Mission Markets update from the B Corp Retreat

Mission Markets Blog

Mission Markets attended the B Corp Retreat yesterday in Long Branch, NJ. Some fellow B Corps also in attendance were Better World Books, CSRWire, Grassroots Capital, Murex Investments, and Singlebrook Technologies. It was a great opportunity for us to continue building our networks and we were inspired by the stories we heard from the B Corp community. The discussions of the day centered around three issue areas: Policy, Increasing B Corp numbers and visibility, and Impact Investing.

Today, we will be at the Social Venture Network‘s Fall Conference. Stay tuned for an update next week!

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A few days after the mine accident in Chile, which trapped 33 men 2000 feet below the earth, ourSodexo Chile team mobilized all its capabilities and experience to deliver a requirement of every rescue worker – food.

Our teammates in Chile worked tirelessly to come up with a creative way to feed warm, nutritious meals to almost 300 people working 24 hours a day on the rescue effort. Our own Sodexo heroes were able to come up with the means necessary to move the required supplies and food from Santiago, the Capital of Chile, all the way to the rescue site, about 560 miles away.

 dozen of Sodexo’s people worked daily in this operation, who with great dedication and professionalism, ensured that nothing was lacking to those working in the rescue of 33 miners.

Sodexo began “feeding hope” on August 16^th. At that time we didn’t know what the outcome would be. Six days later, on August 22^nd, an incredible piece of good news filled the camp – all 33 miners were alive. The message out of the shaft: “Estamos bien en el refugio los 33” — – Translated, “All 33 of us are well inside the shelter.” We were so inspired day after day up to and including the moment each miner brought to the surface alive and well.

In almost two months of volunteer work, and in coordination with the authorities, Sodexo distributed more than 50,000 thousand meals, equivalent to 40 tons of food to rescuers, authorities, police and army forces, among other representatives.

We at Sodexo offered the donation of food and services to the local Government, because we realize during events such as these, we become one united people, all hoping for the same outcome. We had the means and the supplies, so we considered our involvement just part of our commitment as good corporate citizens. We are incredibly happy to see this mission of hope turn into a celebration of joy.

Janet Awad is director general of Sodexo operations in Chile.

-This entry is from Sodexo’s blog page.

Tokyo Eco-Startup Fullcircle Innovations Is Announced as a Finalist in Red Herring 100 Asia Prize

From Glenn Croston’s Fast Company blog.

Solving climate change is a big challenge that will require cooperation and innovation on a global scale. Tokyo startup Fullcircle Innovations is taking on this challenge with its offerings at GreenITers.com and EcoAppsFree.com. The rapidly growing on-line community at GreenITers is bringing people together from around the globe to help build solutions, and with EcoAppsFree.com they are taking the fight right to your smart phone, but Fullcircle Innovations isn’t stopping there. Their vision is not just about products, but taking things to the next level of sustainability from CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) to CSR 2.0. As a finalist for the Red Herring 100 Asia prize, Fullcircle Innovations may get the boost they need to have the global impact they envision.

The Red Herring 100 Asia prize seeks to identify promising startups with the innovation and entrepreneurship that will drive disruptive technologies of the future. Past winners include Google, Yahoo!, and YouTube. The disruptive technology that Fullcircle Innovations is bringing to bear is designed not just to make money, but to make a difference in the environmental challenges our planet faces.
 
Time is short, and the challenges huge. The United Nations warned this week at the Convention on Biological Diversity that the world must act now to prevent mass extinctions. The tipping point to prevent the worst case scenario for climate change may be near. Fullcircle Innovations is working to implement the solutions laid by Thomas Friedman in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded: take action today, save what biodiversity we have left, and speed innovations and education for the next generation.
 
To do this, Flavio Souza, Fullcircle Innovations founder and CEO, envisions the green business world moving to CSR 2.0, in which individuals take responsibility (R) for the work to be done, and group together in social networks (S) of like-minded people who work together to find solutions. The best ideas and innovations from groups like this can be advanced in the corporate world (C) to deliver real solutions, moving from thought to action.

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Walmart Supports Small Business?

Listening to WNYC yesterday morning, Brian Lehrer was on discussing the prospect of Walmart selling organic produce acquired from small and medium sized local farms who practice sustainable farming.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. Walmart is definitely on the top of my least favorite big box stores list. For a variety of reasons. Over the years we’ve all heard about their not so fabulous business practices from treatment of employees, to outsourcing to China to keep prices down. Lets face it Walmart put small businesses out of business. So hearing the Walmart and support small business in the same sentence is shocking, and quite frankly immediately sets off a few red flashing lights in my mind.  The good news here, in my opinion, is that the whole concept off supporting small local farms has gotten mainstream enough that Walmart wants a piece of the sustainability pie! Great news right!?!

Here’s my problem, big box stores are by nature completely and utterly unsustainable! Stores like Walmart have put entire towns out of business, moved sources for goods from our own towns and surrounding cities to countries on the other side of the world. They thrive off the concept of buying cheap, throwing out, and buying cheap again. Thus filling our landfills with unnecessary waste.

It’s all a bit frustrating. If it takes a superstore like Walmart to revive small farms, to get more farms to practice sustainable farming, then that would truly be fantastic. However I can’t help but be wary of what’s going on. You can read about Walmart’s Sustainable Agriculture Goals here.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this topic.

via vivibambini.wordpress.com

Selling Business Sustainability to Executive Management

Generally, the surest way toward environmental and business sustainability is to engage an entire workforce from the top down.  While executive support is a critical key component of most success stories, it is not the only direction from which leadership can come. 

 Business sustainability leaders are often not the management or executives of the company. They are the employees with eco awareness in the organization who take eco action to make change.

 At Wal-Mart, employees are empowered through the company’s personal sustainability project. In just one example, the company saved $1 million a year from a suggestion by an employee to turn out the lighting on the vending machines at night.

 This act of employees working with the company leaders to define value and implement change is referred to as leading up. 

 Whether you work in a corporate culture in which employee action is encourage or a more traditional culture with less communication, there are strategies to further facilitate eco awareness and lead-up in the organization.

 1.    Engage management by incorporating sustainability targets as part of your personal performance metrics.

 2.    Include sustainability concepts in your personal development plan.

 3.    Take on difficult projects where there is opportunity to make significant sustainable change in the current operation of the company.

 4.    Look for opportunities to link value and sustainability in all work activities and projects.

 5.    Become the person in the organization that others look to for sustainability knowledge and innovative ideas.

 As mentioned in our eco friendly consulting, sometimes a “soft” sale approach by involving executives in the creation of the solution can illustrate on a ground level what business sustainability means in your organization.

 When companies consider what other businesses have achieved through upward leadership, they can better appreciate their own opportunities for improved employee engagement.  In our professional consulting at Taiga Company, we work with clients to encourage employees to leverage their eco awareness for the benefit of the organization.

Letter From Pakistan

My travel to Pakistan, in the wake of the deluge, is sponsored by some of my architecture firm’s clients and hosted by Pakistan’s Dawood Group. I’m here to gain a sense of the issues on the ground and to learn how we might help in relief and recovery efforts.

After two days of meetings in Islamabad with several organizations including the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, supporting NGOs, the National Engineering Services of Pakistan (who will be responsible for rebuilding standards and strategies), the Italian consulate, and the office of the Prime Minister responsible for organizing the national relief policy and organization, I’m prepared to travel to  the affected areas in the Sindh region, a vast, ancient alluvial plain at the confluence of nine rivers. Several weeks before I arrive here, the Sindh was experiencing heavy, seasonal monsoons. But the rising flood waters were actually the result of a much greater than normal rainfall to the north, where channels overflowed and flooded fields, grazing lands, roads, utilities, power stations, wells, schools, stores, as well as the settlements of tenant farmers and the homes of the many people who live impoverished lives close to the land.

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Lessons Learned from Board Members of Color

While more than 86 percent of board members of color recently surveyed said they either almost always or often feel comfortable voicing their opinions at meetings, 13 percent said they have encountered some form of tokenism.

Vital Voices: Lessons Learned from Board Members of Color is BoardSource’s first survey designed to amplify the voices of people of color serving on nonprofit boards of directors. It is part of BoardSource’s effort to discover why boards tend to lack racial diversity. In comparing the BoardSource Nonprofit Governance Indexes of 2007 and 1994, BoardSource found that board demographics remained relatively stable, with 86 percent of board members white in both indexes despite a dramatically changing landscape.
 
The Vital Voices survey, conducted in October 2009, analyzed data from 550 respondents. The report was made possible by the generous support of the James Irvine Foundation.
 
Half of the survey respondents said that reaching out to communities of color when recruiting new board members is one of the three most important things a nonprofit board can do to become more inclusive.
 
The top three reasons respondents gave for being recruited were

• their leadership potential

• the organization’s need for their professional skills

• their ability to represent the needs/interests of specific racial/ethnic communities

After they joined the board, some board members felt marginalized; 13% commented that tokenism negatively impacted their board experience. Such comments raise the question of whether and how boards are moving beyond applying a quota system.

Rideshare to the Jon Stewart Rally & Elections with Ridebuzz.org: Restore the Sanity!

 Rideshare to the Rally to Restore Sanity: Ridebuzz.org has implemented a Ridebuzz Event Group to help people share rides to the upcoming Jon Stewart and Colbert Rally taking place on October 30, 2010 in Washington DC. Ridebuzz is helping attendees find and share rides to the Rally, which reduces emissions [1] from holding such events. The online Ridebuzz Event Group for the Rally is a community organizing tool for people to post rides offered and needed, and matches drivers and riders – using email notification. Ridesharing is a way for people to work together to save costs, reduce emissions and find needed transportation [1]. We’ve seen a spike in web traffic since Stewart mentioned ridesharing on the air, which is helping us in our work to mainstream the use of ridesharing.

Rides for the Rally are listed on the homepage: http://www.ridebuzz.org and on the Ridebuzz Event Group: http://www.ridebuzz.org/restoresanity

The Party of Hate: Tea and No Sympathy

As a blogger at Good Business (Good-B), I usually write about money, not politics. This year, however, the two are indistinguishable. Make no mistake, American politics in 2010 are all about money—who has it, who doesn’t and who wants it at any cost.

The economy continues to teeter on disaster two years after the Fall of the Great Lehman Empire. The crash was heard around the world and reverberates in our lives to this day. Massive unemployment, foreclosure nightmares and millions of businesses closing their doors are changing the fabric of American middle class life.

People (those ordinary folks who did not cause the crash yet are paying for it) are mad as hell at the injustice of the bailouts and the economic fallout they inherited. The Wall Street mortgage machine used money as a weapon of mass destruction. Those responsible for the greatest bank robbery in our history have made away with the vault and their freedom too. It’s enough to make the citizenry rise up and turn the boats of taxpayer money over. And so they have in the form of the “Tea Party,” a well-funded upheaval of the status quo. Or is it?

The hyped-up hyperventilating media has convinced us that the amorphous body of angry and contradictory views dubbed the “Tea Party” is a revolution of the “people.” But who are these people? Nobody I know. Despite Peggy Noonan’s passionate defense of Tea Party dogma on Fareed Zakaria GPS recently, the tea drinkers are attracting all varieties of fringe extremists who want among other things to abolish public education, Social Security and Medicare and further deregulate the financial markets. Ouch!

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Book Discussion: Out of the Cage by Burt and Marjorie Liebert

Sponsored by World Centric and the Humanist Community:

Come join us! Together we can build A New World!
 
A discussion based on the new book, Out of the Cage
 
Discussion Leaders: Burt and Marjorie Liebert, Authors 

Bringing people together, living lightly and sustainably on the earth, and at the same time putting a stop to global climate change will be the topic for discussion on Thursday, October 28 at 7:30 PM at World Centric, 2121 Staunton Court, Palo Alto.  Discussion leaders will be Burt and Marjorie Liebert, authors of a new book, Out of the Cage.  “At a time when much of our literature is filled with pronouncements of gloom and doom,” wrote book reviewer Meg Bowman, “Burt and Margie Liebert’s new book, Out of the Cage, is Eleanor Roosevelt’s proverbial candle in the darkness.”    The authors claim that we are “caged in” by our culture, which teaches us that there are certain ways of doing things.  But our culture is no longer working because we are depleting the vital resources on which we depend.  Their book challenges us to get our heads “out of the cage,” and build a cleaner, greener, more livable world. 

Out of the Cage is a creative story of dedicated pioneers who set out to build a carbon-neutral, sustainable economy. It is a handbook for you and me to create a truly glorious society.
 
Admission is free and open to the public.

Thursday, October 28 7:30 PM

World Centric Community Space Wheelchair Accessible
2121 Staunton Court, Palo Alto, CA 94306