Making Good

Ways in which small companies are creatively leveraging their resources to attack various social problems.

It's a myth that you have to be a big corporation or be awash in cash to make a powerful contribution to your community. Here's how small companies from coast to coast are creatively leveraging their products and skills -- and even their customers and suppliers -- to attack a variety of social problems

I'm not a socially responsible person. Yes, I recycle applesauce jars and soda cans. Yes, I throw the odd quarter into a homeless person's cup. But I don't spend a single hour of a single week doing something for someone who isn't an employer, a friend, or a family member. Yet I desperately want to. We all do.

But where to start? The very breadth and severity of the world's problems suggest that nothing less than full-time devotion to them will make a dent. As a small-company owner especially, how can you afford to give away money or hours when you're struggling to make your payroll? How can you come up with anything as powerful and effective as those well-known bulldozers of social responsibility, Ben & Jerry's and the Body Shop?

The truth is, small companies all over the country are inventing ways to give back to their communities. Their ideas -- often born of scarce resources -- are imaginative, fresh, and sometimes even daring. In the belief that every little bit helps, we've brought together several of their approaches to philanthropy as a guide to others who also have the urge to get more actively involved in the world around them.

We have purposely omitted some widely known examples -- companies like Greyston Bakery, which has created its own job-creation machine for welfare families in the Bronx, or Southern Kitchens Inc., in Minneapolis, which hires ex-convicts and other hard-to-employ people. Or Stonyfield Farm Yogurt Inc., in Londonderry, N.H., a business that was started to support family dairy farmers in New England. All those companies are highly effective, but they began life with a social mission. We focused instead on companies that started out with a business agenda and found a way to incorporate social purpose into that mission.

Making that journey is different for every company owner, but there are some common experiences. First, a company's altruistic activities mature, much as its business operations do. Companies that begin by simply giving away money tend to find that less satisfying as time goes on. Eventually, they want to add their personal imprint and amplify the effect that cash will have.

Second, doing good has its pitfalls. Just Desserts, a San Francisco bakery with a history of giving back, had one program fail because employees simply weren't interested in participating and another that threatened to collapse because of ineffectiveness -- the recipients weren't being rehabilitated. The Rumpp Co., a Body Shop franchise in Portland, Oreg., ended a program that involved employees' working at a shelter for battered women and children, because the employees found it too discouraging.

Finally, almost every company that successfully devised its own way of giving back was astounded at the ripple effect its drop in the bucket produced -- for employees and customers as well as their communities.

Here, then, are the folks who without much fanfare are making social responsibility part of their identity and, in the process, are making it easier for the rest of us to follow in their footsteps.

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Donate Your Product
Giving away your product may not be the most earthshaking of charitable activities, but it's a fabulous starting point for three reasons. It's simple to do. It links your business operations to your altruistic urges in a natural way. And it supports existing philanthropic organizations. That's important. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you can augment the effectiveness of an already well-developed program.

Laury Hammel, general manager and principal owner of the Longfellow Clubs, a $4.5-million health and recreation company in Wayland, Mass., is no late-stage convert to social responsibility. He is involved in 10 nonprofit foundations, 5 of which he founded, and also in a host of charities and community events. Even so, one of his company's most satisfying and enduring practices is to donate the use of its health-club facilities to kids with special needs. Hammel is about to celebrate the 16th year of the Handi-Racket Tennis Program, in which about 25 handicapped kids learn to play tennis weekly. Longfellow waives the court fees for the Saturday-afternoon sessions, and most of the tennis pros on hand are volunteers. Neither the kids nor the agency that runs the program and two similar ones in swimming and basketball is charged for use of the pool or the courts. Altogether, the three programs reach some 50 youngsters, about 80% of the children with disabilities in and around Wayland.