CENTER FOR BUSINESS
AS AN AGENT OF WORLD BENEFIT

Nature’s Bin is a thriving example of a business model that has sustainability as the backbone at both ends of the value chain; what is offered to the customer and how it is made. The inspiration for adopting this focus is manifested through integrating education/training and retail sales. With the capabilities of the parent company, Cornucopia, which is a non-profit providing vocational and skill-based training to people with disabilities, and the business acumen of Nature’s Bin as a fresh foods store, the match between societal need and business benefit is beautifully achieved.

Newman’s Own Organics is an organic food manufacturer that focuses on providing the kinds of products people loved as kids, but takes them one step further by using the highest quality of available organic ingredients. Nell Newman, daughter of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, along with Peter Meehan founded Newman’s Own Organics in 1993. Newman’s Organics has been an innovator of organic food products since its conception, concentrating on developing products with wide consumer appeal, such as pretzels, cookies and popcorn. According to Nell Newman, “Some people have a narrow definition of organic. They see it as heavy and tasteless, being forced to change your eating habits. No way! This is great food that is ultimately better for the environment long, long term.”

A cleaning company that is committed not only to keeping the client’s house clean but also ensuring that environment is equally pristine by adopting and promulgating natural and safe cleaning practices – ‘Green Clean Inc’ is an example of how high quality customer service, productive work environment and a healthier planet are goals that buttress each other. The organization has successfully achieved this via a strong sense of social consciousness, providing safer alternatives to harmful chemicals in cleaning products and educating customers, public and employees on safer cleaning practices.

Ten Thousand Villages (TTV) provides vital, fair income to Third World artists and crafts people by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories in North America. It is a nonprofit, self-supporting alternative trading organization (ATO) - a non-governmental organization designed to benefit artisans, not to maximize profits. They market products from handicraft and agricultural organizations based in low-income countries. They provide consumers around the world with products that have been fairly purchased from sustainable sources. ATOs put fair trade into practice and campaigns for more equitable terms of trade for artisans from low-income countries TTV is a nonprofit fair trade program of Mennonite Central Committee, a relief, service and peace agency of the North American Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches. To TTV, each village in the world represents a unique, distinctive people... offering extraordinary products born of their rich cultures and traditions.

The Social Enterprise El Pan de Cada Día (Our Daily Bread) was born in 2003 as the first of its kind in Peru and the only enterprise of its kind to exclusively employ disabled persons (Personas con Discapacidad a/k/a PCD). The company rescues, recuperates and reinserts into society disabled persons of low economic resources that are totally abandoned and that live in extreme poverty in places like the province of Trujillo in La Libertad. The PCD are given dignified living conditions and the opportunity to work regularly for the first time in their lives. The bread and pastry Our Daily Bread produces is sold to approximately 15,000 persons every day in what Peruvians term the "D and E social strata". This segment of the population benefit from the cost and quality of the products created by Our Daily Bread. Working within that poor population the company is fighting against poverty by combining the employment of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid with producing an affordable product for the same.

The Winter 2004 Issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review tells the story of Placer Dome's development of "The Care Project" to facilitate the lay off of more than 13,000 employees in seven countries in a fair and responsible manner. A Canada-based global mining firm, Placer Dome purchased 50 percent of the South Deep Mine from Western Areas Limited in 1999. The mine required massive restructuring in order to make it profitable and to bring it in line with Placer Dome’s safety standards, resulting in nearly a third of the mine’s workforce being let go.

Interface began the QUEST (Quality Utilizing Employee Suggestions and Teamwork) program in 1995 to identify, measure and eliminate waste. Since then, associates have contributed valuable suggestions to improve the efficiency of the equipment and processes. To date, the program has generated significant savings for the company. In 2001, Interface took QUEST a step further by engaging areas of the company, such as Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, that previously had not been as involved. Rather than hold each facility to generic guidelines, individual Interface facilities are encouraged to discover ways to reduce waste that are unique to them. Interface is expanding the breadth of the program and encouraging involvement and accountability at all levels of its operations.

Grameen Bank (GB) has reversed conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and creating a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity. GB provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral. At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the overall development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the grounds that they are poor and hence not bankable. Since the bank does not wish to take any borrower to the court of law in case of non-repayment, it does not require the borrowers to sign any legal instrument. Although each borrower must belong to a five-member group, the group is not required to give any guarantee for a loan to its member. Repayment responsibility solely rests on the individual borrower, while the group and the Grameen Bank center oversee that everyone behaves in a responsible way and none gets into a repayment problem. There is no form of joint liability, i.e. group members are not responsible to pay on behalf of a defaulting member.

Among the many rural businesses of post-communist Russia, ALVI Inc. offers a new model of self-reliance and sustainable development. By aligning community interest and business interest, the company has successfully grown into a multi-product organization with high productivity levels and a flourishing community.

Edun is a socially conscious clothing company created by Ali Hewson and her rock star husband, U2's Bono, with New York clothing designer Rogan Gregory. Launched in spring 2005, the company aims to bring the issue of sustainable employment to the world of high fashion. EDUN was born as an alternative approach to creating beautiful clothes in a respectful, sustainable manner and to shift the focus away from aid to trade in the developing world, particularly Africa.

As the oldest and largest for-profit Fair Trade company in the U.S., Equal Exchange trades directly with 28 democratically run farmer co-ops located in 14 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Its mission is to build long-term partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relations between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate the viability of worker cooperatives and Fair Trade. They strive to build social and economic justice through the marketplace.

Offshore Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East - Exxon Mobil subsidiary Exxon Neftegas Liimited (ENL) - while developing the Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi oil and gas fields for the Sakhalin-1 consortium, discovered a lack of skilled local labor. To help the local residents obtain employment with Exxon, extensive training programs were set up, including English-language training. Other aspects of the training and community development support the growth of local suppliers and contractors.

The Greyston Bakery, a for-profit business, incorporates the positive societal agenda into its core business practice via hiring individuals “chronically unemployed” due to lack of skills and education, as well as histories of homelessness, drug addiction and incarceration. Furthermore, the bakery sustains the work of its non-profit affiliate, Greyston Mandela. With an overriding mission to reduce human suffering, both organizations are focused on sustainability, community development and empowerment.

A number of major financial institutions have come together to adopt a framework for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social issues in project financing. These global voluntary regulatory guidelines, the “Equator Principles” (EPs), are revolutionizing the way large projects are financed. Banks that adopt the EPs apply them globally to project financing in all industry sectors including mining, oil and gas, and forestry, and they make loans only to those projects whose sponsors aim to be socially responsible and environmentally sound.

Chase Home Finance hasn't just paid lip service to diversity; they have invested billions to make it a business necessity. How? Executives realized that reaching into underserved, lower income communities would not only open up a new market. It would also require employees who represented the minority members within those communities. The result: An initial $500 billion investment that is both reshaping community redevelopment efforts across North America, and also changing the company's diversity profile.

As president of Reebok’s Apparel and Retail Products Group, Marilyn Tam realized the soccer ball manufacturing operations in Pakistan were harmful to the children being forced to make the products and detrimental to the local community. By taking a long-term approach, she oversaw a process to correct the situation so that adults would take over the jobs and children would return to their schools.

Recognizing the sizable challenge of having an aging workforce with an average of mid-fifties at one of its plants in South Africa, Nissan took steps to replenish its workforce. Young relatives of the retirees were recruited to assure continuity of family incomes, older relatives served as their mentors before retiring, and financial planning and small- to medium-size business consultants were provided to all retirees. As a result company rejuvenation stimulated community development.