Why integrate a social mission into your business?

You’re an entrepreneur with an idea and maybe a business plan, a small-business owner or the head of mid-sized company.  To expect you to add social purpose to your business just because it’s a good thing to do, is foolish.  You have a bottom-line and other obligations to meet.  You don’t have extra resources to allocate to ‘doing good.’

But doing good is a business strategy, not merely a moral argument or trend.  Businesses with a strong social mission have a competitive advantage.

1. People will talk. consumers, competitors, investors, suppliers and the press.
2. Increased productivity and employee morale.  People want to work for a greater purpose and want to know that their work makes a difference. Employees who are happier work harder and smarter because the work has become personal.  These type of employees are advocates for your company, not just employees of it.
3. Consumer preference. Consumers prefer companies that make a positive impact on the world.  Eighty-three percent of U.S. consumers want more of the products and services they use to benefit causes (2010 Cone Causes Evolution Study) and 62% of global consumers will switch brands if one works with ’good causes’ and the other does not (Edelman, 2010).
4. Innovation.  More companies like Nike, GE and Interface are using sustainability to drive innovation. Seventeen years ago, the late Ray Anderson, who served as Interface’s CEO, committed to becoming a zero-waste company by 2020. Since then, Interface has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in resource and waste disposal costs, increased sales by more than one billion and changed the way the entire carpet industry does business.
5. Influence.  Your company’s initiatives will be modeled as more companies realize the benefits of having a social mission.
6. Lower marketing costs.  Your mission will help your marketing. A line of grocery products founded and once produced by Paul Newman (Newman’s Own) is a somewhat banal story that merits only a mention in the press. The fact that the company donates 100% of profits to charity is a story that sticks, intrigues and encourages participation through purchase.
7. Talent recruitment.  People want to work for employees that care; a social cause is indicative of a favorable workplace.
8. Attract talent for less. Kevin Jones of Good Capital calls this “meaning premium.”   People want to work for a company that allows them to contribute to a greater purpose and are willing to be paid less for the opportunity (NB: this isn’t an argument for underpaying employees).
9. Attract young talent.  Teach for America is a top employer of exceptional college graduates. Last year 12% of  seniors at Ivy League schools applied to work with Teach for America, vying for one of the most challenging and low-paying jobs out there.
10. Talent retention.  When employees are part of a larger mission and feel their contributions make an impact in the world, they’re engaged, proud and motivated.
11. Savings in resource and disposal costs. You’ll save money by reducing energy, water and material consumption. Producing less waste and reusing water or materials costs you less to purchase and less to haul away.
12. Supplier advantage.  Stonyfield Farm pays its organic suppliers a floor price that won’t ever drop, protecting its suppliers from market swings and production hiccups. In return, when supply for organic milk or sugar outpaces demand, Stonyfield is first on the delivery list and is guaranteed a fair price because it’s built a relationship with its suppliers.
13. Risk management. Being in tune with your stakeholders alerts you to potential risks and helps you safeguard against them. An offshoot of this is that your company is better informed and positioned to identify new business opportunities.
14. Future-bound company.  Successful companies that others evangelize and model represent more than just a product or service. They represent a philosophy, culture or experience. When you channel this back into your business, you’ve made your competitive edge that much more edgier.
15. Fun.  Science proves what most of us know–making a difference feels amazing. We feel happy, enlivened and creative.

Your company (1, 5 or 200 employees) is the ideal size to run a purpose-driven business. Although larger brands get more attention for the resources they can bring to their campaigns your company holds an advantage.

1. You’re more agile. You can plan, execute, track and revise nearly on-the-fly. Less memos, less approval, less internal politicking diluting the programs.
2. You can take more risks with your social mission. You have less of a reputation to uphold. You can be a renegade, a heretic, recognized for your commitment to social change and your willingness to try new ideas.
3. You face less financial accountability. Smaller companies aren’t held to the same monetary expectations as larger ones. Your programs’ strength lies in their impact and effect rather than your company’s financial commitment.  A big brand cosmetic company’s one-time campaign cost $500,000 in an upfront investment to its partner charity, the cost of a micro-site and prize expenses, and delivered just a luke-warm impact. Your cosmetic company can affect people more directly by offering products and makeovers to women re-entering the workforce in partnership with a workforce re-entry program and your local Dress for Success chapter. Cost? In-kind only.
4. You have a fresher slate. Small companies are often seen as more personal, less greedy and less noxious. There’s less initial cynicism of your motives and choices.
5. You entice stronger non-profit partners. Smaller companies are rarely able to attract (nor should they try to) the top crust of non-profits.  With fewer wooers and less brand value, a regional non-profit will be more willing to commit time and labor to the project, as opposed to just a sliver of its name recognition.
6. You can galvanize your employees around your mission more easily. As companies need to convince consumers of their sincerity, they also need to convince their own employees. The smaller a company, the shorter this process. Employees help determine the social mission, shape it and execute it.
7. You have more of your customers’ attention.  Generally, the larger a company is the more we view it as a commodity and the less likely we are to see it as an educator or driver of good. Would you be more willing to support a pin-up campaign at Walmart or your neighborhood cupcake bakery? One of your advantages as a smaller business is the frequency of touch points that you have with customers. Use these opportunities to bring them into your mission through storytelling, contribution and advocacy.

Having a social mission is not a drain on company assets or a tangential program, it is a business strategy that yields a competitive advantage, which smaller companies can better leverage.

That’s what AngelPoints, Andy Mercy’s company, does well, which is why I invited him to do a Cause Capitalism interview.

Andy founded AngelPoints after stumbling into a volunteer experience at work and being underwhelmed by the standard of Internet applications that attempted to manage community and employee programs. He saw a market need to help companies track their social responsibility initiatives and felt he had enough personal experience to fill it.

Andy has managed to build a platform that speaks to a company’s needs, as well as to an individual’s passion for engagement, contribution and development. AngelPoints has grown into an all-inclusive employee CSR and sustainability platform that helps employees and companies–like Toyota and JetBlue–track their impact in real-time, communicate (and compete!) across departments, donate, volunteer and collect rewards.

In our conversation, we talk about the impetus for AngelPoints, behavioral triggers and the role of storytelling. Click the player to listen or right-click and download the MP3.

Download audio file (Cause-Capitalism_Andy-Mercy.mp3)

Want to support Andy’s work? You can thank him on Twitter like this.

1. 15 Social Venture Capital Firms That You Should Know About

2. 10 More Social Venture Capital Firms That You Told Me About

3. Will B Corp’s New Campaign Be The Death Knell For Cause-Washing?

4. The Fundamentals of Building an Employee Volunteer Program [interview with Chris Jarvis]

5. Trouble Brewing For Green Mountain Coffee?

6. Microsoft’s Organic Approach To Its $90M Employee Philanthropy Program [interview with Akhtar Badshah]

7. What Is Cause Marketing and Is It Right For You? [interview with Joe Waters]

8. 13 Benefits You Can Count on if You’re a Company with a Social Mission

9. The Woman Who Hires Do-Gooders [interview with Ellen Weinbreb]

10. The Best Kept Secret to Social Venture Funding?

11. Why Your Company Should Have a Social Mission

12. The Empty Suit: 5 Cause Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

13. 12 Ways To Convince Your Boss To Add Social Responsibility

14. Can You Crowdsource Your Sustainability?

15. This Is What Customers Want To Know About Your Cause Marketing Partnerships

Observations

• I do a mix of expert interviews, tactical/resource articles and thought pieces, which is fairly well represented in this list. Takeaway: Interviews take a heck of a lot of time so I’m glad to see they’re valuable.
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• This list represents three prime areas: funding, cause marketing and social mission. Takeaway: I’m pleased with the topical base, but am setting a goal to publish more on measurement and evaluation, hybrid models, consumer engagement and emerging markets.
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• I also pulled the 15 most tweeted posts (many of which aren’t reflected here). Takeaway: My content is seen by two distinct audiences–a social media audience and an information-hungry audience. The first is inclined to tweet interesting titles or favorite bloggers casually and rapidly. The second audience is hunting for specific information on how to engage employees or establish strong nonprofit partnerships, for example. This audience of entrepreneurs and employees connects with Cause Capitalism through search, reads the content and leaves (to implement the tactics and measure their impact, fingers crossed).

But how do you do cause-related marketing (or cause branding) right?

1. Pick a cause you care about.
   Crowdsourced charity had its pop–and then fizzle. Sixty-one percent of consumers say they’d prefer to see a company make a long-term commitment to an issue rather than having the chance to vote for the cause they think the company should support in the short run.
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2. Invest in a cause long-term.
   Crowdourced campaigns in which entrants vy for votes through social media can build site traffic and brand awareness–momentarily.  ”After one year, or five or 10, [these type of campaigns] won’t have clearly defined what the company stands for,” says Alison DaSilva, Executive Vice President at Cone. Consumer-driven, short-term campaigns also make it much harder for a company to measure its social impact.
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3. Involve employees.
   This is a two-for-one. Employees who’re involved in their company’s social or environmental commitments feel more pride and loyalty toward their employer.  Per Cone, 93% of engaged employees say they’re proud of their company’s values (vs. 68% of employees who don’t take part in social or environmental activities).  This 93% of employees who take pride in their company and work translates directly–and tremendously–to customer satisfaction and profitability (Zappos.com and Southwest Airlines are poster children for the theory of Happy Employees Drives Company Success).
   

   On the flip side, employees often bring their passion and knowledge of the company’s sustainability efforts to their interactions with consumers, which can be critical in the success or failure of your company’s specific campaign and larger efforts. Seventy percent of consumers say an informed employee would likely drive their purchase or donation. At the very least, employees greatly influence a campaign’s message and company intent.  As I wrote about here, Ikea charges customers for bags. Asking a customer who’s just spent money in your store to pay for the packaging to cart it away is a delicate request, which is left to the cashier to make.  By training its employees in overall company sustainability goals and illustrating how charging for bags supports these goals, Ikea impassioned (or at least educated) its employees around this transaction.  A reader’s comment on his bag-buying experience sharpens the point:

When the Ikea cashier told me about their bag policy she was beaming with pride. It was pretty much the only time I saw any Ikea worker happy. I think policies like this give people in the company a reason to care.

4. Involve Consumers.
   While  consumers still want to support your company’s cause through transactional purchases (81%) they also want opportunities to volunteer for the cause (72%) and to provide feedback on the product or campaign (75%).  TOMS Shoes is known for its transaction-focused buy-one-give-one model.  But the company has also done an excellent job of providing customers opportunities to act, e.g., through Style Your Sole shoe painting parties and a “One Day Without Shoes” event that mobilized thousands of students to go barefoot for the day.

Thanks to Cone Inc. for another set of valuable data points.

Just as sustainability does not work for businesses unless it serves business needs first, sustainability does not engage individuals unless it first and foremost solves problems they experience in their lives.

So, how can you make sustainability personal and create the best conditions and incentives for engagement?

1. Make it voluntary. Forcing people to care about something is a short-cut to resentment and inaction.
2. Localize it. What matters to the team, to the community, to your customers that employees can connect to? Sometimes it’s as narrow as distinct employee interests (eating organic or reducing office waste, for example). The more localized you can take sustainability, the more personal it becomes.
3. Start with what you care about. To make it personal, start by being personal. Share what issues you’re passionate about and how you first became involved.
4. Don’t pretend to know it all.  Leadership and communication style is a primary influencer engagement. Inspire and listen rather than preach, scare or guilt. Your first job is to inspire possibility.
5. Demonstrate the effect of action. One company piled up a day’s worth of trash to show the potential of what can be eliminated through recycling, composting and product choices.
6. Make it a cross-functional effort. Involve people from different departments and seniority levels from the start.
7. Publicly solicit, display and respond to ideas. After brainstorming sessions or employee surveys, list the ideas in a public place, respond to suggestions and questions and let employees know why some ideas can’t be implemented.
8. Solicit input from outside stakeholders. How have other companies launched successful sustainability initiatives? Are there vendors, organizations or community groups that you could partner with locally?
9. Give employees a place to start now. Even if it’s a small step. My grossest criticism of Michael Moore is that his movies fire me up and then leave me with nothing to do with the indignation he’s inspired. I’m left feeling manipulated and hopeless. What can employees do right away to capitalize on their interest and the momentum of the initiative?
10. Start small for early success. Hitting your target early on builds momentum and confidence.
11. Make it regular. Repeated activities or long-term goals are more inspiring and allow people to connect more personally than a morning of cleaning a park every quarter.
12. Reward the most effective departments or teams. (Tying sustainability goals to individual compensation and bonuses is also very effective, but is more involved).
13. Build company culture around sustainability goals. Whether it’s office parties, charity drives or 401(k)s, look for ways to align them with the company’s sustainability initiatives.

These are just a handful of tactics and ideas. I’d love to know what’s worked for you. What hasn’t?

Image credit, Daily Mail Online