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Why Your Company Should Have A Social Mission

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 […]

Evolving the Supply Chain: From Slave Labor to Personal Transformation

. “What would you say to companies that see improving even one piece of their supply chains as too expensive?” I asked. Joe Sibilia had just shared one method to help companies become more sustainable: take one ingredient in the supply chain and use it to create a social benefit. This is what he had done […]

Radical Pricing Scheme Earns $ for Companies & Nonprofits

Letting people pay what they want, with the promise that 50% will go to charity, produces a higher profit than selling the product at a fixed, market price. It also earns more money for the nonprofit Leif Nelson, an associate professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, ran an experiment […]

To Tap Cause Marketing’s Huge Potential, Do Less Of It

This piece was originally written for and published on Reach Students. If 94% of Millennials condone cause marketing why do only 53% report buying a product that benefits a cause in the past year?  The first finding is compelling, the second certainly is not, particularly given that in many stores you’d have to struggle not to buy […]

Want To Open a Nonprofit Store? 10 Guidelines You–and Nordstrom’s–Should Follow

Scandal in-the-making, customer-pleaser, tax write-off, nonprofit cash cow or game-changer?  Which hyphenated phrase will best describe Nordstrom’s new concept store, which will donate all net profits to charity? I was interviewed recently by American Public Media’s Marketplace on the Nordstrom concept store, set to open in Soho next fall, and on the growing appeal of […]

Can Coke Teach Nonprofits How to Deliver More Social Impact?

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 […]

Creating High Impact Through BoP Business–with Unmesh Brahme

There’s a market at the bottom of the economic pyramid valued at $5 trillion dollars.  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.  How can businesses access this market and how can they do it without […]

Building Microsoft’s ‘Stealth’ CSR Program–with Dan Bross

Microsoft has something up its sleeve. A roiling, innovative and effective CSR strategy, which, even among CSR wonks, has gone largely unnoticed. Over the past weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak with several executives in Redmond, Washington, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, helping to shape Microsoft’s corporate citizenship strategy.  Admittedly, I went into these conversations […]

How I Would Fix Neenah Paper’s Eco-Publicity Ploy

The offer: As part of a publicity push for its carbon-neutral ENVIRONMENT Papers line, Neenah Paper launched a sweepstakes to win an eco-trip for two to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica and a chance to “go hard core and experience conservation in the heart of some of nature’s most fragile environments.”  The lucky winner is […]

How Better World Books Built A Multimillion-Dollar, Venture Backed Social Enterprise–with David Murphy

In this 7-minute clip, Better World Books President and CEO David Murphy talks about the company’s fiduciary commitment to its nonprofit literacy partners and how it received funding, initially with an SBA loan and later through Good Capital, a social investment firm. Right-click and download for the MP3. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] […]