The Social Side Of Sustainability

The following is a guest post by our friends at Saybrook University’s Organizational Systems Program (a 3p sponsor) – designed for students, managers, leaders and consultants who want to understand the nature of organizations, collaborative practices, and transformative change toward systemic sustainability. by Kathia Laszlo One of the reasons it seems so impossible to solve [...]

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by Jess Sand One of the most contentious realities of the new economy is that consumers’ concern for the social impacts of any given product or service is increasingly driving their purchasing behavior. This has left companies large and small scrambling to account for those impacts, which can often be difficult to parse and even [...]

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by Jess Sand As the private sector beings to embrace the possibility that social innovation can lead to a robust bottom line, companies face the very real challenge of figuring out what these efforts might actually look like on the ground. Can a for-profit business truly adapt conventional operational approaches to build a more just [...]

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By Gopi Gopalakrishnan & Karen Pak Oppenheimer, World Health Partners Access to services has always been recognized as one of the chief determinants of health status.  In less developed countries, access is weak particularly for rural communities since formally qualified providers are often unavailable and the weak infrastructure makes availability of products, transportation or information inadequate.  [...]

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This article originally appeared on Dowser.org. Dowser Audio Slideshow: Adam Green, Rocking the Boat from Dowser on Vimeo. Adam Green believes in teaching 21st century job and life skills through old fashioned wooden boat building.

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James Weinberg for Commongood Careers Nonprofit organizations don’t create change. The people who work for nonprofit organizations create change. Imagine your favorite nonprofit. Maybe you work for one, maybe you support one. Now imagine if that organization had no money in the bank, no data on its computers, no branded materials for its mailings. Imagine [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 In February of last year, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  The $787 billion act included $500 million allocated to train “green-collar workers” in the environmental sector.  The inclusion of this funding in the bill was a major boon for the city of [...]

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We’ve covered the inspiring work of Samasource before. But we felt we’d be remiss for wrapping up our series on the social side of sustainability without including another look at this innovative effort.  Though it is a non-profit, Samasource works as a bridge between profit-based, socially-responsible companies, and marginalized people in countries such as Africa and throughout [...]

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Since opening its economy in the early 1990s, India has shown incredible promise, demonstrating rapid growth and entrepreneurial spirit.  But festering social issues still remain for many of its citizens, including poverty and a lack of opportunities and resources.  Many NGOs are devoted to improving the lives of many Indians, and India’s government has recently [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 Many folks in the local economy movement believe that small businesses can compete effectively.  But what happens when a community-based business wants or feels the pressure to grow?  Is it possible for a small, local business to grow without compromising its commitment to sustainability, people, and community?  Are [...]

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By Bryan Stubbs While not perfect, microfinance and Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) have been shown to be an effective tool in aiding mircoenterprises throughout third world communities. The positive impact they have on alleviating poverty and empowering entrepreneurs have been well publicized (Grameen Bank or BRAC). And while challenges remain (high interest rates/impact of the entrance [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 According to Michael Shuman, author of The Small-Mart Revolution, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.  Despite the growing presence of big box chain stores in the US and abroad, Shuman has witnessed a growing number of small businesses using entrepreneurial strategies to gain a competitive [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 The t-shirt you are wearing may have traveled up to 17,000 miles before you put it on.  From cotton grown in the US, it likely traveled to India where the cotton was spun into thread, to Pakistan where the thread was turned into cloth, and then to Sri [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 Product certifications are everywhere.  Walk into Whole Foods and you’ll see packages labeled Fair Trade Certified, USDA Organic, Rainforest Alliance Certified – the list goes on and on.  It can be challenging for consumers to understand exactly what these certifications mean for the products they choose to buy. [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 It’s hard to turn on the news these days without hearing an update on jobs and unemployment.  The federal government has invested millions in new projects to help create jobs across the US.  For the city of Cleveland, waiting for federal assistance just isn’t enough.  That is where [...]

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By Vale Jokisch at BALLE conference 2010 Last December, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post started a campaign to compel individuals to move their money to small community banks and credit unions, effectively boycotting the large banks at the center of the financial crisis.  The gist of the “Move Your Money” campaign was to create [...]

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By Paul Lamb Let’s face it. Social enterprise has not done a particularly good job of attracting and training the full range of next generation entrepreneurs. Sure, an increasing number of training programs exist at the college and graduate school level, but what about teenagers and youth in low income communities? Fortunately a number of [...]

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While microfinance has been a popular and successful tool in third world countries for more than four decades, the overt theme at the Microfinance USA 2010 conference in San Francisco is that domestic micro lending is an untapped, growing market that is not only much in demand, but is greatly in need. In simplest terms, [...]

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By Terry Provance, Executive Director, Oikocredit USA When Mohammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for creating the Grameen Microcredit Bank in Bangladesh he stated, “Poverty is the absence of all human rights.”  He seemed to be echoing what Mahatma Gandhi said about poverty being the worst form of violence 60 years before.  [...]

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Today, three billion people—nearly half the world’s population—burn coal, wood, dung, or compost to heat their homes and cook their food. In addition to the deforestation associated with open fire cooking, especially in regions of conflict, the need for fuel often leaves searchers vulnerable, exposing them to risk of attack. This is particularly true in [...]

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Social entrepreneurship—the art of creating programs with a transformative business model focused on bringing about large-scale, positive change—plays a critical role in building a more sustainable future by increasing income, improving environmental quality, creating jobs, and enhancing quality of life. But just like any start-up, there comes a time when a great idea needs an [...]

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Editor’s Note: This article was written by Nick Cain, and originally appeared on Dowser.org. When we hear the word “incubator,” the image that comes to mind is big heat lamp glowing above a newborn or maybe a basket of eggs. To the entrepreneur, both business and social, the word conjures up a friendly place where [...]

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We’ve all read or watched the horror stories coming out of Afghanistan.  This remote and rugged land has seen more than its share of suffering during the Soviet invasion, the tyranny of the Taliban, and the chaos of the most recent decade.  Whatever one’s take is on the current situation and uncertain future of Afghanistan, [...]

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By Olivia Khalili, founder, Cause Capitalism Ten-to-one if you’re reading this, you are an entrepreneur or intrapreneur who cares about making the world better. Whether you have a history-shifting concept, fledgling idea, or just a desire is often times irrelevant. We have a fascination with systemic solutions because they impress us in their genius, scale, [...]

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By Olivia Khalili, founder, Cause Capitalism One of the undeniable perks of being part of a sector that wants to change the world for the better is its collective commitment to change over self-advancement. Patagonia councils Walmart—a company 1,300 times its size—on greening its supply chain for free. Benetech founder Jim Fruchterman takes time away [...]

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(Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from David Bornstein and Susan Davis’ recent book, Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.) By David Bornstein and Susan Davis Launching an organization is a process of recruiting funders, advisors, board members, and staffers, one by one. Over the past thirty years, the resource landscape has exploded [...]

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In the same way ecosystems with high biodiversity have higher survival rates, businesses with high personnel diversity also fare better than those with one variety of employee. Increased diversity of employees results in a wider variety of thinking, more robust solutions to problems, etc.  In the same way, it’s not surprising that evidence has emerged [...]

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Sustainability is a poorly defined notion. More often than not—and we’re guilty of this, as well—sustainability is talked about in environmental terms. Be it about a company’s footprint from its data centers or the methodology for reporting, we sometimes miss the other two aspects of the bottom line. What sort of pundits would we be [...]

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It costs an employer 23 cents per hour per worker—on average—to provide sick time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   Yet, 39 percent of workers in the private sector and 26 percent of those who work part time do not have any sick days. And, about two-thirds of people who earn $10.40 an hour [...]

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A $3 device may just help wound patients with limited access to medical personnel heal faster.  And, there are about 55 million people in developing countries who could eventually benefit. Negative therapy pressure systems Negative-pressure therapy is relatively standard in the U.S., but the devices are relatively heavy, require a power supply to function and [...]

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