HappyRant

Yahoo! Purple Acts of Kindness

I'm a firm believer in the power of the business world to do good. Yahoo's Purple Acts of Kindness program is a great example.

What exactly is that? I'll let Yahoo! explain...

Yahoo! seeks out individuals who are doing great work in their communities, and amplifies their good deeds by putting some purple power behind their efforts. Leveraging the reach of the Yahoo! network, we hope these stories will touch many of our 500 million users, and serve as an inspiration to commit similar acts of kindness.

The most recent story shines a light on an 8 year old girl in Topeka, Kansas...

This remarkable third-grader from Topeka, Kansas, was inspired by Yahoo!’s Be a Better Planet campaign to encourage Topekans to use reusable shopping bags at the grocery store. Her grandmother contacted Yahoo! to see if we could help jumpstart her campaign.

As part of our Purple Acts of Kindness program, we sent Jaide 900 (purple) canvas shoppings bags. She’ll sell them for $5 a piece at local supermarkets to raise money for organizations that preserve the environment and improve the lives of kids, including Keep America Beautiful, the Topeka School Fund, and the American Heart Association.

What I love about this is not so much the concrete effect this has (let's be honest - 900 shopping bags is only going to have so much of a positive impact on the planet). It's the ripple effect. It's the fact that Yahoo! is shining the light on people who are putting the effort into making their corner of the world a better place.

The more positive efforts people are exposed to, the greater the likelihood that they will feel moved to take some kind of positive action themselves. With its reach to hundreds of millions of people, this has the potential to inspire far beyond the scope of the individual projects Yahoo! highlights.

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Banking for change: Community-minded banking

When you think of the banking industry, a social agenda to make the world a better place isn't typically the first thing that comes to mind. But for Chicago-based Shorebank, it's an integral part of the reason they exist. Today it's a thriving, if fairly small, financial institution, but as this article describes, when it was founded in 1974 expectations were anything but high.

Opening a bank aimed at improving the quality of life in poor urban areas was supposed to be a grand notion doomed for failure.

The demise of ShoreBank, which promotes everything from redevelopment to minority businesses to environmentally responsible lending, was so predictable that a university professor came running to document its beginnings for a case study on business failure.

...Thirty-four years later, the stories are about its trailblazing success.

The bank has managed to thrive in both the financial and social good arenas.

Despite its altruistic slogan -- "Let's change the world" -- this is no charity organization. The Chicago-based banking company reported net income of $5.3 million last year even after tending to its varied missions.

But its biggest impact has been in what it calls community-minded investing, not profitability.

Founded in 1974, the bank was built on an idea far before its time.

ShoreBank was founded on the '60s-era idealism of Ron Grzywinski, Houghton, Milton Davis and James Fletcher (the latter two now deceased), who together ran one of the nation's first minority small business loan programs. Intent on finding ways to reverse the decline of inner-city Chicago neighborhoods, they zeroed in on redlining -- banks' then-routine denial of credit and services to customers in poorer areas.

The four young bankers raised $800,000 in capital and obtained a $2.4 million loan to buy the failing South Shore National Bank in 1973, using it as a model for their then-novel idea that private bank capital could be used to achieve social purposes.

Last year, banking for the poor hit the mainstream awareness as Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize. The insights of Shorebank's founders were woven into Yunus' success.

Through its far-flung business, it can even claim a supporting role in the work honored by last year's Nobel Peace Prize. Grzywinski and Houghton, on 18 trips to Bangladesh over 10 years, advised winner Muhammad Yunus on how to start and manage his Grameen Bank for the poor specializing in very small loans called microcredits.

"They have shown that you can both promote economic opportunity in low-income communities and be a profitable, financially sustainable institution," said Andrea Levere, president of Corporate for Enterprise Development, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that promotes economic development.

Co-founder Grywinski regrets that there haven't been more companies copying their success.

While he has no problems with ShoreBank remaining "really tiny minnows" in the banking world, Grzywinski, 71, expressed disappointment that its experience had not sparked a "broad revolution" in community development banking.

 "It does seem as though a bank company holding model is a very good model to deal with things like neighborhood development, environmental conservation, et cetera," he said in an interview. "So we would like to see a lot of other people do it."

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Big business. Big difference.

I love the potential of the business world to make a positive impact. One great example of that is Green Standards North America, a company built on the idea of doing well by doing good. 

On the surface, it sounds like a brilliant PR scheme. Big business shuns corporate world in favour of small-town Nova Scotia, where the players live out their dreams - and stoke their conscience - making the world a better place for poor people. Dig a little deeper, and you realize it's actually true.

It's hard to argue with their success. The multimillion-dollar company, Green Standards North America of Bridgewater, did more business in the first three months of 2007 than in all of last year. The program is called Waste to Wonder, and it involves diverting corporate waste such as furniture and equipment from landfills and donating it to worthy causes, like schools and charities. Computers, desks, chairs, boardroom tables, projectors - more than 30 million tonnes of corporate waste head to Canadian dumps each year.

The company combines money-making with money-giving.

"It's altruistic capitalism. At the front end, we've got an operating company that charges other companies to do work and makes profit. The back end of the business is a charitable trust, and the operating company covers a lot of the cost of the charitable trust. So we don't go out asking for money, we go and earn money to run the charitable trust. That's unique. The other aspect, which is equally important, is the people involved. We've got an environment here and a team of people here who really feel they're making a difference, and that's very, very motivating for those involved."

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Positive thought + altruism = 10,000 Thoughts

The power of thought to create our reality is getting a lot of press these days. 10000Thoughts.com is a website that builds on that idea with an altruistic spin.

"Helping others often does as much for the helper as for the one being helped.  The act of helping others can silence the ego, create a profound sense of peace, and open ourselves up to the abundance that is ours to have."

The idea that our thoughts have power is nothing new, in fact there have been many scientific experiments conducted to test and prove the theory. Mr. Pair says some of his inspiration came from Lynne McTaggart's book, 'The Intention Experiment', which documents some of these studies. Oprah just completed two shows on the 'Power of Thought' and the 'Law of Attraction'.

10,000 Thoughts takes these ideas to the next level by creating an on-line community where people can combine their thoughts to help one another. The website also provides an  avenue for people to take action as well.  Mr. Pair states, "Thoughts alone are powerful, but when combined with actions and positive emotion, achieving the desired results are inevitable.  10,000 Thoughts has created a community where all aspects of goal achievement are included."

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More socially responsible investing options with ETFs

The more I see money flowing towards the idea of doing good, the happier I am, because money can be a great catalyst for positive change.  If you're looking for more options for socially responsible investing, there's a new option out there with ETFs (exchange-traded funds). As this article from Motley Fool describes it:

There's a new option available to you, though. Now you can invest in a socially responsible manner via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which offer some advantages over traditional mutual funds. Like index funds, ETFs are typically based on some index or grouping of stocks. They tend to sport low fees, and whereas some mutual funds have minimum investment amounts of $3,000 or more, you can buy as little as a single share of an ETF (though that extreme is not always smart, given commission costs -- spending $15 to buy a $45 share puts you down 33% from the get-go).

If you want to know more about ETFs, the article also includes a good list of links to more information. 

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Nobel winner Yunus sees social business stock market

Thirty years ago, if someone had told you that loaning money to the desperately poor was a self-sustaining way to boost people out of poverty, you might have thought they were a few cards short of a full deck. Loaning money to people who have no ability to pay it back? Absurd!

And yet Muhammed Yunus started doing just that, founding the Grameen Bank and ultimately winning a Nobel Prize for his visionary ideas and efforts.

Now Yunnus has another vision, one that helps focus the power of the business world on doing good and making a positive impact. He sees the need for a social business stock exchange.

...Yunus said that there is a need for a separate stock market for socially-oriented companies. These exchanges should primarily list companies which would be doing social work.

Here investors can invest money in the company which is involved with the kind of social work the investor wants to do and put money into, the economist explained. Though it is a free market time, there is need for businesses to do good to people, Yunus stressed.

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) a growing trend

More and more companies are waking up to the idea that Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) isn't just a feelgood warm fuzzy.

There's growing evidence that companies are embracing CSR practices — whether it's reducing factory and transportation pollution, using natural materials for packaging or treating workers fairly — because they believe such strategies can be profitable and socially responsible.

"All of a sudden, corporate responsibility is an idea whose time has arrived," says Julie Fox Gorte, chief social investment strategist at the Calvert Group, which manages socially responsible mutual funds. "We're seeing more companies who think it's not just a philosophy, but good for business, too."

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Fair Trade success

Fair Trade labeling began in the 80's, started to really catch on in the mid-90's, and has steadily been gaining steam since then. This article on Fair Trade success points to the growth in the UK, and talks about  the impact. 

Fair trade sales in the UK are currently increasing by about 40 per cent every year.

What’s most important about this success story is that some of the world’s poorest people are benefiting. Amid the gloom of bad news, fair trade shows that there are effective ways for the poor to gain from international trade and for trade to genuinely support sustainable development, rather than undermine it as so often happens.

It's written by the authors of the newly published book, 50 Reasons to Buy Fair Trade. While you're at it, you might want to read this interview with one of the authors, Miles Litvinoff.

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Kiva's microfinance - Philanthropy for the rest of us

You don't have to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffett to get in on the action of investing your money to make the world a better place. With a young company called Kiva, you can start being a philanthropist with as little as $25.

Kiva is essentially a microcredit clearing house, allowing you to invest in specific developing world entrepreneurs (for a personal touch, each entrepreneur they work with is highlighted on the site, and you can choose where your money goes.

I've been a huge fan of microcredit for years. I love what Kiva is doing, putting the ability to make a difference within reach of the rest of us. And I love how they're using technology to do it in a way that wouldn't have been thinkable ten years ago.

Change for the better, I'd say.

(And if you're not familiar with microcredit, here's a primer on Kiva's site.)

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Honor system coffee

Here's one that's near and dear to my Seattle-based, java-powered heart...a story about coffee. Better yet, a story about a coffee shop/social experiment based on the idea that, "...people are essentially good, but can be influenced by their environment. If people see good, they'll be good."

Terra Bite, a coffee shop in Kirkland, Washington (near Seattle), was launched in November by a Google programmer named Ervin Peretz. Nothing remarkable about that, really. You can't turn around without hitting a coffee shop around here. But here's what makes the idea unique.

There are no prices. It's an honor system, complete with an anonymous drop box for people to pay. And do they?

Even without posted prices, "social monitoring" — the feeling that others are watching what you do — can enforce payment, said Erica Okada, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Washington Business School.

With its anonymous drop box, Terra Bite has minimized, if not eliminated, that effect. Under these circumstances, Okada said, the economic model predicts that Terra Bite customers won't pay anything.

But they do.

It averages $3 per transaction. Currently the coffee shop gets about 80 customers a day. Peretz figures when that hits 100 per day he will "more than break even."

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