, they often “don’t understand the most effective ways to design and implement sustainability programs,” Bhattacharya says.  As a result, “they can’t fully capitalize on the potential [CSR] has for creating business value, and they are achieving little with it despite all their interest,” he adds.

So far, most businesses have focused on the “low-hanging fruit” of CSR.  They have focused on easy-win strategies or activities with direct commercial benefits, such as energy-efficiency initiatives.  This misses the bigger picture.

What Bhattacharya says he is slowly starting to see is a “second wave of corporate responsibility behavior marked by a clearer focus on the total business value such policies can bring.”  “To fully benefit from corporate responsibility, businesses . . . must start by seeing where and how key stakeholders react to a firm’s corporate responsibility initiatives,” which “involves moving away from a top-down strategy determined by the board to a richer process of bottom-up co-creation with stakeholders.” [emphasis added]

Bhattacharya then talks about using focus groups and “other marketing research techniques to understand the deeper psychological needs that corporate responsibility can answer for stakeholders, such as the self-esteem and pride that a consumer can draw from affiliating with a socially responsible company.”  I’m surprised he doesn’t mention social media in this regard, which my firm now considers one of the most powerful such tools for understanding and learning from target audiences.

Bhattacharya cites research involving Procter & Gamble, General Mills and Timberland (without specifying a source) that revealed that many of their stakeholders had no idea of the companies’ corporate responsibility initiatives, or had a very limited understanding.  This is consistent with another recent study by Grail Research that we describe in our last blog post.

Now, he says, those companies have been able to build stronger connections with their stakeholders by including active participation and engagement in their initiatives. This “stakeholder-centric approach has brought them observable improvements in corporate responsibility return, such as increased customer and employee loyalty.”

This fits in precisely with an approach I’m outlining in a white paper we’ll be releasing soon, which lists the most effective ways to design and implement sustainability programs in order of priority, starting with stakeholder engagement.  We believe that the dialogue with stakeholders and the substance of the CSR program each informs the other.

The approach Bhattacharya describes in his article and our forthcoming white paper both look at CSR as a more systemic process for creating business value over time.  We believe, as does he apparently, that this process best starts by co-creating solutions with all stakeholders.  We see sustainability as so broad and complex in scope that crowd sourcing is a must in solving our most intractable problems, while remaining prosperous.

GoodGuide’s New iPhone App Scans for Green Products

by Jessica Knoblauch, 11/25/09

Making environmentally conscious consumer choices can be difficult when walking down supermarket aisles awash with hyper-marketed products. Enter GoodGuide, who has just released a new barcode scanning iPhone application that gives shoppers the power to seek out socially conscious products, right in the palm of their hand.

Just like the GoodGuide website, the new barcode scanner application draws from a wealth of independent, scientific information on the health, social and environmental performance of more than 50,000 consumer items and companies to provide instant product ratings to shoppers. GoodGuide licensed Occipital’s state-of-the-art RedLaser barcode scanning technology for its new application.

Simply by scanning the barcode with an iPhone, consumers can find out the nitty-gritty details of their favorite personal care, household chemical, toy and food products. Wondering whether that household cleaner you’re eyeing is toxic? Just scan it! Shoppers even help pick the products to be rated next based on which ones they scan most frequently. Best of all, GoodGuide’s newest application is available for free from Apple’s iTunes App Store.

+ GoodGuide

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It has been estimated that at least one in every three women around the globe “has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.” This violence occurs with impunity and transcends geography, race, class or religious orientation. United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) states in their publication Not A Minute More: Ending Violence Against Women (NY, 2003) that violence against women “may constitute one of the most universal and unpunished crimes of all.” 

In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the watershed Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, in which violence was defined as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life” (Office of the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights, OHCHR).
 
The pervasive and widespread pandemic of violence against females requires greater consideration than ever as tens of millions of women and girls are being abused daily. Take a closer look at some of the issues facing women today:
 
Sex-selective abortions, the killing of babies born female – female infanticide – and fetal neglect have caused clear and shocking disproportions between the sexes. It is estimated that there are between 50 million to 100 million less females on the planet due to sex-selected discrimination and infanticide.
 
Of the 2 million children being indentured into sexual servitude, it is estimated that 80 to 90% of them are girls (International Labor Organization, 2000).
 
The majority of all incest victims are girls and it is estimated that up to three times more girls are likely to experience sexual abuse than boys during their childhood.
 
It is estimated that between 100 million to 140 million girls have undergone some form of genital mutilation.
 
The United Nations estimated that an average of five women are killed per day in India by “accidental” fires set by husbands or in-laws whose demands for full payment of the wife’s dowry have not been met.
 
“Honor Killings,” executions of women by family members who feel she has in some way dishonored them. These killings oftentimes occur with little or no consequence.
 
War rape, used as a systematic weapon, has shattered the lives of millions of women.
 
 
Women form the majority of the world’s poor. Seventy percent of people living in poverty – those surviving on less than $1.00 a day – are women (Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces).
 
Two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people are women.
 
Women own a mere one percent of the world’s land.
 
It is important to understand that violence against women does not just happen in other parts of the world. The United States Surgeon General has stated that violence against women by their intimate partner “poses the single greatest threat to all American women” (UNDP).
 
In the USA alone, there were 700,000 women raped in 2008. You would think there was a war against women based on these statistics alone.
 
In the United States, 24% of women who marry will experience physical abuse by their intimate partner.
 
On the most basic and fundamental level, in the United States, women get paid 25% less for the very same work done by a man.
 
Women only account for 17% of congressional seats, and only 8 of the 50 state governorships.
 
The preamble of the Declaration states that “violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared to men” (OHCHR). In exploring why this is, it states that “violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women” (OHCHR).
 
The conclusion of the World Economic Forum’s study on the global gender gap states the problem clearly: “The reality is that no country in the world, no matter how advanced has achieved true gender equality, as measured by comparable decision making power, equal opportunity for education and advancement, and equal participation and status in all walks of human endeavor” (Lopez-Claros and Zahidi, 2005).
 
In conclusion, the World Health Organization has stated that “something that greatly encourages violence – and is a formidable obstacle in responding to it – is complacency.” In the Greater Mekong region, where treaties have been signed between governments to end human trafficking, relatively little is done to enforce these laws because human trafficking is viewed as a “soft crime” as no one is killed. It is this type of complacency that does, and continues to, reinforce violent attitudes towards women.
 
PeaceKeeper Cause-Metics wants to share this information with you to continue a dialogue on how to rewrite history in a way that eliminates the dominance of any one group of individuals. Founder Jody R. Weiss describes this new paradigm as neither a patriarchy nor a matriarchy where gender is a determining ruling factor, but rather a system formed by a “collaborative interconnectivity.”
 
Until Collaborative Interconnection can truly be realized between men and women, the way to raise a woman out of poverty and abuse is to give her an economic option and a sustainable trade. This is why PeaceKeeper buys raw ingredients from third-world women’s cooperatives and offers micro-credit loans to women farmers (who produce between 60 and 80% of food supplies in developing countries). When a woman can sustain herself, she is opening up options that will enable her to beat the odds. Additionally, PeaceKeeper has made mini-sized make-up samples for women to sell as an economic option in their village, setting them free to direct their own future.
 
Finally, it has never been more evident that women of privilege have a unique opportunity to speak on behalf of women and children who have no voice for themselves. PeaceKeeper is inviting women of means to use a greater consciousness when buying consumables. How was the product manufactured? Is a woman being exploited in labor servitude in order for us to have that product? Women of wealth can use their buying power to either endorse products that sustain the planet or boycott products that don’t. This small act could actually have a monumental impact on the lives of women. As an example, if women of privilege stopped traveling to countries that signed a treaty to stop human trafficking but meanwhile refuse to enforce it, those countries might start to think differently about how they uphold this law in the face of losing tourism dollars.
 
In closing, the pandemic of violence against women and girls cannot and must not be ignored. it is a moral imperative that will define the future of our planet for generations to come. Many of the facts listed in this article were from a book by the United Nation's OCHA called Broken Bodies, Broken Dreams - Violence Against Women Exposed. To learn more about this and other OCHA publications visit www.ocha.org. To make a donation to PeaceKeeper Fund which gives micro-credit loans to support women in a sustainable trade visit their website at www.iamapeacekeeper.com.

“We want a volunteer experience that can be done in no more than a day, and no less than a half-day.”

Companies want to engage their communities through employee volunteering programs. For most, this means calling a non-profit and scheduling an activity. But how should non-profits respond? Is there a “best” answer for everyone?

Everybody wants to volunteer. And those who don’t....well, they’re bound to feel a little left out of conversation at the next cocktail party. Volunteering is the latest and greatest way to contribute to society. It’s trendy - and unlike skinny jeans, this trend is bound to last. (Don’t get me wrong, I like skinny jeans.)

As corporations jump on the volunteering band wagon, non-profits are frantically trying to manage the influx. Incidentally, they’re finding themselves a little (ok, a lot) frustrated. Corporations make a lot of sometimes unreasonable requests of non-profits when it comes to setting up the ideal volunteer experience for their employees. We’re about to begin a series examining the top seven (yes, seven) requests, and the Bad, Better, and Best way for Nonprofits to respond.

One thing to remember: while its good for you, the Nonprofit, to know what companies want, its equally important for you to know why they want it. Assessing “why” will guide you to a solution that’s better for you, your community, and their company.

The 7 Requests:

The Ideal Volunteer Experience....

1. ...can be undertaken in a day
2. ...can be done together as a team
3. ...has intrinsic value
4. ...does not clash with other objectives
5. ...enhances the skills of their employees
6. ...coincides with the company’s chosen cause
7. ...coincides with what their employees want to do

1. "We want a volunteer experience that can be done in no more than a day, and no less than a half-day.”

...WHY?

First things first:

why does the company want this? Well, the answer is in the question; the experience cannot be too big, or too small. It must feel significant enough to draw people out of the office, and not so significant that they’re scared away.

Now, consider how these things effect you and your Nonprofit, and decide how to respond.

Bad, Better, and Best Responses:

BAD: Invent Work.

Ok so, if you happen to have stand-alone project, in dire need of completion, that would take about a day to finish, and provide a great photo-opp for a group of employees.... then, great. You’re good to go. Fulfill the request. If not, remember that your time and resources are limited. Unless there is an obvious and significant payoff for your provision of this opportunity, you probably want to pass. Whatever you do, do not invent work. Got that? Do not have them repaint the same wall that was painted last week. Inventing work is bad for your non-profit organization.

Inventing work is equally bad for the corporation. Community engagement has become an essential strategy for business. Checking a one-time activity off the “social responsibility” list does not qualify. Hold yourself and the business to a higher standard. If they are asking to volunteer with you out of a genuine effort to become socially responsible, help them do it. Sure, the customer is always right, but it’s your job to help them ask better questions - and be more right. Inventing work is bad for the corporation.

Inventing work is bad for your community. When a corporation volunteers with your non-profit, they are bringing a potential wealth of skills, resources and networks. To access these resources, you must draw the business into more than a “quick and easy” arrangement. Inventing work may be the simplest answer, but ultimately, by offering a one-time, “repaint the wall” experience, you could be stealing value yet to be realized in connecting with that business. See what I mean? Bad for the community.

BETTER: Propose a partnership.

Alright, after you figure out “why” the company wants what they want, and after you decide

not to invent work, let’s consider a better response: Partnership.

It’s really not so complicated. When the CSR guy calls from the corporation, ask about the company’s goals. Like this; “Is this volunteer activity part of a grander scheme or bigger goal you have for the company?” And when you’ve got him listening, let him in on some of your goals. For example, if your NPO was hoping to build a playground for a local school in the next year, explain that you could use a group twice a month over the next 6 months to help with the manual labor. Draw the company into a conversation of mutual benefit. You’ll know within minutes whether or not this corporation is one you want to work with.

Designing the partnership will take deliberate effort to ensure everyone gets what they need without giving up any non-negotiables. Social partnerships are like any other partnership and require some level of commitment in order to thrive. At some point, this will mean institutionalizing certain aspects, but don’t worry - keep it simple and take it slow. The rest will come organically.

A partnership is better for you, and it’s also better for your community, and better for the business. It offers the offers the business a genuine CSR strategy toward becoming socially responsible, and offers the community the potential benefit of the resources the business brings.Propose a partnership: its a better response for everyone. ( For good resources on Social Partnerships check out our Facebook Page).

BEST: Have your cake and eat it too

The problem with “proposing a partnership” is fairly obvious - it’s not realistic to partner with every business who calls. You would overwhelm yourself trying to coordinate that many efforts. Believe me, one, two, maybe three partnerships are enough.

So, if you’re not inventing work, and you’re already partnering with a corporation, what do you do with the rest of the requests for volunteer opportunities? Well, you make it easy, of course. Have your cake and eat it too.

All you need is an ongoing, open volunteer opportunity. This is a space where all types of volunteers can show up on a regular basis (preferably weekly) and involve themselves to any degree they want. The activity provided should be one that can be accomplished with 3 volunteers, or 53. The point is, volunteers see your organization for the first time, and you see them. There is no pressure, no obligation, no disappointment. Volunteers who aren’t worth your effort, weed themselves out. Volunteers who will benefit your organization, stick around. This is the volunteer’s “first stage” - and its important to meet them where they’re at.

If you’re a community kitchen, the activity can involve serving meals. If you work with nature, you can plant trees. If you’re an organization that feels you can’t accommodate this kind of space, trust me: There’s a “first stage” space for everyone. Sometimes it takes some work to get there, but its worth it in the end.

With an ongoing, open volunteer opportunity, you’ll have a great answer for every business who calls. You’ll meet the company where they’re at - really, all they want is to try it out. At the same time, you’ll offer them a chance to develop a partnership that will effectively move them toward their CSR goals, while opening the door for your non-profit to their resources. It’s mutually beneficial and, once the space is set up, the process is more than easy - it’s virtually automatic. To read more about the benefits of a fully automated volunteer process, read this series:

How to Offer a Great Volunteer Experience.

“We want a volunteer experience that can be done in no more than a day, and no less than a half-day.”

When a business asks for a volunteer opportunity that can be accomplished in a day, it’s bad to invent work. It’s better to propose a partnership. And it’s best to have your cake and eat it too by offering an open, ongoing opportunity. If the “best” response sounds like too much work, don’t give up yet. It’s cake. Just check out this series for a few hints:

3 Reasons Why You're Finding It Hard to Find and Keep Volunteers

Next time: “We want a volunteer experience that can be accomplished as a team” and how to respond.

Chris Jarvis
Senior Consultant, Realized Worth, Toronto, Canada 416-567-2004
Email me; chrisjarvis@realizedworth.com
Join our Facebook Page
Follow me on Twitter @RealizedWorth
Check out My LinkedIn Profile

Corporate Social Responsibility News: CSR Minute: Climate Counts Corporate Scorecard; Intn'l Oeko-Tex Assoc/Textile Insight's Sustainability Panel

Although world leaders fail to reach a binding climate agreement this year in Copenhagen, there is still hope and action at the grassroots level.  Expert web hosting service, Site5, is doing their part.  Site5 has partnered with mokugift to plant a tree for every new hosting account.

“Tree-planting with new accounts is a natural extension of Site5’s existing environmental philosophy.  Site5’s business was designed around a remote workforce which is the greenest possible option for a company.  None of Site5’s employees drive to work.  Virtually all of Site5’s operations is waste free, excluding the last few vendors and partners that haven’t gone paperless yet.” explained Ben Welch-Bolen, CEO of Site5. 

The vast majority of the impact Site5 has on the environment is through the electricity our servers and related equipment use. Luckily for Site5, with today's energy prices, being green and being cost effective can go hand in hand. Site5 is constantly working to reduce costs and environmental impact by leveraging new technologies to lower power consumption, using natural DC cooling technology, and using virtualization software to scale efficiently. 

Site5 takes a pragmatic approach of eliminating impact where it can and working with environmental organizations such as Mokugift to counter impact areas that are unavoidable.

Mokugift’s enables progressive, fast-moving companies, like Site5, to plant a real tree as a gift for customers at $1 apiece.  Mokugift trees are planted by farmers practicing environmentally sustainable forestry and agricultural methods in tropical zones in Central America, Africa and Asia. The plantings not only restock, with native trees, existing forests that have been depleted, but also contribute to more diverse, productive and economically sustainable land-use systems.

An official partner of UNEP, mokugift not only empowers corporations and individuals to participate in the Billion Tree Campaign, it also provides the tools to inspire others to participate. Tree planting is an easy first step towards more environmentally responsible choices, and Mokugift enables every company and individual concerned about climate change to make a difference and inspire others to do likewise.  It is grass roots action like Site5’s environmental programs that will show world leaders that the citizens and corporate citizens of our planet demand an environmentally sustainable future.

About Site5

Site5, founded in 1999, provides quality web hosting to individuals, small businesses, and enterprise clients. Our customer service team is 100% in house and we provide guarantees on our uptime and quality of support. Our current hosting philosophy is based on guaranteed performance. While other hosts may try to cram as many accounts as possible on shared servers, we have used our years of experience and the technical analysis performed by our technical gurus to determine exactly how many accounts we should be putting on any given server. In addition, we are continually upgrading our hardware platforms to be among the best in the industry.

We are so confident you will love our web hosting and customer service that we offer a free 30 day trial. Just use the coupon code "FREETRIAL" to try us today!

About UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign
Launched in November 2006 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the objective of encouraging the planting of at least one billion trees worldwide each year, “Plant for the Planet: The Billion Tree Campaign” is now recognized as one of the UN’s most successful environmental campaigns. To date, UNEP has tracked the planting of more than three billion trees in 166 countries. Now in its second stage, the campaign, which stresses the power of partnerships, has set a new goal of seven billion trees planted before the end of 2009—roughly one tree for every living person on the planet.  Every tree counts, and UNEP counts every tree.

For more information on the UNEP’s billion tree campaign, please visit http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/

About mokugift
A social venture focused on customer experience and tangible, positive benefit to the environment and society, Mokugift makes it easy and rewarding to plant trees, for $1 apiece, through online “gifting.” Giving a mokugift tree is similar to sending an e-card, and recipients can proudly display their trees online at Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, and 50 other popular Web sites.

An official partner of the United Nations Environment Programme's Billion Tree Campaign, mokugift collaborates with award-winning nonprofit agroforestry organizations such as Trees For The Future and Sustainable Harvest International to plant trees in twelve countries: Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burundi, Senegal, Zambia, India, the Philippines and Haiti.  Using environmentally sustainable methods, farmers in these countries plant mokugift trees to restock existing forests and enable more diverse, productive and economically sustainable land-use systems.

For more information on mokugift, please visit http://www.mokugift.com

  This year, between 2.5 and 3.5 million people in the United States will experience homelessness – those most in danger of the threat, are children and families – reportedly the fastest growing segment of people in America.   Our streets are now home to 1.3 million kids.

  The new face of homelessness begs that we not treat them as “invisible” or allow them to blend in with the decay or urban wall paper and be forgotten in the cold. One Warm Coat meets that challenge by engaging the public in a national effort that meets local needs by providing any person in need with a warm coat, free of charge. 

  Two years ago the U.S. Senate recognized the month of November as National Homeless Youth Awareness Month. The date holds significance to One Warm Coat whose founder, Lois Pavlow, a long-time philanthropist, organized her first coat collection in San Francisco on Thanksgiving weekend 1992.

  Since then, more than 1 million coats have been donated in thousands of local communities across North America. 

  The simplicity of the idea is also the beauty of the idea.

  Lee Fox, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at KooDooZ Corporation, asked Sherri Wood, President and National Coordinator, if she would invite One Warm Coat youth advocates to share and inspire other kids to get involved in the cause. Within mere weeks of the newsletter distribution, Addison Graham got in front of a camera and shared the impact she has personally made in collecting more than 400 winter coats for those who would otherwise not have protection from the frigid temperatures. 

  November also earmarks the debut of “Cause4KDZ” a video blog launched by KooDooZ this month for the purpose of showcasing young change-makers and the causes they support. “Any age can bring positive impact and change,” said Fox. “While school-based community service remains robust, elementary classrooms are less likely to integrate service than secondary schools. So we have to find other ways to show the public how to engage their kids.  Organizations like One Warm Coat offers such a compelling opportunity for all ages."

  In 2008 more than 8.24 million teens (ages 16-24) volunteered out of a total 61.8 million Americans.    In comparison, it’s estimated that just over 4.2 million elementary, middle and secondary school students participated.  Still in alpha, KooDooZ is working closely with grassroots organizations, to engage youth in volunteerism, cause and social impact opportunities.