Three Criteria for the Ideal Socially Responsible Business Venture

If you are a regular reader of Inspired Livelihood or Craft Biz Blog, you know that I have three criteria for the ideal business venture:

• It is profitable
• It improves lives
• It utilizes a local workforce when possible

Frequently, when someone comes to me for help creating a socially responsible enterprise, they are initially thinking non-profit. They are surprised that they can create a business in the private sector that makes a difference and they think they have to  manufacture product oversees to make a profit. Of course they can have the item made more cheaply in sweatshops that do not pay fare wages but what good is building a business to help people and then taking jobs oversees that could be creating local income and helping unemployed Americans create a livelihood?

I try to encourage the use our own labor force whenever possible so I was absolutely thrilled to read about what I think is the perfect sustainable model.  Darr and Tom Aley founded Mojo, (short for Moms and Jobs), a hand made apparel company that hires and trains single mothers living near or under poverty level. They provide child care, health care and career training to help these women get off social services like food stamps and welfare and create sustainable livelihoods to improve the lives of their children.

If you know of other businesses that are profitable, improve lives and use local workers, please post in the comments below. I’d love to share them with our other readers. What can you think of that you can do to meet the above three criteria in your own business?

From Wall Street to Social Entrepreneur

An article in the New York Daily News today featured several young Wall Street “casualties” who’ve taken advantage of the recession to begin new socially conscious businesses. Stephen Chen and Iris Chau started  GreenSoul Shoes,  selling sandals made from recycled tires by artisans in Third World countries.  Chau’s husband came up with the idea after seeing children playing barefoot in a Manila garbage dump.  For ever pair sold, they donate another to a needy child in the artisans’ communities.  GreenSoul isn’t only making a difference  in underdeveloped countries.  The company incorporates the social change aspect on the home front by using a facility that employs ex-cons, recovering addicts and formerly homeless to do their packing and shipping.

The article mentions other young social entrepreneurs including Tyler Gage and Dan MacCombie, two Brown grads  who are bringing a tea called Guayusa to America as an energy drink. A highly caffeinated, sweet tea that keeps you alert without the jitters, Guayusa is grown in  Ecuador and because it needs the shade of other trees to grow, it is helping to preserve the rain forest, and is supporting indigenous farmers. 

These and many other aspiring entrepreneurs, are turning their recent job loss into an opportunity to create a new economic model that makes doing good in the community or the world a part of doing well financially.  This recession is likely to birth some of the most successful and socially conscious entrepreneurs in history. 

How can you turn a job loss or down economy into an opportunity to take a stand and make a difference while you’re making a living.  Could this be the perfect time for you to, as Gandhi said, “be the change you wish to see in the world?” 

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