09. Jun, 2010 •
Categories: Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee Involvement •
by admin
You want more green initiatives in your company and so do your employees and consumers. Â You’d love to give employee rebates for hybrid car purchases or offer transportation stipends, but the funding for these programs just isn’t there right now. Â It’s taking action (rather than any specific action) that counts. A year ago NetApp was [...]
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04. Jun, 2010 •
Categories: Business Models, Businesses, Micro-lending •
by admin
The concept is simple and brilliant. When I came across Living Goods, my stomach flipped with the potential impact of the organization’s work. Â The mechanisms, intent and appeal match that of blockbuster social enterprises Kiva and charity: water. Living Goods replicates Avon’s model of door-to-door selling, but instead of peddling lipstick and mascara to middle-class [...]
5 Comments
02. Jun, 2010 •
Categories: Build a Purpose-driven Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee Involvement •
by admin
How does good beget good? And what are you doing to tip the domino? In his book, The HIP Investor: Make Bigger Profits by Building a Better World, R. Paul Herman lists employee satisfaction as an indicator of strong investment returns.  He points to Wharton finance professor Alex Edmans’ work identifying a “direct positive correlation over [...]
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28. May, 2010 •
Categories: Build a Purpose-driven Business, Employee Involvement, Tools •
by admin
Part of building a successful business is being able to let other people tell you how to do it better. Â Companies that set up mechanisms to learn from their employees, particularly those at the base of the company who do automated work and aren’t brought into weekly meetings to voice their say, see economic gain [...]
2 Comments
26. May, 2010 •
Categories: Employee Involvement, Rants & Raves •
by admin
It takes more than one action to empower your employees. Â As simple (and obvious!) as that sounds, it’s what struck me the most while writing yesterday’s post on enabling your employees. Â Maybe a better way to structure the post would be to highlight tactics by company since each of the companies I included–King Arthur’s Flour, [...]
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25. May, 2010 •
Categories: Build a Purpose-driven Business, Employee Involvement •
by admin
Employees are the crux of your company.  Successful leaders have known this for years. Take away my people and leave the factories, and soon there will be grass growing on the factory floors, but take away my factories and leave my people, and soon we will have bigger and better factories.  –Andrew Carnegie When you enfranchise your [...]
2 Comments
18. May, 2010 •
Categories: Build a Purpose-driven Business, Business Models, Interviews, Podcast •
by admin
Click the player or right-click and save for the MP3. Business structures for Triple Bottom Line ventures are my Bermuda Triangle.  I’m whipped around to end up confused about the benefits of each structure (L3C, LLC, Special Purpose Corporation, hybrid for-profit and nonprofit) and its respective requirements and restrictions.  So I asked Jenny Kassan, managing director at Katovich [...]
1 Comment
14. May, 2010 •
Categories: Business Models, Commercial & Nonprofit Partnerships, Corporate Social Responsibility, Events, Interviews, Web/Tech •
by admin
In this video, shot by Lee Fox at the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit, Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, talks about the experience that set her on her path at age twelve and how social responsibility can specifically benefit a company. Pamela Hawley founded UniversalGiving as a nonprofit social enterprise to match donors and volunteers with [...]
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