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Lucas Patchett and Nicholas Marchesi wanted to help the homeless in Brisbane, Australia, so they bought an old van, installed two washing machines and two dryers, and rode around the city offering a mobile laundry service. Four months later, they have 120 volunteers, sponsorship from major corporations, and a lot of publicity.

Patchett, 20, says the experience has been "awesome."

The best friends met in high school and have worked with the homeless for several years. The idea for the Orange Sky laundry van came to them when they saw how much clothing was being thrown away. Charities in Brisbane give away free clothes, and Patchett says the homeless would often take more than they needed and then discard the clothes after a few days.

"One of the things we want to do is reduce strains on resources," he says.

Patchett and Marchesi typically set up their van in parks in the early morning alongside cook-outs organized by local groups. They ask if people need laundry taken care of, then take in clothes, and deliver them clean at shelters. Local Salvation Army and Red Cross groups also borrow the van to do their own laundry rounds.

The friends aren't stopping with their home town. With sponsorship from LG, a detergent supplier and a servicing company, they plan to set up next in Cairns, in North Queensland, and after that in Sydney and Melbourne. By the end of 2015, they hope to have 15 vans and be nationwide. "What we aimed to do was create a little charity for young people, run by young people," Patchett says. "It's got heaps of traction, which has been awesome for us."

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A Mobile Laundry Service Keeps The Homeless In Clean Clothes

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Lucas Patchett and Nicholas Marchesi wanted to help the homeless in Brisbane, Australia, so they bought an old van, installed two washing machines and two dryers, and rode around the city offering a mobile laundry service. Four months later, they have 120 volunteers, sponsorship from major corporations, and a lot of publicity.

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9 min read

This story appears in the April 2014 . Subscribe "

Franchising is a powerful business model capable of efficiently delivering to the masses such varied resources as oil changes, emergency medical care, accounting services and jelly doughnuts. But could it do even more? Philanthropists are considering whether the franchise model can be used to bring vaccines, contraception, clean cooking fuel, food and other basic necessities to people in the developing world. The idea, known as social franchising or microfranchising, is beginning to catch on. After a few years of experimenting, the aid community is refining its approach and is ready to make social franchising a major plank in the way nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) assist the world's poorest regions.

The model is similar to commercial franchising, but the bottom-line goal is not pure profit--although many social franchises do aim to become self-sustaining. Rather, these organizations measure success through the number of people they feed, vaccinate or otherwise serve, and the number of franchisees provided with jobs.

In general, a social franchise, often sponsored by or spun off from an NGO or aid organization (although there are many independent social franchises), creates a network of local entrepreneurs who sell products or services door to door or from their homes. For instance, World Health Partners, a nonprofit launched in 2008 in India, recruits people in remote rural villages with limited access to healthcare. Through cell phones and portable computers, these reps connect their neighbors to a doctor in a larger city for a telemedicine session.

Other franchises offer internet connections or the use of cell phones, fortified dairy products, family-planning materials and even beekeeping supplies. Most social franchises rely on charitable donations or grants to stay in operation, but as the businesses become more sophisticated, many are hoping to reach self-sustainable levels.

Chuck Slaughter, founder of clothing and gear company TravelSmith and an entrepreneur who has helped turn around several international apparel brands, started his social franchise, Living Goods, in 2007, delivering lifesaving products to the poor by harnessing the power of the market. Using what he calls the "Avon lady" model, his crew of franchisees go door to door in villages in Uganda and Kenya, selling basic medicines, healthful foods, high-efficiency stoves, solar lights and other health and safety products.

Living Goods provides working capital loans to its agents, who earn sales margins of 15 to 25 percent. The company's goal, besides improving the livelihoods of its agents, is to treat deadly diseases in children, as well as to improve the health and income of its customers. With local on-the-ground knowledge and a desire to increase their profits, Living Goods representatives often venture into areas that are passed over by aid organizations.

Living Goods isn't self-sustaining yet, but Slaughter says the franchise is moving toward that goal. Much of that will come from the introduction of private-label products, designed by the company, which will reduce margins. Living Goods is also harnessing technology, using mobile phones and smartphone apps to gather market data that will help sellers market products directly to individual villagers.

"I've been doing this for seven years, and we're structured as a nonprofit," Slaughter says, "but the longer I'm involved, the fewer distinctions I see between ordinary franchising and what we do."

VisionSpring, which sells eyeglasses to people in more than 20 countries, followed a model much like Living Goods when it was founded in 2002. But simply selling glasses wasn't profitable enough to support sales reps, so the company changed the way it operates: Now the majority of its 15,000 "Vision" entrepreneurs are health workers allied with other organizations. VisionSpring teaches them how to dispense reading glasses, so that selling glasses can become an extra source of income. For the 703 million people who need glasses--the vast majority of them in the developing world--a pair of simple reading specs can improve their quality of life or help them find employment, especially for high-detail work such as weaving.

But VisionSpring also has a second model, one that has seen success in India and El Salvador. Instead of just selling reading glasses, entrepreneurs are associated with an optical store in a larger town. They travel to communities, selling glasses and eyedrops and treating common eye problems but are able to refer more complicated cases to the optical store. "We call it the hub-and-spoke strategy," says Jordan Kassalow, founder and co-chairman of VisionSpring. "It's like LensCrafters meets Mary Kay."

But after years in the nonprofit world helping millions of people, Kassalow is convinced that VisionSpring needs to be a viable business to reach a significant number of the millions more who need vision care.

"If we were a charity, we'd be really proud of ourselves," he says. "We recover $7 from the marketplace for every $10 we spend. But if we aren't sustainable, we'll be scaling those losses as we grow. We don't want to make ourselves more dependent on charity. We recognize there just aren't enough philanthropic dollars. Unless we develop a viable business model, we'll never be able to scale enough to make a dent in the overall problem."

As Kassalow and his team refine the way they do business, they're getting close to sustainability. They estimate they will break even in El Salvador this year. In India, they will cover 80 percent of their costs. But the main reason Kassalow wants his business to be self-sustaining is to demonstrate to multinational companies that there are ways to find and sell to the world's poor, and that the endeavor can be both philanthropic and profitable.

"We're so small compared to these $8 billion or $10 billion companies. If we help just half a million of the 700 million people who need glasses, we'll be wildly successful," Kassalow says. "But if one of these companies sees our success, they can help 100 million people easily. If they came in, we'd feel pretty proud to be the catalyst."

Greg Starbird is CEO of the HealthStore Foundation, which franchises 65 CFWshops (the name stands for Child and Family Wellness) in Kenya and 56 One Family Health locations in Rwanda. He's like to see his business become sustainable but knows he has to be realistic. "Nowhere in the world is healthcare delivered without subsidies of some sort," he explains. "We are trying to figure out ways to reroute those subsidies into the system so they become revenue for our franchisees."

The franchisees for CFWshops, typically trained nurses, spend roughly $7,500--a vast amount of money in the region--to open their small-scale drug stores and health clinics, which chiefly serve subsistence farmers in rural areas.

"Our fundamental concept is to provide access to drugs and healthcare through stripped-down drug shops and clinics," Starbird explains. "Currently, every link in the healthcare chain in the area is severely compromised. There is inadequate information. Assessment is poor. Drugs are substandard. There's an irrational use of antibiotics. Treatments don't reach patients. All of this leaves people sick and dying for no reason.

"But it's not because people are so poor," he continues. "It's a systemic issue. In that context, our concept is a standard-format, high-quality, low-cost system that can operate in small clinics. We observed that among business models, franchising seems to maintain brand standards and scale well and does that efficiently."

Starbird has consulted with members of the business franchise community to help streamline and organize CFWshops, and he believes there's much more that for-profit franchises could do. "We're one of the only groups, if not the only, that have worked explicitly with people who have built large franchise systems. We get real operational advice from them," he says. "I think there are huge opportunities for businesses with social benefits that go beyond the boundaries of NGOs and development work."

In fact, this year the International Franchise Association (IFA) will reveal the results of its Social Sector Franchising Task Force. Consultant Michael Seid, a franchise veteran and chairman of the task force, believes there are many ways the for-profit franchise community can help social entrepreneurs.

"Scott Hillstrom, chairman of the board of the HealthStore Foundation, pigeonholed me at an IFA convention a decade ago," Seid recalls. "I had no interest in social franchising. But after five hours of talking with him, I'd agreed to go to Kenya. He asked me, 'Have you ever saved a life through your work?' And I never had. Franchising brings the ability to sustainably and consistently provide quality products and services to populations that have never seen that before.

"Did you know 50 percent of drugs in sub-Saharan Africa are made of chalk?" Seid adds. "Think of that. Social franchising can help control the quality of medicine just like Subway or McDonald's controls its food. It's really no different than any other franchise system."

Seid and the IFA task force are creating a mentorship program that will enable franchising leaders to advise social enterprises. They are also creating model operations manuals and guides for NGOs on how to operate franchises efficiently.

But social franchising is just one strategy in a new world of market-driven solutions to poverty, one that includes micro-credit, social venture capital and more traditional vehicles such as grants. The Skoll Foundation, which supports social-entrepreneur-led organizations, has been so impressed by the impact of World Health Partners that it has invested in leveraging the nonprofit's microfranchising model to provide energy to rural areas.

"Microfranchising is a tool that may or may not be appropriate, depending on the impact you're after. It fits into an overall ecosystem. But it's exciting," says Sally Osberg, Skoll Foundation president and CEO. "It just shows you that once you unleash the entrepreneurial ambitions in people, there are all types of opportunities to build on."

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How Social Franchising Is Bringing Jobs to the Developing World

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9 min read This story appears in the April 2014 . Subscribe " Franchising is a powerful business model capable of efficiently delivering to the masses such varied resources as oil changes, emergency medical care, accounting services and jelly doughnuts. But could it do even more?

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Fairphone 2: ethical, open and built to last | Fairphone shop

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The Fairphone 2 is ethical, open and built to last. Find out more about the Fairphone 2.

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Columbian Coffee - Catholic Relief Services interview / Michael Sheridan

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Columbian Coffee - Catholic Relief Services interview / Michael Sheridan

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Check out the highlighted content that the HUB has for you this month If you can not see this message click here

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Stop Calling Everything a Social Enterprise

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Stop Calling Everything a Social Enterprise

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The term "disruptive innovation" is thrown around a lot these days. From AirBnb to Uber, everyone seems to be disrupting something, and the phrase has permeated the lexicon of start-up and blue-chip companies alike. I admit, I'm guilty as well.

But its broad usage has become a big problem, according to Clayton Christensen, the original architect of disruptive theory. In this month's Harvard Business Review, he argues that the theory has been widely misunderstood and its basic tenets frequently misapplied. "People use the term loosely to invoke the concept of innovation in support of whatever it is they wish to do," he writes.

Without a doubt, the term has strayed far from the original definition offered by Christensen twenty years ago. Today, it's less of a management theory and more of a marketing buzzword, and Christensen believes the concept is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

Here's my question: Will the current idea de jour of "social entrepreneurship" follow a similar path? Indeed, has it already?

"If the term social entrepreneurship is used to characterize every act of leadership generating public benefit, it will simultaneously become everything and nothing," write Sally Osberg and Roger Martin in their new book Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works. It's essential reading for those seeking to make sense of this constantly evolving sector. And if anyone could provide clarity on the often amorphous definition of social entrepreneurship, it's these two.

Sally Osberg serves as president and chief executive of the Skoll Foundation, which has invested approximately $400 million in people and programs driving transformative change around the world. Roger Martin, former dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, is a leading business strategist who sits on the Skoll Foundation board.

Backed with expertise and empathy for what it takes to drive large-scale change, these two visionary leaders set out to discover the true nature and boundaries of social entrepreneurship. For instance, what is social entrepreneurship? Who can legitimately be considered a social entrepreneur? By exploring these and similar questions, Sally and Roger arrive at a crisp definition and offer up a compelling framework, with examples of how successful social entrepreneurs go about achieving meaningful and sustainable impact.

At the heart of this new framework is the concept of equilibrium change. The authors describe how social entrepreneurs are problem solvers who can't sit still; they abhor the status quo. In response, they target systems that exist in a stable but unjust equilibrium, and they transform them entirely. "These equilibriums lead to the marginalization, suffering, or a large-scale disadvantage of some segment or element of society," explain Sally and Roger. Think: education, energy, healthcare, housing and the environment to name just a few areas where the world could benefit from a radical rebalance.

We're not talking about achieving incremental improvements, or making a broken system a little bit better. This, they suggest, is the role of social service providers: organizations that take direct action, but generally leave the existing system in place. Social entrepreneurs, for their part, aim to permanently transform these broken systems into "new, superior and sustainable" ones. In their words, it means "getting beyond better."

To illustrate this point, the authors highlight inspiring leaders like Vicky Colbert, who completely changed the education sector in Colombia through Escuela Nueva; Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered microfinance through Grameen Bank; and Andrea and Barry Coleman, who transformed last-mile healthcare delivery in sub-Saharan Africa through Riders for Health.

Of course, Sally and Roger's call for social entrepreneurs to go beyond partial responses builds on a growing chorus urging us all to think big and act boldly.

Consider the famous "10x" philosophy of Google cofounder and CEO Larry Page. He believes that a 10 percent improvement means that you're "basically doing the same thing as everybody else." But improving something by 10 times requires "rethinking problems entirely and exploring the edges of what's technically possible," as described in a 2013 article. (For Google, this means designing a car that drives itself, and launching high-altitude hot air balloons that provide internet to the two-thirds of people who currently lack access.)

As someone who believes the world needs revolutionary, not incremental, change, Page refers to these and other big ideas as "moon shots" - things that no one else is working on and, at first, may seem a little crazy. And it's precisely this moon shot mentality that defines social entrepreneurs.

As I've wrote in previous articles, my colleagues and I have spent the past 15 years working at the intersection of two of the world's oldest industries: farming and finance. We provide much-needed capital and training to agricultural businesses that operate in some of the poorest and most environmentally fragile places on the planet. They purchase the harvests of hundreds, often thousands, of farming families and then connect them to regional and global markets that can transform livelihoods.

With 450 million small-scale farmers worldwide, many living on less than two dollars a day, investments to grow and strengthen such businesses can have a remarkable ripple effect. I've witnessed how, with reliable access to financing and training, these businesses can boost incomes and create legions of local jobs for the neediest people in ways that are efficient and entrepreneurial, while also tackling a host of related issues, like food insecurity, emigration and youth unemployment.

Yet these businesses suffer from an inherently unfair equilibrium, and one that is often exacerbated by the unpredictable and volatile forces of Mother Nature and Mr. Market. They are trapped in the "missing middle" of finance - too large for microfinance and typically considered too small, risky and remote for commercial banks to serve.

Even now, despite growing investment in emerging market agriculture and unprecedented demand for sustainably produced food, the financing gap for these businesses and for the smallholder farmers with whom they work is not closing nearly fast enough. So our moon shot, along with several like-minded peers, is to create systemic change in financial markets and in agricultural supply chains. In other words, to "disrupt" an equilibrium that is in urgent need of disruption.

But changing a long-standing equilibrium may seem like an insurmountable challenge, and the path to achieving large-scale, systemic change is riddled with roadblocks, naysayers and setbacks - as I've learned over the years. Plus, it takes time and requires limitless patience. This can be challenging for us impatient optimists, as our desire for immediate solutions and quick wins creeps in.

Thankfully, first-time social entrepreneurs and their more seasoned peers now have a roadmap to take along on their journey. Because "objection to a particular status quo, no matter how strongly expressed, is rarely enough to make a difference," they write, the authors of Getting Beyond Better present a management-style approach for how to actually go about changing an equilibrium. Sally and Roger offer four specific steps: truly understand the system in its current state, envision a future state, build a sustainable model for achieving that future state, and then scale the model.

We've all heard variations of the famous quote by Albert Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." The term "social entrepreneur" wasn't around in Einstein's time, but his reasoning certainly resonates today. We need new thinking and many more equilibrium-changing ideas that help us imagine the future as it should be.

Like "disruptive innovation," the term social entrepreneurship is at risk of being overused and conflated. As the sector and those within it continue to evolve and push the boundaries toward our respective moon shots, let's all make sure that the terminology used is just as meaningful as the work it describes.

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Let's Stop Calling Everything 'Social Entrepreneurship'

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The term "disruptive innovation" is thrown around a lot these days. From AirBnb to Uber, everyone seems to be disrupting something, and the phrase has permeated the lexicon of start-up and blue-chip companies alike. I admit, I'm guilty as well. But its broad usage has become a big problem, according to [...]

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Social Enterprise and Business Model Success

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Social Enterprise and Business Model Success

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B Lab is a nonprofit that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. B Lab's initiatives include B Corp Certification, administration of the B Impact Management programs and software, and advocacy for governance structures like the benefit corporation.

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NYU Stern-Citi Conference in Leadership & Ethics

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Rainforest Alliance President Tensie Whelan at the Sustainable Brands Conference 2013

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Creativity is at the heart of change, according to Rainforest Alliance president Tensie Whelan. She begins her talk with the Rainforest Alliance's Follow the Frog video, which uses humor to show us a misguided way to make a difference and create change. "People want to do the right thing," said Whelan.

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50 Shades of Franchising p.1 (2015) J.McBride

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50 Shades of Franchising p.1 (2015) J.McBride

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Product and trade name franchising is the licensing of a franchisee or dealer to sell or distribute a specific product using the franchisor's trademark, trade name, and logo. Standard forms of franchising include product franchising, traditional franchising, and business format franchising.

Product distribution franchising, more properly called traditional franchising, does not as often come to mind when most people think of a franchise but is quite a bit bigger in volume than business format franchising. The reason is that the size of each transaction in traditional franchising is significantly larger than most business format franchise sales.

In a traditional franchise, it is the products manufactured or supplied by the franchisor that take center stage, not the franchisor's system of how the business should be conducted. The manufacturer licenses to the franchisee the right to sell or distribute a specific product using the franchisor's trademark, trade name, and logo. Whereas in a business format franchise the franchisee's business is only known by the marks it shares with the franchisor and other franchisees, in a traditional franchise the franchisee is intended to have its own local identity.

Traditional franchising is generally found in automobile, truck, mobile home, and farm equipment dealerships; gasoline service stations; automotive accessories; and soda and beer distributors where the franchisee generally is required to provide pre-sale or post-sale services to the franchisor's manufactured products. The traditional franchisee is generally provided an exclusive territory that limits the number of branded competitors it has for the manufacturer's products in its markets. It is also allocated products by the manufacturer based on performance or other variables.

Traditional franchising and supplier-dealer relationships look very much the same. The difference is in the degree of the relationship. In a traditional franchise the franchisee generally only sells the product line provided by a single manufacturer from their business location. But in a supplier-dealer relationship, the dealer may offer a wide variety of products and services, and some of those products will directly compete with each other.

How each is known to consumers is also quite different. Even though the traditional franchisee may have its own identity, that identity is still closely tied to the manufacturer's products and brand. In contrast, in a supplier-dealer relationship, the manufacturer does not license the dealer the right to use its marks to identify its business, and the dealer uses its own name and marks in conducting business.

Both a traditional franchisee and a dealer will use and display marketing materials and signage provided or sold by the manufacturer. However, in a supplier-dealer relationship, there is no expectation or requirement on how they conduct their businesses (other than as it relates to the products, prescribed warranties, etc.), and other than the training provided by the manufacturer that may be required for the specific products being sold, the manufacturer generally does not provide any business or other training to its dealers.

In a business format franchise, the franchisor licenses to its franchisees its trade name and service marks together with its system for delivering products and services under the franchisor's brand. The franchisee is known to consumers by the licensed name it shares with the franchisor and the other franchisees in the system.

It is the system of delivery that is important in a business format franchise. McDonald's doesn't franchise hamburgers, and Midas does not franchise mufflers. What these companies franchise is a system that enables the franchisee to offer products and services under the franchisor's brand. In exchange for an initial and continuing fee, the franchisee is expected to execute their independent business in a way that ensures consistency and meets the franchise system's consumer brand promise.

Business format franchisors establish the look and feel of the business. They provide the franchisee with the design and décor for their business, specify the furniture, fixtures, and equipment the franchisee will use. They also approve the site that the franchisee selects, establish and enforce product and service quality standards, provide initial and ongoing training and support, provide manuals with specific requirements and recommendations, determine the POS and IT system the franchisee will use, require that the franchisee use only franchisor-created or approved marketing materials, etc.

Even though the franchisor does not participate in the day-to-day management of the franchisee's business, what the business format franchisor is trying to achieve is a consistent look and feel for each of its locations. Consistent, sustainable replication is the essence of business format franchising.

In most instances, the franchisor is not providing the franchisee with any finished manufactured product for them to sell, but will frequently provide them with ingredients and supplies they will use in their businesses. When products are provided by the manufacturer, as in the automotive aftermarket, typically the franchisee will be incorporating those products into the products and service they sell. Think of Colonel Sanders' "11 herbs and spices" at KFC.

Business format franchising is the most common type of franchising and is what most people think of when they talk about franchising. It is used by over 120 industries from quick-service restaurants, hotels, education, and printing to senior care and medical services.

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How Trade Name Franchising Differs From the Most Common Franchise Type

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Product and trade name franchising is the licensing of a franchisee or dealer to sell or distribute a specific product using the franchisor's trademark, trade name, and logo. Standard forms of franchising include product franchising, traditional franchising, and business format franchising.

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Porter's Ted Talk on Scaling Social Enterprise

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Porter's Ted Talk on Scaling Social Enterprise

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interesting comment from Yannick Cornet 3 years ago

Capitalism will save the world? Very neoliberal and self-serving. I have trouble with one fundamental premise: Porter leads us to think only businesses create value "Capitalism is where all wealth is created, there is no wealth created by government, there is no wealth created by NGOs. Where business makes a profit, magic happens." (4:30) But wealth is not value, it is only money. When a government builds a public transport system, it does not create profit, but it does create value for society" on Youtube

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Insight: Ideas for Change - Michael Porter - Creating Shared Value

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Interesting comment on Youtube "Yannick Cornet 3 years ago

Capitalism will save the world? Very neoliberal and self-serving. I have trouble with one fundamental premise: Porter leads us to think only businesses create value "Capitalism is where all wealth is created, there is no wealth created by government, there is no wealth created by NGOs. Where business makes a profit, magic happens." (4:30) But wealth is not value, it is only money. When a government builds a public transport system, it does not create profit, but it does create value for society"

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Insight: Ideas for Change - Michael Porter - Creating Shared Value

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Once I heard the premise behind Buy Me Once, I couldn't believe the website didn't already exist. Tara Button, the webshop's founder, couldn't either. She was working in advertising, and one of her clients was Le Creuset, the famous maker of ceramic cookware that has a lifetime guarantee. She got a cooking pot from the company and she thought, "Why aren't there more things like this?"

Then she figured there must a place online to find more things in other categories that shared the same principles as Le Creuset. She searched and searched and couldn't find a site where all types of products built to last were vetted and sold.

"I tried hard to ignore the idea, but it wouldn't go away," Button told me. "It kept on coming back up in my head. When I would read the news about the environment and about the waste we produce, I felt almost sick. I would get this visceral, itchy feeling inside that told me: 'You can do something about this.' I finally got to the point where I was like 'I have to make this site.'"

Button jumped into entrepreneurship and started building the Buy Me Once site after work and late into the night. She finally quit her day job in late January to dedicate herself full-time to the site, and she has already gotten a lot of attention from shoppers and the media. Right now, most of the site is available to shoppers in the U.S. and U.K., and she's working on getting every item available from each country.

As a longtime fan of stuff that lasts, I was curious to learn how this project came together, and Button filled me in on how she made her vision happen.

MNN: What items have you found that will stand the test of time?

Tara Button: I found Buy Me Once socks. If socks can have have a lifetime guarantee, why can't anything? There's clothing, cookware, toys for kids, recycled plastic toys that are hardcore durable and sustainable wooden toys too. There are accessories, like umbrellas, and luggage, like Eagle Creek. A massive bugbear for me is plastic "wood" that chips, and there's so much furniture out there these days that's made like that, so we have furniture that won't fall apart after a few years, and if it does get nicked, you can fix it. If it's made out of vinyl, no way. It's a shame. Also, beauty products, like hairbrushes, tweezers and shavers.

How do you decide what to include?

I'm looking for the best in show in terms of longevity. And the companies that are really trying and trying to cut down on this throwaway culture. Like Patagonia offers free fixing of their clothes. Nobody does that, and half of us don't know how to [sew] anymore. It's wonderful to find these gems of companies; they do exist. It's all about finding things that last and helping things to last - cherishing the things that last. That's the ethos.

Up until now, it's been mainly me reading countless reviews, talking to people, calling companies, comparing and contrasting different products in the same category, to which one is the best. And there was serious research too. When it came to choosing shoes, I talked to cobblers and asked about what shoes are easy to fix and which ones last. I'm a big fan of talking to the experts, since they are going know from experience what lasts.

What's your biggest challenge?

I'm looking a products from companies all around the world, and sometimes it's been tricky to find people who will ship. I also underestimated response from the U.S. It's been huge. Over 60 percent of our traffic is coming from America, so we are determined to give that love back.

The response has just been amazing. I have an email backlog of 600 emails of suggested products from people, and we are plowing through them, checking to see what they are and if they fit our ethos. Some won't work and some will. If readers have ideas, they can send them along to me at: contact@buymeonce.com. We always want to hear about great products that have lasted and the stories behind them as well; we want to put them up online and share the best.

Will the site feature anything other than products?

One of the sides of the website that is going to become an important part is challenging manufacturers to do better. If we feel that there's a particular category that needs attention, we are going to create a challenge. [For example] we haven't been able to find a Buy Me Once electric kettle. The guarantees from the companies are really short, and online reviews say they all break really soon. For me, that's not good enough. In a world where we build satellites and send people to space, we can make a kettle that doesn't break after three years. There used to be kettles that lasted longer. If you find a kettle from the 1950s, they often still work. That kind of thing gets my goat.

It's frustrating, and I feel it's immoral to make something that breaks and ends up in a landfill, and it's really short-sighted. If you're not a wealthy family, having to replace these items is not cheap. And the first company who does do that will make a killing. People really do want stuff that's built to last. We have some other work to do on the site first, but the challenges are going to be important.

We also have content: Like how to have a kid's birthday party with no waste. You can have a fun, colorful, great birthday party but without three trash bags full at the end of the day. And we're working on a capsule wardrobe that's "Buy Me Once."

Website only stocks products that last a lifetime

Tired of replacing stuff every few years? This website solves that problem.

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Website only stocks products that last a lifetime

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Once I heard the premise behind Buy Me Once, I couldn't believe the website didn't already exist. Tara Button, the webshop's founder, couldn't either. She was working in advertising, and one of her clients was Le Creuset, the famous maker of ceramic cookware that has a lifetime guarantee.

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Published on

1. This is an archive of prior version New version is at: jobs.netflix.com/culture 1

2. Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility 2

3. We Seek Excellence Our culture focuses on helping us achieve excellence 3

4. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 4

5. Many companies have nice sounding value statements displayed in the lobby, such as: 5 Integrity Communication Respect Excellence

6. Enron, whose leaders went to jail, and which went bankrupt from fraud, had these values displayed in their lobby: Integrity Communication Respect Excellence 6 (These values were not, however, what was really valued at Enron)

7. The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go 7

8. Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees 8

9. At Netflix, we particularly value the following nine behaviors and skills in our colleagues... ...meaning we hire and promote people who demonstrate these nine 9

10. You make wise decisions (people, technical, business, and creative) despite ambiguity You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms You think strategically, and can articulate what you are, and are not, trying to do You smartly separate what must be done well now, and what can be improved later 10 Judgment

11. 11 Communication You listen well, instead of reacting fast, so you can better understand You are concise and articulate in speech and writing You treat people with respect independent of their status or disagreement with you You maintain calm poise in stressful situations

12. 12 Impact You accomplish amazing amounts of important work You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you You focus on great results rather than on process You exhibit bias-to-action, and avoid analysis-paralysis

13. 13 Curiosity You learn rapidly and eagerly You seek to understand our strategy, market, customers, and suppliers You are broadly knowledgeable about business, technology and entertainment You contribute effectively outside of your specialty

14. 14 Innovation You re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems You challenge prevailing assumptions when warranted, and suggest better approaches You create new ideas that prove useful You keep us nimble by minimizing complexity and finding time to simplify

15. 15 Courage You say what you think even if it is controversial You make tough decisions without agonizing You take smart risks You question actions inconsistent with our values

16. 16 Passion You inspire others with your thirst for excellence You care intensely about Netflix's success You celebrate wins You are tenacious

17. 17 Honesty You are known for candor and directness You are non-political when you disagree with others You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face You are quick to admit mistakes

18. 18 Selflessness You seek what is best for Netflix, rather than best for yourself or your group You are ego-less when searching for the best ideas You make time to help colleagues You share information openly and proactively

19. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 19

20. Imagine if every person at Netflix is someone you respect and learn from... 20

21. Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues Great workplace is not espresso, lush benefits, sushi lunches, grand parties, or nice offices We do some of these things, but only if they are efficient at attracting and retaining stunning colleagues 21

22. Like every company, we try to hire well 22

23. Unlike many companies, we practice: adequate performance gets a generous severance package 23

24. We're a team, not a family We're like a pro sports team, not a kid's recreational team Netflix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars in every position 24

25. The Keeper Test Managers Use: Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix? 25

26. The Keeper Test Managers Use: Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix? 26 The other people should get a generous severance now, so we can open a slot to try to find a star for that role

27. Honesty Always As a leader, no one in your group should be materially surprised of your views 27

28. Honesty Always Candor is not just a leader's responsibility, and you should periodically ask your manager: "If I told you I were leaving, how hard would you work to change my mind?" 28

29. All of Us are Responsible for Ensuring We Live our Values "You question actions inconsistent with our values" is part of the Courage value Akin to the honor code pledge: "I will not lie, nor cheat, nor steal, nor tolerate those who do" 29

30. Pro Sports Team Metaphor is Good, but Imperfect Athletic teams have a fixed number of positions, so team members are always competing with each other for one of the precious slots 30

31. Corporate Team The more talent we have, the more we can accomplish, so our people assist each other all the time Internal "cutthroat" or "sink or swim" behavior is rare and not tolerated 31

32. We Help Each Other To Be Great 32

33. Isn't Loyalty Good? What about Hard Workers? What about Brilliant Jerks? 33

34. Loyalty is Good * Loyalty is good as a stabilizer * People who have been stars for us, and hit a bad patch, get a near term pass because we think they are likely to become stars for us again * We want the same: if Netflix hits a temporary bad patch, we want people to stick with us * But unlimited loyalty to a shrinking firm, or to an ineffective employee, is not what we are about 34

35. Hard Work - Not Relevant * We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office * We do care about accomplishing great work * Sustained B-level performance, despite "A for effort", generates a generous severance package, with respect * Sustained A-level performance, despite minimal effort, is rewarded with more responsibility and great pay 35

36. Brilliant Jerks * Some companies tolerate them * For us, cost to effective teamwork is too high * Diverse styles are fine - as long as person embodies the 9 values 36

37. Why are we so insistent on high performance? In procedural work, the best are 2x better than the average. In creative/inventive work, the best are 10x better than the average, so huge premium on creating effective teams of the best 37

38. Why are we so insistent on high performance? Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues 38

39. Our High Performance Culture Not Right for Everyone * Many people love our culture, and stay a long time - They thrive on excellence and candor and change - They would be disappointed if given a severance package, but lots of mutual warmth and respect * Some people, however, value job security and stability over performance, and don't like our culture - They feel fearful at Netflix - They are sometimes bitter if let go, and feel that we are political place to work * We're getting better at attracting only the former, and helping the latter realize we are not right for them 39

40. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 40

41. The Rare Responsible Person * Self motivating * Self aware * Self disciplined * Self improving * Acts like a leader * Doesn't wait to be told what to do * Picks up the trash lying on the floor 41

42. Responsible People Thrive on Freedom, and are Worthy of Freedom 42

43. Our model is to increase employee freedom as we grow, rather than limit it, to continue to attract and nourish innovative people, so we have better chance of sustained success 43

44. Most Companies Curtail Freedom as they get Bigger Bigger Employee Freedom 44

45. Why Do Most Companies Curtail Freedom and Become Bureaucratic as they Grow? 45

46. Desire for Bigger Positive Impact Creates Growth Growth 46

47. Growth Increases Complexity Complexity 47

48. Growth Also Often Shrinks Talent Density % High Performance Employees Complexity 48

49. Chaos Emerges % High Performance Employees Chaos and errors spike here - business has become too complex to run informally with this talent level Complexity 49

50. Process Emerges to Stop the Chaos Procedures No one loves process, but feels good compared to the pain of chaos "Time to grow up" becomes the professional management's mantra 50

51. Process-focus Drives More Talent Out % High Performance Employees 51

52. Process Brings Seductively Strong Near-Term Outcome * A highly-successful process-driven company - With leading share in its market - Minimal thinking required - Few mistakes made - very efficient - Few curious innovator-mavericks remain - Very optimized processes for its existing market - Efficiency has trumped flexibility 52

53. Then the Market Shifts... * Market shifts due to new technology or competitors or business models * Company is unable to adapt quickly - because the employees are extremely good at following the existing processes, and process adherence is the value system * Company generally grinds painfully into irrelevance 53

54. Seems Like Three Bad Options 1. Stay creative by staying small, but therefore have less impact 2. Avoid rules as you grow, and suffer chaos 3. Use process as you grow to drive efficient execution of current model, but cripple creativity, flexibility, and ability to thrive when your market eventually changes 54

55. A Fourth Option * Avoid Chaos as you grow with Ever More High Performance People - not with Rules - Then you can continue to mostly run informally with self-discipline, and avoid chaos - The run informally part is what enables and attracts creativity 55

56. The Key: Increase Talent Density faster than Complexity Grows 56

57. Increase Talent Density * Top of market compensation * Attract high-value people through freedom to make big impact * Be demanding about high performance culture 57

58. Minimize Complexity Growth * Few big products vs many small ones * Eliminate distracting complexity (barnacles) * Be wary of efficiency optimizations that increase complexity and rigidity 58 Note: sometimes long-term simplicity is achieved only through bursts of complexity to rework current systems

59. With the Right People, Instead of a Culture of Process Adherence, We have a Culture of Creativity and Self-Discipline, Freedom and Responsibility 59

60. Is Freedom Absolute? Are all rules & processes bad? 60

61. Freedom is not absolute Like "free speech" there are some limited exceptions to "freedom at work" 61

62. Two Types of Necessary Rules 1. Prevent irrevocable disaster - Financials produced are wrong - Hackers steal our customers' credit card info 2. Moral, ethical, legal issues - Dishonesty, harassment are intolerable 62

63. Mostly, though, Rapid Recovery is the Right Model * Just fix problems quickly - High performers make very few errors * We're in a creative-inventive market, not a safety-critical market like medicine or nuclear power * You may have heard preventing error is cheaper than fixing it - Yes, in manufacturing or medicine, but... - Not so in creative environments 63

64. "Good" versus "Bad" Process * "Good" process helps talented people get more done - Letting others know when you are updating code - Spend within budget each quarter so don't have to coordinate every spending decision across departments - Regularly scheduled strategy and context meetings * "Bad" process tries to prevent recoverable mistakes - Get pre-approvals for $5k spending - 3 people to sign off on banner ad creative - Permission needed to hang a poster on a wall - Multi-level approval process for projects - Get 10 people to interview each candidate 64

65. Rule Creep * "Bad" processes tend to creep in - Preventing errors just sounds so good * We try to get rid of rules when we can, to reinforce the point 65

66. Example: Netflix Vacation Policy and Tracking Until 2004 we had the standard model of N days per year 66

67. Meanwhile... We're all working online some nights and weekends, responding to emails at odd hours, spending some afternoons on personal time, and taking good vacations 67

68. An employee pointed out... We don't track hours worked per day or per week, so why are we tracking days of vacation per year? 68

69. We realized... We should focus on what people get done, not on how many days worked Just as we don't have an 9am-5pm workday policy, we don't need a vacation policy 69

70. Netflix Vacation Policy and Tracking "there is no policy or tracking" 70

71. Netflix Vacation Policy and Tracking "there is no policy or tracking" There is also no clothing policy at Netflix, but no one comes to work naked Lesson: you don't need policies for everything 71

72. No Vacation Policy Doesn't Mean No Vacation Netflix leaders set good examples by taking big vacations - and coming back inspired to find big ideas 72

73. Another Example of Freedom and Responsibility... 73

74. Most companies have complex policies around what you can expense, how you travel, what gifts you can accept, etc. Plus they have whole departments to verify compliance with these policies 74

75. Netflix Policies for Expensing, Entertainment, Gifts & Travel: "Act in Netflix's Best Interest" (5 words long) 75

76. "Act in Netflix's Best Interest" Generally Means... 1. Expense only what you would otherwise not spend, and is worthwhile for work 2. Travel as you would if it were your own money 3. Disclose non-trivial vendor gifts 4. Take from Netflix only when it is inefficient to not take, and inconsequential - "taking" means, for example, printing personal documents at work or making personal calls on work phone: inconsequential and inefficient to avoid 76

77. Freedom and Responsibility * Many people say one can't do it at scale * But since going public in 2002, which is traditionally the end of freedom, we've substantially increased talent density and employee freedom 77

78. Summary of Freedom & Responsibility: As We Grow, Minimize Rules Inhibit Chaos with Ever More High Performance People Flexibility is More Important than Efficiency in the Long Term 78

79. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 79

80. If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. -Antoine De Saint-Exupery, Author of The Little Prince 80

81. The best managers figure out how to get great outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by trying to control their people 81

82. Context, not Control Context (embrace) * Strategy * Metrics * Assumptions * Objectives * Clearly-defined roles * Knowledge of the stakes * Transparency around decision-making Control (avoid) * Top-down decision-making * Management approval * Committees * Planning and process valued more than results Provide the insight and understanding to enable sound decisions 82

83. Good Context * Link to company/functional goals * Relative priority (how important/how time sensitive) - Critical (needs to happen now), or... - Nice to have (when you can get to it) * Level of precision & refinement - No errors (credit cards handling, etc...), or... - Pretty good / can correct errors (website), or... - Rough (experimental) * Key stakeholders * Key metrics / definition of success 83

84. Managers: When one of your talented people does something dumb, don't blame them Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set 84

85. Managers: When you are tempted to "control" your people, ask yourself what context you could set instead Are you articulate and inspiring enough about goals and strategies? 85

86. Why Managing Through Context? High performance people will do better work if they understand the context 86

87. Investing in Context This is why we do new employee college, frequent department meetings, and why we are so open internally about strategies and results 87

88. Exceptions to "Context, not Control" * Control can be important in emergency - No time to take long-term capacity-building view * Control can be important when someone is still learning their area - Takes time to pick up the necessary context * Control can be important when you have the wrong person in a role - Temporarily, no doubt 88

89. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 89

90. Three Models of Corporate Teamwork 1. Tightly Coupled Monolith 2. Independent Silos 3. Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled 90

91. Tightly Coupled Monolith * Senior management reviews nearly all tactics - e.g., CEO reviews all job offers or advertising * Lots of x-departmental buy-in meetings * Keeping other internal groups happy has equal precedence with pleasing customers * Mavericks get exhausted trying to innovate * Highly coordinated through centralization, but very slow, and slowness increases with size 91

92. Independent Silos * Each group executes on their objectives with little coordination - Everyone does their own thing * Work that requires coordination suffers * Alienation and suspicion between departments * Only works well when areas are independent - e.g., aircraft engines and blenders for GE 92

93. #3 is the Netflix Choice 1. Tightly Coupled Monolith 2. Independent Silos 3. Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled 93

94. Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Highly Aligned - Strategy and goals are clear, specific, broadly understood - Team interactions focused on strategy and goals, rather than tactics - Requires large investment in management time to be transparent and articulate and perceptive * Loosely Coupled - Minimal cross-functional meetings except to get aligned on goals and strategy - Trust between groups on tactics without previewing/approving each one - so groups can move fast - Leaders reaching out proactively for ad-hoc coordination and perspective as appropriate - Occasional post-mortems on tactics necessary to increase alignment 94

95. Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled teamwork effectiveness depends on high performance people and good context Goal is to be Big and Fast and Flexible 95

96. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 96

97. Pay Top of Market is Core to High Performance Culture One outstanding employee gets more done and costs less than two adequate employees We endeavor to have only outstanding employees 97

98. Three Tests for Top of Market for a Person 1. What could person get elsewhere? 2. What would we pay for replacement? 3. What would we pay to keep that person? - If they had a bigger offer elsewhere 98Confidential

99. Takes Great Judgment * Goal is to keep each employee at top of market for that person - Pay them more than anyone else likely would - Pay them as much as a replacement would cost - Pay them as much as we would pay to keep them if they had higher offer from elsewhere 99

100. Titles Not Very Helpful * Lots of people have the title "Major League Pitcher" but they are not all equally effective * Similarly, all people with the title "Senior Marketing Manager" or "Director of Engineering" are not equally effective * So the art of compensation is answering the Three Tests for each employee 100

101. Annual Comp Review * At many firms, when employees are hired, market compensation applies * But at comp review time, it no longer applies! * At Netflix, market comp always applies: - Essentially, top of market comp is re-established each year for high performing employees - At annual comp review, manager has to answer the Three Tests for the personal market for each of their employees 101Confidential

102. No Fixed Budgets * There are no centrally administered "raise pools" each year * Instead, each manager aligns their people to top of market each year - the market will be different in different areas 102

103. Compensation Over Time * Some people will move up in comp very quickly because their value in the marketplace is moving up quickly, driven by increasing skills and/or great demand for their area * Some people will stay flat because their value in the marketplace has done that - Depends in part on inflation and economy - Always top of market, though, for that person 103

104. Compensation Not Dependent on Netflix Success * Whether Netflix is prospering or floundering, we pay at the top of the market - Sports teams with losing records still pay talent the market rate, to get back to winning 104

105. Bad Comp Practices * Manager sets pay at Nth percentile of title- linked compensation data - The "Major League Pitcher" problem * Manager cares about internal parity instead of external market value - Fairness in comp is being true to the market * Manager gives everyone a 4% raise - Very unlikely to reflect the market 105

106. When Top of Market Comp Done Right... * We will rarely counter with higher comp when someone is voluntarily leaving because we have already moved comp to our max for that person * Employees will feel they are getting paid well relative to their other options in the market 106

107. Versus Traditional Model * Traditional model is good prior year earns a raise, independent of market - Problem is employees can get materially under- or over-paid relative to the market, over time - When materially under-paid, employees switch firms to take advantage of market-based pay on hiring - When materially over-paid, employees are trapped in current firm * Consistent market-based pay is better model 107

108. Employee Success * It's pretty ingrained in our society that the size of one's raise is the indicator of how well one did the prior year - but for us the other factor is the outside market * Employee success is still a big factor in comp because it influences market value - In particular, how much we would pay to keep the person 108

109. Good For Each Employee to Understand Their Market Value * It's a healthy idea, not a traitorous one, to understand what other firms would pay you, by interviewing and talking to peers at other companies - Talk with your manager about what you find in terms of comp - Stay mindful of company confidential information 109

110. Efficiency * Big salary is the most efficient form of comp - Most motivating for any given expense level - No bonuses - Instead, put all that expense into big salaries, and give people freedom to spend their salaries as they think best - Employees can decide how much Netflix stock they want, versus cash 110

111. No Vesting or Deferred Comp * We don't want managers to "own" their people with vesting - all comp is fully vested * We want managers to be responsible for creating a great place to work, and paying at the top of market * Employees are free to leave us anytime, without penalty, but nearly everyone stays * Employees stay because they are passionate about their work, and well paid, not because of a deferred compensation system 111

112. No Ranking Against Other Employees * We avoid "top 30%" and "bottom 10%" rankings amongst employees * We don't want employees to feel competitive with each other * We want all of our employees to be "top 10%" relative to the pool of global candidates * We want employees to help each other, and they do 112

113. Seven Aspects of our Culture * High Performance * Values are what we Value * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 113

114. In some time periods, in some groups, there will be lots of opportunity and growth at Netflix Some people, through both luck and talent, will have extraordinary career growth 114

115. Baseball Analogy: Minors to Majors * Very talented people usually get to move up, but only true for the very talented * Some luck in terms of what positions open up and what the competition is * Some people move to other teams to get the opportunity they want * Great teams keep their best talent * Some minor league players keep playing even though they don't move up because they love the game 115

116. Netflix Doesn't Have to Be for Life * In some times, in some groups, there may not be enough growth opportunity for everyone * In which case we should celebrate someone leaving Netflix for a bigger job that we didn't have available to offer them - If that is what the person prefers 116

117. Three Necessary Conditions for Promotion 1. Job has to be big enough - We might have an incredible manager of something, but we don't need a director of it because job isn't big enough * If the incredible manager left, we would replace with a manager, not with a director 2. Person has to be a superstar in current role - Could get the next level job here if applying from outside and we knew their talents well - Could get the next level job at peer firm that knew their talents well 3. Person is an extraordinary role model of our culture and values 117

118. Timing * If a manager would promote to prevent an employee from leaving, the manager should promote now instead of waiting * Three tests still have to be passed 1. Job big enough 2. Superstar in current role 3. Person is an extraordinary role model of our culture and values 118

119. Development * We develop people by giving them the opportunity to develop themselves, by surrounding them with stunning colleagues and giving them big challenges to work on - Mediocre colleagues or unchallenging work is what kills progress of a person's skills 119

120. Career "Planning" Not for Us * Formalized development is rarely effective, and we don't try to do it - e.g., Mentor assignment, rotation around a firm, multi-year career paths, etc. 120

121. We Support Self-Improvement * High performance people are generally self- improving through experience, observation, introspection, reading, and discussion - As long as they have stunning colleagues and big challenges to work on - We all try to help each other grow - We are very honest with each other 121

122. We want people to manage their own career growth, and not rely on a corporation for "planning" their careers 122

123. Your Economic Security is based on your Skills and Reputation We try hard to consistently provide opportunity to grow both by surrounding you with great talent 123

124. Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom & Responsibility * Context, not Control * Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled * Pay Top of Market * Promotions & Development 124

125. We keep improving our culture as we grow We try to get better at seeking excellence 125

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Published on This is an archive of prior version New version is at: jobs.netflix.com/culture 1 Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility 2 We Seek Excellence Our culture focuses on helping us achieve excellence 3 Seven Aspects of our Culture * Values are what we Value * High Performance * Freedom &

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Can Africa's fertile farmland feed the world?

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Process Interventions on Group Decisions

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Public Procurement and Private Certification

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Impact of Institutions on Cumulative Research

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Student Performance and Knowledge Retention

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Emily Heaphy: Repairing Breaches with Rules: Embedded Agency in the Work of Patient Advocates.

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How do front-line workers use rules to maintain and change organizations and institutions? Using a comparative qualitative research design, I find that patient advocates, a type of pressure specialist, encounter breaches in the interpersonal, operational and institutional order. Analyses revealed that they drew from a repertoire of four rule use patterns to repair breaches.

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SIYLI | Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence Leadership Training

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Bring our Google-born mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and leadership training to your organization. Or attend one of our public programs around the world.

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The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education

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Thomas Williams shares how he strives to model and teach environmental, social & economic responsibilities throughout a college system.

AASHE empowers higher education faculty, administrators, staff and students to be effective change agents and drivers of sustainability innovation. AASHE enables members to translate information into action by offering essential resources and professional development to a diverse, engaged community of sustainability leaders.

AASHE has partnered with 13 Centers for Sustainability Across the Curriculum on a pilot basis to offer workshops and other professional development opportunities on sustainability in the curriculum in an effort to increase the accessibility and diversity of sustainability-oriented training for faculty.

As the campus sustainability movement has evolved, a wide variety of networks of campus sustainability advocates have emerged. These networks, which are often formed along state, provincial and/or regional lines, share many goals with AASHE. For this reason, we have formalized a collaborative relationship with many of these networks through our Affiliates Program.

Applications will be accepted each year in the summer. Stay tuned for information on becoming a Mentor/Mentee. Participants will connect with other campus sustainability practitioners to share knowledge, cooperate on projects and advance the field of higher education sustainability.

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AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education

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Thomas Williams shares how he strives to model and teach environmental, social & economic responsibilities throughout a college system. AASHE empowers higher education faculty, administrators, staff and students to be effective change agents and drivers of sustainability innovation. AASHE enables members to translate information into action by offering essential resources and professional development to a diverse, engaged community of sustainability leaders.

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pending on ethical food and drink products - including organic, Fairtrade, free range and freedom foods - hit £8.4bn in the UK in 2013, making up 8.5% of all household food sales. By leveraging environmental credentials, such as local, sustainable and transparent production, a new wave of urban agriculture enterprises are justifying a premium price. But while a higher price point might better reflect the true cost of food production and help build a viable business, it can also exclude lower income groups, fuelling perception that local, sustainably produced food is the preserve of food elitists.

Making urban grown produce affordable

"This is a real challenge," says Kate Hofman, CEO and co-founder of London-based aquaponics enterprise GrowUp Urban Farms, which produces fish, salads and herbs in unused city spaces to sell wholesale. Unit 84 - its aquaponic, vertical farm - is housed in an industrial warehouse in east London. Launched in autumn last year, it has a projected annual production of 20 tonnes of greens, salads, and herbs (enough for 200,000 salad bags) and four tonnes of tilapia (cichlid fish). It sells its produce as wholesale to local restaurants and grocers.

GrowUp farms fish inside an industrial warehouse in London's Beckton. Photograph: Mandy Zammit/GrowUp Urban Farms

"Food is a commodity, and we have to make the business work. Of course, we are growing more expensive things [such as micro-greens] with a bigger margin for a customer who has more to spend, but we are trying to grow other affordable things like mixed salad, and get those into retailers that are widely accessible," says Hofman. GrowUp Urban Farms does not share wholesale prices but, as an example, customers can currently buy 50g of peashoots through Farmdrop for £1.10 compared to £1 for the same weight on Sainsbury's website.

As the business develops, Hofman is aiming to produce premium micro-greens for Michelin-starred restaurants that in turn can, she says, support the expansion of more affordable salads and herbs.

Accessible technology

Erez Galonska, founder and CEO of Berlin-based Infarm which sells a range of modular, app-controlled, indoor hydroponic growing systems, agrees that accessibility is important.

A big part of Infarm's focus, according to Galonska, is democratising growing technologies to produce high quality produce at affordable prices. "Anyone [shops, restaurants, schools and hospitals] should be able to have their own farm, and grow their own food. The first ones to do it are obviously the early adopter types but, in principle, there is no reason for it not to become a standard."

Berlin's Metro Cash & Carry supermarket, part of the Metro Group wholesale chain, has already implemented the Infarm hydroponics system in store, growing herbs, radish and greens which Infarm says will be available at a price comparable to Metro's other fresh goods. Infarm will begin targeting businesses globally this year.

Indoor farm in Berlin's Metro Cash & Carry supermarket. Photograph: Merav Maroody/InFarm

Workforce diversity

Swiss aquaponics enterprise Urban Farmers - which sells its urban growing system and raises tilapia, micro-greens, salads and herbs - has taken over the rooftop floors of De Schilde, a former Philips TV and phone set factory in The Hague. It aims to produce 45 tonnes of vegetables and 19 tonnes of tilapia annually from summer 2016. Other enterprises including a microbrewery are expected to follow.

Tycho Vermeulen - a horticulture researcher from Wageningen University who has worked to attract more urban agriculture enterprises to become tenants of De Schilde - is concerned about diversity of the urban farming workforce. "It's just an observation, but the tendency for urban agriculture entrepreneurs is to be white and middle-class," he says.

Urban Farmers pilot rooftop farm in Basel , based in the Dreispitz area south of Basel, just a few tram stops from the centre of the city. Photograph: Raphi See (Raphael Seebacher)/Urban Farmers

For urban agriculture to move beyond serving a niche group of people and make a real impact on the global food system, it will have to engage a wider demographic. This has been the driver behind GrowUp's education and training programme in the London borough of Newham.

According to Hofman, Newham has "one of London's highest unemployment rates ... There's a real need for job opportunities [with companies] that are prepared to invest in training young people with a poor history of educational attainment".

GrowUp has created roles specifically for young local people with a history of poor educational attainment, training them as aquaponics technicians for commercial food production and developing their skills in planning crops and monitoring quality. Hofman hopes that they will stay and develop with the business as it expands.

GrowUp is creating jobs for local people from London's Newham borough. Photograph: Mandy Zammit/GrowUp Urban Farms

Wider inequalities in the food system

For some the challenges around equality in urban agriculture are simply a reflection of the global food system's wider issues. Patrick Holden, founding director and CEO of the Sustainable Food Trust, says, for example, that many of those working in the food sector are paid poorly and as a result, "the people who produce our food can't afford good food".

Holden hopes the interest in urban food will end up benefitting the whole of society in the future. "There's a whole generation for whom urban food growing is becoming a major interest. These kinds of food revolutions tend to be led by people who have more information, and maybe more disposable income, but that's not to say they're not tapping into something of interest to all sections of society," he says.

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Is urban farming only for rich hipsters?

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pending on ethical food and drink products - including organic, Fairtrade, free range and freedom foods - hit £8.4bn in the UK in 2013, making up 8.5% of all household food sales. By leveraging environmental credentials, such as local, sustainable and transparent production, a new wave of urban agriculture enterprises are justifying a premium price.

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Ron Finley: A guerrilla gardener in South Central LA

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Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys."

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Problem Solution Key metrics Unique value proposition Unfair advantage Customer Segments Channels Cost Structure: This could be problematic as existing procurement contracts exist at College Financial Sustainability Social Lean Canvas FT Project Designed for: Matthew Healy Designed by: 1 On: 29/1...

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Nigeria's response to Polio Epidemic (2016)

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Nigeria's response to Polio Epidemic (2016)

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Nigeria recently celebrated a full year and a half without a new case of wild poliovirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has certified there has been no evidence of wild polio in Nigeria for more than a year and removed it from the list of polio-endemic countries. These are milestones both for Nigeria and for the global campaign to eradicate polio. Nonetheless, continued effort and vigilance will be critical over the next two years to declare the country and the rest of Africa completely free of the disease.

Toward these ends, Nigeria has significantly increased polio immunity among its population over the past three years. As recently as February 2012, only 16 percent of local-government areas (LGAs) in high-risk states had achieved the target level of immunity coverage: vaccinating more than 80 percent of all children under the age of five. By September 2015, coverage had improved more than sixfold: 97 percent of LGAs in high-risk states had achieved the target (Exhibit 1). The success of Nigeria's federal and state governments, Global Polio Eradication Initiative partners, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is all the more impressive given the climate of disinformation, intimidation, and violence that peaked with the 2013 murder of 13 vaccinators by insurgents in Kano and Borno states.

This article reviews the steps that Nigeria and its partners took to eradicate polio, especially the introduction of a novel approach to disease control: emergency operations centers (EOCs). It also explores what the lessons learned from Nigeria's approach to polio might teach other countries about emergency health responses.
Social Sector
Taking the fight to polio: Establishing EOCs

In 2012, Nigeria had a serious polio problem. It was Africa's only remaining polio-endemic country, and the number of confirmed new wild poliovirus cases was increasing, eventually reaching 122 that year. Indeed, Nigeria was considered the worst performing of all polio-endemic countries, with a majority of new cases throughout the world. Immunization coverage was declining, attributable to weak program performance, lack of accountability, significant levels of mistrust at the community level, poor engagement of the country's traditional structures, and little coordination between the government and its international partners working to eradicate the disease. In addition, the states with the highest risk for polio were all in northern areas plagued by weak health systems, poor health indicators, and challenging security conditions.

Nigeria created a presidential task force to lead the country's response to the eradication of polio. The plan was to work with national and international organizations, such as the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Rotary International. With the support of the Gates Foundation and strategic assistance from McKinsey & Company (see sidebar "McKinsey's support for Nigeria's polio-eradication effort"), the Ministry of Health created EOCs to focus on the highest-priority interventions, to improve coordination, and to manage the program's overall performance closely. EOCs are centralized command-and-control units responsible for disaster preparation and management. Other countries and cities have also used them to respond to emergencies.

Nigeria's National Polio EOC was established in the capital, Abuja, in October 2012. The EOC model requires national and international organizations to locate their leaders in the same place and to meet regularly to develop and execute eradication strategies, improve vaccination campaigns, and respond immediately to outbreaks. Each organization contributed people to support the collection, analysis, and reporting of eradication data. The NPHCDA provided local staff to gather data from LGAs, wards, and settlements in high-risk states.

The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, asked the NPHCDA's Executive Director, Dr. Ado Jimada Gana Muhammad, to lead the creation of the national EOC. He appointed Dr. Andrew Etsano as EOC Incident Manager and Dr. Faisal Shuaib as Deputy Incident Manager, with direct reporting lines to the Executive Director and the Minister, respectively. They worked with the NPHCDA and the international partners to develop the required organizational structure, working committees, meeting routines, procedures, and data-analysis support. Besides establishing the national EOC in Abuja, the ministry oversaw the design and set up the first state EOC in Kano. This became the model for the successful EOCs opened in six other high-risk states in northern Nigeria.

The national EOC leadership and the international partners collaborated to train members of state teams in collecting and analyzing data, solving problems, and improving the execution and reporting of vaccination campaigns. Each EOC in the states most at risk for polio required a team of 10 to 15 people, including highly trained interagency public-health officials, epidemiologists, communication experts, data analysts, and support staff. Some operated in efficient modern facilities built to UN security standards; others (such as the EOC in Borno State) operated from buildings with infrastructure meeting US safety standards. Nigeria's polio EOCs employed the five components described in Exhibit 2 to focus their analyses and actions on the highest-priority problems, to improve accountability, and to ensure operational effectiveness.

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War-room approach. Nigeria's national EOC is structured around a war room where the walls are covered with regularly updated wild poliovirus maps, data and analysis on polio cases, and polio immunity coverage in the country's 11 high-risk states. The war room's digital screens not only depict up-to-date polio-performance indicators but are also used for videoconferences with state EOCs and external experts. The complete EOC meets twice a week in the war room to assess the performance of vaccination campaigns, outbreak response, efforts to extend access to hard-to-reach populations, and activities in insecure areas. The EOC also holds meetings of its strategy, operations, outbreak, and communications committees in this room.

Dedicated cross-functional talent. Nigeria's government and its international partners posted experienced polio experts and emergency health professionals to work closely together. The Federal Ministry of Health/NPHCDA provided a strong leadership team, including Dr. Etsano, Dr. Shuaib, and several of the agency's highest-qualified experts on health programs and data analysis. WHO and the CDC placed epidemiologists in the EOCs to ensure that regular house-to-house vaccination programs did not miss the hardest-to-reach children. UNICEF's experts addressed the challenges of communication, social mobilization, and noncompliance to support traditional, religious, and opinion leaders, and to educate Nigerians to overcome misinformed arguments against vaccination. WHO deployed experts and thousands of "boots on the ground," including immunization professionals, vaccination-program supervisors, trainers, and polio-surveillance experts. The national EOC data team-the engine room of Nigeria's polio-eradication program-included members from all of the EOC partners.

Fast-paced analytics and frequent synthesis. The EOC leadership and the strategy and operations committees work closely with the data team to analyze vaccination campaign performance during and immediately after all campaigns, to develop interventions to reduce the number of missed children, and to increase the level of polio immunity in high-risk states, LGAs, and wards. For example, one analysis assessed the impact of directly observed polio vaccination (DOPV), an intervention introduced in priority LGAs in September 2014. The DOPV effort placed vaccination teams in open areas outside homes (for example, markets, schools, and streets) to reduce the number of missed children generally and the number of children missed specifically because of absence or noncompliance. Preliminary findings showed the following:

The number of children vaccinated in LGAs that implemented DOPV increased by 7.8 percent, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in LGAs that did not.

In LGAs that implemented DOPV, the proportion of missed children fell by 24 percent from the previous month, compared with a 13 percent decrease in LGAs that did not.

DOPV improved coverage: 26 percent of LGAs implementing it improved by at least one lot quality-assurance sampling (LQAS) coverage category, compared with 12 percent of LGAs that did not implement DOPV.

While the impact of these innovative DOPV efforts require further analysis, lessons learned were used to improve the program to reach more children and further increase polio immunity coverage.

Rapid decision making and syndication. Nigeria's polio EOCs ensure that all relevant decision makers and experts are co-located and can review performance challenges with data from the field in real time. By design, the EOC helps the team to make and review decisions rapidly, using more than 50 monitoring and accountability officers with direct connection to the most vulnerable LGAs and wards. Every day, the EOCs take up interventions and challenges in high-priority LGAs-for example, by developing, executing, and actively following responses to new polio cases and by taking specific education and communication measures in targeted high-risk communities where an anti-oral polio vaccine video had been circulating. The EOC has well-developed procedures, honed over three years, to ensure that it records and immediately disseminates discussions and decisions throughout the entire EOC community.

Intensive program management. The EOCs' program-management capabilities are an essential element of Nigeria's progress in eradicating polio. The detailed collection and analysis of key performance indicators across all of the country's high-risk states, LGAs, and wards improved the quality and rigor of monthly polio vaccination campaigns.

Collecting and verifying data from field staff using mobile phones in remote northern areas is a challenge. Monitoring and accountability officers working in the polio EOCs are in constant contact with the field, collecting data and following issues specific to each LGA and ward. However, while training and tools to simplify the process have been provided, mobile networks do not extend far beyond major population centers and are frequently out of service.

Vigorous program management allowed EOCs to identify issues and to overcome specific challenges-for example, by launching "hit and run" campaigns and "firewalling" efforts to vaccinate children in the face of insecure conditions caused by insurgents, as well as by using polio survivors, community clowns, and drummers to mobilize house-to-house vaccinations. The EOC also spearheaded the creation of health camps that address noncompliance by offering a package of healthcare services and extras, such as candy and soaps.

How the EOCs focus efforts on top-priority challenges

With increasingly effective vaccination campaigns, heightened public awareness and education, and results-focused performance management, Nigeria began to see solid improvements in the level of polio immunity and fewer wild poliovirus cases in high-risk states. The country was able to interrupt transmission of wild poliovirus Type 3 (WPV3) in November 2013 and cut the number of genetic clusters of the remaining wild poliovirus Type 1 (WPV1) to a single cluster by early 2014 from the six genetic WPV1 clusters circulating in 2012.

Once the national EOC was up and running, the focus shifted to addressing the country's biggest challenges and developing practical solutions to the problems of vaccination teams in high-risk locations. During the second half of 2014 and into 2015, the EOC developed innovative strategies to improve the vaccination effort in Kano State (where five of Nigeria's six polio cases occurred in 2014) and to address security issues blocking effective campaigns in parts of Borno and Yobe states, where insurgent activities limited access to communities and children. These strategies included the following:

1. Health camps were set up across Kano to provide not only vaccination against polio but also other health services and medicines. In an analysis of the impact of the health camps, the national and Kano State EOCs found the following:

Between May and September 2014, 1.1 million children were vaccinated with oral polio vaccine (OPV).

The camps appeared to help reduce the proportion of missed children, but noncompliance remained an issue.

2. The analysis helped to improve drug-administration policies and the selection of sites for health camps. It also suggested a need to emphasize communication with traditional emirs and chiefs, religious leaders, and supporting organizations (such as the local Rotary polio-survivors group) to reduce the level of noncompliance. The national EOC also decided to place more health camps in the wards with the highest incidence of missed children. These actions-along with line-listing all missed children and then working with traditional, religious, and opinion leaders to resolve them-helped to improve vaccination campaign performance and polio immunity coverage in Kano.

3. The insurgency affecting parts of northern Nigeria has displaced millions of families and disrupted the healthcare networks, which were already weak, required for effective vaccination programs-in addition to the direct threats against and murder of vaccinators. The biggest impact was in Borno and Yobe. The national EOC, working with colleagues in the field, intervened to address these security challenges-for example, by introducing inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). While more costly and difficult to administer than its oral counterpart, IPV confers a higher degree of per-contact immunogenicity for difficult-to-access children than oral polio vaccine does. IPV given to a child already primed with OPV will provide a higher immunity boost than giving that same child an extra dose of OPV. In June and August 2014, IPV campaigns based in health camps covered areas of Borno and Yobe. They reached places that were difficult to access through traditional house-to-house campaigns because of the insurgency and therefore had lower population immunity. An analysis of this approach found the following:

Across Borno, 2,214 health camps were used to administer about 1.4 million doses of IPV (91 percent coverage of the target population) in 256 wards (82 percent); insecurity prevented implementation in other wards.

Across Yobe, 889 health camps were used to vaccinate 880,566 children with IPV (105 percent coverage of the target population) in 69 (39 percent) of the wards. (Estimates of the target population were not always accurate-coverage was more than 100 percent in certain cases.) Some areas were not included in this IPV program, because they did not suffer from Borno's security and accessibility challenges.

4. The analysis helped clarify the reach and impact of the IPV campaigns and allowed the EOC leadership to plan next steps for covering other challenging areas in Borno and Yobe. For example, in November 2014 the government undertook another campaign, this time to cover areas of Yobe the previous IPV effort had not reached. Analysis also demonstrated that estimates of the size of the target population were not always accurate, because of movement in the face of the insurgency.

Applying the lessons learned

The success of Nigeria's EOCs in combating polio provides interesting lessons, especially in view of the country's previous approaches to emergency public-health challenges. Before establishing the polio EOCs, Nigeria's federal government and its international partners relied on incremental improvement targets, annual budgeting, and fragmented donor projects and funding. The overall effort lacked focus and immediacy. Polio had the upper hand, exploiting every opportunity to increase the number of wild poliovirus cases.

Nigeria's polio EOCs changed that dynamic. First, requiring the Ministry of Health, state and local health agencies in the north, and all international partners to collaborate through the EOCs brought the best minds and resources to bear on the critical issues. Second, an emergency posture with strong leadership-rather than the traditional incremental approaches-forced a search for immediate solutions and results. The only objectives were raising the level of immunity above the threshold targets in all states and LGAs, stopping the transmission of polio, and eliminating new cases of the disease. Step-by-step annual targets would never get the job done.

Last, using data to assess the performance of polio vaccination teams and of local health agency support, before, during, and after each campaign, enabled the EOCs to shift focus to the highest-risk locations and issues. Improved data collection from the field and satellite imagery to identify communities being missed for immunization activities allowed the EOCs to adapt new approaches rapidly and to experiment with interventions to solve complex vaccination and surveillance problems.

Developing countries can consider applying these lessons to respond more effectively to other health challenges, both emergencies and long-standing medical issues. Applying them more rapidly and completely could, for example, have improved West Africa's response to the Ebola outbreak dramatically (see sidebar "Using the EOC model to combat Ebola"). The core issue is to adopt a war footing and take the fight directly to the challenges. Using EOCs to improve the coordination of resources, to focus the best minds, and to carry out intensive local data analysis could help control future outbreaks of disease and improve the health of entire communities.

While significant work remains to rid Nigeria of polio in the next year and a half, the country deserves full credit for halting its transmission and eradicating Ebola. The effective use of emergency operating centers provides an excellent example of how national governments and their international partners can fight the world's most dangerous diseases through strong leadership, intense collaboration, data analytics and performance management focusing on results. An important remaining question is where and how countries and international organizations can best deploy EOCs to overcome other emergency health crises.

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Nigeria recently celebrated a full year and a half without a new case of wild poliovirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has certified there has been no evidence of wild polio in Nigeria for more than a year and removed it from the list of polio-endemic countries.

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GrowFood Carolina - South Carolina's First Local Food Hub

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An introduction to the what's, why's, and how's of South Carolina's first local food hub.

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For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which industry entrants will succeed. Unfortunately, the theory has also been widely misunderstood, and the "disruptive" label has been applied too carelessly anytime a market newcomer shakes up well-established incumbents.

In this article, the architect of disruption theory, Clayton M. Christensen, and his coauthors correct some of the misinformation, describe how the thinking on the subject has evolved, and discuss the utility of the theory.

They start by clarifying what classic disruption entails-a small enterprise targeting overlooked customers with a novel but modest offering and gradually moving upmarket to challenge the industry leaders. They point out that Uber, commonly hailed as a disrupter, doesn't actually fit the mold, and they explain that if managers don't understand the nuances of disruption theory or apply its tenets correctly, they may not make the right strategic choices. Common mistakes, the authors say, include failing to view disruption as a gradual process (which may lead incumbents to ignore significant threats) and blindly accepting the "Disrupt or be disrupted" mantra (which may lead incumbents to jeopardize their core business as they try to defend against disruptive competitors).

The authors acknowledge that disruption theory has certain limitations. But they are confident that as research continues, the theory's explanatory and predictive powers will only improve.

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For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which industry entrants will succeed. Unfortunately, the theory has also been widely misunderstood, and the "disruptive" label has been applied too carelessly anytime a market newcomer shakes up well-established incumbents.

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Securing a "bridgehead" in war means to conquer ground in an enemy's territory. Bridgehead Inc., a small Ottawa-based coffee shop business, continues to capture ground of its own in a competitive local café environment.

The number of Bridgehead Coffee locations will double in the city in the next three years, said Tracey Clark, owner of the coffee chain.

"Our strategy was, well let's put a Bridgehead as a community anchor in every single one of the old city of Ottawa neighbourhoods," she said. The company, which prides itself on fair trade coffee, in-house roasting and food preparation, has 16 cafés scattered around Ottawa, with one opening every year since 2000. Now, there are plans to rollout cafés in surrounding Ottawa suburbs such as Orleans, Kanata and Barrhaven, in the next two years, with six set to open in 2016, Clark said.

But the specialty coffee market hasn't proven an easy one to grow in, with the market dominated by Starbucks and fast-food chains such as McDonald's pushing into the specialty coffee business. Home-grown gourmet coffee franchises such as Second Cup and Timothy's World Coffee have faced an uphill battle against Starbucks, which now dominates the Canadian market with more than 1,400 stores.

Second Cup rebranded in winter 2014 to go with a more upscale look that incorporates sleeker signage to pull patrons away from the white and green Starbucks cups, after a continued period of sales decline.

Bridgehead locations also provide that contemporary coffee shop feel with plenty of exposed brick, dark woods and hanging low-lights. But to compete like Second Cup and Timothy's, outside the Ottawa market, is not in Bridgehead's plan, yet.

Its history differs from those brands. Bridgehead Trading was founded by United Church ministers and activists in 1981 to support Nicaraguan coffee farmers during a U.S. trade embargo. In the 1990s, the business faltered under the ownership of Oxfam-Canada, and in 2000 Clark took the opportunity to transform the company while maintaining its core value of commitment to fair trade and community. The seeds of running a fair trade business were planted in her mind during a trip to Nicaragua in 1987. Today, that commitment has Bridgehead sourcing coffee from small-scale growers from from Bolivia to Rwanda.

"It's standing for something. We had a strong sense of vision and a strong sense of values right from the get go," she said.

Clark, who often cycles to the Bridgehead locations, said community culture also comes through in Bridgehead's commitment to Ottawa neighbourhoods. "A lot of times people like to think of the coffee market as being saturated, contested, and it is," Clark said. "For us it was important to compete on product, experience, and to make really solid choices in terms of locations."

One in particular, which opened in 2012 on Anderson Street in Ottawa's Little Italy, houses corporate offices a stairway away, giving coffee drinkers on the ground floor a glimpse into the glass offices. The hum of the company's coffee roaster is a sign the company has taken direct control of how its coffee tastes, allowing for experiments in flavour and freshness.

The roastery is partially supported by funds from the Ottawa community through a program where customers purchased gift cards. These cards were between $250 and $1,000 and the money would be given back to customers via "Bridgehead dollars" every six months for three years.

This is the only location that received this kind of funding because of the administrative work involved. Family and friends initially funded Bridgehead and those same groups continue to control the company, along with some new investors. "In late 2013, several smaller shareholders exited and a local group of investors became partners in the business," she said.

The company also underwent a menu expansion in 2015, adding craft beer and wine as well as quinoa salads with roasted squash, to chocolate pecan squares, all prepared in-house by a team of 40 cooks. Increasing specialty items such as in-house brewed Kombucha juice, coupled with a model that favours slow growth has been key to the company's success. "It has to be smart. It can't just be growth for growth's sake," Clark said.

Which is why there are no plans to move further afield yet. Bridgehead needs to ensure it can retain its close ties to communities and the vertical integration of its food products, Clark said.

While, the current economic climate presents some problems, including the low dollar making it more expensive to bring the beans to the roastery, Clark said these costs have not affected the plans for growth.

Although Bridgehead is a small business, it's had a place in the market for a long-time, said Michael Mulvey, marketing professor at the University of Ottawa. "You could say they do have a 'bridgehead' already, established long before competitors came on the scene," said Mulvey, who's research centres on brands and their connection to customers.

Bridgehead was a social enterprise before the term really became known, defining itself based on its fair trade commitment as well as gaining a following of clients who care about coffee and where it comes from, he said.

Its success in the next few years will be predicated on whether it can stick to its core values of authenticity. "If they start to try to become something that they're not, that's when they are going to be putting some risk into the equation," he said.

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Why Ottawa-based coffee shop Bridgehead doesn't see Starbucks as a threat

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Securing a "bridgehead" in war means to conquer ground in an enemy's territory. Bridgehead Inc., a small Ottawa-based coffee shop business, continues to capture ground of its own in a competitive local café environment. The number of Bridgehead Coffee locations will double in the city in the next three years, said Tracey Clark, owner of the coffee chain.

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Bds (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) and York 

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Bds (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) and York 

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Latest Breaking News, Headlines & Updates | National Post

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Read latest breaking news, updates, and headlines. Get information on latest national and international events & more.

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Looking for a TEDx Talk? Find it on the TEDx YouTube Channel!

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We are in the process of re-thinking the way TEDx talks are shown on TED.com

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Looking for a TEDx Talk? Find it on the TEDx YouTube Channel! We are in the process of re-thinking the way TEDx talks are shown on TED.com If you are not automatically redirected within the next 10 seconds, please click here

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This article is by Paul Klein, founder and president, Impakt, and Milinda Martin, vice president, community investment, corporate brand, and reputation, Time Warner Cable.
January 1, 2025, Irving, Texas: Exxon Mobil is proud to announce that its exit from the extraction and production of non-renewable resources is now complete. Back in 2015 the company began its 10-year journey out of fossil fuels by committing itself to a bold set of changes that have transformed the company and indeed the world. Key actions over the past decade include:

hiring a new chief executive, formerly the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that believes economic prosperity and environmental stewardship go hand in hand;

being certified as a B-Corporation, a designation stipulating a material positive impact on society and the environment;

introducing a new class of shares whose value reflects both financial and environmental performance; and
transforming more than 10,000 Exxon and Mobil stations into local centers of sustainable transportation where customers can recharge their electric vehicles, buy or rent bicycles, and purchase discounted passes for local transit systems.

While this scenario sounds far-fetched, new research we conducted with Microsoft, Nestlé, Pfizer and Telus International reveals that announcements like this one may not be that unusual in 2025. "An intersection is coming where society will expect corporations to fill the void in the face of government cuts, and, likewise, corporations will expect their societal influence to increase as their social capital becomes the force of change in communities, countries and even entire global industries," said Jeffrey Puritt, president of TELUS International.

We predict that 2015 will mark the beginning of a long-term transition of the role and purpose of the world's largest public companies and the value chains they control. This shift will start with an acknowledgement that despite years of implementing initiatives designed to make the companies more "responsible," real progress on climate change and other global issues has remained incremental. The new imperative for business leaders will be to embrace the idea that the viability of their businesses depends on solving the world's most pressing societal issues.

"More or less all business started out with a social purpose of some kind, so the future may look more like a rediscovery of the social purpose of business," said Paul Bakus, president of corporate affairs at Nestlé. "What's been lost in recent decades is the long term perspective, values-based behaviours grounded in respect, and interconnectivity between the needs of society and the innovative dynamism of business."

Today, corporations that connect the dots between social issues and business solutions are seen as leaders. But we are moving toward a time when leadership will mean having the courage to stake a much bigger claim. "Today our social investments focus on providing access to medicines and building health care capacity for those most in need," said Caroline Roan, vice president for corporate responsibility at Pfizer and president of the Pfizer Foundation. "Ultimately, we are striving to create a commercial structure that will allow us to ensure that our medicines are used effectively and provided in an affordable and sustainable way to everyone who needs them."

For millennials, who are often cited as the generation that will change the world, and who will make up the next wave of business leaders, this degree of commitment will be the rule rather than the exception. At Microsoft, this is taking shape with programs such as Tech for Good, focusing on providing software donations and cash grants to non-profit organizations, and YouthSpark, which aims to create opportunities for 300 million young people around the world in the areas of computer science education, employment, and entrepreneurship. "As this generation grows up and continues to shape the world, we will still see companies selling products-that certainly won't go away-but we'll see an even stronger desire for companies to be good corporate citizens with a 'serving communities' mission ingrained in their cultures," said Lori Forte Harnick, general manager for citizenship and public affairs at Microsoft.

Further, a recent study by MSLGROUP, The Future of Business Citizenship, suggests that amid the emerging social purpose of business, millennials in positions of leadership will put the interests and priorities of their employees ahead of customers and shareholders. This re-ranking of stakeholders will be based on the belief that external value (higher profits and better products and services) is created by recognizing the interconnectivity of business and community and engaging employees to actively participate in improving both.

Externally, stakeholder activism continues to evolve and affect the way businesses work and intersect with social issues. "Now more than ever, stakeholder engagement is the cornerstone of corporate responsibility," says Roan. Corporations are recognizing that they are more productive when all sides are able to understand one another's interests, aspirations, and commitments, and work together. "In recent years, Nestlé has been engaging much more systematically with stakeholders, even constructively critical ones, to ask them what they expect of us," said Bakus. "This has led to the development of 35 forward-looking commitments covering every area of our business-nutrition, water, rural development, sustainability, and compliance."

When businesses commit to solving social issues, they need to think very differently about their competition. "People are moving away from asking 'What's in it for us?' to asking 'What's the risk for our company to act alone?,'" said Doug Bannerman, North American head of social responsibility for Statoil. "We realize as an industry that we're having cumulative impacts, so as an industry we have to have cumulative solutions." In Alberta, oil and gas corporations have established the Oil Sands Community Alliance to effectively manage the issues associated with economic growth and to maximize benefits for the communities where they operate. "The scale of industrial impacts is so big that the expectation is now that we have to be partners instead of competitors," Bannerman said .

Paradoxically, having a strong business commitment to social change will also means having an exit strategy from philanthropy. "I like to say that if we are successful, my team, Pfizer's corporate responsibility group, will be out of business, and responsible business growth will be fully integrated into our commercial organization," said Roan. Related to this, businesses that commit to solving social issues will support only those non-governmental organizations that are prepared to be redundant. Instead of providing philanthropic support to NGOs, corporations are already considering a range of other opportunities including helping charities transition from philanthropy to sustainable social enterprise, and delivering more socioeconomic value to communities by investing in local entrepreneurs. "I think companies realize that the biggest impacts that we make in the social sphere probably are not terribly sexy," said Bannerman. "It's what we pay in terms of taxes, what we pay in terms of royalties and fees, and what we pay suppliers that is most impactful."

Companies such as Nestlé are already helping to redefine what scalable impact can look like when businesses focus on issues that are specific to their areas of expertise. Nestlé's grains improvement program in Ghana and Nigeria is an inspiring example. The company has worked to reduce the high levels of mycotoxins (natural fungal contaminants that can cause immune suppression, impaired development in children, and liver damage in both humans and animals) in cereals, dried fruits, and nuts, which are important both to Nestlé's breakfast cereals and to the health and livelihoods of local farmers. "With our partners-the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the College of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences at the University of Ghana-we worked with local farmers to improve agricultural and storage practices and raised awareness of the risks associated with contaminated grains," said Bakus. "To those farmers who produced mycotoxin-free produce, we paid price premiums. The results? Farmers doubled their yields and their revenues, and we have increased sales of fortified Golden Morn by 56% since 2012, made from 100% good-quality local grains."

Our research showed that social initiatives are not delivering enough impact because they are being pursued without real long -term vision of social purpose or bold commitment to social goals. "Companies need to become much more intentional about their corporate cultures, where social purpose will play a much larger role, even to the point where it's a daily expression of who they are and why they exist as a business," said Puritt.

To what degree is your company moving towards a vision as bold as the Exxon Mobil scenario? Bannerman says, "Rather than a company saying, 'Well, we give a million dollars to Covenant House and Boys and Girls Clubs,' which is what we're used to saying, it should say, 'We're going to eliminate youth homelessness by 2025.' That's a much more bold goal, and I think that's the kind of thing that we need to do inside all of our companies."

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Rediscovering the social purpose of business

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This article is by Paul Klein, founder and president, Impakt, and Milinda Martin, vice president, community investment, corporate brand, and reputation, Time Warner Cable. January 1, 2025, Irving, Texas: Exxon Mobil is proud to announce that its exit from the extraction and production of non-renewable resources is now complete.

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Just weeks after a Vancouver company introduced unlimited paid vacation in January, some employees are already off on holidays in Thailand.

"These are high-quality people, who will come back more refreshed, better than ever," said Jeff Booth, chief executive officer of BuildDirect, an online home improvement marketplace that sells everything from flooring to kitchens.

"We feel it's the right thing for our employees. Instead of measuring hours, we measure output," said Booth, who says he took seven weeks of vacation last year including a three-week trip to Vietnam.

"If my best person came to me and said, 'I really need this time, a paid vacation.' Would I give it to them? I would," he said, adding then he looked around the room and wondered whether he would grant such vacation to others. He would.

The policy now means all 300 employees have access to unlimited paid vacation - including staff in the warehouse. Though there are still rules including limiting it generally to no more than four consecutive weeks, as many times over the course of the year, though a manager could give the sign-off on longer periods.

"We trust our best people like owners, and they pay that trust back to us, acting like owners," Booth said. "When you trust people, they trust you right back."

Miovision, a Kitchener-based traffic management company, also brought in the new unlimited paid vacation policy last month, part of a policy to emphasize trust, but also formalizing what had essentially been an unwritten rule.

"Ultimately, we are all passionate about what we do and are hard-working professionals," said Miovision's CEO Kurtis McBride. "We just decided we didn't need to babysit the staff. They are quite capable of deciding how much time they need, while still getting the work done."

McBride, who wouldn't say how much vacation he took last year, confesses "it was not enough," though he and his family are planning a getaway in March.

As part of the new policy, known as "flex vacation," Miovision also set a minimum requirement - all 110 employees must take at least three weeks a year, in part because some people just wanted to work all the time.

"The idea is take as much vacation time as you need, but we're all here to build the future," he said. "We ask people to plan that into project schedules, and work to find a lull in a project, or burn hard for three weeks, so you're not leaving your team in a lurch."

McBride concedes there is a potential for someone to abuse the policy, but if that reports just 1 per cent of the workforce, would that justify treating the remaining 99 per cent like children?

Legal and accounting departments at both companies had to jump through hoops to meet employment standards rules - including determining how to figure out how to pay out owed vacation for departing employees.

While BuildDirect and Miovision are joining the likes of companies such as Netflix, LinkedIn or Virgin Group, the idea hasn't worked at some companies including crowdfunding website Kickstarter, which reverted back to fixed vacation days last fall.

That's because the open-ended policy left employees feeling uneasy about taking days off, especially whether they were taking an appropriate amount of time or too much.

In 2014, the Tribune company, which publishes the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, reversed a discretionary time off policy in just a few weeks, reportedly because long-time employees were upset over the sudden disappearance in value of vacation days they had accrued over time.

Julian Barling, Borden chair of leadership at Smith School of Business, noted that the traditional model of limiting vacation days was built on fear that people would escape the workplace.

"In the workplaces of the current era, we are trying to construct workplaces that are very different, where autonomy is very important," he said. "It does not mean doing everything and anything they want."

The difference is having meaningful work that people enjoy, with the idea about not worrying about people "absenting" themselves for fun, he said.

Barling believes this policy could apply to larger companies, but it really comes down to courage.

"It requires courage on the part of leadership to appreciate there are better ways of working, better ways of organizing," he said. "It requires trust, not just in your employees, which is hard enough, but trusting yourself that you can't go into questioning everything you have done."

He said he hopes that the idea of unlimited paid vacation is just a first step in looking at how workplaces are organized.

"It's a good step, but a step in a longer process to really changing the nature of work," he said, adding if employees can do their work in less than an eight-hour workday, then they should be allowed to leave early.

But Barling believes despite small tech companies trying out flexible vacation policies, it's unlikely to set off major changes, given the weak economy.

"When times get tough, businesses get tough. People have a tendency to tighten things up, to be far more concerned about monitoring behaviour," he said.

However, he argues this is the ideal time to try something like this, potentially when there may be less work due to the economic slowdown.
Correction - February 17, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that referred to Miovision as a Waterloo-based company.

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Canadian tech companies' newest innovation: unlimited paid vacation | The Star

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Just weeks after a Vancouver company introduced unlimited paid vacation in January, some employees are already off on holidays in Thailand. "These are high-quality people, who will come back more refreshed, better than ever," said Jeff Booth, chief executive officer of BuildDirect, an online home improvement marketplace that sells everything from flooring to kitchens.

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Growing up on a farm in central Kenya, Winston Wachanga witnessed the piles of fruit and vegetables that perished after never making it to a market.

Later with a tomato farm of his own, he experienced the same struggle of farmers across the country trying to find a buyer. "We have so much produce but accessing customers is difficult. We don't have capacity to get produce to market and we end up being exploited. It becomes frustrating," he says.

To solve this gap, Wachanga set up online delivery company Kitchen Soko. In less than a year he has built up a network of 80 local farmers in Kenya whose produce is delivered in a box straight to the customer's front door. Customers can find out exactly which farm the produce has come from.

Winston Wachanga, founder of Kitchen Soko. Photograph: Winston Wachanga

Wachanga is one of the tech entrepreneurs tapping into Africa's middle class as well as the continent's improving access to internet. In 2013 McKinsey estimated that by 2025 e-commerce could account for 10% of retail sales in Africa's largest economies.

Kitchen Soko says it now supplies 500 boxes a week. Expats make up about one quarter of Kitchen Soko's clients, says Wachanga, but the rest are Kenyans. "Middle-class Kenyans living busy lives in the city, like those in other growing economies, value their time," he says. "That's why there is a lot of e-commerce."

Reports about dangerous toxins found in food sold in Nairobi have led to a surge in demand, says Wachanga. Recent tests on a sample of food bought in markets and supermarkets in the city found chips cooked in transformer oil, fruit containing traces of calcium carbide - usually used in welding - and kale containing toxic levels of lead. "Big suppliers don't care where the food comes from. We are letting people know the source," says Wachanga. "All our producers have to go through our food principles. They have to strive to produce food as organically as they can."

In Gambia, IT entrepreneur Modou Njie also saw an opportunity to buy food directly from local food producers and cut out the middleman, launching Farm Fresh last August. Its website offers more than 100 products, while farmers receive specific orders and a guarantee the produce will be bought from them.

Farm Fresh has seen steady demand in its first year and is soon launching in Sierra Leone with plans to extend to Senegal and Ghana.

Providing a direct link from farm to fork isn't always straight forward, however. This is true of Rwanda whose nickname "the land of a thousand hills" hints at the logistical struggle.

Civil engineering graduate Gael Murara recently introduced online grocery deliveries to Kigali, Rwanda's capital, with his startup GroceWheels. While his aim is to buy directly from farmers, he needs to build up enough demand to make that practical, and in the meantime he buys from wholesalers.

Part of this demand driving process will be about familiarising people with the concept of home delivered groceries. "E-commerce is very new. I have a lot of people asking where we work from, I say we are just online, we don't have a shop. It's the fact they don't see the person they are buying from," Murara says.

For the farmers, these companies say they offer better profits and spark competitive prices. Wachanga says that middlemen in traditional supply chains in Kenya are now having to compete with the rates that Kitchen Soko offers its farmers, and so have to give farmers better deals.

Better deals for farmers could incentivise people to remain in or enter agriculture, a sector that struggles with a reputation for being a lot of hard work for little pay. "If you say you're a farmer they will just laugh at you. It isn't highly regarded," says Njie. "A lot of people are not aware that agriculture is a lucrative market."

In Kigali, Murara hopes to show young people that agriculture "is not just getting up at 5am to tend to crops ... People don't really realise the market that is there. There are a lot of exciting things that can reduce the work of the farmers," he says.

Harvesting vegetables for Kitchen Soko. Photograph: Winston Wachanga

There are, however, notes of caution about the potential of these businesses. Omair Ansari, emerging consumer market analyst at Renaissance Capital, says it is too early to know the scale of this niche sector but queries its profitability.

Widespread internet access is planned but is currently low, he says, while credit cards and mobile payment platforms like Kenya's Mpesa are still relatively rare. Furthermore, these schemes are directed at a high earning middle class and while that demographic is growing, it's a slower growth than initially predicted. A recent Credit Suisse report suggests only 19 million people on the continent should be considered middle class. Ansari predicts that online grocery delivery companies will struggle to make money until those challenges are overcome.

"Among the upper middle and upper class there is a demand but that is also finite. You see stupendous growth rates of e-commerce because it simply didn't exist before, but that also has a cap on it when the rest of the population doesn't have access to mobile data. You can launch it now but it will end up costing you until that [internet] penetration rate kicks through. So the scalability isn't huge until logistics, mobile broadband and the cost of data are sorted," he said.

Wachangai remains buoyant. "People working in farming will be the next millionaires and it will only come through innovation like ours."

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The rise of internet veg box schemes in sub-Saharan Africa

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Growing up on a farm in central Kenya, Winston Wachanga witnessed the piles of fruit and vegetables that perished after never making it to a market. Later with a tomato farm of his own, he experienced the same struggle of farmers across the country trying to find a buyer.

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Action Against Hunger - Until the world is free from hunger

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Action Against Hunger saves lives by preventing world hunger and giving communities access to the essential aid they need.

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OAKLAND, Calif., February 25, 2016 /3BL Media/ - Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, and the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), an international consulting and research firm specializing in health and sustainability, today released new data indicating that fifty-nine percent of consumers now recognize the Fair Trade Certified™ label. This growth is supported by new insights into consumer spending habits- particularly around the role of Millennials in driving ethical purchases - and an abundance of new Fair Trade products hitting store shelves.

In addition to the spike in general awareness, up from fifty-five percent in 2013, the joint research between NMI and Fair Trade USA reveals that nearly forty percent of the general population look for proof of social claims when purchasing products. Millennials are especially motivated by causes, seventy percent of whom are more likely to buy products from companies that support their favorite causes, compared to sixty-one percent of the general population. Sixty-five percent of Millennials also recognize the Fair Trade Certified label.

"Consumers want accountability, responsibility and sustainability from the companies with which they do business," said MaryEllen Molyneaux, President of NMI. "The Fair Trade Certified label allows shoppers to readily identify products that meet these criteria."

Fair Trade USA partnered with NMI as part of its broad-reaching "The State of Sustainability in America" study, which will be released at the end of March 2016.

Increased numbers of Fair Trade Certified™ products on store shelves also make identifying and purchasing ethical products easier than ever. One hundred and thirty-three new Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) products have launched since January 2016 alone, driven largely by growth in the mainstream sector. These products add to the nearly 550 Fair Trade Certified™ CPG items launched in 2015. Some new products, many launching in time for Expo West 2016, include:

Sweets & Treats: Marich Chocolates launches 32 new skus dipped in Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate, including Triple Chocolate Toffee, Pastel Chocolate Cherries and Milk Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Popcorn. TCHO expands offerings to five new bars. Vosges Haut-Chocolat expands offerings to five new bars. Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value Fair Trade Ice Cream adds two new flavors, French Vanilla and Cookies & Cream, made with Fair Trade Certified™ sugar. Kashi launches two GoLean bars made with Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate. Annie's launches Cocoa Bunnies Cereal made with Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate.

Beverages: Third Street expands offerings to three new chai flavors. Hiball launches Fair Trade Alta Palla sparkling water, cold brew and protein drinks. Honest Tea's entire line of products will now source 100% Fair Trade Certified™ tea and sugar. BJ's Wholesale Club launches Wellsley Farms coffee made with Fair Trade coffee beans. Kroger launches a line of Simple Truth teas as well as a new private label coffee. Zico expands coconut water selection with new 1-liter offerings.

Unique & Notable: Sensible Organics launches Skin Solve, designed to moisturize and replenish skin. SunRidge Farms launches two new skus, including Dark Chocolate Ghost Pepper Almonds.

"This growth in Fair Trade offerings indicates that consumers increasingly care about what happens at the other of the supply-chain-that the farmers who grow the foods they love can take care of their land, their families, and themselves," said Sri Artham, Vice President of CPG at Fair Trade USA. "It's clear that the brands supporting Fair Trade are rewarded by consumers voting with their dollars."

With new Fair Trade products popping up in nearly every aisle of the supermarket, consumers have more opportunities than ever to make a difference their dollar, shop their values, and empower farming communities across the globe.

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About Fair Trade USA
Fair Trade USA is a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable livelihoods for farmers and workers; protects fragile ecosystems; and builds strong, transparent supply chains through independent, third-party certification. Its trusted Fair Trade Certified™ label signifies that rigorous standards have been met in the production, trade and promotion of Fair Trade products from over 80 countries across the globe. Recognized as a leading social venture by the Clinton Global Initiative, the Skoll Foundation and Ashoka, Fair Trade USA also provides critical capacity-building programs at origin, and educates consumers about the power of their purchase. Visit www.FairTradeUSA.org for more information.

Contact:

Jenna Larson, Fair Trade USA

(510) 844-1668; jlarson@fairtradeusa.org
About NMI
NMI is an international strategic consulting and research firm specializing in health and sustainability since 1990. They are known for their consumer databases, now with 17 years of data across more than 1 million consumers in 30+ countries. NMI's knowledge and experience within health, sustainability and social research is unparalleled. For more information please visit www.NMIsolutions.com.

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Fifty-Nine Percent of Americans Now Aware of Fair Trade Certified™ Products

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OAKLAND, Calif., February 25, 2016 /3BL Media/ - Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, and the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), an international consulting and research firm specializing in health and sustainability, today released new data indicating that fifty-nine percent of consumers now recognize the Fair Trade Certified™ label.

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Ted Talk on Social Enterprise and Charity

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Ted Talk on Social Enterprise and Charity

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Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

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Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend -- not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses).

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Jonny Price has a fresh outlook on microlending and alternative finance's potential influence for society.

Mr. Price is a Senior Director with Kiva Zip, a platform which facilitates zero-percent interest loans to inspirational borrowers making a difference in their communities through character-based lending.

Entrepreneurs invite family and friends to first support their project to prove their creditworthiness. Should a designated threshold be reached, the project is presented to the Kiva Zip community for support.

Mr. Price has a degree in history and economics from Cambridge, where he focused on industrialization, the twentieth century political economy and African history. With a historian's eye, I asked him what lessons he applies from his studies in his role with Kiva Zip.

"History seems to go in cycles," Mr. Price said. "Something begins with one viewpoint, then another revisionist view challenges it. Finally a more synthesized outlook, a combination of the first two, emerges, one more balanced."

Mr. Price cites the late 19th British Empire as an example. Once seen as spreading a great civilization across the globe, historians later began viewing that period as a terrible one, as they focus on the many negative effects of the British expansion.

Now a middle ground is emerging, one which acknowledges both the positive and negative contributions of the British Empire in India and Africa. Price sees them both on his frequent trips to those areas.

A similar pattern is unfolding in lending, Mr. Price said. Back in the George Bailey era, banking was based on relationships and trust between the bankers and the community. Over the last 50 years that coziness has evaporated.

Kiva Zip aims to bring it back.

"At Kiva Zip we want to keep the same elements of scale and cost efficiency but reintroduce the human relationship by underwriting based on someone's standing in the community," Mr. Price said.

Democratization of finance is something the Kiva Zip team spends plenty of time thinking about, Mr. Price added. Whereas one person at a bank develops an algorithm which arbitrarily screens thousands of applicants by homogeneous criteria, Kiva Zip presents one applicant to thousands of lenders and lets them apply their own.

If someone has a heart to revitalize inner city Detroit, they can focus on projects geared toward that goal. Maybe it is helping those prone to stereotypes. Create an opportunity for people to support causes which mean something to them and they are more likely to support more of them.

And the best part is this does not have to cost a bundle to accomplish, Mr. Price said. As borrowers repay loans into a lender's account, the lender can redeploy those dollars to projects over and over again.

Connect borrowers and lenders who are both passionate about projects, produce hundreds of successful programs and you have yourself quite the marketing team, Mr. Price said.

"They are reaching out to their communities with a much more compelling message than me going out there and telling people to lend to them."

The online social lending community is still in its early stages, yet some strata are beginning to emerge. If you are going on Kickstarter or Indiegogo and hoping the crowd will do most of the heavy lifting, you may be better off buying Powerball tickets. The sheer volume of campaigns means you better have a connected network or your chances of success drop fast, Mr. Price said.

"On other sites, it's incumbent on you to do 80 percent of the work through your own network. With Kiva Zip you still have to do some work, but it is more 80-20 the other way."

"And what's even better is the success rate on Indiegogo is around 15 percent whereas on Kiva Zip it's 90 percent."

Included in that 90 percent are many mom and pop operations like gardeners and mechanics, those unsexy fields which form the backbone of the economy, Mr. Price added.

I speak to many in the crowdfunding industry who believe the success of most crowdfunding methods will lie mostly with those sectors with built in affinity groups like video games, tech, entertainment and gadgetry.

Maybe it depends on your definition of affinity group. While sexy areas do attract attention, the Kiva Zip model is clearly resonating on a deeper level, where those ties have more meaning.

Farmers and formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs are two groups of people seeing success on the platform.

"Some may have 'only' an 80 percent repayment rate, but that means four out of five are paying it back," Mr. Price said.

"Those are amazing success rates."

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Kiva Zip aims to bring human element back to borrowing

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Jonny Price has a fresh outlook on microlending and alternative finance's potential influence for society. Mr. Price is a Senior Director with Kiva Zip, a platform which facilitates zero-percent interest loans to inspirational borrowers making a difference in their communities through character-based lending. Entrepreneurs invite family and friends to first support their project to prove their creditworthiness.

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We are a car sharing program in your community that lets you go where you want, when you want. Share in your community today and enjoy the ride!

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Ever wonder why it's so difficult to get local produce at your grocery store? www.redtomato.org The biggest hurdle: Logistics! Red Tomato has spent 16 years learning how to leap (or at least climb over) logistics barriers for local produce.

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British Columbia is making it easier for do-gooders to make money and give back to the community by setting up a new business model which is also aimed at attracting socially conscious investors.

B.C.'s so-called Community Contribution Company (C3) caps a company's profit at 40 per cent, even after the business is sold. The remainder goes to social causes, which can range from homeless shelters to recycling programs.

The province is the first in Canada to introduce the new corporation category, with Nova Scotia expected to soon follow.

Since the regulations took effect on July 29, 2013, at least three companies have registered to become a C3, including a new social enterprise consulting company started by David LePage and three partners. Mr. LePage was part of a consultation team that helped to craft the legislation, which included amendments to the province's Business Corporations Act.

"We're trying to join together what is mostly been seen as an oxymoron - business and social value. We're looking now at how do you use business models to create social value," says Mr. LePage, whose new company is called Accelerating Social Impact CCC Ltd.

Supporters of the new corporate structure say it's about time a new hybrid model was created, since existing legislation for non-profit and for-profit companies have limitations. For instance, non-profits can't issue shares or pay dividends, which makes it difficult to lure investors. For-profit firms pay dividends, but where they put the money is up to shareholders who may not share the company's willingness to contribute to social causes.

Still, many argue the C3 model has too many restrictions and can create too much red tape, which will create barriers for both companies and investors. There's also concern that the plan, which the provincial government promises will create more jobs, will turn out to have little impact.

To become a C3, companies need to fill out the proper forms and the status is instantaneous, however, it takes a few days to prepare and people should seek professional advice before they do it.

The C3 structure is modelled after a similar program in the United Kingdom, known as Community Interest Companies (CICs). More than 6,000 CICs have registered in the UK since the program started in 2005.

B.C.'s program comes after three years of consultation between the government and a group known as the B.C. Social Innovation Council, which is a mix of non-profits, business, government and community leaders.

C3s differ from private companies because they include an 'asset lock,' which includes a 40-per-cent cap on dividends that can be paid out to shareholders. The remaining profit must go towards community purposes or held and transferred to a qualified organization, such as a charity, according to the government. Companies that set up a C3 are also required to have three directors and to publish an annual report describing their activities.

Companies interested in taking on the C3 status can do it at the time of incorporating their company, or if they amend their existing corporate structure, which means getting approval from its shareholders.

"It's a new kind of company, a new innovative business model," says B.C. finance minister of Michael de Jong in an interview.

In announcing the new business model, Mr. de Jong says it will generate "meaningful, local employment in B.C. and generate economic wealth for our province" by spurring private investors who want to put their money into these types of companies.

While the idea sounds good, Joel Solomon, chair of Vancouver-based social venture financing firm Renewal Funds, says it still needs to be tested to see if it will generate jobs and investment in the province.

"The devil is in the details," he says. "New models require testing and refinement, along with extra support of early adopters, or they are simply a public relations exercise ... time will tell if it's a symbolic gesture or if there is real commitment to social goods."

He says the government also needs to maintain ongoing support for social enterprises, which includes recognition they create jobs and shouldn't be a constant source of cutbacks.

"The business sector is unlikely ever to replace most necessary functions of government," he adds.

It's those cuts to social sector grants that are driving some non-profits to seek for-profit means to maintain their business, says Del Friday, an associate who works with small business owners at Vancouver-based law firm Kuhn LLP.

While the new model should attract companies that want to contribute to social causes, Ms. Friday says businesses need to be aware of the restrictions and requirements for C3s.

"We are talking about a normal business and adding a few layers of regulation. You have to really know that you want to do this. It has to be an integral part of your business model because you will run into extra expenses," she says.

Andy Broderick, vice president of community investment at Vancity, says many of companies that will sign on will likely be new ventures. Vancity, which was also part of the consultation group to implement the C3 model, says the new structure allows it to offer more financing to social enterprises, which its members have been requesting.

"We see C3 as another tool that will help increase the number of companies out there that will be thoughtfully run. Our credit won't have to turn them down because they are structured for a double bottom line, but don't have a legal structure that will protect that," he says. "This is just one more thing that should allow us to move more capital into community goals. It's more of the kind of business we're looking for."

Mr. LePage, of Accelerating Social Impact, acknowledges the C3 model isn't for everyone, but offers an alternative.

"It changes the landscape of options and it's a very important step, but we have to be careful of what we expect it to do," says Mr. LePage, who is also the team manager at Enterprising Non-Profits, a program that supports social enterprise development.

"For a lot of young entrepreneurs who want to do good and do business it's a great model. For some non-profits and charities that want to set up subsidiaries for profit it's a great option. But people are going to use the existing model when it's right for them," he says.

"It's great to have another avenue to blend social values into business, but it's not the only way to do it."

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B.C.'s new business model makes it easier to make money and give back

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British Columbia is making it easier for do-gooders to make money and give back to the community by setting up a new business model which is also aimed at attracting socially conscious investors. B.C.'s so-called Community Contribution Company (C3) caps a company's profit at 40 per cent, even after the business is sold.

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Farmall H Oil Change & Getting Ready For Spring

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The Power of Having Great Training Partners w / Rich Froning & Angelo Dicicco

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Learn about the Tahoe Food Hub's mission and purpose.

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Launching a new enterprise-whether it's a tech start-up, a small business, or an initiative within a large corporation-has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. According to the decades-old formula, you write a business plan, pitch it to investors, assemble a team, introduce a product, and start selling as hard as you can. And somewhere in this sequence of events, you'll probably suffer a fatal setback. The odds are not with you: As new research by Harvard Business School's Shikhar Ghosh shows, 75% of all start-ups fail.

But recently an important countervailing force has emerged, one that can make the process of starting a company less risky. It's a methodology called the "lean start-up," and it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional "big design up front" development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts-such as "minimum viable product" and "pivoting"-have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.

The lean start-up movement hasn't gone totally mainstream, however, and we have yet to feel its full impact. In many ways it is roughly where the big data movement was five years ago-consisting mainly of a buzzword that's not yet widely understood, whose implications companies are just beginning to grasp. But as its practices spread, they're turning the conventional wisdom about entrepreneurship on its head. New ventures of all kinds are attempting to improve their chances of success by following its principles of failing fast and continually learning. And despite the methodology's name, in the long term some of its biggest payoffs may be gained by the large companies that embrace it.

In this article I'll offer a brief overview of lean start-up techniques and how they've evolved. Most important, I'll explain how, in combination with other business trends, they could ignite a new entrepreneurial economy.

The Fallacy of the Perfect Business Plan

According to conventional wisdom, the first thing every founder must do is create a business plan-a static document that describes the size of an opportunity, the problem to be solved, and the solution that the new venture will provide. Typically it includes a five-year forecast for income, profits, and cash flow. A business plan is essentially a research exercise written in isolation at a desk before an entrepreneur has even begun to build a product. The assumption is that it's possible to figure out most of the unknowns of a business in advance, before you raise money and actually execute the idea.

Once an entrepreneur with a convincing business plan obtains money from investors, he or she begins developing the product in a similarly insular fashion. Developers invest thousands of man-hours to get it ready for launch, with little if any customer input. Only after building and launching the product does the venture get substantial feedback from customers-when the sales force attempts to sell it. And too often, after months or even years of development, entrepreneurs learn the hard way that customers do not need or want most of the product's features.

After decades of watching thousands of start-ups follow this standard regimen, we've now learned at least three things:

1. Business plans rarely survive first contact with customers. As the boxer Mike Tyson once said about his opponents' prefight strategies: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

2. No one besides venture capitalists and the late Soviet Union requires five-year plans to forecast complete unknowns. These plans are generally fiction, and dreaming them up is almost always a waste of time.

The business model canvas lets you look at all nine building blocks of your business on one page. Each component of the business model contains a series of hypotheses that you need to test.

3. Start-ups are not smaller versions of large companies. They do not unfold in accordance with master plans. The ones that ultimately succeed go quickly from failure to failure, all the while adapting, iterating on, and improving their initial ideas as they continually learn from customers.

One of the critical differences is that while existing companies execute a business model, start-ups look for one. This distinction is at the heart of the lean start-up approach. It shapes the lean definition of a start-up: a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

The lean method has three key principles:

First, rather than engaging in months of planning and research, entrepreneurs accept that all they have on day one is a series of untested hypotheses-basically, good guesses. So instead of writing an intricate business plan, founders summarize their hypotheses in a framework called a business model canvas. Essentially, this is a diagram of how a company creates value for itself and its customers. (See the exhibit "Sketch Out Your Hypotheses.")

Second, lean start-ups use a "get out of the building" approach called customer development to test their hypotheses. They go out and ask potential users, purchasers, and partners for feedback on all elements of the business model, including product features, pricing, distribution channels, and affordable customer acquisition strategies. The emphasis is on nimbleness and speed: New ventures rapidly assemble minimum viable products and immediately elicit customer feedback. Then, using customers' input to revise their assumptions, they start the cycle over again, testing redesigned offerings and making further small adjustments (iterations) or more substantive ones (pivots) to ideas that aren't working. (See the exhibit "Listen to Customers.")

During customer development, a start-up searches for a business model that works. If customer feedback reveals that its business hypotheses are wrong, it either revises them or "pivots" to new hypotheses. Once a model is proven, the start-up starts executing, building a formal organization. Each stage of customer development is iterative: A start-up will probably fail several times before finding the right approach.

1. Founders translate company ideas into business model hypotheses, test assumptions about customers' needs, and then create a "minimum viable product" to try out their proposed solution on customers.

2. Start-up continues to test all other hypotheses and tries to validate customers' interest through early orders or product usage. If there's no interest, the start-up can "pivot" by changing one or more hypotheses.

3. The product is refined enough to sell. Using its proven hypotheses, the start-up builds demand by rapidly ramping up marketing and sales spending, and scales up the business.

4. Business transitions from start-up mode, with a customer development team searching for answers, to functional departments executing its model.

Third, lean start-ups practice something called agile development, which originated in the software industry. Agile development works hand-in-hand with customer development. Unlike typical yearlong product development cycles that presuppose knowledge of customers' problems and product needs, agile development eliminates wasted time and resources by developing the product iteratively and incrementally. It's the process by which start-ups create the minimum viable products they test. (See the exhibit "Quick, Responsive Development.")

When Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden started Blue River Technology, they were students in my class at Stanford. They had a vision of building robotic lawn mowers for commercial spaces. After talking to over 100 customers in 10 weeks, they learned their initial customer target-golf courses-didn't value their solution. But then they began to talk to farmers and found a huge demand for an automated way to kill weeds without chemicals. Filling it became their new product focus, and within 10 weeks Blue River had built and tested a prototype. Nine months later the start-up had obtained more than $3 million in venture funding. The team expected to have a commercial product ready just nine months after that.

In contrast to traditional product development, in which each stage occurs in linear order and lasts for months, agile development builds products in short, repeated cycles. A start-up produces a "minimum viable product"-containing only critical features-gathers feedback on it from customers, and then starts over with a revised minimum viable product.

Stealth Mode's Declining Popularity

Lean methods are changing the language start-ups use to describe their work. During the dot-com boom, start-ups often operated in "stealth mode" (to avoid alerting potential competitors to a market opportunity), exposing prototypes to customers only during highly orchestrated "beta" tests. The lean start-up methodology makes those concepts obsolete because it holds that in most industries customer feedback matters more than secrecy and that constant feedback yields better results than cadenced unveilings.

Those two fundamental precepts crystallized for me during my career as an entrepreneur. (I've been involved with eight high-tech start-ups, as either a founder or an early employee.) When I shifted into teaching, a decade ago, I came up with the formula for customer development described earlier. By 2003 I was outlining this process in a course at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 2004, I invested in a start-up founded by Eric Ries and Will Harvey and, as a condition of my investment, insisted that they take my course. Eric quickly recognized that waterfall development, the tech industry's traditional, linear product development approach, should be replaced by iterative agile techniques. He also saw similarities between this emerging set of start-up disciplines and the Toyota Production System, which had become known as "lean manufacturing." Eric dubbed the combination of customer development and agile practices the "lean start-up."

The tools were popularized by a series of successful books. In 2003, I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany, articulating for the first time that start-ups were not smaller versions of large companies and laying out the customer development process in detail. In 2010, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur gave entrepreneurs the standard framework for business model canvases in Business Model Generation. In 2011 Eric published an overview in The Lean Startup. And in 2012 Bob Dorf and I summarized what we'd learned about lean techniques in a step-by-step handbook called The Startup Owner's Manual.

The lean start-up method is now being taught at more than 25 universities and through a popular online course at Udacity.com. In addition, in almost every city around world, you'll find organizations like Startup Weekend introducing the lean method to hundreds of prospective entrepreneurs at a time. At such gatherings a roomful of start-up teams can cycle through half a dozen potential product ideas in a matter of hours. Although it sounds incredible to people who haven't been to one, at these events some businesses are formed on a Friday evening and are generating actual revenue by Sunday afternoon.

Creating an Entrepreneurial, Innovation-Based Economy

While some adherents claim that the lean process can make individual start-ups more successful, I believe that claim is too grandiose. Success is predicated on too many factors for one methodology to guarantee that any single start-up will be a winner. But on the basis of what I've seen at hundreds of start-ups, at programs that teach lean principles, and at established companies that practice them, I can make a more important claim: Using lean methods across a portfolio of start-ups will result in fewer failures than using traditional methods.

A lower start-up failure rate could have profound economic consequences. Today the forces of disruption, globalization, and regulation are buffeting the economies of every country. Established industries are rapidly shedding jobs, many of which will never return. Employment growth in the 21st century will have to come from new ventures, so we all have a vested interest in fostering an environment that helps them succeed, grow, and hire more workers. The creation of an innovation economy that's driven by the rapid expansion of start-ups has never been more imperative.

In the past, growth in the number of start-ups was constrained by five factors in addition to the failure rate:

The founders of lean start-ups don't begin with a business plan; they begin with the search for a business model. Only after quick rounds of experimentation and feedback reveal a model that works do lean founders focus on execution.

1. The high cost of getting the first customer and the even higher cost of getting the product wrong.

2. Long technology development cycles.

3. The limited number of people with an appetite for the risks inherent in founding or working at a start-up.

4. The structure of the venture capital industry, in which a small number of firms each needed to invest big sums in a handful of start-ups to have a chance at significant returns.

5. The concentration of real expertise in how to build start-ups, which in the United States was mostly found in pockets on the East and West coasts. (This is less an issue in Europe and other parts of the world, but even overseas there are geographic entrepreneurial hot spots.)

The lean approach reduces the first two constraints by helping new ventures launch products that customers actually want, far more quickly and cheaply than traditional methods, and the third by making start-ups less risky. And it has emerged at a time when other business and technology trends are likewise breaking down the barriers to start-up formation. The combination of all these forces is altering the entrepreneurial landscape.

Today open source software, like GitHub, and cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, have slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. Hardware start-ups no longer have to build their own factories, since offshore manufacturers are so easily accessible. Indeed, it's become quite common to see young tech companies that practice the lean start-up methodology offer software products that are simply "bits" delivered over the web or hardware that's built in China within weeks of being formed. Consider Roominate, a start-up designed to inspire girls' confidence and interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. Once its founders had finished testing and iterating on the design of their wired dollhouse kit, they sent the specs off to a contract manufacturer in China. Three weeks later the first products arrived.

Another important trend is the decentralization of access to financing. Venture capital used to be a tight club of formal firms clustered near Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. In today's entrepreneurial ecosystem, new super angel funds, smaller than the traditional hundred-million-dollar-sized VC fund, can make early-stage investments. Worldwide, hundreds of accelerators, like Y Combinator and TechStars, have begun to formalize seed investments. And crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter provide another, more democratic method of financing start-ups.

The instantaneous availability of information is also a boon to today's new ventures. Before the internet, new company founders got advice only as often as they could have coffee with experienced investors or entrepreneurs. Today the biggest challenge is sorting through the overwhelming amount of start-up advice they get. The lean concepts provide a framework that helps you differentiate the good from the bad.

Lean start-up techniques were initially designed to create fast-growing tech ventures. But I believe the concepts are equally valid for creating the Main Street small businesses that make up the bulk of the economy. If the entire universe of small business embraced them, I strongly suspect it would increase growth and efficiency, and have a direct and immediate impact on GDP and employment.

There are signs that this may in fact happen. In 2011 the U.S. National Science Foundation began using lean methods to commercialize basic science research in a program called the Innovation Corps. Eleven universities now teach the methods to hundreds of teams of senior research scientists across the United States.

MBA programs are adopting these techniques, too. For years they taught students to apply large-company approaches-such as accounting methods for tracking revenue and cash flow, and organizational theories about managing-to start-ups. Yet start-ups face completely different issues. Now business schools are realizing that new ventures need their own management tools.

As business schools embrace the distinction between management execution and searching for a business model, they're abandoning the business plan as the template for entrepreneurial education. And the business plan competitions that have been a celebrated part of the MBA experience for over a decade are being replaced by business model competitions. (Harvard Business School became the latest to make this switch, in 2012.) Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, and Columbia are leading the charge and embracing the lean start-up curriculum. My Lean LaunchPad course for educators is now training over 250 college and university instructors a year.

A New Strategy for the 21st-Century Corporation

It's already becoming clear that lean start-up practices are not just for young tech ventures.

Corporations have spent the past 20 years increasing their efficiency by driving down costs. But simply focusing on improving existing business models is not enough anymore. Almost every large company understands that it also needs to deal with ever-increasing external threats by continually innovating. To ensure their survival and growth, corporations need to keep inventing new business models. This challenge requires entirely new organizational structures and skills.

Over the years managerial experts such as Clayton Christensen, Rita McGrath, Vijay Govindarajan, Henry Chesbrough, Ian MacMillan, Alexander Osterwalder, and Eric von Hippel have advanced the thinking on how large companies can improve their innovation processes. During the past three years, however, we have seen large companies, including General Electric, Qualcomm, and Intuit, begin to implement the lean start-up methodology.

GE's Energy Storage division, for instance, is using the approach to transform the way it innovates. In 2010 Prescott Logan, the general manager of the division, recognized that a new battery developed by the unit had the potential to disrupt the industry. Instead of preparing to build a factory, scale up production, and launch the new offering (ultimately named Durathon) as a traditional product extension, Logan applied lean techniques. He started searching for a business model and engaging in customer discovery. He and his team met face-to-face with dozens of global prospects to explore potential new markets and applications. These weren't sales calls: The team members left their PowerPoint slides behind and listened to customers' issues and frustrations with the battery status quo. They dug deep to learn how customers bought industrial batteries, how often they used them, and the operating conditions. With this feedback, they made a major shift in their customer focus. They eliminated one of their initial target segments, data centers, and discovered a new one-utilities. In addition, they narrowed the broad customer segment of "telecom" to cell phone providers in developing countries with unreliable electric grids. Eventually GE invested $100 million to build a world-class battery manufacturing facility in Schenectady, New York, which it opened in 2012. According to press reports, demand for the new batteries is so high that GE is already running a backlog of orders.The first hundred years of management education focused on building strategies and tools that formalized execution and efficiency for existing businesses. Now, we have the first set of tools for searching for new business models as we launch start-up ventures. It also happens to have arrived just in time to help existing companies deal with the forces of continual disruption. In the 21st century those forces will make people in every kind of organization-start-ups, small businesses, corporations, and government-feel the pressure of rapid change. The lean start-up approach will help them meet it head-on, innovate rapidly, and transform business as we know it.

A version of this article appeared in the May 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything

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Launching a new enterprise-whether it's a tech start-up, a small business, or an initiative within a large corporation-has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. According to the decades-old formula, you write a business plan, pitch it to investors, assemble a team, introduce a product, and start selling as hard as you can.

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We want to answer the question: Do consumers care about sustainability? And we want you to join in the discussion.

The status quo of coffee isn't sustainable. Smallholder coffee farmers produce 80% of the world's coffee, but they are an aging populace-in Colombia, for example, the average age of a farmer is around 55 years old. Farmers are often paid below cost of production, making it difficult to for them to maintain their farms. Who will grow our coffee in the future if coffee production is no longer profitable business for young people?

Growing delicious coffee requires agronomic knowledge, but many farmers have little access to training and support. Unless we pay farmers a fair price and help connect them to valuable resources, the future of specialty coffee is uncertain.

Question Coffee™ is trying to change that. We invite anyone in the coffee value chain-whether you're a grower, roaster, grocery store, or consumer-to join our movement. We invite you to add your unique value and support this experiment to see if fully sustainable supply chains can succeed in the modern economy.

Question Coffee™ is not about one company, or even one industry. It's about a simple question that has the power to transform business for the better.

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We want to answer the question: Do consumers care about sustainability? And we want you to join in the discussion. The status quo of coffee isn't sustainable. Smallholder coffee farmers produce 80% of the world's coffee, but they are an aging populace-in Colombia, for example, the average age of a farmer is around 55 years old.

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Learn what it takes to build a successful startup using the Customer Development process, where entrepreneurs "get out of the building" to gather and iterate on feedback.

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The speakers at Ivey's Social Enterprise Fair had a few traits in common.

They all shared captivating stories on why they chose careers in social enterprise. They were all high energy, enthusiastic, and passionate about their jobs.

And beyond that, they were all women.

The event, designed to introduce Ivey students to the unique career path of social enterprise, hosted four speakers from three organizations: Amanda Armstrong, an HBA '10 grad from Textbooks for Change, Sonja Fernandes from Ezzy Lynn, and Colleen Lindemann and Tonia Richardson from Coupons for Hunger.

A twist on business traditions

Now in its second year, the Fair brought out some students who were unfamiliar with social enterprise. Armstrong began her presentation by explaining what exactly a social enterprise is: a for-profit business that has a mission for social good at its core.

Returning to Ivey to speak with current students was something Armstrong felt strongly about. She's always enthusiastic to shed light on a career path that's outside of the traditional four - accounting, finance, marketing, and consulting.

"I'm a big believer in having people share their stories, mentorship, and inspiration," Armstrong said. "And mentorship not just from above you, but peer-to-peer, as well. It's important for us recent, young graduates to go back and talk to students."

Fernandes, who studied philosophy at Huron College, sees events like the Social Enterprise Fair as a chance for students to hear about opportunities outside of what they learn in the classroom.

"These events enable students to think about business differently, through real stories and companies," she said.

Case in point: Amy Zhou. A current HBA2 student, Zhou began her Ivey education unsure of where she wanted to end up. Resources like the Social Enterprise Fair, and Professor Oana Branzei's Social Enterprise class, helped her find her way.

"I completely changed career tracks," she said. "I'm now pursuing the Certificate in Entrepreneurship. Social enterprise is really the best of both worlds - nonprofit and for-profit."

Women inspiring women

Fernandes discovered her passion for social enterprise through Western Propel. At the time, there weren't many female students in the start-up space. The Ezzy Lynn team says that the lack of women was their biggest motivator to create their own venture.

"We are all about empowering women," Fernandes said. "Strong female leaders have inspired us and we can only hope to be that same inspiration for other young women."

Armstrong hopes to combat the gender gap in business by supporting and encouraging women. Providing role models and mentors for young women is important, she said, and helping them develop confidence is crucial to success.

Inspired to show off some of Ivey's female role models, Zhou, a Co-President of the Women in Management Club, is now in the process of interviewing successful alumnae and sharing their stories online.

"Women are typically under-represented in the business world and in start-up companies," Armstrong said. "Initiatives like this are important. We need to showcase all the women who are already doing awesome things in leadership positions."

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Empowering women through social enterprise

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The speakers at Ivey's Social Enterprise Fair had a few traits in common. They all shared captivating stories on why they chose careers in social enterprise. They were all high energy, enthusiastic, and passionate about their jobs. And beyond that, they were all women.

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How long will you wait for the perfect cup of coffee?

Once about speed-sloshed into a paper cup and gulped on the ride to work-quick coffee now signals cheap coffee and not what customers want. More coffee shops are betting that a wait of four minutes or more is desirable. It takes that long for a cup of coffee dripped through an hourglass-shaped carafe or for a 'pour-over' where baristas pour hot water over a filter of coffee into a single mug.

Tad Jusczyk says he waits somewhere between five and 10 minutes for his 10:30 a.m. coffee at D Squared Java in Exeter, N.H. Three different varieties are listed on a chalkboard, and the barista brews his cup at 205 degrees Fahrenheit. On a recent morning, the 35-year old architect requested the Ethiopian Chelelektu grounds brewed on a "bee house" ceramic dripper. He paid $4 and waited while reading the second book of "My Struggle" by Karl Ove Knausgaard. "I like the fact that it takes a little longer," he says. "It's a mental break."

One benefit of slower-brewed coffee is that the coffee vendor has more control over the process and, as a result, taste. Water is heated to an ideal temperature-between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit-and they select the beans they want for each cup and grind them fresh.

Coffee shops are weighing costs and revenues of slower service by evaluating employees behind the counter, longer brew times, and how that affects prices and lines.

"It's 'how do I balance the quickness with the slowness,'" says Peter Giuliano, a senior director at the Specialty Coffee Association of America, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based trade association representing roasters, farmers and baristas. The industry term for a coffee counter that contains manual brew methods is "slow bar," says Giuliano. "There is a surprising number of people who want to slow down and enjoy for 15 minutes."

Consumers in their 20s and 30s who grew up around Starbucks and coffee culture's bolder flavors are helping drive the slower service, says Spencer Turer, vice president of Coffee Analysts, a coffee consulting firm in Burlington, Vt. "They started where we evolved into," he says. That conversation with the barista is a key part of the experience, he says. Coffee shops sometimes offer lower countertops so that customers can see their drink being made to order.

Businesses are saying "I'm going to slow from 30 seconds to five minutes, how much am I going to charge to cover loss of volume in order to make this a viable business," says Turer. The standard coffee shop model used to be about moving 500 people through the store a day for $1.50 a cup, he says.

An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.

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Even Starbucks plays role as coffee joins the 'slow food' movement

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How long will you wait for the perfect cup of coffee? Once about speed-sloshed into a paper cup and gulped on the ride to work-quick coffee now signals cheap coffee and not what customers want. More coffee shops are betting that a wait of four minutes or more is desirable.

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Daily Table opened its doors Thursday with shelves full of surplus and aging food.

The nonprofit grocery store is in the low-to-middle income Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. It's selling canned vegetables two for $1 and a dozen eggs for 99 cents. Potatoes are 49 cents a pound. Bananas are 29 cents a pound.

"That's good. It's cheap! Everything good," says Noemi Sosa, a shopper marveling at the prices that - for Boston - are phenomenally low.

The reason these prices are so low? Most of the stock is donated by food wholesalers and markets. It either didn't sell or it's surplus.

Grocery stores like Trader Joe's aren't donating any food to Daily Table yet, but the plan is to get food from them eventually, too.

It was Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, who came up with this concept. He was frustrated by the amount of nutritious food that went into dumpsters, just because it was nearing its sell-by date. Meanwhile, millions of people don't eat very well. But Rauch had to fight the critics, who said he was just dumping food rejected by rich people on the poor.

Rauch first announced he would open the store in September 2013.

"It's been a long time coming," he says.

Checking out with the cashier, customer Manuel Goncalves admits he surveyed the expiration dates before putting food in his basket.

"I looked around, I saw the date. I saw the food being prepared in the back," he says. "And I felt comfortable to come back and buy as much as I can.

His groceries come to $30.46. "That's it? Wow!" he says.

For just over $30, he walks out with what looks like enough groceries to feed his family for a week.

Besides selling staples, Daily Table is also cooking up prepared meals on a rotating menu. "The recipes have to change every day because the donations change every day," says head chef Ismail Samad. Even though the food is not as new as what's in your local supermarket, that doesn't mean it's bad, he says.

"The top of the kale might be getting a little light green. We cut that off and sauté it up," he says.

Samad hopes customers in Dorchester eat it up. If they do, Rauch wants to expand this model to other cities across the country.

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Trader Joe's Ex-President Opens Store With Aging Food And Cheap Meals

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Daily Table opened its doors Thursday with shelves full of surplus and aging food. The nonprofit grocery store is in the low-to-middle income Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. It's selling canned vegetables two for $1 and a dozen eggs for 99 cents. Potatoes are 49 cents a pound. Bananas are 29 cents a pound.

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Kiva believes in the power of financial inclusion for everyone. Learn more about our mission, who we serve, and what makes us unique here.

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Social Enterprise Development

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n 1988, the first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, was applied to packs of Mexican coffee sold in Dutch supermarkets. At the time, using a product label to say something about standards in a supply chain was revolutionary, but today it is routine. The Ecolabel Index currently lists 463 certifications in 199 countries.

On the face of it, certifications on everything from fish to timber can be seen as progress, promising higher standards and transparency in the pursuit of sustainability. But what purpose are the certification labels actually serving? Can we assume that they are beneficial to producers? Do consumers understand what's behind a certification label, and does it even matter if they do? These were some of the questions asked at a recent roundtable discussion hosted by the Guardian and supported by Mondelēz International.

When Fairtrade first emerged, it was about product differentiation, giving consumers a vehicle for choosing a more equitable, sustainable supply chain over the standard one. As more companies have accepted the need to make their supply chains fairer, that role has changed.

"Certification now plays an additional verification role alongside a whole set of other interventions. It's about shoring up the sustainability of supply chains, because companies are more aware of risks and challenges," said Barbara Crowther, director of policy and public affairs at the Fairtrade Foundation.

Companies going alone

The pressure on businesses to do the right thing all the time has led many to start their own projects. While in-house approaches to certification give a business greater oversight and brand differentiation, critics argue it may reduce transparency.

"If your goal is to be a sustainable company, certification will play a role, but so might working with partners on the ground, and working with regulators," said Will Stephens, head of sustainable sourcing at The Body Shop.

The Body Shop has a history of setting up its own direct, fair trade relationships with suppliers, and only some of its products actually carry the Fairtrade logo. Stephens gave the example of a scrubbing mitt made from cactus fibres, which is sourced directly from a specific community in Mexico. "I don't think certification would be meaningful for that, and you would need a certification body specialised in cactus. But we have a long tail of other raw materials where certification does play a role."

Recent programmes launched by global confectionery companies with cocoa-producing communities show how certification is just one part of what is happening on the ground today. About 20 years ago, third-party certification of cocoa was a step forward for an industry that had previously not been able to trace its beans much further back than the export dockyard. Today, the industry is more aware that certification alone isn't addressing problems of low productivity, poor infrastructure and child labour, which continue to destabilise the supply chain. Programmes such as Mondelēz's Cocoa Life and the Nestlé Cocoa Plan are using partnerships with civil society organisations to address those issues, alongside certification.

Certification alone doesn't address the problem that consumers think it addresses

Nicolas Mounard, chief executive of Farm Africa

"Certification can tell you that more sustainable practices are being followed, and that's a good thing, but we're trying to say what the actual measured impact is on productivity, income or other dimensions," said Jonathan Horrell, global sustainability director at Mondelēz International.

Certification no solution to poverty

Mondelez recently announced that 21% of its cocoa is now "sustainably sourced", meaning it has come either through Cocoa Life or certification. This figure - and the very need for a programme like Cocoa Life - might surprise consumers who thought that years of certifications under Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ and others had done more to create sustainable producer communities.

"Consumers expect certification to be building capacity at farm level, but it's not a development tool. Certification alone doesn't address the problem that consumers think it addresses," said Nicolas Mounard, chief executive of Farm Africa.

This is one of the tensions that businesses face when it comes to certification, particularly in food and drink: consumers expect high standards and constant improvement on the ground, but supply chains are complex. Certification on its own can't perform miracles, and the shorthand of the label can't convey the complexity of what it does and doesn't do.

"Consumers are demanding them, but when you look at how many certifications there are, it's hard to understand the labels and what it all means," said Mikkel Andersen, global strategic services director at Sustainia.

What next for fairer supply chains?

If there is to be greater clarity on certification and what it can do, industries may need to confront price as well. Referring to the tea sector, Stuart Singleton-White, director of external communications at Rainforest Alliance, said the signals from producers are that positive change costs money. "All the producers are saying the big problem is that if you want a living wage and decent housing, the price you're paying for your tea is not enough to support that development on the ground."

In non-food sectors such as textiles, there's also room for more informed debate about the role, if any, of certifications. The 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh drew attention to serious problems in textile supply chains, but certification has a low profile there. Will that change?

"Fairtrade has been working on a textile standard for the past decade and that's now coming into fruition," said Clare Lissaman, director of product and impact at Mysource. "But I think labour activists on the Clean Clothes Campaign and Labour Behind the Label will say we cannot expect consumers or indeed companies to drive this. This is where governments and workers organising and standing up for their own rights has to be the way forward. As brilliant as Fairtrade has been in galvanising a huge consumer movement, we're not going to get change in the garment industry like that."

Certification standards have done a lot to make supply chains fairer and more transparent over the past couple of decades, and with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 - particularly SDG12, on sustainable production and consumption - we may be moving towards a more nuanced dialogue about certification and its role in supply chains. In the words of the SDG itself, achieving the goal is something that must involve "business, consumers, policymakers, researchers, scientists, retailers, media, and development cooperation agencies".

At the table: certification debate

Tom Levitt (Chair) Guardian Sustainable Business

Jonathan Horrell global sustainability director, Mondelēz International

Amanda Berlan senior lecturer, ethical business, Coventry University

Mikkel Andersen global strategic services director, Sustainia

Rob Harrison director, Ethical Consumer

Will Stephens head of sustainable sourcing, The Body Shop

Tallulah Chapman head of communications, FSC UK

Clare Lissaman director of product and impact, Mysource

Connor McVeigh UK supply chain director, McDonald's

Barbara Crowther director of policy and public affairs, Fairtrade Foundation

Stuart H Singleton-White director, external communications (Europe and Asia), Rainforest Alliance

Nicolas Mounard CEO, Farm Africa

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Behind the label: can we trust certification to give us fairer products?

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n 1988, the first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, was applied to packs of Mexican coffee sold in Dutch supermarkets. At the time, using a product label to say something about standards in a supply chain was revolutionary, but today it is routine. The Ecolabel Index currently lists 463 certifications in 199 countries.

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Divine Chocolate, Ghana

Kuapa Kokoo (KUAPA), or "good cocoa farmer" in the Ghanaian language of Twi, is a co-operative of cocoa farmers established in 1993, in the Republic of Ghana (Ghana), following the liberalization of the economy. Some 2000 small-scale cocoa farmers formed the co-operative to protect themselves against fluctuations in the price of cocoa on the international market.

KUAPA's ultimate aim is to ensure the socio-economic and political needs of its farmers, to enhance women's inclusion in decision-making processes, and to encourage environmentally sustainable production practices.

By 1997, KUAPA had over forty thousand members from one thousand villages. The co-op had taken control of sales and distribution channels, improved the quality of its products, increased the quantity of cocoa sales in Ghana by ten percent, and boosted its farmers' income.

Financing and partnerships

KUAPA's early development was aided by instrumental support from international organizations and corporations. The farmers' co-operative joined forces with Twin Trading, an alternative trade organization that provided the co-op's initial financing and offered operational and financial advice, and Stichting Nederlandse Vrijwilligers (SNV), a non-profit organization based in the Netherlands that offers rural development and training advice in developing countries.

From the beginning, the co-operatives' farmers established Kuapa Kokoo Limited (KKL) as a licensed cocoa buying company owned by the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers Union (KKFU). KKL acts as the commercial and trading department of the union while also negotiating best-prices on the market and sharing profits with its members. It is run by non-farming managers.

In 1996, KUAPA farmers incorporated the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers Trust (KKFT). KKFT receives all premiums from the farmers' cocoa sales into the international market. The money is invested into KUAPA's main business and social concerns. The trust, for example, funds several community projects such as digging water wells, financing economic projects for local women, running mobile medical programs, providing credit unions, and educating farmers. It is also responsible for paying the farmers' bonuses.

In 1998, as a means to increase profits, gain direct access to international markets, and sell their own goods, the farmers voted in favor of setting up a chocolate manufacturing company. As a result, Day Chocolate Company (DAY) was established as a chocolate brand based in the United Kingdom (UK).

DAY was to be largely owned by the farmers' cooperative with additional investment from Twin Trading and The Body Shop International (The Body Shop). Extra logistical, financial, and marketing support for the venture was provided by Christian Aid (a sustainable development agency), the UK government's Department for International Trade, Comic Relief (a philanthropic charity), and National Westminster Bank (NatWest offered banking services).

Commercialization

In 1998, DAY produced its first chocolate bar - Divine Fair Trade milk chocolate - and launched it in the UK market. Because KUAPA farmers owned thirty three percent shares in the company, the product was the first farmer-owned Fair Trade chocolate bar (Fair Trade is a trading practice based on dialogue, transparency, respect and equity for producers).

The cooperative's business model was a revolutionary idea in many other respects. Not only did the farmers own shares in their company, they also had two representative directors sitting on DAY's governing board. Moreover, although DAY was based in the UK, one out of four annual board meetings was held in Ghana, at the heart of the farmers' location.

In 2006, KUAPA's influence in DAY and share of the company's profits increased substantially when The Body Shop donated its shares in the chocolate company to the farmers. Shortly thereafter, the company changed its name and as has been known as Divine Chocolate LTD (DIVINE). In 2007, DIVINE launched a separate operating company in the USA, Divine Chocolate Inc.

Branding and trade dress

In order to distinguish KUAPA chocolate products from those of well-established competitors in the industry, DIVINE was aware that it had to develop a strong brand name and image that would resonate with consumers.

The company sought to attach its brand image to the timeless principles of quality, equity and fairness. In order to achieve these aims, DIVINE elected to participate in Fair Trade certification and launched a series of campaigns aimed at attracting new consumers and persuading policy makers to support Fair Trade certified goods.

Having achieved "Fair Trade" certification for all its products, DIVINE developed high profile promotional campaigns in collaboration with established charitable firms, major organizations, parliamentarians and famous individuals in the UK.

In order to raise nation-wide awareness of its brand, the company produced TV campaigns in the UK featuring British celebrities. In 1999, for instance, DIVINE and Christian Aid launched a "Stock the Choc" television campaign for its chocolates featuring a well-known television personality in the UK. The campaign resulted in the company's products being stocked in Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd (Sainsbury's), one of the country's leading businesses.

Having gained the attention of the nation at large, the company focused its next consciousness raising campaign on attracting young consumers to its brand. To this end, DIVINE launched a series of community based campaigns - in partnership with established children-oriented organizations in the UK - that engaged and challenged young adults and their parents.

In 2000, for example, the manufacturer launched its crunchy brand of Fair Trade chocolate - known as Dubble - in collaboration with Comic Relief, a well-known charity in the UK especially famous for mobilizing young people. Thousands of children joined the competition announced as part of the campaign, all keen to be a part of creating a Fair Trade chocolate bar that was affordable. The campaign not only introduced the young to DIVINE's affordable product, it also raised awareness among them of its ethical aims.

In order to consolidate the gains made in capturing this important customer-base, in 2001 the company initiated another Fair Trade competition where children were asked to write poems expressing their ideas of Fair Trade. The launch was not only supported by Christian Aid, but also by famous children's books writers such as Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Morpourgo.

By the time DIVINE introduced its most famous product (Dark 70%) in 2001, its brand name not only resonated with the UK public generally, but its ethical and equitable credentials were gaining support as well. Furthermore, in the same year, the Co-operative Supermarket in the UK adopted Fair Trade chocolate, supplied by DIVINE, in all its stores.

Seeking to maximize its brand image among young consumers and their families, in 2003 the company created a new campaign - featuring Dubble Agents - where young adults (or "Dubble Agents") were given a "Mega Mission" to induct parents or guardians into community-driven, Fair Trade projects. "MISSION: POSSIBLE" - as the campaign was called - was launched in preparation for the 2006 Fair Trade Schools Conferences (called CHOCOL8). The campaign included a new website (www.dubble.co.uk), and a Mission information pack - designed to help Dubble Agents use positive pester power to get a fair deal for producers in developing countries worldwide.

The CHOCOL8 conference was particularly successful in mobilizing young people. Driven by the Trading Visions charity, the conference allowed school children to conduct Fair Trade discussions all over the UK. Two Ghanaian children whose parents are KUAPA farmers went to the UK and inspired their contemporaries during the visit with stories about life in rural Ghana. By introducing children from both communities to each other, the company bridged the cultural and emotional divide between the young, UK campaigners on the one hand, and their peers in Ghana on the other. The UK children were thus motivated to campaign for Fair Trade and KUAPA gained new supporters for its causes and customers for its brands.

Having established a strong brand presence among children and adults in the UK, DIVINE was determined to ensure the support of international and national policy makers for its Fair Trade goals. Following the CHOCOL8 conference, 12,000 signatures (called the Chocolate Challenge Manifesto) from the children was presented to the then UK minister for International Development. With the combined voice of thousands of UK children behind them, the company was able to make a strong case for Fair Trade at the highest levels of government. DIVINE showed that not only was Fair Trade a viable means of international trade, but it was also a noble cause stirring positive grass-roots activism in children.

Having made an initial approach to government, DIVINE took further measures to maintain the Fair Trade momentum and achieve its other aims: inclusion of women. In 2005, the company launched its first UK-wide advertising campaign featuring young women from the KUAPA community in Ghana. In the same year, a farmer from the co-operative visited the UK parliament (and the Scottish parliament in 2006) and lobbied its members on behalf of KUAPA members. By introducing its women farmers to the UK public and parliament, the company not only put a human face to its ethical aims, it also enhanced women's role in the company and strengthened its ethical brand presence. Furthermore, in July of 2005 DIVINE enhanced its brand awareness by ensuring that its Fair Trade chocolates were readily available to heads of state who attended and the media who reported The Group of Eight (G8) summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Indeed, after a series of successful branding drives, DIVINE changed its company name from Day Chocolate Company Ltd to Divine Chocolate Company Ltd in 2007, a decision which consolidated its market presence and aligned the company's trade name with its leading chocolate brand. Commensurate to DIVINE's new trade name, the company incorporated attractive design features for its chocolate. Timed to coincide with Ghana's Golden Anniversary Independence celebrations, DIVINE's chocolates were wrapped in golden, traditional, West African Adinkra symbols (made from woodcuts or screen prints).

The farmers' co-operative and the company's board members not only altered DIVINE's trade dress, they also changed the product's content. The company's chocolates now contain Fair Trade sugar from the Republic of Malawi, further enhancing KUAPA's and DIVINE's Fair Trade credentials and brand image.

As of 2011, DIVINE had fifteen chocolate brands including Divine Fair Trade Milk Chocolate, Dubble, Divine After Dinner Mints, Divine Drinking Chocolate, and Divine 70% Dark Chocolate Salted Fudge. Because of the high quality of Ghana's chocolate, the Darkly Divine 70% cocoa brand has achieved respectable market share in the 70-80% cocoa solids block segment.

The company's strategic branding as Fair Trade combined with national campaigns targeted at specific consumer and policy groups optimized its entry into the UK chocolate market. DIVINE has consequently become a major brand in the UK with global ambitions.

Trademark

Having developed a distinct brand image, the managers at DIVINE are keenly aware of the value of the company's brands as assets for enabling future commercialization and as tools for enhancing customer loyalty. They therefore are keen to safeguard those assets through the intellectual property (IP) system.

To this end, in 1998 the company applied for trademarks for the slogans: "Divine Heavenly Milk Chocolate with a Heart"™ and "A Fair Deal for Cocoa Growers"™ in its largest market - the European Union (EU) - at the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). A figurative mark with the colors gold, white, pink, red, orange, blue and green is also registered.

Because the company desired to expand into the United States of America (USA), which has a US $16 billion chocolate industry, in 2005 it filed a trademark for DIVINE™ at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In the same year, DIVINE was filed as a word and figurative trademark in the EU via the intellectual property office (IPO) of the UK.

In order to protect its new brands and catch-phrases, in 2008 the company filed a trademark for the word mark " DIVINE" and the phrase " Heavenly Chocolate with a Heart ", also at the USPTO.

With its intellectual property rights (IPRs) secured with trademarks, the company is able to expand unencumbered into new territories and pursue further commercialization opportunities.

Business results

KUAPA's growth and business success has been based on a well-planned strategy to empower farmers, produce quality products, and commercialize attractive, ethically sound, customer-approved chocolates.

On the long road to success, the farmers' company has become an award-winner. In 1999, DIVINE won Millennium product status, a trophy which was awarded by the Design Council in the UK to British companies which show "imagination, ingenuity and inspiration" in product design.

Not only winning awards, the co-operative has proved its resilience in the market. As a result, representatives of KUAPA celebrated its 10th Anniversary in Kumasi, Ghana, in 2004. The co-op's sister company, moreover, has expanded across borders and continents. In 2007, DIVINE Chocolate Inc. launched into the USA in order to take advantage of a 102% increase in that year in sales for Fair Trade products in North America.

Furthermore, KUAPA farmers have enjoyed the benefits of DIVINE's growth. In August of 2007, the company announced its first dividends (payment to share-holders) and the co-op's members shared in the profits.

KUAPA farmers not only succeeded in launching a chocolate brand in the UK, they also set a new standard for ethical business practices around the world. In acknowledgement of the company's equitable business model, in 2008 DIVINE was named Best Ethical Business by The Observer newspaper, a renowned publication in the UK.

Indeed, as of 2010, DIVINE had further entrenched its Fair Trade commitments and positively impacted the culture of fairness in trade between developed and developing countries. The company purchased its first container of cocoa from the Republic of Sierra Leone's only Fair Trade certified co-op, Kpeya Agricultural Enterprise (KAE). Due in part to DIVINE's Fair Trade success, Cadbury Plc - the second largest confectionery manufacture in the world - converted 20% of its chocolate to Fair Trade.

With ethically produced, top quality chocolate ingrained into its production processes, in 2010 DIVINE was a US $25 million company in the UK and US $4 million company in the USA. KUAPA's membership, meanwhile, has grown to 45,000 farmers representing over 1,200 villages in Ghana who are deeply involved in community organization, Fair Trade income, and the prospects of its DIVINE chocolate bar.

A fair and ethical brand new mission

KUAPA began as a mission to instill a sense of pride in its farmers, a taste of quality in its products, and a desire for equity with its consumers. In so doing, the co-operative re-wrote business models for success and launched into a competitive market with a powerful brand protected by trademarks. Subsequently, the cooperative's farmers have seen their income and bargaining power increased, their products successfully marketed, and its profits re-invested in the community.

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Kuapa Kokoo (KUAPA), or "good cocoa farmer" in the Ghanaian language of Twi, is a co-operative of cocoa farmers established in 1993, in the Republic of Ghana (Ghana), following the liberalization of the economy. Some 2000 small-scale cocoa farmers formed the co-operative to protect themselves against fluctuations in the price of cocoa on the international market.

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ABNT Ecolabel is a life cycle based ecolabel that is a voluntary method of environmental performance certification and labelling for products and services in Brazil.

It is run by the Associacao Brasileira de Normas Tecnicas (ABNT) (the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards) and is a member of the Global Ecolabelling Network. ABNT is also a certification body accredited by Inmetro ...

Italian Association for Organic Agriculture's certification. They certify organic products and companies in a broad range of categories, including:

food

detergents

farms

cosmetics

stores

bio-fibres

Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) is a standard for farm animal welfare - the basic premise is that animals must be able to behave naturally and be in a state of physical and psychological well-being. The standard:

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) offers standards for aquaculture and for the seafood chain of custody.

The standards are being developed by the Aquaculture Dialogues in compliance with the guidelines for standard setting established by the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling Alliance ( ISEAL).

The certification according to these standards ...

A guide and rating system resulting in a certificate for the assessment of building quality, in terms of Summary project description and issue level results of the evaluation:

Resource Consumption

Environmental Loadings

Indoor Environmental Quality

Durability

Safety and Security

Quality of the design process

Quality of the construction ...

The AsureQuality Organic Standard is based on internationally recognised guidelines and is accredited by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements ( IFOAM).

BIO Hellas is an accredited certification body that provides Inspection and Certification services for the organic products according to:

The Regulation EC 834/2007 & 889/2008

The NOP/ USDA Regulation.

Also provides inspection services for the organic products according to:

The Biokreis is a non-governmental organisation. Its goals are:

to help farmers to grow organically,

to bring farmers and manufacturers together - regionally and on a fair basis,

to promote organic agriculture,

to inform consumers about organic agriculture and a healthy lifestyle.

The Blue Angel was initiated by the German government and awarded by an independent Jury to products that are environmentally friendlier than others serving the same use.

Each label specifies that the product or service focuses on one of four different protection goals: health, climate, water, and resources.

The Blue Angel Standard is managed by four entities:

The ...

BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is an environmental assessment method for buildings around the world.

BREEAM provides clients, developers, designers and others with

Burn Wise is a partnership program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that emphasizes the importance of burning the right wood, the right way, in the right wood-burning appliance to protect your home, health, and the air we breathe.

The Burnwise program covers three types of heaters: Woodstoves, Fireplaces and Hydronic Heaters (Outdoor Wood Boilers).

Carbon Neutral certification program requires an initial carbon audit in the form of a Life Cycle Analysis - a comprehensive carbon audit which calculates the CO2 emissions used in raw materials, fuel & electricity and waste used in the production and distribution of that product.

The Carbon Trust Standard is a certification mark of excellence, designed to recognise organisations for real carbon reduction.

To qualify, organisations must measure, manage and genuinely reduce their carbon footprint and commit to reducing it year on year.

Benefits of achieving the Standard include:

The Group has developed the Carrefour Agir Éco Planète range, which comprises products that are certified (European Ecolabel, FSC, MSC and so on) or which carry an external support.

In 2007, the HPC range was extended to include 13 eco-label products marketed in four countries: France, Belgium, Spain and Greece.

The non-food sector also offers Agir Éco Planète products, ...

CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Built Environment Efficiency) is a Japanese assessment and certification tool for buildings that covers:

Energy efficiency

Resource efficiency

Local environment

Indoor environment.

Four CASBEE assessment tools serving at each stage of the design process

Green Restaurant Association Seal is an ecolabel for restaurants that have committed to sustainability.

STANDARDS

Products may be certified by WFEN if:

CIMS is an organizational Standard and certification program that applies to management, operations, performance systems, and processes. The Standard is divided into six areas of management best practices: Quality systems; Service delivery; Human resources; Health, safety, and environmental stewardship; Management commitment; and Green Building (GB). Certification demonstrates that a cleaning organization ...

The Climate Registry is a non-profit organization that sets consistent and transparent standards to calculate, verify and publicly report greenhouse gas ( GHG) emissions into a single registry.

The Registry offers different levels of certifications, supports both voluntary and mandatory reporting programs, and provides comprehensive data to reduce GHG emissions.

The Registry's ...

The Cradle to Cradle Certified(CM) Products Program provides a company with a means to demonstrate efforts in eco-intelligent design. Cradle to Cradle Certification is a third-party sustainability label that requires achievement across multiple attributes:

The Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Research (CSRR) Quality Standard certifies research corporations that undertake CSR Research.

These companies deliver profiles and ratings to the SRI (Social Responsible Investment sector). One of the requirements for passing the standard is covering system or group factors such as quality management systems, HR and complaint management.

They ...

The Degree of Green® rating program aims at helping consumers by rating products and explaining those ratings in clear language.

At the core of Degree of Green® are data sheets that detail the environmental, health and sustainability attributes of various products. A top rating of 4 goes to products that have:

The DGNB Certification System was developed by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) together with the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building, and Urban Affairs (BMVBS) to be used as a tool for the planning and evaluation of buildings in a comprehensive quality perspective. It is designed as a rating system and covers all relevant topics of sustainable construction.

Awards within ...

Certification mark for Additives (e.g. printing inks, colours, adhaesives etc.) used for compostable products on basis of EN 13432 / ASTM 6400)

also for compostable products e.g. packaging

Eco3Home is a label for home furnishings in the USA. Products are manufactured by companies that commit to all three initiatives (health, safety, and environment) to achieve the label. This means they are working to incorporate eco-friendly business practices into:

1. Core manufacturing operations

2. Global operations

3. Product design and development

The eco-leaf is an environmental product declaration based on a life cycle analysis consisting of three parts:

1. a product environmental aspects declaration;

2. a product environmental information data sheet;

3. the product data sheet.

The ECOLOGO Certification Program was aquired by UL Environment, a division of UL (Underwriters Laboratories) in 2010. ECOLOGO Certification is based on multiattribute, life cycle-based standards. All products certified to an ECOLOGO standard must meet or exceed each of the listed criteria before receiving the mark. ECOLOGO Certification is classified as an ISO (International Organization for ...

Effinature certification was designed to reverse trend of biodiversity deterioration in the construction sector and raise awareness among town planners about this major issue.

Determine the value of the site and the ecological potential of the project.

Preserve the existing natural heritage and existing landscape.

Control the impacts of the project ...

EWOF Site Standard

The EWOF Site Standard is the first standard to be launched. This standard was developed to:

*Provide recognition for small, single-site businesses *Increase the uptake of formal environmental management participation *Provide consumers and the community with some reassurance about the site based activities of businesses

The EPA mandates that all renovation and repair contractors working in pre-1978 homes, schools, and day care centers who disrupt more than six square feet of lead paint are required to become EPA Lead-Safe Certified in lead-safe work practices.

EPEAT is a global rating system for greener electronics. Using EPEAT ("Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool"), purchasers in 43 countries can evaluate, compare and select electronics based on environmental attributes. EPEAT currently includes categories for PCs and Displays, Televisions, and Imaging Equipment (printers, copiers, scanners, multifunction devices, fax machines and mailing ...

AssoSCAI has developed the multi-label "Environmental Label AssoSCAI" to assist Italian companies in the correct classification of environmental goods according to ISO 14021 standard.

Companies can use this label in B2B transactions to more clearly communicate their environmental credentials, including their current ecolabel qualifications.

All points are substantiated through ...

A voluntary scheme designed to encourage businesses to market products and services that are kinder to the environment and for European consumers - including public and private purchasers - to easily identify them.

This mark is available to member organizations that meet the requirements of the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO) monitoring system and identifies them as registered Fair Trade Organizations.

WFTO is working with Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International ( FLO) on a Quality Management System for Fair Trade.

The Forest Stewardship Council® ( FSC) promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests.

The Forest Stewardship Council® ( FSC) promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests.

Friend of the Sea Approved Fisheries:

target stocks which are not overexploited

use fishing methods which don't impact the seabed, and

generate less than average 8% discards.

Global Green Tag® is a third party, green product rating and certification system, underpinned by scientific and Life Cycle Assessment ( LCA) processes. The program assesses products against worst case business as usual products in the same functional category and with the same functional purpose, based on the following impacts / benefits:

COMPREHENSIVE RULES FOR ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE TEXTILE PRODUCTION

Green-e® Climate is the first and only consumer protection and certification program for retail carbon offsets. It complements project certification programs by ensuring that offset sellers:

1. Source only verified and properly tracked and credited reductions from high-quality projects certified under project standards that meet a high standard of quality,

2. Retire ...

The Greener Product Certification Seal demonstrates that a product has been evaluated against the LEED, LEED for Homes and NAHB green building standards using internationally recognized third-party certification organizations, laboratory test results and/or other supporting documentation.

Products in twenty four building products categories are evaluated using seven environmental qualifiers ...

The Green Flag Program promotes student leadership and activism for the creation of safer and healthier school environments. The Program assists schools to achieve environmental success in the following four issue areas:

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

2. Indoor Air Quality

3. Integrated Pest Management

4. Non-Toxic Products

The Green Label / Green Mark gives overall assessment of a product's environmental quality relative to other products in its category.

The scheme is based on Israeli Standard SI 1738, which is itself based on EU Directive 880/92.

Depending on their engagement for and performance in sustainable development, accommodation enterprises are certified by ibex fairstay as either Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum. The label controls a hotel's achievement in the 5 dimensions:

Management

Economy

Environment

Social responsibility

Regional creation of value and culture

There are currently 96 declaration holders that together ...

The International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA) EcoLabel Standard Program provides a determination of the environmental performance of a manufacturer's transaction and identification cards through a third-party ecolabeling certification program.

The current ICMA EcoLabel criteria include:

EPA created Indoor airPLUS to help builders meet the growing consumer preference for homes with improved indoor air quality. EPA developed additional construction specifications to help improve indoor air quality in new homes.

Construction specifications include the careful selection of and installation of moisture control systems; heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems; combustion-venting ...

The ECO Certification program assures travellers that certified products are backed by a strong, well managed commitment to sustainable practices and provides high quality nature-based tourism experiences. It has three levels:

Nature Tourism - tourism in a natural area that leaves a minimal impact on the environment;

EcoTourism: tourism in a natural area that offers interesting ways ...

LEED Professional Credentials distinguish building professionals with a thorough understanding of green building practices and principles and the LEED Green Building Rating System. There are now two categories of LEED Professional Credentials: LEED Green Associates; and LEED Accredited Professionals. The LEED Green Associate credential is intended for professionals who want to demonstrate green ...

level® was created ...

This label works to conserve coral reefs and other marine ecosystems by creating standards and certifications for those engaged in the collection and care of ornamental marine life from reef to aquarium.

MAC Certification covers both practices (industry operators, facilities and collection areas) and products (aquarium organisms).

MINERGIE is a label for new and refurbished low-energy-consumption buildings indicating comfort made possible by high-grade building envelopes and the continuous renewal of air.

The following requirements must be met:

MINERGIE-A is a label for new and refurbished low-energy-consumption buildings that seek "Nearly zero-energy Buildings" according to the EU guidelines 2010/31. It also takes into account the building gray energy, unlike MINERGIE and MINERGIE-P standards.

The following requirements must be met:

MINERGIE ECO is a label for new and refurbished low-energy-consumption buildings that addresses ecological and social requirements. It can be combined with MINERGIE, MINERGIE-P, and MINERGIE-A, which are standards that focus more on energy consumption.

Health requirements:

MINERGIE-P is a label for new and refurbished low-energy-consumption buildings that seeks an even lower energy consumption than the MINERGIE Standard.

The following requirements must be met:

The non- GMO seal means that a product has been produced according to rigorous best practices for GMO avoidance, including testing of risk ingredients. The Non- GMO Project is the only organization offering independent verification of testing and GMO controls for products in the U.S. and Canada.

The NSF Sustainability Certified mark is available to products that meet conformity assessment to a NSF/ ANSI or other national or international sustainable product standards.

Use of the NSF Sustainability Certified Mark is granted once certification has been completed through product evaluation, conformity assessment against standards and protocols, and production systems review.

The ...

Labels being phased out in 2014 and replaced by Organic Content Standard (OCS).

Organic Exchange has two standards:OE 100: Certifies products made with 100% organic fiber that have been tracked through the production chain and segregated to prevent commingling with other fibers.

OE Blended: Applies to all goods that ...

The Oeko-Tex Standard 100 is a globally uniform testing and certification system for textile raw materials, intermediate and end products at all stages of production.

The certification covers multiple human-ecological attributes, including harmful substances which are prohibited or regulated by law, chemicals which are known to be harmful to health, but are not officially forbidden, and ...

Philips products that have a Green logo offer customers, users and society an environmental improvement of at least 10% in one or more of the Philips Green Focal Areas:

Energy efficiency

Packaging

Hazardous substances

Weight

Recycling and disposal

Lifetime reliability

Planet Positive is a mark of accreditation to the Planet Positive Protocol. The Protocol requires four steps: measuring, reducing, acting and reporting on GHG emissions.

Planet Positive certifies businesses, products, events or people commit to taking positive action by either donating to community projects, or offsetting into verified carbon projects.

Businesses and organisations ...

They certify farming, wildcrafting, livestock, processing, packing, and handling operations. QCS also certifies a diverse array of organic operations regardless of type, location, or size.

The Recognised® eco-label identifies environmentally preferable commercial cleaning products.

Recognised® products have undergone independent third-party scientific assessment against a multiple-criteria Standard.

Recognised® covers, but is not limited to, the following products for use in commercial applications: hard surface cleaning products including general purpose cleaners, ...

Sustainable Materials Rating Technology or SMaRT, is the consensus sustainable products standard and label for building products, fabric, apparel, textile & flooring, covering over 80% of the world's products with environmental, social, & economic criteria.

It is the result of 17 years of standardization with six national votes of consensus approvals involving thousands of professionals.

SMaRT ...

Smart Approved WaterMark is Australia's water saving labelling program for products and services which are helping to reduce water use.

The Smart WaterMark label is licensed to be used on products which have been approved as water saving by an independent Technical Expert Panel. Criteria include:

SundaHus Environmental Data is an environmental assessment of products used in construction and buildings. The core of the system is a database of substances, materials and products.

The product assessment is based on the provider's documentation of the product together with the rules of the Swedish Chemical Inspectorate's PRIO criteria and EU REACH Directives.

The assessment is ...

SFI chain of custody labels allow the use of fiber from certified forests, certified sourcing, and post-consumer recycled material. All of these terms are defined in the SFI Definitions (Section 13 of ...

TRA certifies manufacturers of Modular and Manufactured Homes using the ANSI ICC 700-2008 National Green Building Standard. The label indicates compliance with all aspects of the standard excluding site factors.

TRA certifies manufacturers of components for Recreational Vehicles (RVs) using the ANSI ICC 700-2008 National Green Building Standard.

The TRA Green Certification program includes a directory of suppliers that supply the manufacturer with construction material, electrical, cooling, heating, plumbing, floors, etc; and highlights those suppliers who have been Verified Green.

Requirements for Product EE01 are: 100% of the energy supplied is from renewable sources. At least 30% of the amount of energy supplied is generated in new power stations. Price surcharges are used for building new renewable sources of energy.

The UPS Carbon Neutral shipping label indicates that UPS customers have offset the climate impact of the GHG emissions produced by the transportation of that shipment. UPS calculates the emissions and purchases carbon offset credits equivalent to the GHG emissions created in shipping the package to make it "carbon neutral".

The U.S. EPA Safer Choice program (previously U.S. EPA Design for the Environment Program) advances EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment. The program uses EPA's chemical knowledge and resources to carefully evaluate products and to label only those that have met the program's leadership standard. By allowing use of the logo on products, EPA empowers consumers and commercial ...

The Verified Carbon Standard provides a global standard and program for approval of credible voluntary offsets.

"VCS offsets must be real (have happened), additional (beyond business-as-usual activities), measurable, permanent (not temporarily displace emissions), independently verified and unique (not used more than once to offset emissions)." (Source: v-c-s.org)

Developed by The ...

VeriFlora is a sustainability certification program for cut flowers and potted plants. It is administered by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS), a third-party certifier of environmental, sustainability and agricultural product quality claims. It is accredited under ISO/IEC Guide 65, the international standard for third-party product certifiers.

The VeriFlora label indicates flowers and ...

"Vitality Leaf" was developed by the Russian NGO Non-profit partnership Ecological Union in 2001, is officially registered, open and clear for all potential participants.

Member of the Global Ecolabelling Network since 2007.

Certified member of the Global Ecolabelling Network's Internationally Coordinated Ecolabelling System (GENICES) since 2011.

Criteria for certification ...

Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) Conservation Certification recognizes wildlife habitat management and conservation education programs. Successful Wildlife Habitat Council Conservation Certification programs are designed to provide benefits to communities, increase employee morale, further sustainability goals, and strengthen relationships with stakeholders.

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ABNT Ecolabel is a life cycle based ecolabel that is a voluntary method of environmental performance certification and labelling for products and services in Brazil. It is run by the Associacao Brasileira de Normas Tecnicas (ABNT) (the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards) and is a member of the Global Ecolabelling Network.

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OAKLAND, Calif., February 25, 2016 /3BL Media/ - Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, and the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), an international consulting and research firm specializing in health and sustainability, today released new data indicating that fifty-nine percent of consumers now recognize the Fair Trade Certified™ label. This growth is supported by new insights into consumer spending habits- particularly around the role of Millennials in driving ethical purchases - and an abundance of new Fair Trade products hitting store shelves.

In addition to the spike in general awareness, up from fifty-five percent in 2013, the joint research between NMI and Fair Trade USA reveals that nearly forty percent of the general population look for proof of social claims when purchasing products. Millennials are especially motivated by causes, seventy percent of whom are more likely to buy products from companies that support their favorite causes, compared to sixty-one percent of the general population. Sixty-five percent of Millennials also recognize the Fair Trade Certified label.

"Consumers want accountability, responsibility and sustainability from the companies with which they do business," said MaryEllen Molyneaux, President of NMI. "The Fair Trade Certified label allows shoppers to readily identify products that meet these criteria."

Fair Trade USA partnered with NMI as part of its broad-reaching "The State of Sustainability in America" study, which will be released at the end of March 2016.

Increased numbers of Fair Trade Certified™ products on store shelves also make identifying and purchasing ethical products easier than ever. One hundred and thirty-three new Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) products have launched since January 2016 alone, driven largely by growth in the mainstream sector. These products add to the nearly 550 Fair Trade Certified™ CPG items launched in 2015. Some new products, many launching in time for Expo West 2016, include:

Sweets & Treats: Marich Chocolates launches 32 new skus dipped in Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate, including Triple Chocolate Toffee, Pastel Chocolate Cherries and Milk Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Popcorn. TCHO expands offerings to five new bars. Vosges Haut-Chocolat expands offerings to five new bars. Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value Fair Trade Ice Cream adds two new flavors, French Vanilla and Cookies & Cream, made with Fair Trade Certified™ sugar. Kashi launches two GoLean bars made with Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate. Annie's launches Cocoa Bunnies Cereal made with Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate.

Beverages: Third Street expands offerings to three new chai flavors. Hiball launches Fair Trade Alta Palla sparkling water, cold brew and protein drinks. Honest Tea's entire line of products will now source 100% Fair Trade Certified™ tea and sugar. BJ's Wholesale Club launches Wellsley Farms coffee made with Fair Trade coffee beans. Kroger launches a line of Simple Truth teas as well as a new private label coffee. Zico expands coconut water selection with new 1-liter offerings.

Unique & Notable: Sensible Organics launches Skin Solve, designed to moisturize and replenish skin. SunRidge Farms launches two new skus, including Dark Chocolate Ghost Pepper Almonds.

"This growth in Fair Trade offerings indicates that consumers increasingly care about what happens at the other of the supply-chain-that the farmers who grow the foods they love can take care of their land, their families, and themselves," said Sri Artham, Vice President of CPG at Fair Trade USA. "It's clear that the brands supporting Fair Trade are rewarded by consumers voting with their dollars."

With new Fair Trade products popping up in nearly every aisle of the supermarket, consumers have more opportunities than ever to make a difference their dollar, shop their values, and empower farming communities across the globe.

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About Fair Trade USA
Fair Trade USA is a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable livelihoods for farmers and workers; protects fragile ecosystems; and builds strong, transparent supply chains through independent, third-party certification. Its trusted Fair Trade Certified™ label signifies that rigorous standards have been met in the production, trade and promotion of Fair Trade products from over 80 countries across the globe. Recognized as a leading social venture by the Clinton Global Initiative, the Skoll Foundation and Ashoka, Fair Trade USA also provides critical capacity-building programs at origin, and educates consumers about the power of their purchase. Visit www.FairTradeUSA.org for more information.

Contact:

Jenna Larson, Fair Trade USA

(510) 844-1668; jlarson@fairtradeusa.org
About NMI
NMI is an international strategic consulting and research firm specializing in health and sustainability since 1990. They are known for their consumer databases, now with 17 years of data across more than 1 million consumers in 30+ countries. NMI's knowledge and experience within health, sustainability and social research is unparalleled. For more information please visit www.NMIsolutions.com.

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Fifty-Nine Percent of Americans Now Aware of Fair Trade Certified™ Products

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OAKLAND, Calif., February 25, 2016 /3BL Media/ - Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, and the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), an international consulting and research firm specializing in health and sustainability, today released new data indicating that fifty-nine percent of consumers now recognize the Fair Trade Certified™ label.

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As we are reminded by the release of Bernie's Yearning, the flavor from Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen announced earlier this year, the boundaries between profits and purpose are increasingly blurred. While many have debated whether this mixing of profits and purpose is good or bad for business and society, it is time to move on. Organizations and leaders that use businesses to address social issues are here to stay. We should focus, therefore, on how they can do so most effectively.

In the for-profit sector, corporations increasingly engage in corporate social responsibility, while on the non-profit side, traditional charities face growing pressure to demonstrate a measurable return to donors who are no longer satisfied with inspiring stories about changed lives or communities revitalized.

But perhaps the trend that most epitomizes the blurring of profits and purpose is the rise of hybrid social enterprises whose raison d'etre is to pursue a social mission through a commercial venture. Think Toms Shoes, think Warby Parker, and even King Arthur Flour. From 2006 to 2011, the number of social entrepreneurs pursuing hybrid ventures as opposed to purely for-profit or purely non-profit ventures increased from 37% to almost 50%.

From 2006 to 2011, the number of social entrepreneurs pursuing hybrid ventures increased from 37% to almost 50%.

Such hybrid organizations are increasingly supported by new forms of investment. The "impact investment" market, in which investors seek a social as well as financial return, was estimated at $60 billion in 2014, and some predict it could grow as large as $500 billion in assets over the next decade.

Legal structures are also changing. Thirty US states and Washington D.C. now have Benefit Corporation legislation, which requires a firm to pursue social and environmental goals, not just profits. There are roughly 1,000 benefit corporations in the US, up from just a handful in 2011. Another 1,000 companies are registered as low profit limited liability corporations, a hybrid structure that enables for-profit, mission-driven firms to accept philanthropic funds.

Many have lauded these trends, arguing that they bring resources, fresh ideas, and innovative solutions to social problems, offering a much-needed corrective to years of inefficient management and lack of results in the nonprofit sector. Certainly, the Gates Foundation and other philanthropies launched by business leaders of the new economy have put previously unimaginable levels of resources toward experimental solutions in the areas of health and education, among others. And nonprofits or hybrid ventures that are challenged to be more accountable and efficient may ultimately develop better programs for their beneficiaries.

For each success story, there are countless other organizations in which combining profits and purpose has been much more problematic.

Take the social enterprise Digital Divide Data, which I have studied for the past eight years in my research at Cornell University. DDD's mission is to provide economic opportunities to the disadvantaged young people by training and employing them in an operationally sustainable IT outsourcing business. By hiring them to work on actual client projects with real deadlines, DDD provides their intended beneficiaries-high school graduates who are physically disabled due to landmines or polio-with more realistic work experience. DDD "graduates" get an estimated $110,000 increase in lifetime earnings.

Yet for each success story, there are countless other organizations in which combining profits and purpose has been much more problematic, even detrimental to the very constituencies that are supposed to benefit. In the field of microfinance, which aims to address global poverty by providing loans to people who would otherwise not have access to financial institutions, some of the most prominent organizations have been accused of prioritizing their own financial gain over helping people in need.

Mixing profits and purpose can create significant tension and conflict between employees as well. In my own research in the natural foods retailer Whole Foods Market, I found that "capitalist" employees who wanted to help the company increase profits often clashed with "idealists" who valued the company's commitment to organic foods and environmental sustainability. Absent effective leadership, such clashes can increase turnover and lead to declining performance or even failure.

Certainly, the blurring of profits and purpose, and the challenges it creates, is not entirely new. Business leaders have long engaged in philanthropic efforts. Nonprofits in health and higher education have faced competitive pressures and for-profit competition for several decades now. Worker cooperatives, perhaps the oldest form of hybrid venture, have existed for centuries. But something is different now. The blurring of profits and purpose is not just limited to a few corporations or leaders, nor to a few sectors. It is a central and enduring fact of organizational life.

What is needed, therefore, is not more encouragement or celebration, but rather greater attention from leaders to the challenges that the blurring of profits and purpose creates, and the strategies and practices by which these challenges can be overcome. We need leaders who can unite capitalists and idealists, leaders who can build guardrails that prevent hybrids from drifting too far toward one extreme or the other. Only then will the full potential of hybrids be realized.

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The line between non-profit and for-profit has become increasingly blurry

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As we are reminded by the release of Bernie's Yearning, the flavor from Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen announced earlier this year, the boundaries between profits and purpose are increasingly blurred. While many have debated whether this mixing of profits and purpose is good or bad for business and society, it is time to move on.

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After receiving $10 million from the federal government, an Ottawa organization is poised to play a key role in funding thousands of community activities and events marking Canada's 150th anniversary next year.

Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly announced Monday that Community Foundations of Canada, which has offices on Albert Street, has been selected to receive the money from the federal government's $210-million Canada 150 fund, created to pay for sesquicentennial celebrations.

The federal funding is seed money for CFC's new Community Fund for Canada's 150th, which it hopes to grow to $40 million through fundraising. The 191 community foundations CFC represents will match all private and public contributions.

The fund will distribute "micro-grants" ranging from $100 to $15,000 to applicants, who will be required to match the dollars they receive through direct contributions or in-kind support - effectively doubling the program's impact.

Municipalities, registered charities, amateur athletic associations, corporations that provide low-cost housing to seniors and other municipal or public bodies can apply for grants from the fund.

"Through thousands of small grants to thousands of communities, the fund will support projects that build vibrant, healthy and engaged communities, inspire deeper understanding about our communities and our country, and encourage participation in community initiatives connected to the sesquicentennial," said Laurel Carlton, CFC's director of leadership initiatives and governance.

CFC's chief operating officer, Andrew Chunilall, said the fund aims to kick-start projects "that empower local groups around local priorities - from community gardens to sports tournaments, from river cleanups to documentaries, from children's orchestras to acts of reconciliation."

Ultimately, he said, "the fund is about gathering a groundswell of local activities that engages Canadians from all walks of life." Recipients will have until Jan. 31, 2018 to present funded activities.

The fund's objectives appear well aligned with the federal government vision for 2017 celebrations outlined Monday by Joly.

That vision has four pillars, she said: engaging young people, celebrating diversity, encouraging environmental stewardship and promoting national reconciliation.

"In 2017, we want to celebrate and continue to build a welcoming country where everyone can reach their potential," Joly said. By bringing Canada 150 events to communities across Canada, "multiple facets of Canadian diversity will be recognized and celebrated."

No relationship is more important to the government than that with indigenous peoples, Joly said. "It is vital for all of Canada that we move forward together in the spirit of reconciliation so that Canada's next 150 years leaves a better legacy."

Joly also announced that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra will receive $7.5 million from the Canada 150 fund. She said the orchestra will working with various orchestras throughout Canada to highlight the work of "iconic" Canadian musicians as well as new and emerging artists.

A TSO spokeswoman said both the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Ottawa Symphony will take part in the initiative's "fanfare commissions," where the TSO commissions a composer those orchestras choose to celebrate Canada in music.
dbutler@postmedia.com twitter.com/ButlerDon

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Ottawa-based organization gets $10M for national Canada 150 project

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After receiving $10 million from the federal government, an Ottawa organization is poised to play a key role in funding thousands of community activities and events marking Canada's 150th anniversary next year.

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The world's largest coal company, the Peabody Energy Corporation, warned on Wednesday that it might have to file for bankruptcy protection as it struggles to keep up with its debt payments.

In a securities filing, Peabody said waning demand for coal around the world and stiffer regulations had raised "substantial doubt" about whether the company could continue to operate outside bankruptcy.

Analysts have been warning for months that Peabody could follow the nation's other large coal companies, like Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources and the Patriot Coal Corporation, into bankruptcy. The United States coal industry has been pummeled by tighter regulations and competition from cheaper sources of fuel, mostly notably natural gas.

Peabody, which owns and operates coal mines across the United States and Australia, has been trying for weeks to negotiate a deal with its creditors to ease some of its debt payments. But those talks have failed to produce a deal, leaving Peabody with few options outside a bankruptcy filing, analysts say.

Based in St. Louis, Peabody traces its history to 1883, when coal was becoming the nation's dominant energy source. It expanded into Australia in 2011 with the purchase of two coal companies there.

The coal industry has been struggling for many years, but its problems have intensified recently with the slowdown in the demand from the emerging markets and the slump in natural gas prices in the United States.

With revenue falling and debt costs rising, coal companies, which are large employers in parts of West Virginia, Wyoming and Utah, have been scrambling to stay solvent.

Peabody said that last month it reached the limit on its revolving credit line, borrowing the maximum of $945 million.

Peabody said it would not make roughly $71 million of interest payments that were due on Wednesday. The company has a 30-day grace period to either make the payment or be found in default.

Lenders to the coal industry are taking staggering losses on their investments. Some debt is trading at just pennies on the dollar.

Peabody's shares, which have been trending up in recent weeks on hopes that the company might be able to sell some assets and reach a deal with creditors, fell as much as 43 percent on Wednesday.

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Peabody Energy Warns of Possible Bankruptcy Filing

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The world's largest coal company, the Peabody Energy Corporation, warned on Wednesday that it might have to file for bankruptcy protection as it struggles to keep up with its debt payments. In a securities filing, Peabody said waning demand for coal around the world and stiffer regulations had raised "substantial doubt" about whether the company could continue to operate outside bankruptcy.

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The Californian craft beer brewed from waste water

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A San Francisco brewery is using Nasa technology to make beer with water from sinks and showers, while other brewers are finding new ways to go green

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Coffee in Canada

Coffee is Canada's most consumed beverage amongst adults - even more than tap water. As champions for the advancement and enjoyment of coffee in Canada, the Coffee Association of Canada (CAC) continually strives to better understand and educate Canadians about their favourite brew.

Every year, the CAC commissions the proprietary Canadian Coffee Drinking Study on behalf of its members. Below is an infographic, which highlights a few key findings from the results of the 2018 survey.

The Coffee Industry in Canada:

$6.2 billion industry

$4.8 billion sales in Foodservice

$1.4 billion sales in Grocery / Retail Sales

Interested in US stats? Click here!
Coffee Creates Jobs in Canada:

160,000+ jobs in Cafes and Coffee Shops

5,000+ jobs in Manufacturing and Roasting

5,000+ independent café and coffee shop owners and several thousand franchise owner-operators

Attractive entry-level positions for young people

Jobs in support sectors such as packaging, cup suppliers, food manufacturing etc.

Coffee and Trade

Of the traditional importing markets for coffee - North America, Europe and Japan, Canada is showing, by a considerable degree, the fastest sustained growth in the last decade.

Over 30 developing countries export coffee to Canada.

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Coffee Facts | Coffee Association of Canada

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Coffee in Canada Coffee is Canada's most consumed beverage amongst adults - even more than tap water. As champions for the advancement and enjoyment of coffee in Canada, the Coffee Association of Canada (CAC) continually strives to better understand and educate Canadians about their favourite brew.

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-         Add to plan / customize PD

-         How to choose?

-         OER (Open Education Resources)

-         Role to curate tech

-         SAMR

-         TPACK

-         Make sure it’s appropriate software to use

-

-            832x3QTH�

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Are these the seven most sustainable cities? - in pictures

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Landmarks around the world went dark for Earth Hour this weekend but many cities are making longer term moves towards sustainability. From Hamburg's coffee pod ban to São Paulo's ad-free streets - seven cities taking radical steps

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Meet the South Korean entrepreneurs promising a clean energy revolution

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Decades after South Korea's stark economic past, its startups are developing solar, wind and hydro-powered products for developing world markets

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By the time the first fireflies were stirring, we were coming up the dusty, jungle-lined road that led to the hacienda. Over to the east, the Colombian cordillera had been brushed by the last rays of the setting sun. The jungle was beginning the deep, resonant hum of irrepressible nocturnal life and we were rattling up the cobbled road into a plaza bordered on two sides by luxuriant foliage and on the others by the deep verandas of the two-storey pantiled house. I had, I realised, inadvertently stumbled into a Gabriel García Márquez novel.

The hacienda

No one came out to greet us, so we waited. Finally a light and a friendly face appeared, and we were shown to our rooms in Hacienda La Cabaña. Everywhere were pots of flowering ginger and heliconia (false bird of paradise) plants, apparently a passion of the owner, Don Hernán Sierra Nieto, who was away in Bogotá. I glanced into a ground-floor room and saw an ornate sofa above which hung portraits of his ancestors: steady, solemn faces, worn down by the responsibilities of managing the coffee plantation.

Next door was a bar stocked with a crazy assortment of bottles. On the wall, above portraits of smouldering Colombian divas, was the skin of a giant anaconda killed by Don Hernán's grandfather. The old man's voluminous riding breeches were also up there. I went to the kitchen and asked for a beer, then sat out in a red leather chair listening to the ghostly screeches and whispers of the jungle night.

Coffee may have been supplanted by cocaine as Colombia's most famous agricultural export, but the plantations still exist. And though struggling against increased worldwide competition, they continue to pick the little red berries and produce fine arabica beans. One benefit of their fight for survival is that many are now opening their doors to guests, and the fine old houses, with their deep, cool verandas surrounded by verdant gardens, jungle and plantation, make great places to stay.

Colombia was off-limits to all but the intrepid traveller for years (you only have to read Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden's chilling account of the demise of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1992, to get a feel for how dysfunctional and crazy the country had become). But today the country is much safer, and visitors are coming back. The Farc rebellion has been contained, and while peace negotiations drag on, most of the country is starting to enjoy some relative tranquillity.

The land around the town of Armenia in the west of the country is perfect for the coffee bushes: rolling jungly hills between two great mountain ranges with rich volcanic soils and great rivers like the Quindío. My plan was to do a coffee trail through the estates and jungles up to the town of Salento in the north, then walk into Los Nevados national park in the western foothills of the central cordillera, an area that until recently was lost to militias, guerrillas and violence, but is now open again.

My first big problem was dragging myself away from the Hacienda La Cabaña breakfast, a cornucopia of tropical fruits, eggs, cheese and arepas - the cornmeal pancakes that seem to come with everything in Colombia. Out in the garden the same fruits were being plundered by a dazzling array of colourful birds. Then Don Hernán drove in and my plan to leave early just disappeared. Instead, I toured his astonishing museum of a house, a tribute to the six generations that had carved the place from the jungle and then slowly filled it with darkly ornate furniture, sepia photographs, exuberant paintings and strange souvenirs - every one of them haunted by a story. Eventually, however, Anna my local guide, insisted: the first leg of the coffee trail was to be done on horseback, and we needed to move.

The farmstay

At a neighbouring estate, we mounted up, admiring the views across acres of rolling coffee trees and banana fields. The horses were tough little creatures, nimble down steep banks and ready to plunge across the Quindío, something I personally was hoping they would refuse to do. There was no need to worry though: encouraged by David, our guide, they held their own against the current. On the far bank, we wandered through groves of orange trees laden with scarlet orchids before picking our way through endless lines of coffee trees and bananas.

Not everyone agrees with this kind of monoculture, and our second night was spent in La Granja de Mamá Lulu, a kind of new-age experimental agricultural colony, where they are proving to the world that one square kilometre of hillside, lost in a sea of monoculture and cattle ranches, can be a paradise. This house had all the charm and idiosyncrasy of our previous night's lodgings, but with a modern twist. The huge rambling eccentric building is entirely constructed from bamboo. The gardens are miraculous, with huge flowers and fruits, monkeys, the cries of birds. I wandered the trails for hours, finding giant butterflies, a hummingbird on its nest and several fruits I didn't recognise but later tasted. The farm's 60 coffee trees manage to produce enough beans for eight kilos of roasted coffee every year, but my visit did not coincide with the picking season. Instead, we harvested some cacao pods, pale green, warty giants with delicious white pulp around the dark beans. That evening we spent a pleasant hour roasting our own cocoa, then grinding it and making hot chocolate.

The ranch

Next day, we were back in García Márquez territory, staying in the delightfully creaky Rancho de Salento, a working dairy farm with guest rooms smartly painted in blue and gold. The comfortably old-fashioned rooms opened on to a veranda with hammocks, where I lay watching the hummingbirds sip from a huge yellow flowering tree on the lawn.

I loved the place but was up early to meet a new guide, Edison, who was to take me walking up the Quindío valley. We were in the foothills of the central cordillera now and the Quindío, which we followed, was mostly whitewater, home to the aptly named torrent duck, which Edison pointed out, gamely swimming up waterfalls.

Birdlife is a big draw in Colombia which has more species (almost 1,900) than any other country. They are often wildly colourful and large: in quick succession, Edison showed us a motmot, with its tail like a pair of badminton racquets and brilliant turquoise eyebrows, a bright green jay and a toucan, which unflappably allowed me to take its picture.

We swam in the river and lay drying off on the rocks while Edison tried to explain how difficult life had been only a few years before: "This area was full of rebels and paramilitaries. It was often brutal. You had to take sides."

I eyed his rather paramilitary clothing. Had he been involved? He would not be drawn. He'd seen things he'd rather not talk about. Now he only wanted to care for the environment and protect the wildlife. He was just happy that those days were over and tourists were returning.

The patio house

Once the sun had warmed us, we faced a stiff climb up the mountainside to the town of Salento, a gorgeous jewel of a place with each whitewashed house wrapped around a shady patio where hummingbirds flitted between potted flowers. I dropped my bags in La Posada del Café, a lovely example of a traditional dwelling with simple rooms and a patio decked with flowers. The woodwork was neatly painted in butterscotch with minty blue details.

Down a side street off the main square, Café Jesús Martín is trying to introduce Colombians to the idea of coffee as a drink. It's a weird concept: coffee, as every Colombian knows, is for exporting to gringo countries then using the cash to buy darkly ornate wooden furniture. However, the Martín family are trying to change this. They took me away to see their plantation where the beans were quietly ripening, still a month away from picking, then to a workshop where I learned how to select the best beans - nice fat specimens without insect holes - and roast them. Back at the lovely old cafe, I sat in a corner and overdosed on caffeine and sugar while the evening swelled out into the streets.

Salento is a great place to laze away a couple of days. The saloons are full of men in straw trilbies drinking aguardiente (sugar cane brandy) poured from large chrome urns on the bar, then wiping their noses on their ponchos. Horses and dogs stand waiting outside. Mexican trumpets blast down the lamp-lit streets. There are tourists here, but it doesn't feel like they boss the place, not yet.

The town is gateway to Los Nevados national park and the standard way of getting there is to take a veteran Willys jeep taxi from the square. Los Nevados is renowned for its wax palms, the tallest palm tree on earth, and setting off from park HQ we were immediately among them, their slender trunks reaching up to 60m high. Standing on the ridges and buttresses they make an astonishing spectacle, especially when mobbed by the extremely rare parrots that rely on them for food.

Once in the jungle, we began to climb, stopping regularly because of the altitude - and the birds: huge woodpeckers, toucans, and a glimpse of an eagle cruising down the tumbling river. After a couple of hours, we entered the clouds and reached a 3,000-metre summit. The clouds parted and we had magnificent views. The path does continue and I was told a handful of inhabitants provide a guesthouse on the high-altitude plateau, but we weren't equipped for that. This was our goal, the place where the water comes from that feeds the millions of coffee trees below. It was not coffee, however, that I was yearning for. The aguardiente back in town was beckoning.

Juiced up: fruit like you've never tasted

There's so much more to drink in Colombia than coffee and aguardiente. The sheer variety of weird and wonderful fruit is a delight for visitors. The owner of La Posada del Café, Maria Elena Rincón, who is a mine of information, sent me off with instructions to taste both lulo and guanaba fruit juice. Both were new to me; both were delicious.
Lulo (also known as naranjilla) makes a refreshing light juice, with a sweet-sour-citrus flavour, or try milk mixed with the juice of the guanaba (soursop), a fruit that has been recently linked to natural cures for cancer.
Also magnificent is cherimoya (custard apple), which Mark Twain described as "the most delicious fruit known to man". Another great one is tomate de arbol (tamarillo), which is mixed with cinnamon to make a tasty juice.
And there's more: mamoncillo, a little like a lychee drenched in lime; curuba - think banana crossed with passionfruit; maracuya (a type of passionfruit); pitahaya (dragonfruit); and nispero (a type of medlar, with sweet, rich flesh).
If you're lucky, somewhere on a stall you will find a waxy orange sphere that breaks open to reveal a soft greenish pulp filled with seeds which you hoover up: this is the granadilla, a cousin of the passionfruit, and the fruit that proves Twain wrong. The Jesús Martín cafe in Salento makes a mean tea with it.

Way to go

The trip was provided by Sumak Travel (020-36424246, sumak-travel.org) which promotes community tourism initiatives. Its private 12-day Criollo Colombia Tour of Bogotá, Villa de Leyva, the coffee region and the Amazon rainforest, including accommodation, internal flights, activities, excursions and most meals, costs from £1,650pp, or from £2,160pp including return flights from Heathrow.

UK rail travel was provided by Holiday Extras (0800 1313 777, holidayextras.co.uk) which can also arrange lounge access, transfers and parking.

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Colombia is full of beans: coffee regions open for tourism

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By the time the first fireflies were stirring, we were coming up the dusty, jungle-lined road that led to the hacienda. Over to the east, the Colombian cordillera had been brushed by the last rays of the setting sun.

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HugeDomains.com - Shop for over 300,000 Premium Domains

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Value Stream Mapping

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HugeDomains.com - Shop for over 300,000 Premium Domains

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Herdfunding: how the internet is raising money for farms

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Instead of approaching banks, small, local farms are finding cash and loyal fans online

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Considering B Corp? Considering an ESOP?

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A new business certification called B Corp is becoming a leading business innovation, and the model works extremely well with an ESOP. B Corp companies have a mission to maximize "stakeholder value.

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Fairphone: one smartphone company's search for conflict-free gold

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A Dutch social enterprise has created the first Fairtrade gold supply chain for consumer electronics - will other mobile phone companies follow suit?

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How badger bombs and politics brought Lush sales of £500m

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Cosmetics company Lush has managed to combine record sales with controversial campaigns. Don't expect others to copy

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Over the past 15 years, Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) and Fair Trade labels have played an important role in driving consumer awareness and demand for socially and environmentally sourced products. For years, FLO/Fair Trade have been flag bearers for small-holder empowerment and have pushed a desperately needed agenda. But today, serious questions loom about the relevance of Fair Trade organizations and labels. The debate revolves around Fair Trade's impact-or lack thereof-at the base of the pyramid (BoP), and its ability and desire to accomplish its original mission.

A recent investigation by a team of BoP supply chain experts from I-DEV International uncovered some critical weaknesses within three Fair Trade supply chains. For a month, the team traversed jungles and mountains and lived in remote villages of Sumatra, Indonesia. Their mission was to gain a firsthand understanding of the local dynamics, livelihoods, and day-to-day challenges of Fair Trade farmers who produce much of the Indonesian coffee, cassia (sold as cinnamon), and black pepper that the developed world consumes. The team left Sumatra after a harsh reality check for Fair Trade subscribers, but they also identified a few clear opportunities to redesign Fair Trade and revive its relevance.

I-DEV's team met with nearly 100 farmers, collectors, and co-op managers. The resounding observation was that while many of the farmer co-ops have reinvested their Fair Trade premiums and profits to become highly sophisticated, professionally run "businesses" with well-equipped processing and packing plants, the majority of farmers were disconnected from this process, and virtually all of them saw their co-ops as just another external business that paid a collector (intermediary) to buy their harvest. Farmers felt no sense of ownership in the co-ops, and many admitted that they were members of several. The most disconcerting observation was that not a single farmer I-DEV spoke with could say whether their life had improved financially or otherwise since the arrival of Fair Trade.

Surprisingly, many farmers were completely oblivious about where their products were sold, how much they sold for, or what they were used for. When one of I-DEV's team pulled a chai tea bag from his pocket and asked a group of cassia farmers if they had ever seen a product that contained cassia (cinnamon), shockingly, no one in the group ever had. To them, cassia was just tree bark, and no one had ever explained how the rest of the world used it. In fact, virtually none of the farmers from any of the three supply chains knew how much the co-op received or how much the collector (the local elected representative of the co-op/ intermediary) earned compared to their own earnings. (This is Fair Trade 101!) Many could not recall the last time they received any training or saw any of the co-op training staff. For them, the only tie to the co-operative was the local collector. One collector even physically threatened a farmer for talking to I-DEV's team.

In order to remain relevant and reclaim its place as innovation leader, Fair Trade must remember and re-engage the individual farmer. It can do this by restricting certification so that it only goes to organizations that truly empower and forward-integrate farmers-teaching them to move up the supply chain and ensuring that an increasing amount of the value added stays at the farmer level. More specifically, Fair Trade might establish a tiered certification system, something like LEED certification. It could also use individualized scorecards to evaluate organizations based on continuous improvement, measuring key factors such as shortened supply chains (I-DEV found as many as 5 to 7 links along supply chains before exportation, which is ridiculous!).

Finally, any redesign of the Fair Trade labels must include a quality component. Beyond BoP impact, poor bean quality and flavor is hands-down the biggest criticism of Fair Trade. Meanwhile, Direct Trade has emerged as a fast-growing and highly profitable niche of the specialty coffee market-fueled in part by dissatisfaction with FLO's social and product shortcomings. This premium coffee has sold for as much as $120/lb and undergoes rigorous flavor testing, much like wine does. If Fair Trade coffee quality doesn't improve, the Direct Trade movement-led by Stumptown, Counter Culture, and Intelligentsia micro-roasters-will quickly become a growing threat.

Read SSIR's case study "The Problem with Fair Trade" here.

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The Future of Fair Trade...Is There One? (SSIR)

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Over the past 15 years, Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) and Fair Trade labels have played an important role in driving consumer awareness and demand for socially and environmentally sourced products. For years, FLO/Fair Trade have been flag bearers for small-holder empowerment and have pushed a desperately needed agenda.

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Project managers: Set up new project We will review you submission and upon agreement, you will receive a project ID and will be asked to complete the information necessary to set up the COF assessment questionnaire (e.g., customizable fields, supplemental dimensions).

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In 2012, I joined Fair Trade USA as a consultant. Soon after I began my work for the organization, I held a series of workshops with members of its coffee supply chain and producer services team. Among the topics I covered were producer cooperatives, the coffee market, and knowledge management. In these workshops, I often used a version of the Cultural Orientations Framework developed by the executive coaching expert Philippe Rosinski. ¹ My goal was to explore how culture-the framework in which we view and interpret what surrounds us-affects how we think, feel, and act.

In one exercise, I sought to help workshop participants understand how their position as observers within a particular cultural framework skews the way they perceive and value "impact"-for example, the impact that the practice of fair trade has on parties that engage in it.

According to Fair Trade USA's 2011 Almanac, the five countries from which the United States imported most of its Fair Trade coffee were, in order, Peru (25 percent), Colombia (12 percent), Honduras (11 percent), Nicaragua (10 percent), and Indonesia (9 percent). ² I shared those data with people in the workshop. Then I presented them with a comparable set of data that reflected the perspective of producing countries. This list indicated the scale of Fair Trade exports to the US market in relation to the total production of each country. From one list to the other, the ranking of countries changed. Nicaragua (6.4 percent), for example, moved from fourth place up to first place. More important, the array of countries that appeared on the list changed. Costa Rica placed third (5 percent) and Mexico placed fifth (2.4 percent), whereas Colombia (1.6 percent) and Indonesia (1.4 percent) vanished from the top-five tier. ³

Suddenly, our impact assessment had changed. Which country, Peru or Nicaragua, benefited more from its fair trade relationship with the United States? What about Colombia, which had gone from second place to sixth-place also-ran status? People in the workshop began to see that "the impact of fair trade" can vary according to how they look at it. Viewing the data from an import- or consumer-based perspective yields one result, and viewing that information from an export- or producer-based perspective yields a different result. Both perspectives are valid, but only by viewing them together can we arrive at a comprehensive perception of reality.

That simple workshop exercise helps to illuminate what I have come to call the paradox of fair trade. The fair trade movement was founded to benefit small producers of coffee and other commodities-most of them located in developing countries of the Global South-by integrating them advantageously into a global export market. Yet as the movement has evolved, it has come to place a considerable emphasis on tailoring its efforts to the needs and aspirations of consumers in the Global North. In theory, fair trade can flourish on the basis of a win-win relationship between producers and consumers. In practice, however, tensions can emerge between those in the movement who emphasize the "fair" part of fair trade (for them, the interests of the producers are paramount) and those who emphasize the "trade" part (they prioritize the need to reach consumers).

Late in 2011, two of the most important organizations in the fair trade movement- Fairtrade International (Fairtrade) and Fair Trade USA -announced that they would be going their separate ways. That split marks a critical turning point in the history of fair trade, and people in the movement are still trying to make sense of it.

My goal in this article is to explore how a conflict between two opposing worldviews-two cultural frameworks-led to this internal division within the fair trade community. I will also explore how engaging with the paradox of fair trade allows us to see the interconnectedness of those cultural frameworks. In the end, I believe, the people of Fairtrade and Fair Trade USA can overcome their differences and achieve a real, transformative impact on the lives of producers and consumers alike.

The Theory and Practice of Fair Trade

In the early 1980s, Father Francisco Vanderhoff Boersma returned from the Oaxacan mountains in Mexico to his native Netherlands to talk with anyone who would listen about the inability of Mexican coffee producers to receive a price that would ensure them a dignified standard of living. Father Boersma, cofounder of the fair trade movement, hardly imagined that 30 years later the movement would include 1.3 million producers in 70 countries across four regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Oceania). Today, Fair Trade commerce takes place in 125 countries, and total annual sales of Fair Trade products exceed $6 billion. Since 2011, sales have increased by more than 16 percent. ⁴ (I will use the lowercase term "fair trade" to refer to the broad movement to improve the lives of commodity producers through trade. I'll use the uppercase term "Fair Trade" to refer to the activity of organizations that formally certify Fair Trade products.)

The idea of fair trade is simple. Ultimately, it involves a mutually beneficial exchange between two parties: producers and consumers. Its purpose is to improve the living and working conditions of small farmers and workers, and it depends on solidarity with people who are willing to pay more for a product to ensure that their purchase has a positive impact on producers. The goal is to empower producers and their organizations so that they can not only earn a fair price for their goods, but also take control of their businesses and reinvest in their communities.

Seen from one perspective, fair trade is a partnership between producers and consumers to rectify unequal trade relations by fortifying the trade chain's weakest link-small-scale producers-and by weakening the power of intermediaries (commonly known as "coyotes" in Latin America) who add little or no value while claiming a large part of the revenue from sales. These middlemen, whether they are independent operators or employees of transnational companies, take advantage of the producers' isolation and lack of market knowledge. By eliminating them and thereby shortening the supply chain, Fair Trade organizations have had a direct, positive impact both on producers' income and on product quality.

In the late 1980s, leaders in the fair trade movement began launching country-specific Fair Trade labels. Then, in 1997, a number of organizations merged to form the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, which consolidated the global strategy of the movement and brought order to a crucial element of the Fair Trade system: certification. The role of certification is to make sure that all stakeholders in each supply chain meet an established set of trade, labor, and environmental standards. An independent certifier is responsible for checking compliance with these standards, and the Fair Trade label on a product guarantees to consumers that they have been met.

From the beginning, the flagship Fair Trade product has been coffee, and coffee still represents the product with the highest sales volume. But the list of Fair Trade goods has expanded to include other agricultural products: cocoa, honey, rice, cotton, sugar, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, and so forth. Although the consumption of Fair Trade products is increasing, they represent a small fraction of the overall market for coffee and other commodities. An estimated 25 million small producers make up 70 percent of worldwide coffee production, but sales of Fair Trade coffee account for only 2 percent of total production. Those figures clearly indicate the challenge-as well as the opportunity-that lies ahead for Fair Trade organizations.

A Movement Divided Against Itself

On September 15, 2011, Fairtrade International and Fair Trade USA published a joint statement that read in part: "[W]e have different perspectives on how best to achieve [our] common vision ... of empowering producers and workers around the world to improve their lives through better terms of trade." With that statement, a 14-year-old organizational alliance came to an end. The disagreement between the two groups stemmed from a long debate over whether to include large coffee plantations and non-organized small coffee producers in the Fair Trade system. Leaders of Fair Trade USA, eager to take that step, decided to break away from Fairtrade, and they launched a new strategy called Fair Trade for All.

When Paul Rice, founder and CEO of Fair Trade USA, was asked about the split, he said: " It's not personal. It's business." ⁵ He and other leaders in the US group pointed out that other Fair Trade-certified products, such as tea and bananas, came from plantations. Why, they asked, should the core Fair Trade products (coffee, sugar, and cocoa) be available only from producers' cooperatives? Rice signaled that Fair Trade USA would focus primarily on growth-growth in sales and, Rice hoped, growth in impact. "Fair Trade of the past was amazing. And absolutely not scalable," he said. ⁶ By allowing a wider range of producer entities to participate in the Fair Trade system, Rice argued, the movement would create efficiencies that would encourage large corporate buyers to obtain more products from that system. As a result, he believed, sales of Fair Trade products would increase, and the financial and social returns to all types of producers would increase as well.

Opponents of the Fair Trade USA decision charged that the Fair Trade for All strategy moved too far away from the movement's original commitment to the empowerment of small-producer organizations. Rob Cameron, then CEO of Fairtrade, made that case in an open letter issued immediately following the split: "The FAIRTRADE Mark is the world's most widely recognized ethical certification mark and we believe that our producer-focused approach is [the] key to that success. Producers worldwide not only [are] valued for their opinion, but are co-owners in the Fairtrade system." ⁷ A model built around small producers' organizations, Fairtrade leaders argued, is the only one that can guarantee the true empowerment of producers. Other models (such as the plantation model and the production-by-contract model) perpetuate dependence either on an employer or on intermediaries.

The World Fair Trade Organization, a global network of Fair Trade organizations, emphasized the risk that Fair Trade would end up falling under the control of big multinational corporations: "The WFTO believes the interests of producers, especially small farmers and artisans, should be the main focus in all the policies, governance, structures and decision making within the Fair Trade movement. ... It is not unthinkable under this scenario to have a multinational operation own the entire supply chain and be able to label it as Fair Trade. This is completely unacceptable to the WFTO." ⁸

Alongside these reactions from leading institutions, a myriad of activists, academics, buyers, brokers, concerned consumers, and producers around the world voiced their opinions for or against this decision. On the ground, all of us who had been part of the fair trade movement now found ourselves looking at each other differently. We laughed to release tension, but our uneasiness was real. After working together for years, we had suddenly turned into adversaries.

Getting Personal

The night I first heard of fair trade, I could barely sleep. It was in 1994, and I was participating in an event hosted by Setem, a Spanish NGO where I was a volunteer. At that time, I was working at a bank. But I also found time to work as a social activist and as an informal educator of young people. Setem, I learned that night, placed the concept of fair trade at the center of its strategy to raise public and consumer awareness about the inequities in North-South trade relations. For the next several years, I promoted the fair trade concept in churches and in schools, in social organizations and in government institutions. Then I decided to meet with fair trade coffee producers firsthand. I wanted to see with my own eyes the impact that fair trade was having in the field. So in 1998 I grabbed my backpack and flew to Mexico. What was meant to be a two-year trip has become a calling that has occupied me for more than 15 years.

For my first field experience, I landed in the state of Chiapas. There I volunteered to work with one of the most successful cooperatives within the Fair Trade system-an organization that had sent the first shipping container with Fair Trade coffee ever to reach the UK market. Since then, I have worked with organizations of small farmers to improve their production systems. I have assisted them in their organizational development, helped them build management capacities, and supported their efforts to obtain loans and seek new markets. I have witnessed how these organizations have leveraged the benefits of fair trade to become more competitive and to defend the interests of their members. From 2006 to 2011, I worked for Root Capital, where I led an initiative aimed at improving access to credit for small rural businesses, the vast majority of which sell their products under a Fair Trade label. I also served as an advisor for Setem on a project designed to help fair trade producer organizations gain access to the Spanish market.

Over the years, the Fair Trade system has grown considerably. But the fair trade family remains relatively small. It's a very young movement whose founders are still active and whose success is based on an almost utopian sense of marching together in pursuit of shared values.

That is why many personal relationships suffered following the split between Fairtrade and Fair Trade USA. In some cases, feelings of resentment are very real. In general, there is the sense of disappointment that often comes after a failure. Right now, we are hurt and at odds with each other, and it's difficult to separate rational arguments from emotional reactions. It's easy to look for culprits and to point fingers. For many of us, at this point, the safe thing to do is to surround ourselves with those who think as we do, and then to go out and prove that our way is the right way. Which means that our focus now is on competing with each other.

Outside the Market and Inside the Market

Let's take a step back and look at the underlying reasons for the split between Fairtrade and Fair Trade USA. In particular, let's use a variation of the cultural orientation analysis that I discussed earlier. By working to understand the cultural dynamics that have resulted in a conflict between two visions of the fair trade movement, we will be able to imagine options for the movement that take us beyond a purely competitive stance.

The fair trade movement takes certain things for granted. First, it assumes the pre-eminence of the current system of economic relationships. Second, it recognizes that some people participate in that system at a disadvantage. The question that stems from these premises is this: What makes "fair" trade necessary? There are two ways to answer that question, and each way reflects a specific cultural orientation.

One answer says that the current economic system is socially unjust, as well as inefficient in its distribution of resources, and that it depletes natural resources. To people who hold this view, fair trade is a powerful way to highlight the contradictions of the current system. This position has both a philosophical basis (What is "justice"?) and a political basis (How do we achieve it?). Linked to this position is a commitment to standing outside the system- outside the market. From the perspective of this cultural orientation, the goal is to confront the market system with a more humane model. Adherents of this view accept that system and work within its rules, but they seek to "contaminate" it with a potentially revolutionary idea: Fair trade puts people before profits.

The other answer says that the current economic system properly reflects a belief in free will: An individual who acts on self-interest will end up benefiting other actors within that system. Fair trade is thus one way that the system attends to the priorities of consumers. The system, in other words, responds to every type of demand, including the "demand" of consumers who have a desire for social justice. People who subscribe to this position stand inside the system- inside the market. Their goal is to participate fully in the market. They don't deny that there might be ways to improve the current system, but they believe that the market is the most efficient way to allocate resources. From the perspective of this cultural orientation, the first priority of fair trade is to expand the market for Fair Trade products as broadly as possible.

When the fair trade movement split in 2011, it did so precisely along this fault line. Fairtrade represents an outside-the-market perspective. Its cultural orientation aligns with a European cultural framework, in which the principles of social democracy and the welfare state remain strong. Fair Trade USA, by contrast, represents an inside-the-market perspective. Its cultural orientation aligns with an Anglo-American cultural framework, in which the principles of individualism and competition tend to be dominant.

To speak of "cultural orientations" is to step into a tricky area. Unavoidably, we find ourselves using simplifications or stereotypes to guide us. Individual and cultural reality is, of course, much richer and more complex than the schematic overview that I have provided here. Still, a broad overview of this kind can be useful as a tool for analyzing different beliefs, motivations, and attitudes toward change. (See "Two Organizations, Two Cultures," above.)

Cultures in Conflict

The culture of Fairtrade and the culture of Fair Trade USA have evolved in sharply different ways. And those differences find expression in the voices of the top leaders at those organizations-in the voice of Harriet Lamb, the current CEO of Fairtrade, and in that of Paul Rice, CEO of Fair Trade USA. What follows is a survey of comments that these two leaders have made in public forums over the past couple of years. ⁹

Attitude toward the market system | In discussing how the fair trade movement should interact with the current economic system, Lamb emphasizes the importance of transforming that system. "How can we change the world from the bottom up? How can we change the economy through changing people?" she asks. "Change," indeed, is the main word on her mind when she says, "We need new laws and new governments and new policies if we're going to change the structures of power, but one of the ways we are going to get there is through changing relationships." Rice, by contrast, focuses on the need to adapt to the current system. "The new version of globalization that's emerging and growing very rapidly," he says, reflects the idea "that you can actually be profitable and sustainable at the same time." In another forum, Rice made the point more bluntly: "The solution is the market."

Evaluation of impact | The two leaders also speak in contrasting terms when they discuss the impact of fair trade. Lamb argues that gauging the impact of fair trade is a more complex task than simply reading a sales-growth chart. "Fair trade is about enabling consumers to buy responsibly, enabling producers to farm responsibly, pushing companies to trade responsibly," she says. "But it's also more than that. It's about being a change agent." Rice, although he emphasizes the benefits that his organization delivers to producers, uses language that is more bottom-line-oriented than Lamb's. "Over the last 10 years, we've been able to deliver over $220 million in additional market value back to those farming communities," Rice says. "At the end of the day, it is the best metric for success that we have."

Strategy | How organizations operate is necessarily a result of the strategic objectives that drive them. At Fairtrade, the focus is on supporting frontline producers. "We need above all else to be really world-class in our work with small holders. That's what fair trade is famous for," Lamb says. "Nobody [else] is helping small holders to get organized and get a better deal from trade. Nobody [else] is helping small holders build their businesses and become stronger exporters empowered within the value chain." Fair Trade USA has adopted a strategy that pivots on the needs of corporate buyers and consumers. "Companies are finding that this model, and similar models, are helping them stabilize their supply chain, improve their reputation, and also tap into this growing consumer segment that we call the 'conscious consumer segment.' They are looking for great products that also are kind of consistent with their values," Rice says. "Great products make us also feel good."

Partnerships | Similarly, Fairtrade and Fair Trade USA give priority to their connections to different kinds of partners. "Farmers know best what would enable them to make change in their communities, and we have to make sure that in fair trade the farmers and workers are in the driving seat," says Lamb. Rice, for his part, sets his sights on allying with parties that drive demand for the products that his organization certifies. "Partnerships with companies and market-based approaches," he says, "are often needed in order to solve social or environmental problems."

And here is a pair of quotations that succinctly convey the difference in outlook between Lamb and Rice-and the difference in culture between the Fair Trade groups that they lead. Lamb points to the importance of producers: "We work to really unlock the power of the many in the interest of the farmers and workers." Rice, meanwhile, points by implication to the centrality of consumers: "Every purchase matters. Every purchase is an opportunity to change the world."

What would happen if people on each side of this culture clash could truly talk with each other? The challenge of cross-cultural communication is for people to recognize that they-just like those with a different outlook, a different sense of identity-are ensconced in their own cultural orientation. Being open to understanding other cultural frameworks is a skill that requires us to move our own identity off-center and to experience that identity from a different vantage point. My hope is that people in the fair trade movement can take that step.

Working Through the Paradox

Under the umbrella of the fair trade concept, two perspectives-two cultural orientations-coexist in tension. There is the outside-the-market perspective of Fairtrade, and there is the inside-the-market perspective of Fair Trade USA. Within each perspective, the basic definition of fair trade is the same: the use of trade as a means to achieve social justice. But there is no agreement on the exact meaning of "social justice," or on the best strategy for achieving it, or on which side of the producer-consumer equation should receive greater emphasis. The current split within the movement puts this tension into clear view.

But are these two perspectives, in fact, mutually exclusive? Or are they, perhaps, complementary? Even though they each regard producers and consumers in a different light, they agree that the essence of fair trade lies in engagement between those groups. They agree, moreover, on the need to increase the participation of consumers in fair trade-whether that participation takes the form of promoting responsible consumption (Fairtrade) or the form of increasing sales (Fair Trade USA). Not all consumers are the same. Their beliefs and aspirations, and how they see their role in society, differ. So why not consider each perspective to be a different method for reaching a different set of consumers? For some consumers, a fair trade transaction is a chance to participate in meaningful, long-term change. For others, it's a one-time chance to "do good." Fairtrade is clearly in the best position to reach the first kind of consumer, whereas Fair Trade USA is probably best suited to reach the second kind.

What I propose, in sum, is that these two groups pursue their competing yet complementary approaches. Each group will spread the fair trade ideal while approaching consumers in its own way. In other words, each organization will act in accord with its cultural orientation. Fairtrade, with its outside-the-market perspective, will deepen the sense that the Fair Trade system operates by and for organized small producers. Fair Trade USA, with its inside-the-market perspective, will extend fair trade to more potential consumers. One organization will focus on quality (enrich the concept), and the other will focus on quantity (grow to scale).

Again, it is a paradox: The fair trade movement aims to empower producers, yet it does so largely by serving consumers. That paradox, that tension at the root of the fair trade concept, has led to an institutional split within the movement. But the effort to work through the paradox can also lead us to be innovative in our search for a way forward. I envision the possibility of building a new model that respects both cultural frameworks: We can compete and work together at the same time. We can appeal to consumers using different methods, even as we could join forces to empower producers.

What if members of each group could recognize that they are only partially right? What if they could say, in effect, "We all are fair trade"? What if, together yet separately, they could rebuild the global Fair Trade system in a way that serves as an example for other organizations? We have an opportunity to put in place a new model in which we harness the benefits of market competition while using the power of solidarity to distribute those benefits.

Fair trade in this new era should be not only a matter of good business, not only a compelling way of unlocking the power of social justice, but also a transformative movement for all stakeholders. If we can remain aware of our own cultural orientation and also remain respectful of others' orientation-if we can use that knowledge to help us work together-then we will have an opportunity to make a real difference.

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In 2012, I joined Fair Trade USA as a consultant. Soon after I began my work for the organization, I held a series of workshops with members of its coffee supply chain and producer services team. Among the topics I covered were producer cooperatives, the coffee market, and knowledge management.

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Nestlé, if you care about the environment what's with your disposable coffee cups?

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Nescafé's one-use cups are aimed at busy commuters who want cheap on-the-go coffee, but we already have reusable cups for that

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Canadian Trademarks Details 0903697-0 - Canadian Trademarks Database - Intellectual property and copyright - Canadian Intellectual Property Office - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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