Mazon held a informational gathering on Social Responsibility a few weeks ago at Adat Shalom in Bethesda (they called it Potomac), Maryland.

I’ve mentioned Mazon before. (you can just check for Mazon for more references in the ndex to the right). Mazon builds upon my religion’s principles to accept responsibility for the more vulnerable among us- using the principles of Tzedaka (justice) and Tikun Olam (make the world perfect). Its efforts include affording access to nutritious food today (insuring no one goes hungry tomorrow), providing grants to anti-hunger organizations so they can continue their efforts, and providing education and advocacy to augment the anti-hunger movement.  The anti-hunger movement is changing the term it employs to ‘food insecurity’, which covers hunger, nutrition, and the ability to obtain wholesome food.

But, that was not the direct subject discussed by the panel moderated by Mark Gunther, the Sustainable Business Editor for The Guardian, as well as a long-time contributor to Fortune.  The topic was social responsibility, and the two invited panelists were Seth Goldman  (TEO of Honest Tea, now part of Coke) and Aron  Cramer (CEO of Business for Social Responsibility [BSR]).   (Note:  My spelling is Aron’s.  the ticket has the wrong spelling!)

Of course, both these guys were there to promote their books.  Seth (and his business partner) wrote Mission in a Bottle.  Aron cowrote Sustainable Excellence.

Seth Goldman grew up with a family emphasis on tzedaka as charity, not righteousness.  His early efforts involved working for Lloyd Bentsen (TX), which was followed by a stint in the National Service Corp (pre-Americorps days, folks).  He characterized the NSC as big on passion and devoid of management skills. From there, he used his desire to effect social change by business and took a job with the Calvert Mutual Funds (this entity specializes in sustainable and responsible investing).

He went back to his business professor (Barry Nalebuff) and, together,  they started to make tea.  Their first customer try (after working up the formula in his kitchen) was Whole Foods- which placed an order for 15000 bottles.

Honest Tea employs ‘open book’ management, which it thinks keeps its employees entrepreneurial.  Seth knew this was a critical choice, since his employees were earning below market salary, supplemented with stock.  It didn’t help that Honest Tea continually lost money for 10 years, relying on investors to make up the shortfalls and provide the funds to satisfy its growth.

The corporate goal was not to make money, but to effect the change they hoped.  Making the product cheaper would change what makes the product different (organic, free-trade ingredients are employed; of course, the bottles are an issue with their philosophy).   Since they were continually growing in sales, they could keep the faith they were fighting the good fight (and snare more investors). Being bought out by Coke helped them get the critical mass they needed to change folks’ diets.  (They now could go after national accounts, since they can distribute their products across the US.)

Aron Cramer’s father, Irving, was one of the founders of Mazon.  One of the tenets he recalls from his youth is that ‘business is what you do to enable you to do things you need to do’.  (That tenet resonates with the attitudes in my house; except that we were admonished to try to work with/in a business that had similar, strong values.)

Aron worked for Congressman Henry Waxman early on, as well as ABC News.  He then went to law school, which was followed by his affiliation with BSR.

BSR grew out of a Ralph Nader idea.  Ralph advocated founding a counterpart to the US Chamber of Commerce.  The Social Venture Network was formed to help companies operate in a socially responsible and sustainable fashion. SVN has threshold rules that determine who can become a member; BSR lets anyone in- but you can’t use that membership to claim any sort of benefit or approbation of one’s policies.

BSR is not a lobbying group, but a non-profit affiliation of 275 members.  It builds collaboration based upon principles, such as promoting privacy on the internet and women’s health & safety in Bangladesh.

Both of these fellows grew up in times when socially concerned kids typically became teachers, social workers, or involved in politics, not business.  Now, students are bringing these attitudes with them to business schools, and the schools are reacting to it, incorporating these concepts into their programs.

As an example, Aron brought up Net Impact (nonprofit entity for students and professionals interested in using business skills to support of various social and environmental causes).  This grew out of and was a spin-off of SVN in the early 1990’s. .

Aron also reminded the audience that stocks are now held for only four to seven months; previously it was typical for stocks to be held for seven years.  That change alters the behaviors of the stock companies’ management, where the pressure to cut corners is high.

He believes that consumers will lead the change and then companies will follow.    As a further example, he brought up the most active folks on LinkedIn are employees from the five big internet firms plus Unilever (whose CEO has led his company to drive for sustainability).

Maybe you should check out their books.  I plan to borrow them from my library.

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