We’ve been pretty busy these past few weeks, but seemingly not as busy as the folks at All Together Now, the organisation behind the Give Racism the Finger campaign (also on Facebook). We’ve donated 1% of our profits for the March–June 2011 quarter (did I mention we’ve been busy?) as part of our regular giving program to support organisations doing great work in the community.

Chatting to Priscilla Brice-Weller, founder of All Together Now, it seems that the campaign is going from strength to strength, with a new initiative (that I’ve sworn to secrecy about!) launching soon. But this year has already seen some impressive results.

Over four weeks in May and June 2011, All Together Now worked in partnership with The Body Shop. The Body Shop asked their customers to Give Racism the Finger by dipping their finger in ink and putting their fingerprint on a board in the store. In doing so, they were committing to speak up when they witness racism. During the in-store campaign The Body Shop helped All Together Now to collect 50,706 fingerprints in 83 stores across Australia, which resulted in 150,000 conversations about racism between store staff and customers.

Priscilla also tells me that the annual Social Cohesion report (by the Scanlon Foundation) released in September 2011 showed that 1 in 7 Australians have been a victim of racism in the past year… that’s around 3 million Australians! So it’s great to be able to support organisations like All Together Now in helping tackle such an important issue. We hope you’ll join us and do the same…

Your Carbon Footprint that is…

We are proactive in reducing our carbon footprint and being aware of our impact and possibilities to reduce our impact on our environment.  In addition to trying our air travel, through Climate Friendly, and wanted to offset the emissions of our other (essential) emissions-intensive activities.

Climate Friendly works with corporations, businesses and individuals to measure, manage, and offset their carbon footprint, by  providing a quick and easy calculation tool, to take action immediately.  While these tools allow you to calculate offsets for flights, electricity and car travel, we wanted to offset more than those things, so we sent an email to Climate Friendly to see if they could help.  They quickly responded and sent us spreadsheet for us to fill in and  return to them to finish the calculations.

Before we could complete the spreadsheet, we needed obtain certain figures, make calculations and implement procedures to produce more accurate figures — so we thought we’d share how we went about doing it…

The first figure we tackled was our electricity, dividing the KW usage (from our electricity bill) by 5 working days, divided by the staff members.

For paper consumption, we went through our invoices and extracted all paper purchases i.e. A4 80gsm, A4 110gsm, FlipChart per 60gsm etc. worked out an average over the period of time and tracked it in a spreadsheet.

Taxi travel and freight figures were extracted from our cashflow reports from our accounting system.  For paper waste, we didn’t empty our 7 litre recycling bin for 4 weeks and measured how much we filled it for that period.

At the end of the day these figures are not absolute, but by continually measuring our consumption, our hope is that we’ll no longer be grappling for figures, working on guesstimates or making assumptions.  We’ll have a more comprehensive understanding of how big our footprint really is.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re delighted to have urban and social planning consultancy Urban Affect on board as a partner. In this guest post (reposted with permission), principal Allison Heller shares some of her thoughts on CSR and social engagement.

A new year is often a time of reflection among businesses on strategic directions and corporate goals. For many firms, sustainability — environmental, social, economic — is fast moving up the agenda.

Raised regulatory standards and consumer expectations are today demanding far more from companies than an annual CSR report and a handful of associated token initiatives. The genuine integration of sustainability within an organisation may require significant organisational change and improved stakeholder engagement.

The Centre for Social Innovation — a partnership between the Universities of New South Wales, Melbourne, Western Australia and the Swinburne University of Technology — has been undertaking research on this shift taking place in the corporate sector in recent years. Researchers Gianni Zappala and Sarah Adams’ 2010 paper, The Integration of Corporate Responsibility: Evidence from leading companies in Australia & New Zealand (PDF 266 KB), considers the level of integration of sustainability principles and practices achieved to date.

The paper defines Corporate Responsibility (CR) as “understanding and minimising a company’s negative impact or footprint on society and a broad range of stakeholders including the planet and environment, its employees, the communities in which it operates and the governments which make the laws.” It utilises data from the Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) benchmarking tool developed by Business in the Community in the UK in 2002, which is applied annually in Australia and New Zealand by the St James Ethics Centre.

The reseach found that “corporate responsibility is on the whole well integrated into the way that leading companies in Australia and New Zealand are doing business.” However it suggests that firms could improve in four key areas, including ensuring improving CR training at board level and improving the extent and quality of stakeholder engagement.

The following criteria are suggested as a measure of firms that have achieved genuine integration of CR principles:

• Adopt a holistic conception of corporate responsibility or citizenship;
• Have board level governance systems to oversee CR policies and practices;
• Have senior leaders that champion CR internally and externally;
• Have a range of structures and systems to integrate CR across the business, including risk management systems, stakeholder consultation schemes, sustainability training for managers and employees, establish and monitor key performance indicators for CR, and
• Have an open and transparent approach to CR information disclosure (eg undertake assurance of their CR reports).

There is no denying the challenge for corporates in moving to greater levels of stakeholder engagement and associated transparency. However in many cases this is a necessary first step on the road to more sustainable, productive and profitable business. Which companies will rise to the challenge in 2011?

As part of Zumio’s quarterly giving program of donating 1% of net profit to organisations doing good within the community, we have chosen to support Project Rwanda Coffee Bikes.

Coffee Bikes was founded in 2005 by Tom Ritchey after he visited Rwanda in 2005. Being a bicycle enthusiast himself, he soon realised that the bicycle could be a important tool in rebuilding the country.

Rwanda has nearly 500,000 small farming coffee producers who have an average of 200 coffee trees each.  Each small plantation is managed like a small garden, and is owned by a family. These farms produce the highest quality coffee bean, as the soil is a rich volcanic grade and the farmer is able to give a high standard in cultivation.

As a farmer can not afford to buy a vehicle or an animal to transport their harvest, they are forced  to carry their load and walk  to a collection point, taking them up to 12 hours to do so.   Unfortunately the coffee bean begins to deteriorate from the time it is harvested until the time it is pulped, thus reducing the profit for the farmer if it takes too long to get to market.   By providing the farmers with these specially designed coffee bikes, it dramatically reduces the transport time to 2-4hrs, thus yielding the farmer a higher profit for their harvest and supplying a superior bean.

It is a micro-finance system and designed around the pay it forward concept, where you invest $300, the farmer pays it back over 2 years and once the debt is paid the money is recycled, allowing another farmer the opportunity to finance a bike, with the cycle continuing.

The coffee bike (aka cargo bike) opportunity is not only for coffee farmers but is also extended to farmers who harvest other crops and other goods, such as potatoes, cassava, milk etc.  50 donated cargo bikes were also used to distribute mosquito nets and malaria treatment to help prevent deaths, their goal is to Eliminate Malaria Deaths by 2015.

Cargo Bikes are  helping farmers to rise above poverty, giving Rwanda the potential of creating a prosperous rural economy.

Regular readers may recall that Zumio has a quarterly giving program where we donate 1% of net profit to organisations doing good within the community.  I just wanted to take a moment to mention who we’ve supported for the past two quarters.

Given the continued attacks on refugee rights that seem to flare up in response to electoral pressures, we decided to theme our giving for this past few months on initiatives that support refugees in our local community.

Asylum Seekers Centre NSW

The Asylum Seekers Centre supports Sydney-based (and in some cases regionally-based) refugees by “providing a welcoming environment and front-line support for community-based asylum seekers.”  The centre receives no government funding and relies on philanthropic support and public donations.  They recently ran an appeal highlighting a shortfall in funding due to a significant increase in the use of their services — so we are grateful of the opportunity to provide at least a little support to help them achieve their fundraising goal.

The Social Studio (Melbourne)

The Social Studio is “a dynamic space where clothing is created from the style and skills of the young refugee community.  Recycled and excess manufacturing materials are gathered from local industry and re-configured into original clothing.”

We loved the fact that the Studio combines so many positive benefits into one initiative — sustainable garment manufacture, refugee support, promotion of “social inclusion, community and vitality” through their mobile shopping carts — and we’re delighted we can be participating in their community in some small way.

Check out the site, consider donating, or if you’re in Melbourne, keep an eye out for their “pedal powered pop-up shops” to purchase some of the clothes produced by participants in the initiative…

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (but clearly not a lot of blog writing!) about the idea of social innovation in a business context.  This ties into some previous thoughts I’ve posted about values and sustainability as a lens for innovation.

Two articles that I’ve come across recently expand on this concept.  The first is from Tim Draimin and focuses on shifting from Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Innovation.

In the article Tim references Michael Porter’s thoughts:

Michael Porter suggests that CSR has evolved.  He speaks about a concept he calls “shared value” or “corporate policies and practices that enhance the competitiveness of the company while simultaneously advancing economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates.”

The thinking goes that while traditional CSR programs are often viewed as an adjunct to the core business, something that happens “to the side”, the idea of CSI is that the benefit comes from the core business itself.  (While I do have reservations about the Corporate Social Innovation moniker, I do think the concept has merit.)

This is akin to what Adam Werbach outlines in his book Strategy for Sustainability when he talks about North Star goals and aligning sustainability goals with core business activity.  To my mind this also very much aligns with the concept of “betterness models” as put forward by Umair Haque.

I was reminded of this article (which I read quite a few weeks ago now) when I came across Dan Gray’s post on delivering short-term “quick wins” for sustainability within the context of a longer-term sustainability agenda.

In his post he says:

The authenticity of your commitment stems from the materiality of your actions – i.e. beyond the thin veneer of charitable giving, cause-related marketing etc., that commitment should be self-evident in the very products and services you provide, and the manner in which you conduct your daily business.

And goes on to quote Jonathon Porritt:

In an ideal world, all actions taken by a company to enhance its own commercial success should simultaneously generate benefits for society, over and above those that come directly through the use of that company’s products and services.

There are, of course, a number of cultural drivers that make consideration along these lines important for businesses moving forward, and I think they tie into the shift we’re also seeing in relation to social technologies (social networks etc.).  A quick summary of my current thinking is that people are seeking:

• Human connection: as organisations have grown in size and become more and more depersonalised, people are wanting more human interactions and personal response.
• Authenticity and transparency: from greenwashing to the GFC, the market’s trust has been eroded.  People are looking for organisations to say what they mean and mean what they say.
• Co-creation and collaboration: people are taking a more active role in developing the products and services that they use.  And if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they will often create it themselves.
• Environmental and social responsibility: global warming, looming limits to natural resource consumption, pollution and waste; respect for human dignity with fair wages and conditions — people want to support organisations that take these issues seriously, not just as something “to the side”.

Building a business (or service/product/brand) that resonates in this new “economy of meaning” requires a rethinking of an organisation’s role in more than “market” or financial terms.  But also, I think, a re-evaluation of an organisation’s relationship with customers/constituents, stakeholders, and the environment.

And I believe that it is in this rethinking that significant opportunities for innovation can be found.

I read this report from the BSR 2009 conference with interest – especially “BSR’s road map for achieving success in this new world:”

1. Promote innovation for sustainability.
2. Embrace systems redesign.
3. Maximize the power of networks.

My thinking, though, is that by focusing first on point 3 organisations can better achieve points 1 and 2. Thoughts?

I’m looking forward to reading through the remainder of the session summaries from the conference – from what I’ve seen so far it seems like it was a very good event.

On Thursday I attended the launch of the Sustainability Challenge programme, being promoted by Models of Success & Sustainability (MOSS). (There’s currently no web presence for the programme, though some information is contained in the MOSS PDF brochure. More info on the Sustainability Challenge website.)

It is quite an interesting programme modeled around a group board game supporting organisations in providing educational material about sustainability, promoting key points for discussion and incorporating anonymous polling (or auditing) tools.

During Thursday’s session we participated in some demonstration rounds of the game within groups. Even though we weren’t able to get the effect of a full workshop (due to time constraints), I was impressed with the promise of the tool.

It is designed to be run in a workshop mode, and it was a well designed tool that incorporated competitive spirit in a constructive way to enhance learning. And while the focus of the session on Thursday was environmental sustainability, the programme itself covers a much broader set of areas, including diversity and other social factors.

The customisation options alluded to by MOSS and Sustainability Challenge International (co-designers of the game, along with input from Swinburne University and Baker & McKenzie) seem quite strong too. There also seems to be a vision of “crowdsourcing” questions and answers for the game as well.

The programme seems ideally suited to larger organisations and CSR departments, though if the costs are reasonable (I’m not yet sure what the programme’s price point is) would also be appropriate for smaller group settings.

Regular readers may recall that I have a initiative of donating 1% net profit to causes I support each quarter.

I spotted in politician blogger Penny Sharpe’s recent email out that the NSW Public Sphere conference, was looking for support to cover the costs of the event.

As a big believer in more transparent and representative government, and of the power of social/web 2.0 tools for helping in this aim, I decided to apply the funds from last quarter (plus a little bit of a “top-up”) to support NSW Public Sphere.

Though not my intention, technically this makes Zumio a “sponsor” of the event. I’m proud to be associated with the event in this context, but my main hope is that NSW Public Sphere will help spark further advancement of what’s being termed “Government 2.0″.

As far as I know the organisers still need further funds to cover costs, so if you think you can help, contact Penny (details on her site) to let her know.

Of course, I’m also looking forward to participating in the event. If you’re going, I’ll see you there :) Otherwise keep an eye out for the #nswsphere tag on Twitter for ongoing commentary throughout the day.

As regular readers would know, Zumio donates 1% of nett profit to a worthy cause each quarter. This month we’ve chosen another Project H Design project to support: the Hippo Roller redesign.

The Hippo Water Roller is a fantastic example of simple but effective design in context with a worthy social outcome. From the Hippo Water Roller website:

In many countries, traditional water collection involves carrying a 5-gallon (20-liter) bucket on the head. This practice puts a great burden on the body and can damage the spine, neck and knees over time. A full Hippo Water Roller only feels like 22 pounds (10 kg) when rolled over level ground, making it possible for almost anyone to transport 24 gallons (90 liters) of water in much less time and with greater ease.

The San Francisco chapter of Project H Design have “re-designed the Hippo Roller for improved shipping efficiency for wider distribution and a lower price point” and they are raising funds for new tooling to produce the redesigned rollers.

Zumio is of course delighted to be able to contribute to this goal. This is the second Project H Design initiative we’ve supported – the last was Lifestraw distribution to Mumbai. I’d definitely suggest checking out their (soon to be updated) website, or follow them on Twitter or Facebook, for more about their work.

P.S. if you’re wanting to support the Hippo Roller project, simply drop Emily at Project H Design (her email is in the receipt notices etc.) to let her know.