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With a deep background in sustainability and corporate accountability, Beth Holzman brings an appreciation for impact evaluation and stakeholder involvement to Timberland as the company’s CSR Strategy and Reporting Manager.  I invited Beth to Cause Capitalism to talk about how Timberland engages its diversified stakeholders, why the company moved to quarterly sustainability reports, what the strategy is behind its microsite Earthkeeper and whether businesses are focusing too heavily on the consumer-facing side of CSR.

Notes on Timberland (read more on Timberland’s CSR strategy)

Timberland has a historical commitment to social and environmental sustainability, reflected in the company’s initiatives, some of which are listed below.  Timberland’s corporate responsibility programs are focused around four pillars–energy, product, workplace and service.

• Timberland began its partnership with City Year more than two decades ago in 1989 and has donated more than $10 million to help City Year expand its service programs to 13 cities nationwide.
• In 1997 through its Path of Service Program Timberland began offering employees 40 hours of paid-time off to volunteer annually.
• The Timberland “Nutrition Label,” aimed at communicating the environmental impact of the product to consumers was introduced in 2006 and viewed as one of the first efforts at educating and engaging consumers in a products’ sustainability.
• CEO Jeff Swartz holds live quarterly CSR Stakeholder calls. You can download a recording of each call here.
• This year, Timberland is on track to meeting an aggressive 50% emissions reduction target over a 2006 baseline.

Like this interview? You can thank Beth on Twitter like this and follow her at @CSR_Beth and Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz (who returns tweets!) at @Timberland_Jeff.

Imagine being rewarded with a free trip from Boulder to Boston after choosing Continental for 100,000 air miles worth of travel. Easy, these customer loyalty programs have been around for a while, working seemingly well for both high-margin and low-margin products.

But now imagine making your fifth donation to Room to Read or Mercy Corps. Your likely reward will be more mail asking you for more money as you’re moved through the fundraising pipeline.

So here’s my proposition to nonprofits and companies savvy enough to know that cause partnerships work, but aware of creeping cause marketing fatigue to consumers: Create a contributor loyalty program by matching every donor’s nth donation to the nonprofit organization.

Take charity: water as an example. As a contributor, I would get an email letting me know that once I’ve made five donations over $20, charit: water’s partner (let’s go with Clorox’s Brita water filters) will match my donation up to $50.  Brita and charity: water would also attract new donors (Twitter and Facebook are low-hanging fruit) with Brita’s pledge of a future match. And sure, why not have Brita email me a coupon for a water filter at the time of its donation, giving me an action to channel my new brand awareness and enthusiasm.

Or go a step further and create a branded product available only to repeat donors. After my fifthth donation of more than $20 to The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Timberland matches my next donation up to $xx and sends me a coupon for a pair of TNC-branded sandals (unavailable to the public), which label me as committed supporter of the environment.

This type of campaign would generate more goodwill for the company than a normal percentage-of-sale or buy-one-give-one campaign because the matched donation isn’t dependent on the consumer buying a Brita or Timberland product. Rewarding donor commitment also requires a long-term partnership between the nonprofit, the for-profit and the donor, which is an important component of successful cause campaigns.

I’d love to hear from you, from whatever perspective you bring–nonprofit, corporate, new donor or committed donor. Is this inspiring enough? Do you feel it provides enough rewards to the company in the short-term?
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An article profiling Subaru’s new badges for owners catalyzed this train of thought. Subaru owners can now order badges to stick on their cars indicating how many Subarus they’ve owned (and how many of which they’ve driven over 100K miles) and what type of outdoor activities they like. The badges have been a surprising success for Subaru since they launched two weeks ago.

“Storytelling is the most exciting way to hook people,” says Deron Triff who co-founded Changents with Alex Hofmann after meeting Scott that day in the restaurant and keeping up with his work on MySpace–the only serious social media site at the time. Modeling Scott’s approach to engaging youth in online philanthropy, Deron and Alex created Changents to provide change agents with the digital storytelling tools and services to share their stories and mobilize people, called “backers,” around them. The site launched in June 2008 and landed a banner partnership with the Timberland Company in its first year.

I invited Deron to Cause Capitalism to talk about his experience founding a for-profit social enterprise, how the business model has changed in the current crowding of social media platforms and how he won over Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz and causestrategist Carol Cone with cold emails.

Listen to our conversation (about 35 minutes) by clicking on the player below. Prefer MP3? Just right-click and save. As usual, I’ve highlighted some points below.

• Deron and Alex met while working for PBS. They brainstormed about a Gen Y entertainment and “attitude-driven” media company that operated as a social enterprise. “MySpace was about it in terms of credible social networks in 2007,” says Deron. “There wasn’t a platform for people who were changing the world through social enterprise, music, activism, art or engineering.”
• Changents focuses on the power of charismatic individuals and their incredible personal journeys–rather than traditional institutions and non-profits–as the drivers of scalable change movements.
• When Deron and Alex developed their business plan in 2007 they envisioned Changents as a video-based site. Just this week, they reworked their plan to support a new site that will use crowd-sourcing to match the specific skills of community members to change agents’ needs. Although video is still a part of Changents, the site has expanded its technology tools, e.g., offering all change agents the ability to directly phone in a podcast that’s then broadcast to their backers.
• The decision to create a for-profit social enterprise was very deliberate. Deron believes that “by maximizing profits and revenue,  you can maximize social impact. The two are mutually reinforcing.” This decision (as some readers might have experienced) makes it difficult to get outside funding. Deron points to a common feeling from investors that the model of for-profit social enterprise discounts ROI. Consequently, Deron and Alex bootstrapped the company (moonlighting in business development and digital strategy for entertainment firms).
• Changents partnered with Timberland to launch EarthKeeper Heroes, a campaign promoting the stories and work of individual environmentalists through social and digital media. This first partnership helped establish Changents as a storytelling platform for individuals and companies committed to change.
• Deron and Alex identified Timberland as their ideal company to partner with because of Timberland’s corporate sustainability practices and appeal to a younger generation. Deron wrote CEO Jeff Swartz a cold email explaining his concept and laying out a proposition. Both men liked to volunteer, so Deron offered to do a volunteer project of Jeff’s choice in New Hampshire if he could spend a little bit of time with Jeff.  Deron also played his strongest card–the stories of what Changents change agents were doing. “I talked about the people and their work, and Jeff connected with that,” says Deron.
• Deron’s first advisory board member was cause strategist Carol Cone. He recruited her with a cold email as well.
• Changents has two revenue streams. The first is serving as a type of broker between companies and change agents. They help “corporate citizen companies” create end-to-end social media campaigns across all social media networks. The second source of revenue is sharing change agents’ stories through traditional media. Changents has published a book and is working on a movie as well as a reality TV show profiling change agents.

I was particularly impressed by Deron’s success in cold emailing Jeff and Carol. Have you had a particular triumph in this area? Or how do you respond when you get a cold email asking for help or guidance?

Connect with Deron on Twitter at @Changents.

I spoke with upstart entrepreneurs about five ways they can incorporate cause into their business, regardless of its size. Although the methods range in their levels of commitment and implementation time, they all display action on the behalf of a cause.

1. BOGO: Buy-One-Give-One

   With a BOGO business (a company that donates an exact item match for every item sold) cause is at the core of the business model. BOGO businesses have dual objectives, to support and enhance their causes and to turn a profit (the latter, the distinguishing factor from a nonprofit).  Exemplary BOGO businesses are Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child, The BoGo Light by Sunnight Solar and TOMS Shoes.
   
   WHAT TOMS GIVES: Millions of pairs of shoes to children in need in South America and Africa.
   WHAT TOMS GETS: Recognition for pioneering the BOGO business model and a vocal following of die-hard fans.

2. Portion of Profits Donated

   The most common way companies engage in social responsibility. A company will pledge and donate a portion of proceeds to the community it serves.  In 1983, long before cause marketing was the term du jour, American Express ran a campaign to fund restoration of the Statue of Liberty. For every dollar spent on an Am Ex card, the company donated 1 cent toward restoration.

   WHAT THEY GAVE: $1.7 million toward Lady Liberty’s overhaul.
   WHAT THEY GOT: A 27% increase in card use and 47% growth in new card acquisitions.

3. Transparency and Call-to-Action

   Transparency is primarily effective when a company pledges to support a cause and publicly charts its progress. The one-two punch is the follow-up call-to-action, which motivates the customer to act on behalf of the same cause. Timberland cares about environmental stewardship and has for some time. But many customers to whom this might matter, were unaware. Only with the introduction of something called the Timberland Nutritional Label, however, did Timberland weld its cause to the consumer.  The Timberland Nutritional Label is affixed to the boxes of all 3 million pairs of footwear sold annually. It shows the buyer where the footwear was made, the amount of energy that went into making it and the amount of renewable energy Timberland uses.

   WHAT THEY GAVE: By calling itself out as a conscious company, Timberland held itself responsible in the public’s eye.
   WHAT THEY GOT: Sales grew 10% annually and stock prices doubled from 2006-2008.

4. Employee Volunteerism

   Paid time-off for employees to volunteer, either on a company-sponsored or individually chosen project. Imagine the culture of a corporation that truly values giving back, to the extent that it will trade temporary profit for employee satisfaction and loyalty and a tested public image of its commitment.
   
   WHAT THEY GAVE: One week of paid-time off and loss of productivity per employee.
   WHAT THEY GOT: Increased brand awareness and enthusiasm and employee satisfaction that translated to growth in sales.

5. Employee Incentives

   Inculcate your employees in your company’s mission not through processes, call scripts and company retreats, but through participation, collaboration and incentives. Burt’s Bees incentivizes employees and reinforces the company goal of environmental sustainability in several ways. Employees receive bonuses based in part on how well the company meets jointly established energy conservation goals, and plum parking spots are reserved for those that carpool or drive hybrids to work.

   WHAT THEY GAVE: Nothing really. No additional bonuses were given nor were extra parking spots created.
   WHAT THEY GOT: Employee buy-in, reduced energy costs, a strong culture of teamwork and conservation, brand authenticity as environmentally friendly.

Marc Benioff, of Salesforce.com and Compassionate Capitalism, wrote a great piece on how to bridge the disconnect between corporate profits and cause.  He argues that socially responsibly initiatives are created in isolation from the corporate mission.

An ‘integrated corporation’ creates value in its local community or global network as well as for its shareholders. Benioff offered up several ways in which a company becomes integrated, i.e. financial earnings in confluence with social good.

Two of these models stand out to me because they provide a direct and immediate link to the community being served and minimize additional overhead.

1. Returning a percentage of profits to the global communities served
2. Encouraging employees to dedicate a percentage of their (work) time toward community service

TOMS Shoes accomplishes this first model with products rather than profits. For every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS donates a pair to a child in need. How this translates is more than 60,000 pairs of shoes to children in Argentina and South Africa and a black ledger for TOMS.

I touched on Timberland’s sponsored employee volunteerism in Timberland Attaches “Nutritional Label.” Since the program began in 1992, it’s resulted in more than 200,000 hours of community service in 30 states and 18 countries. Ben & Jerry’s has employee community-action teams, while Hasbro Toys is dedicating 1 percent of corporate time to local service projects. Albeit this is not a gross number, but it’s a conscious beginning.

Increasingly, companies are realizing that volunteerism is way to practice social responsibility in real time, in addition to acting as a vehicle for building employee goodwill and retention.

Read the complete article here.