Coke, it’s everywhere. It’s in communities without electricity, running water or proper nutrition. Why? Because it’s an innovator in distribution, consumer analysis and marketing. What can the social impact sector (nonprofits, social enterprises, the public sector) learn from Coke that will allow us to save more lives?  Melinda French Gates asked this question during a TEDxChange [...]
Neither nationwide purse-tightening nor cries of Slactivism! Greenwashing! and Fad! have shaken cause marketing. Eighty-three percent of consumers “want more of the products, services and retailers they use to benefit causes,” according to Cone Inc.’s 2010 Cause Evaluation Study. But how do you do cause-related marketing (or cause branding) right? Pick a cause you care about. [...]
When I first heard about KaBOOM!’s partnership with Kool-Aid, I thought unequivocally that the nonprofit had swallowed the sugary, Red No. 40-punch. Kool-Aid’s pledged to help KaBOOM! build 24 playgrounds and provide funding for 20 more. In a campaign aimed at promoting “healthy, active lifestyles for kids,†why is KaBOOM! partnering with an historic obesity [...]
How does a physician with sufficient medical knowledge and analytic ability distinguish himself? He measures high on the empathy scale. Â Once a physician gets past a certain threshold of analytic ability, he’s proven himself to be an okay doctor on the functional front, so the point of differentiation becomes his empathic abilities. When the Jefferson [...]
Don’t call it a community and don’t plan to build one unless it will offer real value to the people who participate. Not just to you or your brand or the top-dogs within the community.  That’s called marketing or complicit back-scratching, but not community in a sense of deep give and take and shared value, [...]
Rather than doing the industry in, cause-washing might just save corporate sustainability. Although consumer trust is worse than we thought, the anecdote has the potential to alter the way companies do business and consumers shop. Less than one percent of people (surveyed recently by BBMG in partnership with B Lab) trust company advertisements or statements [...]
What exactly is a social enterprise? Can Levi’s be counted as one because it practices sustainability? Can KABOOM! because its operations are entrepreneurial? Â The term (which encompasses both profitable and non-profit initiatives) has had critics and confused bystanders shaking their heads and voicing alternatives for a while. The criticism seems mostly to rest on the [...]
In the last four days that I’ve been back in the states I’ve had to pay for bags three times (at CVS, Ikea and Trader Joe’s). It’s a surprising and welcome development, particularly as I’m not in California or Boulder, but in Washington, D.C. My reaction to the pay-for-bag-system has also evolved in step with [...]
I came to the whole idea of social impact and business after several frustrating experiences–working for a business lobbying organization that (not shockingly) ran against my values, becoming privy to the status quo inefficiencies of traditional international economic development and suffering alongside my nonprofit clients as they focused more on fundraising and philanthropic realpolitik than constituent [...]
There’s a market at the bottom of the economic pyramid valued at $5 trillion dollars. Â But the real allure of this market, at least for me, is the opportunity to help its 4 billion people access healthcare, educational and basic living services. Â How can businesses access this market and how can they do it without [...]
I'm Olivia Khalili. I created Cause Capitalism to show you how to grow your business by incorporating a social mission. 
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