Op/Ed on CSRwire: We Did Our Job, Time to Move On

Ed Note: The following op/ed is from Joe Sibilia, former CEO of CSRwire, which was recently acquired by 3BLmedia.

By Joe Sibilia

Like a flower that blooms and dies to seed new growth, CSRwire.com lived out its usefulness, spawning and raising awareness for innovative approaches to a new economy.   Our talented team has been seasoned by the dripping drama of a federal court case, driven by the challenges of a shifting media landscape, determined by detractors’ defilements and championing a new approach to business -- an awesome effort.  With a full appreciation that the bloom was fading and the end was near, they extended the limits of their imagination, experimented and explored new boundaries.   It was time to move on and continue our experiment with innovating new ideas.

As we close the doors on a remarkable 15 years, there is a lot of history and achievements to remember and many organizations and individuals to appreciate.  Although this space is not big enough to recognize everyone, we’ll do our best to highlight many. 

It has been said that life is too short to learn from your own mistakes; we should learn from the experiences of others. Learn from our mistakes and benefit from our experiences.  This post will focus on appreciating our many friends and colleagues. My earlier post focused on sharing what we learned.  I hope to engage in further conversations.

Vice President of Partnerships Kristen Sibilia sums up the philosophy leading CSRwire best: "Business is personal, it’s family."  We ask ourselves: “If we treat our business relationships like immediate family, would we act differently?”  We've treated our business partners as true family members. A lifetime indoctrination in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable startups helped us remain critical and open to innovation. We appreciate all your efforts.

Decades before the turn of the century, inside the canopy of a Vermont garage, Jay Falk and his team of developers conceived and nurtured CSRwire as the lone voice screaming the messages of hope of its members, to anyone that would listen.   Jay needed additional financing to create and develop more innovative approaches, like the OneReport, and Meadowbrook Lane Capital, which successfully used the wire for its clients and in an attempt to take Ben & Jerry's Homemade private and create a private stock exchange, stepped in.

In the blizzard of a Nor'easter snowstorm, Jan Morgan trekked to Gasoline Alley and helped shovel us out, established structure with the company and as President, stayed for three years. She hired Aman Singh as Editorial Director, who through her journalism and digital communication experience steered the wheel as we navigated  from a traditional newswire to a true innovative digital media platform.   

Jack Wysocki has been with CSRwire and stayed the course longer than anyone else, sharing his experience and insights with hundreds of members and collaborating on getting their CSR and sustainability news out to the world.  Frank Fitzgerald Attorneys at Law sowed a depth of talent and compassion, harvesting consistent legal counsel. We've had great technology partners in Fuzz Productions, fellow B Corp Singlebrook Technologies and Mark Firehammer.

The members of our LLC/B Corp., Doug and Ann Stockbridge, David Mager, Dr. James Faulkner, Frank Fitzgerald, Jan Morgan and Jay Falk, demonstrated a willingness to be patient and allow us the flexibility to challenge traditional approaches to business.

Over the years there have been various Executive Directors, including Meagan Connelly, Christina O'Connell and Greg Schneider, all of whom helped distinguish CSRwire and leveraged their association with us to pursue successful careers on their own. 

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) collaborated with us in their infancy, as their sole communication partner, to advance the voice of their members and offer a platform to share best practices with a global audience.

Sustainable Brands and the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship used our rich platform to inform, educate, attract and form successful business alliances. We also enjoyed valuable partnerships with Ceres and the Social Venture Network as they were emerging from obscurity.

The Hauser Center at Harvard and the Initiative for Responsible Investment launched “From Transparency to Performance – Industry Based Sustainability Reporting on Key Issues” on CSRwire.com, ultimately leading Dr. Jean Rogers to take the leap and inaugurate the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

Coop America (now known as Green America) led multiple activists’ efforts, broadcasting their plans and objectives to our audience, impacting changes as wide as GMOs and conflict minerals.

A nationwide training tour of Business Wire bureaus inspired Business Wire to pursue an exclusive partnership with us, following their purchase by Berkshire Hathaway.  

Kristen Sibilia was embedded in the New York headquarters of PRNewswire and trained their staff on the finer art of CSR communication.  

Marketwired, our Canadian partner, established a powerful tool to augment the social and environmental initiatives of an entire nation.

Getting behind the curtain at Bloomberg provided a rare glimpse of the wizard of Wall Street. Bloomberg tapped into our feeds for voluntary disclosure and popularized the term ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) by making our content available to its users.

We did not sit on the sidelines and watch the shifting role of capitalism.  As we gained momentum and added new members across the corporate, NGO, government and academic sectors, we continued to highlight the movement through our independent reporting and op/eds. Led by Sarah Peyok and Francesca Rheannon and in recent years by Aman Singh, our independent reporting and commentary section published peerless and honest reports about challenges and opportunities, earning distinction from peers and multiple media outlets.

Countless authors’ books and events were featured free of charge, and nonprofits were extended significant discounts to get their word out.

From the formation of the United Nations Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative and the launch of B Lab and its B Corporation certification, to the advent and consequent debate over integrated reporting, the confluence of marketing, PR and CSR as well as the opportunities offered by social media, we discussed, debated, reported and distributed content to a diverse audience of journalists, analysts, activists, academics, investors, investor relations, public relations and pubic policy professionals worldwide.

We partnered with TriplePundit to launch innovative stakeholder engagement campaigns. These facilitated conversations were aimed at taking a pulse of your community, sharing knowledge and inspiring action. These resulted in millions of impressions, hundreds of engaged stakeholders and hours of critical feedback for our members.

In 2013, when the University of California dipped into our archives to conduct a study on the voluntary disclosures of our members and found a link between voluntary disclosures and increased shareholder value, Harvard was conducting a similar study between good corporate citizenship and access and cost of capital. We knew then that staying focused on our mission to turn values into valuation was finally beginning to shift the mainstream landscape, propelled further by peer reviewed research, making the business case palpable.  Our investments and commitment in time, effort and capital would begin to pay community dividends long after our passing.

We’ve learned as much in this deal as we did selling environmental technology and fruit beverage formulas to PepsiCo, starting one of the first micro finance small business banks in America, preserving the social and environmental initiatives of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream, incubating over fifty social enterprises on Gasoline Alley and working with the least employable and the greatest public safety threats in our community.  Each deal has been a new learning experience.

In all, we’ve been at the forefront pioneering a new way of doing business.  The pieces left behind are like children on their way to adulthood, plowing a new beginning into the future.  Best wishes to all searching for a better way of doing business.

Joe