With just over two months left until I graduate from business school, I’ve started to reflect on what I’ve accomplished over the last two years.

Without a doubt, the most fulfilling experiences of my MBA program have been the chances I’ve had to engage in real-world consulting projects for corporate and nonprofit clients.

In the last four semesters, I’ve worked on some pretty terrific marketing and corporate social responsibility projects – including brand audits, marketing research plans, stakeholder communications strategies, and social media tactics.

But perhaps my most satisfying consulting project was a sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement plan for Praxair, a $9B Fortune 300 industrial gas manufacturer in Danbury, CT. I’ve talked about this project in past posts, and I was thrilled to see that Boston University recently issued a press release about this engagement (including a quote from yours truly!).

These consulting projects have been the most rewarding part of my MBA, but they’ve also been the most challenging and time-consuming. In the end, though, I’ve signed up for all of them without hesitation – in large part because I (and many of my fellow MBA classmates) believed they’d serve as proof of our experience to potential employers come recruiting season.

Interestingly, last week The Wall Street Journal published an article about companies partnering with business schools to create these sorts of CSR projects for students. The article starts out positively, saying urgent “social concerns” are leading more and more companies to partner with business schools to provide real-world education and training to students (aka: potential employees).

Unfortunately the story takes on a different tone just a few sentences later:

The effort [to create real-world CSR consulting projects] is being met with both gratitude and skepticism from business schools, which say that despite the emphasis on integrating these hot-button topics into the curriculum, it’s business as usual at recruiting time. Few hiring managers, they say, ask students about corporate-responsibility training or indicate it’s a priority.

That’s right – according to the article, these CSR projects may be happening more frequently on business school campuses, but that doesn’t mean they’re turning into more CSR jobs for MBA graduates after school.

The article drills home the point even further, saying that engaging students in these kinds of projects “doesn’t translate into hiring socially responsible M.B.As, an issue that “points to a disconnect on part of the companies: There’s enthusiasm in the classroom for imparting corporate responsibility and sustainability concepts, but hiring managers attending campus recruiting sessions say it’s rarely something they quiz candidates about.”

In the end it seems that MBA grads looking for CSR jobs can easily find themselves between that proverbial rock and a hard place – on the one hand, they’re receiving extraordinary real-world training for future sustainability positions; yet on the other, there’s often no opportunity to continue this work once they finish business school.

Another related and interesting study that just came out also reinforced this point:

Ellen Weinreb from Sustainability Recruiting analyzed six years of CSR job postings and drew conclusions about the availability of jobs and overall trends in CSR recruiting. Her findings point to an interesting conclusion for recent MBA grads wanting to get into CSR (which, by the way, is the same conclusion drawn by the Wall Street Journal article):

If you want to work in CSR, get functional experience first.

Ellen’s study shows an increase over time in VP and Director-level CSR jobs – which is great news for people already working in CSR but not so great for MBA grads just trying to jump in.

Since those high-level CSR jobs are most likely out of reach for newly-minted MBAs, Ellen suggests job seekers embed themselves in a corporate function (marketing, finance, strategy etc), learn the business, and then transition internally to a CSR role.

When you think about it, this advice makes sense; after all, to be effective in sustainability, you’ve got to first understand the business you’re in.

For my part, it turns out that I’ve actually heard this advice many, many times – and given the frequency with which it’s said, I’ve taken it seriously to heart.

Still, this puts me – and many other soon-to-be MBA grads – in a bit of an awkward position going forward.

My goal is to work in a CSR role within a big consumer brand, so I’ve stacked my resume with CSR-related projects and classes to show future employers that I know what I’m talking about.

But if in the end it turns out that these kinds of activities don’t necessarily translate into a job-seeker’s “competitive advantage,” did I waste my time on these projects when I should have been doing something else? Obviously that’s being overly dramatic, but the issue certainly gives me pause.

In the end, the best advice I can give to CSR job-seekers is sort of a hybrid model:

Learn the business through functional experience, but bring sustainability to work every day.

Yes, getting that marketing, or finance, or supply chain experience under your belt will be crucially important – not only to build credibility and a reputation for yourself, but also as a way to help you think about sustainability and CSR opportunities from within.

But just because you’re working in a non-CSR function doesn’t mean that you should chuck your CSR know-how and skills out the window. On the contrary, your understanding and flexibility in CSR can only help you do your functional job better.

We can still hope that one day CSR will be such a corporate priority that all companies will recruit for these positions. In the meantime, my advice is to earn your stripes at a company you respect and admire, make your interest and intentions in sustainability clear, and with time transition into the CSR job you want.

As the old saying goes, “Your patience will be rewarded”.

These days I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about consumers and the brands they love.

I’m taking a Branding class this semester, and each week we do a case study of a different company and the branding challenges it faces.

Perhaps the biggest insight I’ve gleaned from the first couple of months is this:

Consumers own brands, not marketers.

That’s right – as much as companies may want to believe they have control over their brand and its meanings, in the end consumers are the ones who instill a brand with its true essence.

That’s because, at its core, the value of a brand comes from fulfilling some inherent consumer need, want or desire. While companies can (and obviously should) manage their brand, in the end consumers are the meaning makers of what the brand stands for.

As part of this course, I’m working on a consulting project for a regional consumer goods company that wants to go national. For confidentiality’s sake, let’s pretend this company makes cleaning products (it doesn’t).

Over the last few weeks my team and I have spent a lot of time doing a deep dive into the company and what its brand means for consumers. How do consumers use these cleaning products? What do the products allow consumers to accomplish? What emotional or social benefits come from using them?

What we’ve found so far is that the people who love this brand really love this brand.

In fact, they’re pretty fanatical. The products they use, and more importantly the brand overall, serves to truly define part of their identity.

Amazing what people will do for the brands they love!

In essence, it’s not just a product they use. It’s a lifestyle.

For the most part it’s been fascinating and even fun to see how these loyal consumers use, evangelize, and embody this brand.

Yet, during my research I stumbled upon some concerning evidence to suggest that some consumers had taken this fanaticism too far – namely, multiple YouTube videos of consumers using the product inappropriately. To follow the example of our phony product, let’s say consumers were uploading videos of themselves sniffing the fumes from the cleaning products and getting violently ill.

Of course, with my interest in corporate social responsibility, warning bells immediately went off in my head:

• Assuming the company knows about these videos, how should it respond?
• What is the company doing to prevent this dangerous activity?
• What legal implications exist if someone is seriously hurt engaging in this behavior?

And the list goes on.

But beyond the obvious CSR questions, I also thought of my key branding takeaway thus far:

If consumers make the meaning for a brand, what happens if they turn the meaning into something the company doesn’t want (in this case, a vehicle for irresponsible and unhealthy behavior)?

What is a company’s obligation, if any, for social responsibility in branding?

Some brands – alcohol-producers, cigarette companies, gun manufacturers – know that responsibility comes with the territory (although it’s certainly debatable whether they themselves always promote responsibility among consumers).

But what about brands that take on meanings that companies didn’t intend? If consumers own the brand, what opportunities do brand managers have to reclaim negative meanings and even to combat abuse of the product?

People often talk about corporate social responsibility as a brand builder – do it right and your brand will be strengthened and given more value.

But in this case, can CSR actually be a brand definer? Can social responsibility help brand managers looking to refine the (presumably unwanted) meanings that consumers have instilled in their brand?

This is the question I’ll be trying to answer over the next few months, and I’ll be sure to let you know what I find out. Since I’m still a student of branding, though, and certainly no expert, I’d love to hear your thoughts:

What role do you think CSR can play in helping to manage brands? What companies or case studies do you know of that exemplify this issue of unintended, negative and/or dangerous brand meanings?

One example we’ve looked at in class is Harley Davidson and the Hell’s Angels – talk about a brand meaning (aka: organized crime) that a company might want to refine!

Thanks for weighing in…

I’m pleased to share that my birthday was this week (for those who know me well, you know this is a big deal).

I love birthdays in general, and I especially love mine. Why?

Well, my birthday is an important time for me for a couple of reasons. Yes, I love cake and presents and having an excuse to go out to dinner or celebrate.

But more than anything, I love my birthday because it’s the one time during the year that I stop and take stock of where I’m heading.

Every February I usually take some time to sit quietly and think – to reflect on what happened over the last year as well as to visualize where I want to go in the coming year.

This is what I call making my Birthday Resolution.

Over the years my Birthday Resolutions have helped me chart my course and provided some much-needed clarity.

This year my birthday (and thus my Resolution) comes at a particularly interesting and unique time in my life. In three months I will graduate from business school and head out into the big wide world again.

But where will I head to?

Over the last year and a half my education has opened my eyes to possibilities that I didn’t even know existed. I’ve developed a true passion for using business to effect change, and most days I wake up eager and excited to find a job that allows me the chance to “do good and do well”.

Yet some days I wake up feeling weighted down by the burden of responsibility. Whether it’s dealing with the inevitable dread of school debt, or feeling overwhelmed by the expectations of others, sometimes I just can’t see the forest through the trees.

So how does this relate to my Birthday Resolution?

In some ways, you could say my life these days is a bit of a see-saw, with my job search right smack in the middle of things.

On one hand, I want my new job to be motivated by mission and purpose.

I want to find an opportunity that offers personal fulfillment and the chance to do good for other people. I also want to land in an organization and in a role that allows me to act as a good global citizen.

Yet as graduation nears, I’ll be honest: I have a lot of debt to deal with.

And sometimes that translates into feeling like I just need a job – any job – so I can start paying that off.

Not to mention the fact that it’s easy feel pressured to take “the right” job after school – that is, the kind of job that most MBAs go for (consulting, finance, strategy etc). That may not be what I want, but when everyone else is doing it, it’s hard to resist the urge to cave.

Given all of this, my Birthday Resolution is all about balance.

My goal for the year ahead is to find that point of balance on the see-saw – which means looking for opportunities that both quench my thirst for social purpose while also helping to turn down the volume on some of my anxieties.

Is this asking too much? Maybe. But I never said my Resolution had to be practical!

Sure, I know I’ll have to make trade-offs. This is not a scenario in which I can be guaranteed the best of both worlds. But perhaps I can strive for a job after school that is a happy medium between the two extremes.

What does this look like? To be honest I have no clue. But I’m working on it.

And I’m convinced that there are opportunities out there that will allow me to balance out my see-saw. I just have to find them!

As I kick my job search up a notch, I’ll be sure to report on my progress here at The Changebase. In the meantime, have you ever made birthday resolutions? Even if it’s not your birthday, I encourage you to think about stopping for a moment and taking stock of the direction in which you’re heading. How can you reposition yourself to find your point of balance on the see-saw?

I’ve written before on The Changebase about my own journey to find sustainable, local food - including this post on defining what local food really is.

The big conclusion I reached after trying to define “local” was that what I really meant was eating seasonal.

By eating seasonally, we get a couple of benefits:

1. Food tastes better: Anyone living in a New England winter who’s bought a package of raspberries shipped from California (or farther away!) knows what I’m talking about. There’s a reason why raspberries, and many other fruits and veggies, don’t grow naturally in the winter. Wait until prime growing season and your tastebuds will be rewarded.
2. It doesn’t cost as much: Buying produce in season means you’re getting it when it’s most abundant – which means it’s less expensive. Trust me, your wallet will thank you.
3. The planet is happier (and so are you): Ok, maybe “happy” isn’t the right word, but there’s plenty of evidence that eating in season places less stress on the environmental systems needed to grow your food. It means avoiding much of the artificial “stuff” that gets used to grow your watermelons in December, which by extension means ingesting less artificial stuff when you eat. 

So what’s the catch? Well, I’ve found that it’s actually kind of difficult to find out what’s seasonal – given that each region of the world has different growing seasons (as well as natural resources that make growing certain foods easier or more difficult).

That said, I did find one resource recently that I thought was worth sharing.

Eat Seasonably is a UK-based campaign to get people thinking about what they eat and when. I first heard about this group via Twitter, and when I saw the incredibly helpful seasonal calendar they created, I was hooked.

Granted, I’m contradicting myself because this is an initiative that’s focused on the United Kingdom, so the information in this calendar isn’t completely applicable to where I (or maybe you) live. Still, the interactive map and downloadable pdf they put together is such a great tool that I still think it’s worth sharing.

Check out the website and play with the interactive calendar - it’s an easy, seamless, and visually interesting way of understanding what’s best, what’s available, and what should be avoided when.

According to the calendar, February’s best includes leeks and cabbage…

Happy eating (seasonally)!

When it comes to the crisis of Global Warming (what author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman says should actually be called “Global Weirding”), things can get pretty overwhelming fast.

Animal extinction, water scarcity, rainforest destruction – these are all pretty heavy topics requiring big picture thinking and action.

And if world governments can’t even build consensus to take action, how can we as individuals ever expect to make a difference?

Well, I’m here to say: Don’t Get Discouraged.

Sure, many of these issues can only be solved through global coalitions that unite for a common purpose (and boy, does that sound like hard work!).

Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that even big problems can be helped through small “micro-actions”.

Take, for example, what happened just a few weeks ago at my own business school. The Boston University chapter of Net Impact organized something called “D.U.M.P. Week” (aka: Don’t Use More Plastic).

In essence, D.U.M.P. Week was about rallying the internal community to consider how their everyday choices – in this case, using plastic bottles – impact the world around them.

During each day of the promotion, members of the Net Impact board set up shop in the graduate student lounge to educate and connect with students around the topic of sustainability. Through tidbits and facts written on poster board, an informational video showing the impact that plastic has on the Earth, and fun contests and games, the chapter leaders were able to successfully and effectively get the student body engaged in sustainability in a very personal and on-the-ground way.

In addition to education, the organizers of D.U.M.P. Week asked students to consider signing a sustainability pledge that outlined a set of behaviors each student would agree to uphold. These included:

1. Power Down Computers
2. Bring Your Own Mug and Water Bottle
3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
4. Think Before Your Print
5. Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
6. Turn Off the Lights
7. Take Shorter Showers
8. Carry a Reusable Shopping Bag
9. Walk More, Drive Less
10. Wash Laundry in Cold Water

In exchange for signing the pledge, each student received his or her very own reusable water bottle (not plastic!) to kick-start these new behaviors.

A Student Signs the Pledge

So why was D.U.M.P. Week so successful? In many ways, it serves as a real-life example of everything I’m learning in my marketing classes:

You can always grab people’s attention with big ideas, questions, even images. But until you tell consumers why it matters to them, you’re missing your opportunity to connect, engage and inspire action.

D.U.M.P. Week wasn’t just about scary doomsday scenarios or cold environmental terminology; it was about inspiring our community to connect, learn, and take action in easy and understandable ways.

As I waited in line to sign the pledge myself, I couldn’t help but feel excited by this small yet motivated demonstration of commitment by my fellow students (who, by the way, are still using their water bottles weeks later).

On their own, these behavior changes may seem like a drop in the bucket – but taken together they represent a collective, united plan of action that can and will have meaningful impact.

When it comes to sustainability, every bit (or micro-action) counts.

I encourage you to think about what micro-actions you could take to help move us toward a more sustainable planet.

And, if you’re looking for other examples of micro-change, check out Cindy Gallop and IfWeRanTheWorld.com. Cindy and her team (who I first learned about at The Feast) have created a crowd-sourcing platform for people to declare the actions (big and small) that they would take if they ran the world. Even better, the platform lets you share your idea with others and activate your network to get involved. Definitely worth checking out.

Anyone who knows me knows that food is a big part of my life – learning about it, talking about it, and especially eating it!

I’ve written about my interest in food in past posts, and today I came across a recent TED talk about food that I thought was worth sharing.

First, for those of you who don’t know, TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a non-profit “devoted to ideas worth sharing”.

Every year TED organizes a conference that showcases truly outstanding collections of today’s greatest thinkers, scientists, artists, activists and changemakers doing great things in the world. And the best part is that after each conference, TED posts these talks on its website so that everyone can learn and participate in the idea-sharing.

In addition to showcasing these incredibly diverse, passionate and articulate speakers - and this year’s list is no exception – TED hands out an annual TED Prize. The goal of this Prize is to grant someone’s “One Wish to Change the World”. In addition to $100,000 in seed money, the TED Prize winner gets the chance to pitch his or her wish in front of the conference’s incredible collection of attendees – with the purpose of inspiring the audience to act.

TED’s goal, then, is to harness the power of its network to inspire collaboration on some of the world’s most important and pressing problems.

The 2010 TED Prize winner is Jamie Oliver, a well-known British chef who’s launched a campaign called Jamie’s Food Revolution. Jamie’s wish is this:

I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.

To learn more about the problem that Jamie sees, and the solution he proposes, check out this video.

Congratulations Jamie, and good luck!

After a brief hiatus, I’ve recently taken up yoga again as way to inject a little clarity and exercise into my otherwise crazy daily routine.

For those of you not familiar with yoga, let me say first that it’s not just about stretching (although that’s a part of it). In fact, what we Westerners think of as yoga is actually just the physical component of an overarching mental, physical and spiritual practice that originated in India.

In most yoga classes in the U.S., students spend time moving through a series a poses or postures – some seated, some standing, even some inverted or upside-down. Each pose, or asana as they are called in Sanskrit, is a measured movement that aligns physical effort with breath.

Sometimes you do poses quickly (to generate heat) and sometimes slowly (to increase strength and endurance) – but no matter the speed, yoga poses are rigorous, physically challenging, and precise. Each new movement requires focus, concentration and calculated positioning to ensure the alignment of body and breath.

Interestingly, while your body works hard in each pose, your mind and spirit do as well. Each day you come back to yoga, your body responds differently. Some days you’re tired or sore, while other days you feel light and nimble. Each scenario requires both mental and physical adjustments, and those can only happen when you clear your mind of other details and focus solely on the pose at hand.

In yoga, each student brings unique abilities and challenges to class. Some students are more flexible than others, for instance, while other students have more trouble balancing or finding stillness.

In a roomful of yoga students, sometimes I find that it can be easy to get competitive, to want to “be better” than the person next to me, to reach farther or hold a pose longer. Other times when I see someone who’s obviously better than me, I want to throw my hands up and leave the studio, thinking it’ll be easier to save face by walking away entirely.

What I love about yoga, however, is that it’s not about winning. It’s not about being competitive.

Instead, yoga is about a continual acceptance of where you are at that very moment.

In its most basic form, yoga is a practice. It’s a journey.

It’s not about perfection – it’s about checking in with yourself, taking stock of your progress, and making adjustments and corrections to find the right position.

As a recent class wound down, I started to think about all of these things and in the process, had a bit of an epiphany: in many ways, yoga and sustainability aren’t that different.

Like yoga, sustainability is rigorous, demanding, and requires careful and measured movement. Companies must work tirelessly to create sustainability programs of substance, ones that actually have a powerful and lasting impact on communities and our environment. And to make that progress, sustainability officers must somehow find ways to cut through the clutter, clear their desks, and focus on the big questions at hand.

Yet also like yoga, sustainability is a practice – a long journey towards what’s achievable.

Like me in my yoga classes, companies may strive for perfection, and at times may also face the urge to compete against others and to win. Alternatively, some companies may choose to not even give sustainability a try, fearing that they’ll be exposed as incapable or inadequate.

In the end, corporate sustainability it isn’t about being perfect.

Instead, it’s about being thoughtful, discerning, and patient in our move toward progress. It’s about taking stock of where we are and recognizing the small and big adjustments we can make to improve and/or reduce our footprint.

Just imagine how powerful our sustainability efforts could be if we stopped thinking about it as a public race to the finish line, and instead saw it like a collection of students, each striving toward incremental yet powerful improvements for our planet and our communities.

Now that’s something to ponder the next time you’re in child’s pose!

I wrote a post last week on The Changebase that seems to have hit home for some readers.

It was about the value of storytelling in CSR reports  as a way for companies to not only connect with various audiences but also to bring their sustainability stories to life.

Obviously, I’m a big believer in storytelling – otherwise I wouldn’t have written that post! Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had missed one crucial element: Listening.

Sure, storytelling is a valuable way for a company to get its CSR message across. But even this is still a very one-sided way of communicating.

With the increase in consumers wanting and expecting to have a more immediate and impactful voice on business today (especially via social media channels), it seems that the true CSR winners are those companies that not only tell stories, but that allow their stakeholders to shape the story that gets told.

Stakeholder engagement is an incredibly complex topic, and to be honest, I’m still learning about best practices in this area. If you can imagine that each business faces unique industry- and firm-level opportunities and threats, then it follows that each business must also consider and engage with a unique set of supporters, critics and third-party groups. Not only are there a lot of different voices to consider, but there’s no one-size-fits-all model to follow.

Some companies (often the ones that have been burned by crisis or stakeholder anger in the past) have invested a lot of money in better managing these external and internal audiences. Nike and Gap, for example, are two companies I’ve heard (at least anecdotally) that have full departments dedicated to stakeholder engagement. Which makes sense since, in my opinion, it certainly sounds like a full-time job.

Timberland is another company that’s chosen to listen, not just talk. In its Voices of Challenge project, Timberland has created a platform for stakeholders to share ideas, discuss concerns, and create collaborative opportunities for the company.

We’ll be incorporating your feedback as we develop Timberland’s CSR strategy. We hope you’ll join the conversation by posing questions and comments and providing suggestions for how to approach opportunities and challenges. Let your voice be heard – join the conversation by clicking on the buttons below.

And here’s an example of the type of contributions Timberland is getting:

By creating a two-way dialogue in which the company has the opportunity to hear directly from its stakeholders, Timberland wins a couple of big ways:

• It earns additional credibility and loyalty from consumers, suppliers, NGOs and others who appreciate corporate transparency and authenticity, and who want to have a voice in Timberland’s business decisions
• It solidifies the brand as forward-thinking, inclusive and progressive – all adjectives, by the way, that differentiate Timberland from its competitors and inevitably will help drive sales
• It provides Timberland with additional raw data to understand who its stakeholder audiences are, what matters to them, and by extension, what should matter to Timberland.

Ultimately, when companies listen, they learn.

It’s the kind of no-brainer statement that any market researcher would agree with, yet when it comes to CSR, it’s not always so easy to do.

Companies often worry that by opening themselves up to a conversation with stakeholders, all they may get in return is criticism, anger and frustration. And sometimes, that’s exactly what happens.

Yet this fear of being criticized should actually be outweighed by the possibility that true idea sharing can lead to innovations and developments that the company could not have conceived of on its own.

Funny enough, one of my research projects for this semester is to work with a marketing and communications firm to dive deeper into the opportunities that exist for companies to drive innovation, improvement and ultimately revenue by engaging their stakeholders. When you distill it down to our most basic research question, it’s this:

Can listening be a company’s competitive advantage?

Time will tell, but my initial hunch is that it can.

In the meantime, what’s your company doing to listen – I mean, really listen – to what your consumers, customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and community members have to say? What ideas and insights could you gain from them that will make your business more effective, strategic and successful going forward?

Picture this:

Four MBA classmates and I are sitting in a large, somewhat imposing corporate conference room at one of the world’s largest chemical and gas manufacturers.

In front of us sit 12 Director and C-level executives from our client company, and they’ve come here specifically to hear what we think – as MBA students, as potential employees and investors, and as concerned citizens – about their current sustainability reporting materials.

After four months of intensive learning about best practices in CSR reporting – as well as doing a deep dive into this company’s business and industry – we developed a set of recommendations that really centered around the following:

A successful CSR report doesn’t just tell impact – it tells stories.

Granted this is an oversimplification, but not by much! From what we could gather, it’s clear that this company is committed to not only reducing its own carbon footprint but also that of its customers. When it comes to being an environmental steward and good corporate citizen, this company is doing lots of things right.

Yet, all of this great work had been lost on us initially as readers; in fact, it wasn’t until just days before our presentation that we realized how stellar this company really was.

How could this have happened? How, after hours and days spent poring over their sustainability documents, could we have possibly missed the point?

It comes down to communication. While this company was obviously successful in its sustainability efforts, it had done so little to communicate its story that we’d almost missed it entirely.

With that we presented a number of recommendations on how to present content and provide context in ways that are engaging, interactive and customized for stakeholders.

At the end of the presentation, during the Q&A period, one of the executives asked: “Why does it matter if we don’t tell people about what we do in sustainability. Isn’t it good enough that we do something at all?”

To that our team answered an emphatic “No”. It’s not enough to just do something.

Sure, companies need to be mindful of greenwashing. Consumers can certainly smell insincerity from miles away - and these days they’ve gotten even better at sniffing out fake green marketing claims.

Nonetheless, it seems to me (and others out there) that this concern about greenwashing has gone too far. In fact in some cases, greenwashing worries are actually holding companies back from saying anything at all about sustainability – mainly for fear that someone, somewhere will find something to criticize.

Ladies and Gentlemen of Corporate America, take note: 

A fear of greenwashing is not an excuse to stop you from telling your sustainability story!

In fact, by effectively communicating a company’s CSR successes – and, crucially, also its shortcomings – in authentic, transparent and collaborative ways, a company can achieve an array of benefits, including (but certainly not limited to):

• Proving to investors that it’s focused on the long-term viability of the business
• Giving consumers a voice and a stake in the company’s efforts to improve communities and the environment
• Demonstrating to its employees that the company’s values and culture are aligned with their own
• Engaging NGOs, the media and potential detractors in conversations around the company’s sustainability process, goals, and strategies.

By not focusing on the manner in which it told its sustainability story, our client company had inadvertently left very real value on the table – value that instead was being captured by competitors who had done a tremendous job on both the reporting and storytelling fronts.

Now, don’t get me wrong – to have a successful CSR program, a company surely needs to know its footprint, set strategic and forward-thinking goals, and report its numbers.

But to be a true leader in sustainability, a company must be able to go beyond its numbers and move towards an inclusive, engaging and heartfelt discussion with its stakeholders about its current sustainability journey.

In my research, I came up with a couple of good examples of companies that tell their sustainability stories in compelling ways (Cadbury, Shell, and Timberland, just to name a few). What companies do you think are doing a good job of communicating the story behind the numbers? I’d love to hear what you’ve found.

One of my goals for The Changebase is to use the blog as a platform for sharing the stories of companies, organizations and people working to create change in their communities. After all, there are lots of examples of great progress being made in CSR, social enterprise, and philanthropy and they should be celebrated!

This time around, I’m pleased to share the story of Christine Guardia and her work with KooDooZ.

I hope, after reading Christine’s post, you’ll be inspired to find your own “life balance of Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit”!

By Christine Guardia

We live in a world defined by change – change grabs the headlines and demands our attention.  Our access to information has been heightened with globalization and, as a result, it has further mobilized our communities for change. 

The concept of leveraging social media for social good resonates with me, because that’s what I do for a living.  I am the “cause cultivator” for KooDooZ, a “cause-based” social networking site for youth.  In this role, I cultivate non-profit and for-profit partnerships for the purpose of co-creating and co-marketing real-world events and social impact campaigns.The site’s purpose is to provide KDZ (our users, typically ages 9 through 15) with a safe place online to channel their passions into actions and strategies for social change and personal growth.  For the benefit of our non-profit and for-profit partners, KooDooZ provides event and social impact expertise, delivering collaborative real-world events (such as the Tour De Fitness) and online challenges (such as coat drives) to nurture new youth and family engagement.

Despite the fact this generation (Gen Z) is altruistic and cause-centric, their access to opportunities to “create change” has traditionally been limited.  So far, there have been unequal opportunities for civic engagement before the age of twenty.  By challenging themselves with service learning, volunteerism and personal growth opportunities, KooDooZ KDZ learn outside the boundaries of formal education.  Our technology allows them to access information and craft their own identities in unprecedented ways.

Because kids need a higher diversity of ways to engage as social entrepreneurs, KooDooZ challenges KDZ to find their life balance of Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit.  I decided to do the same; since working for KooDooZ, I have been inspired by ChicoBag to stop using plastic shopping bags and switch to reusable bags.  The “Bag Monster,” a person covered in 500 bags (the average number of plastic bags an American uses each year), made me realize I needed to make a change.  Now reusable bags are strategically placed in my car, at my office and near the front door. 

I also carry EcoUsable’s BPA-free stainless steel filtered water bottle, which further reduces my dependency on plastics.  EcoUsable provided stainless steel bottles to the Tour de Fitness (TDF  ’09) participants and also sponsored a challenge within KooDooZ asking KDZ to come up with their own images of sustainability.  The winning bottle design will be produced by EcoUsable and sold via KooDooZ.  In addition, for every bottle sold, the winner will receive $1 and KidShape, a non-profit organization that builds healthy families, will also receive $1. 

The KooDooZ website is currently in Alpha release and this spring we will be launching a pilot program for groups of kids (siblings, classmates, teammates, etc.) and the adults in their lives (parents/guardians, teachers, coaches, etc.) to be some of the first KooDooZ users and provide feedback to help shape the system.  Our goal is to partner with schools, nonprofits and/or companies that would like to help children create change. 

If you would like to utilize KooDooZ to challenge KDZ to achieve in 2010, please contact us at info@koodooz.com.
 
Christine Guardia is a graduate of the Public & Nonprofit Management Program at Boston University School of Management. In her free time, Christine enjoys spending time with her eight nieces and nephews, walking (she is currently training for an 18-mile fundraising walk this summer) and reading.