Social Intrapreneurship at Work

“How many of you would call yourself a social intrapreneur?” This was the question that Mark Feldman, managing director of Cause Consulting posed to the fifty attendees at this morning’s Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference breakout session, “The Business of Corporate Citizenship: Creating New Social Ventures within Your Company.”

A quick glance around the room showed only a handful would give themselves this title.

Yet, as Mark and his panelists, Amy Skeeters-Behrens (head of Global Citizenship Marketing, eBay) and Nancy Mahon (executive director, MAC AIDS Fund), made it clear to all attendees, anyone considering creating a “social corporate enterprise” within their company is exactly that. Perhaps, Mark suggested, after this session, “you’ll consider yourselves a little bit differently.”

But first: what is a social intrapreneur? According to Amy, a social intrapreneur focuses on “building and developing new ventures within a company, designed to generate large-scale social impact”.

For eBay, this means creating a wide array of ventures – from the eBay Green Team to World of Good by eBay – that enable their buyers, sellers, employees and larger community connect to causes they care about. At MAC AIDS Fund, social intrapreneurship takes the form of the MAC Viva Glam line of lipsticks and lip glosses whose sales support HIV/AIDS initiatives globally.

Throughout the panel I was struck by a handful of ideas and themes that kept cropping up – what I’d call best practices for any social intrapreneur:

Alignment of core competencies and the social venture you’re creating: As Amy stressed, and Nancy reiterated, building these social venture opportunities means taking a long, hard look at what your company does well – and what it might not be as good at. Not only does this ensure your venture will be aligned with what you do best, but it forces you to partner with authentic, credible leaders in the space you want to play in. In eBay’s case, they are great at building shopper marketplaces and providing a trusted space to transact, but they’re not as knowledgeable or skilled in other crucial areas that were necessary to build World of Good. This led them to partner with social entrepreneurs and industry leaders to help build their model – and their credibility.

Creation of a point of view for your venture: Nancy repeatedly brought up the idea that the Viva Glam line of products has been successful because it represents a connection to a singular point of view (HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and support). The great thing about having a CSR point of view, rather than simply a portfolio of smaller causes grouped together, is that this can clearly support the business’s point of view and brand meanings.

CSR needs to be about making money: Both panelists agreed that “profit isn’t a dirty word” and that “you can make money and do good in the world.” This idea is especially crucial for developing the business case for CSR – until you come to terms with the fact that CSR must directly tie to financial outcomes, you won’t be able to create and identify the data you need in order to make a compelling business case for your work.

In all it was a terrific first breakout session, with great ideas and inspiration flowing throughout the room. I can’t wait to see how the next session goes!

Ashley's Note: This is the first of three posts I wrote as a featured blogger for The Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship's 2010 Annual Conference. Click these links to learn more about the conference, check out the session description, and to read all the blog posts from the event.

The State of Corporate Citizenship

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be live blogging (and tweeting!) from this year’s Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference April 11 - 13.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the BCCCC hosts an incredible conference each year that includes a “Who’s Who” list of CSR, sustainability, and philanthropy professionals from around the world.

The purpose, like most conferences, is to bring together respected corporate citizenship professionals and thought-leaders for idea-sharing, discussion and networking. Students like me (and basically anyone who’s not a corporate member of the BCCCC) don’t usually get to attend, but somehow the stars aligned this time around and I’ll be there. It’s a rare opportunity, for sure – and I’m very excited.

I’ve been asked by BCCCC to provide live blog content for three sessions:

• The Business of Corporate Citizenship: Creating New Social Ventures within Your Company
• A Seat at the UnCommon Table: Leveraging your Philanthropic Investments in Education
• Corporate Citizenship Journey – What have we learned? What is next?

With experts from industry, government, and the nonprofit sector, the sessions promise to be thought-provoking, informative, and inspiring.

Once the conference ends and the dust settles, I’ll be reposting my write-ups on The Changebase.

Can’t wait until the Conference has finished? Check out the BCCCC blog for my posts as they're uploaded, and be sure to follow me on Twitter. I’ll be tweeting regularly so you can get all the updates.

And another tip: don’t just follow me on Twitter. Search the conference hashtag #bcccc_conf to see what everyone’s tweeting about!

To learn more about the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and this year’s conference, check out their website.

Ashley's Note: As of April 15th, all of my posts from the BC Conference are live on The Changebase. Check out:

• Social Intrapreneurship at Work
• Taking a Seat at an Uncommon Table
• The Corporate Citizenship Journey

The Basics of Fair Trade

How many of you have heard of Fair Trade? I’d imagine many of you have. But how many could actually define it, or discuss it, or even promote it? My guess is not as many.

That was the case for me until recently. Recognizing that I’d heard a lot about Fair Trade but that I couldn’t actually talk about it at length with anyone, I felt the need for some information and education.

Enter my local Net Impact chapter and the event they hosted this week featuring Rodney North, self-proclaimed “Answer Man” from Equal Exchange.

Equal Exchange is a 24 year-old organization started by three guys trying to answer a question: “What if food could be traded in a way that is honest and fair, a way that empowers both farmers and consumers?”

As the founders saw it, there were three key problems they felt needed to be addressed:

1. Chronic, generational poverty amongst the tropical farming population, especially coffee farmers. Interestingly, they noted that while coffee farmers kept getting poorer and poorer, the industrialized nations that drank the coffee kept getting richer and richer.
2. Exploitative and undignified working conditions in the U.S., which they felt warranted the creation of a new democratic and cooperative business model.
3. Uninformed and disempowered consumers that were unaware of the environmental and social problems present in various production supply chains and marketplace systems.

With all of this in mind, Equal Exchange set out to create an organization that would tackle these three crucial issues.

Today, Equal Exchange sources fair trade coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas, nuts and berries from farmer-owned cooperatives in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. In their own words:

At Equal Exchange, we’ve created a different path to the market – one that brings farmers closer to you, and delivers more of your dollars to their communities. We do this by partnering with small-scale farmer co-ops that are democratically organized, which means they make decisions on their terms. Through this model, we believe food can become a delicious and powerful tool for creating Big Change for small farmers, their families and communities.

According to Rodney and the Equal Exchange website, Fair Trade encompasses a number of practices and ideals meant to provide adequate protection and support to growers, as well as increased assurance and certification for consumers. Some of these include:

• Direct purchasing from the farmer cooperatives themselves – ie: no middlemen
• Agreed-upon floor pricing for commodities so that even in times of financial crisis, farmers earn a living wage
• An extension of credit by Equal Exchange and other importers so that farmers may invest in new resources and technology to grow a higher quality product
• A fee paid by importers and wholesalers to cover the costs associated with Fair Trade certification
• A seal attached to each and every product ensuring certified status to the consumer.

As Rodney put it so cleverly: “We don’t teach a man to fish. We just stop stealing from him.”

And whether it’s through the fair prices they pay farmers, the kind of cooperative organization they’ve created, or the partnerships they’ve built with consumer and faith-based organizations, it’s clear that Equal Exchange is pushing forward with its mission of creating a “more equitable, democratic and sustainable world”.

As the talk wound down, Rodney touched on a couple of points that I thought were worth sharing.

When asked about Equal Exchange’s goals for the future, Rodney said that the organization’s explicit purpose is to be an example for others to follow. As an organization, Equal Exchange can only buy so much coffee itself! So its goal is to create a model that others can emulate. And, he said, the one good thing about our economic system is that organizations copy models that work.

He pointed to McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Ben & Jerry’s as examples of companies that have gotten into using Fair Trade products. While most would argue their intentions are purely based on maintaining or growing market share, Rodney still sees this as a success – because regardless of their intentions, they're still supporting Fair Trade principles and practices.

Finally, and I thought very insightfully, someone brought up the topic of the “Local Food” movement – that is, the idea of eating locally to promote more sustainable agriculture and food production.

“How does Fair Trade,” the attendee asked, “align with or diverge from the goals of eating locally?”

After admitting that the idea of eating locally can be problematic for Fair Trade proponents, Rodney said the best Equal Exchange can do is provide information and education to consumers looking to learn more. He also pointed out that some products – like coffee, for instance – just can’t be sourced locally.

So, while a neighborhood coffee shop might want to serve sustainably-produced beans, their best bet is to stick with fairly-traded, overseas products versus anything artificially produced closer to home.

All in all, a terrific night of learning, conversation, and food for thought (no pun intended). I encourage you, the next time you’re wandering the grocery aisles, to think about where your bananas or nuts or chocolate came from.

By being thoughtful and educating ourselves about the origins of our food and the people who produce it, we can go a long way in supporting the important mission of organizations like Equal Exchange.

Happy grocery shopping!

Meeting Our Future Women Leaders

This weekend I was lucky enough to be featured as a panelist at the third annual Boston University 85 Broads conference. The theme of the event was “Rising to the Top,” and it brought together an incredible group of professional and undergraduate women to learn from each other and network.

If you aren’t familiar with 85 Broads, a quick check of their website tells an interesting story:

85 Broads is a global network of 20,000 trailblazing women who are inspired, empowered, and connected.

The "founding members" of 85 Broads were women who worked for Goldman Sachs at 85 Broad Street, the investment banking firm's NYC headquarters. Over the past decade, 85 Broads expanded its membership to include women who are alumnae and students of the world's leading colleges, universities, and graduate schools worldwide. Our members are located in 82 countries around the world and work for thousands of for-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations.

As a graduate of an all-girls high school and a big proponent of creating leadership opportunities for women in business, I’ve always been curious about 85 Broads – which is why it was so exciting to be invited to present at the BU chapter’s annual conference.

The panel I participated in was for undergraduate women interested in pursuing nonprofit careers, and I was joined by two other panelists doing some incredible work:

• Amma Sefa-Dedeh, executive director of One Hen (a very cool microfinance nonprofit here in Boston) and a recent Babson MBA graduate
• Jenny Jordon, associate consultant at The Bridgespan Group (an off-shoot of Bain & Company that works specifically with nonprofit clients).

Amma, Jenny and I were there to talk about our experiences working in nonprofit leadership roles, discuss the various advantages and challenges of working in the nonprofit sector, and to answer questions from the young women in attendance.

For my part, I got the chance to talk about my work in fundraising, my interest in corporate social responsibility, and my decision to pursue an MBA. Many attendees were also interested to hear how I was using The Changebase to not only share ideas and create conversation, but also as a personal branding tool during my job search.

One particular question seemed to strike a chord not just for the women in the audience but for me as well.

An attendee asked about switching from the nonprofit sector to the corporate world, and vice versa: “Is it hard to make the switch” she wondered, “or do I need to pick one sector and stick with it?”

Given that I am a sector-switcher myself, this is something I tackle regularly in my cover letters and job applications. My feeling is that there’s nothing wrong with “switching sides” but you do need to be prepared to do a little extra hand-holding with potential employers. The experience and background that resonates with recruiters in one sector might not be what resonates with recruiters in another, so job seekers need to be prepared for this.

As Amma so insightfully put it: “Career switchers need to put in 200% extra effort” – whether you’re moving from one sector to another, or simply switching functions like going from engineering to finance, you need to be ready to work that much harder to get people to take a chance on you and your skills.

Certainly valuable advice for everyone in the room – even me!

In all I was incredibly impressed by the roughly 25-30 young women in attendance (dressed in suits on a Saturday no less!). Between the thoughtfulness of their questions and their passion for learning about and doing this important work, it was clear to me that these women are motivated to not only make social change, but to forge ahead in their own professional careers.

In my opinion, if the women in attendance are any indication of the quality of our future women leaders, I think we’re in good hands!

Engaging Your Employees in CSR

In the grand scheme of things, Corporate Social Responsibility is still an emerging field, which means that everything – from general strategy to best practices – is still being solidified.

One of the questions that is still debated quite often in the CSR community concerns the “business case” for this kind of work.

In a world where business decisions need to be justified through sound reasoning and quantitative measurements, it can be tough to explain why “doing good” is important.

I’ve tried to tackle this question in past posts, and the fact that I’m bringing it up again I think is proof that the jury’s still out on this one. Nonetheless, I did just hear one perspective on the topic that I thought was worth sharing with you.

Bob Willard is a sustainability author whose “claim to fame” (as he put it) is the quantification of the bottom-line benefits that companies can enjoy through CSR. He recently presented his ideas on the value of CSR as part of a Net Impact Issues-in-Depth call that I was lucky enough to listen to.

Bob started by laying out his general framework for the case for CSR, otherwise known as The 3 R’s:

1. Risks
2. Responsibilities
3. Rewards

The first category, Risks, is pretty obvious and serves as the most direct justification for engaging in CSR. From managing regulatory changes to preparing for the potential depletion of certain natural resources, corporations must consider what risks they face and how CSR might help mitigate exposure to those risks.

The next category, Responsibilities, really speaks to the new wave of expectations surrounding corporate involvement in the community and the environment. Whether from consumers, the media, NGO’s or even employees, there is clearly pressure being put on companies to be active and engaged in society – with reputation, loyalty and credibility at stake.

Yet it was the third ‘R’ – Rewards – on which Bob focused. As Bob put it, “There are surprisingly big rewards for taking up responsibility expectations and mitigating risk”.

In fact, according to Bob’s calculations (which he called conservative), these rewards can be sizeable for both large corporations and small-to-medium businesses, who can expect to earn at least 38% and 66% more profit, respectively, through CSR programs.

Not surprisingly, the biggest area of CSR reward comes from the eco-efficiencies created in sustainability programs (ie: saving water, reducing waste, etc).

What comes next? Interestingly enough, the second biggest reward opportunity comes through employee engagement in CSR programs. Whether through reduced recruiting and attrition costs or increased employee productivity, the HR benefit of CSR is not to be overlooked.

Now, we all know anecdotally that CSR improves morale, reduces turnover, and generally leads to more satisfied employees. What’s cool about what Bob has done is that he’s actually put numbers behind these assertions and provided the calculations that prove these rewards.

Admittedly, I’ve never been great at statistics – but when Bob presented a regression analysis showing a correlation (R² = .57) between employee engagement and CSR activities, I just about swooned!

While I’m not going to repeat everything Bob presented, you can check out his website to see presentations and spreadsheets that show the numbers behind his ideas. In general, Bob's overall point was that employee engagement drives business results (after all, happy employees beget productive employees) – and that CSR is one big way to dramatically improve the recruitment, retention and satisfaction of employees.

Thus, in essence, CSR leads to engaged employees which leads to increased returns for business. And voila - the business case for CSR in a nutshell!

As a job-seeker and future engaged employee, this assertion rings true for me. Nonetheless, if you’re still doubtful, I’ll leave you with some of Bob’s statistics as food for thought:

Recruiting

• 40% of MBA grads rated CSR as a an “extremely” or “very” important company reputation measure (Hill & Knowlton Jan 08)
• MBA grads will sacrifice an average of $13,700 in annual salary to work for a socially responsible company (2003 Stanford University study)

Retention

• 83% of employees in G7 countries say their company’s positive CSR reputation increases their loyalty (GlobeScan 2006)
• 57% of employees say their company’s CSR reputation is a factor in retaining them (Towers Perrin-ISR global survey 2007)

Productivity

• Fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues (Hay Group website, May 2009).
• At Best Buy, a 2% increase in employee engagement at one of its electronics stores corresponds, on average, to a $100,000 annual rise in its sales (Business Week, “The Case for Optimism,” August 13, 2009).

So what do you think? Is employee engagement a compelling motivation for CSR at your company? Is this an argument that wins over senior company leaders? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.