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.

Click the player to listen to our conversation. Prefer MP3? Right-click and download.

Download audio file (Cause-Capitalism_Mike-Dupee.mp3)

Michael Dupee began working with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters after graduating college in the early 90s. At that time, the company was mid-point between its modest beginning as a neighborhood cafe in Waitsfield, Vermont, in 1981, and it’s current state as a publicly-trade company with six subsidiary brands and more than $715 million in revenue in 2009.  In 1996, Mike left Vermont and Green Mountain Coffee for his MBA and spent a couple of years with Goldman Sachs.  He rejoining the company as its Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility in 2004.

Born into Vermont’s climate of sustainability, Green Mountain Coffee has always been kind to the environment. The company began composting in 1983, switched to biodegradable coffee bags for bulk purchases and started contributing 5% of pre-tax profits to social and environmental nonprofits in the mid-90s.  But the enterprise’s (and its employees’) sustainable habits didn’t count for a cohesive strategy (and at times worked against one).

So Mike’s first priority was to create an overarching strategy that would unite and further sustainability efforts.  ”The biggest problem was getting organized,” says Mike. “We needed to identify a direction that we could all work towards.”  After a lot of listening and acting as a “thinking partner,” Mike and his team created a company-wide framework that defined success in six areas:  supply-chain communities, local communities, environment, sustainable products, working together for change and the workplace.

If you listen to our conversation you’ll hear Mike talk about some of the specific challenges inherent in formalizing sustainability, his admitted initial error when working with supply chain communities and the best kept secret of many CSR departments.

More on Green Mountain Coffee’s CSR

• The company specializes in fair trade certified and certified organic coffee.
• Green Mountain Coffee offsets 100% of its direct greenhouse gas emissions.
• In 2007, the company opened a 10,000 gallon biodiesel fueling station at its Waterbury, VT, distribution center.
• Packaging for Newman’s Own Organic coffees is made from partially renewable materials.
• In 2006, the enterprise launched an all-natural paper hot beverage cup developed in partnership with NatureWorks and International Paper. The cup is lined with a bio-plastic made from sugar.
• Employees can choose to receive paid time-off to volunteer in their communities (up to 52 hours per year) or to earn a grant for a nonprofit organization by volunteering on their own time.
• Green Mountain Coffee offers all employees a stock purchase program and profit sharing options for employees in the specialty coffee business unit.
• The company was ranked #1 in “The Best Corporate Citizens” in 2006 and 2007.

Referenced in our conversation
Revelation to Action is an online, open-sourced competition, run through Ashoka’s Changemakers platform, to find and fund ideas and organizations that strengthen communities in the Northeast.

Like this interview? You can thank Mike on Twitter like this.

Many CEOs seem to have reversed cause and effect. Brand trust and reputation are the result of a company’s sustainability actions. Are we being set up for a decade of window dressing and cause-washing as companies cobble together sustainability programs to burnish their public image?

These findings were published last week by the United Nations Global Compact and Accenture. Internationally, 766 CEOs were polled on sustainability and business with 72% identifying brand, trust and reputation as their biggest motivator for sustainability, 44% citing revenue growth and cost reduction, 42% personal motivation, 39% consumer demand and 31% employee engagement and retention.

Seven years ago we would have celebrated the fact that 93% of these CEOs see sustainability as critical to their companies’ success. But really, how can that be disputed? Today, sustainability is fundamental. The remaining 7% will be swept along or swept away soon enough.

So the challenge I see is exciting business leaders and employees about the non-public facing side of sustainability. How can we communicate the subjective and financial value of creating a sustainable workplace? Or of reducing waste? Or switching to environmentally preferred materials?  We need more Interfaces–companies that transform their entire system and resource selection, not their advertising and marketing strategies–and less (Product) RED-like campaigns.*

*I have a lot of respect for the (Product) RED campaign for the money and awareness it has raised and for the way it’s allowed diverse companies to get involved. But we’re evolving past the stage of one-off (even long-term) cause marketing campaigns to significant systems change.

For companies looking for mission-based capital, it also carries four distinct benefits and potential for higher valuations.

1. Flags your entrenched commitment to sustainability.
   Social investors want to invest in companies that achieve high social or environmental impact and that can maintain their impact despite future financing, sale or IPO. The legal and performance standards for a B Corp serve to safeguard a company’s social mission during growth, transformation or sale.
2. Enforces accountability and transparency.
   Investors will ask about your experience, commitment and aptitude before they hand over funds. B Corp certification indicates you’ve already been vetted by a third-party and have made specific legal and ethical commitments for your business.
3. Puts you in the center of a closed investing community.
   Being part of the B Corp community is like the secret knock that gets in front of attentive investors. Nearly 30 financial service companies are registered B Corps (TBL Capital, Mindful Investors, Good Capital, Agora Partnerships, IGNIA Partners, Partnership Capital Growth, City Light Capital and Mission Markets are some. Do I have your attention?).  As of last year, six B Corps have been funded by a fellow B Corp investor and more have been awarded financing from commercial lenders like New Resource and e3 Banks.
4. Gets you a step ahead.
   Investors’ Circle, the angel investor network for triple bottom line businesses, requires companies to submit to the B Impact Rating System. Benchmark Asset Managers, e3 Bank, Good Capital, RSF Social Finance, TBL Capital and Mission Markets also use the impact rating system as part of their due diligence to vet potential investments. Last April the Obama Administration announced its support of B Lab’s Global Impact Investing Rating System (“GIIRS”), built from the B Lab’s company rating system, to facilitate capital to social enterprises.  A B Corp certification not only signals your commitment to social impact and opens the door to potential investors, it can also expedite a lengthy vetting and funding process.

The B Impact Rating System is free and available to any company, whether or not it wants to become a B Corp. The rating system is also an effective way to benchmark, track and improve your company’s social and environmental performance and gauge its impact on stakeholders. The tool is updated every two years; version three is on the way. Funding is only one benefit of becoming a B Corp (branding, transparency, product and service discounts and tax benefits are a few others).

It’s been interesting to watch B Labs develop in mission, scope and impact. I first wrote about the organization in March 2008 and had the the chance to interview cofounder Jay Coen Gilbert a year ago. During our interview I confessed my initial skepticism that B Corporation was just another certification with lukewarm meaning that cost companies money and confused consumers. Having seen the impact of the organization’s diligence and talked with many entrepreneurs about how they benefit as a B Corp, I’m now an informed advocate with a blog and sometimes an audience.  But what’s your take?

I invited Paul to Cause Capitalism to talk about how investors can use the HIP methodology to guide their investment decisions, as well as how entrepreneurs can apply it to create businesses that seek to deliver human impact and profit for shareholders.

Click the player to listen to my conversation with Paul or right-click and save for the MP3.

Paul’s new book,  The HIP Investor: Make Bigger Profits by Building a Better World, shares how to perform a quantitative assessment of your company’s HIP potential, analyzes the products, metrics and decision-making practices of the most and least HIP companies in the S&P 500 and provides questions and tools to help you build a solid HIP portfolio across all asset types.

The HIP methodology uses 30 indicators to gauge a company’s output in the categories of health, wealth, earth, equality and trust (inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) and to measure how each can drive financial value.  This approach prioritizes measurable results over policies and philosophies.

In the beginning of the interview I confessed to Paul that I thought socially responsible investing (SRI) did outperform traditional investing.  The short answer is that SRI tends to lag behind traditional investing in up markets but can provide better cushion in down markets.  Paul explained why this is:

“The SRI approach focuses on negative screening, which means that companies that are perceived as negative or have products with perceived negative impact are kicked out of your investment universe.  This increases the risk of your portfolio and has tended to depress the return.  The second thing that happens with socially responsible investing is that those who do it focus on policy evaluations and operating practices.  But these factors don’t actually correlate with better financial performance.  [The HIP methodology] focuses on quantifiable results–what are the true outcomes in the categories of health, wealth, earth, equality and trust?  And how do these outcomes drive financial value?  When you do this, you find that sustainability factors, the metrics of results, actually can drive financial performance in a way that can beat traditional investment.”

About R. Paul Herman
Paul created the HIP methodology and founded HIP Investor Inc., an investment advisor, to help investors realize higher Human Impact + Profit.  He advises investors and manages portfolios (including the HIP 100 Index) using the HIP Scorecard featured in Fast Company magazine and in The HIP Investor book (John Wiley & Sons 2010).

Paul was part of the team that designed the sustainability scorecard for Walmart, which is now part of the Sustainability Consortium.  He has worked with social enterprises Ashoka and Omidyar Network, and consulted with McKinsey & Co.  He is a member of Investors’ Circle and an advisor to Net Impact.  Paul earned a degree from the Wharton School.  Paul has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and on CNN and CNBC.  Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus called the HIP Scorecard “a new yardstick for business” in his book, Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.

Like this interview?  You can thank Paul on Twitter like this and follow him at @HIPInvestor.