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The Payoff
It may be crass to discuss the payoff of doing good. But let's face it, there are ramifications. When asked, company owners have a wide range of answers.
They are able to attract and retain employees longer. Their customers feel a more intense bond with them. They believe that what they put out in the world will come back to them. Only one of the dozens we interviewed talked openly about enjoying the good publicity that often arises from such programs. In the end, all the answers -- except that last one -- revolve around one factor: a social purpose injects humanity into the process of commerce. Business has been defined -- and perceived -- as soulless for so long that when people get a chance to express a bit of caring through their company, they love it.
PASS IT ON
Lewis Smoot believes in mentoring -- with a twist
The animating principle of Lewis Smoot Sr.'s socially responsible activities is that next to nothing is accomplished by giveaways. The way he sees it, if you give money away to people, you're not effecting a permanent improvement in their lives. His construction company, the Smoot Corp., based in Columbus, Ohio, acts as a mentor to struggling minority contractors. But it's not a cakewalk for the companies that are sponsored. "The success of our mentorship is tied to the profitability of the mentorship," Smoot says. A less exacting standard would rob the mentored company of the chance for long-lasting self-sufficiency.
Unlike many programs in which a successful company meets sporadically with one or more fledgling businesses, Smoot targets only one company at a time and develops a true working partnership. The Smoot Corp. is currently working with the Oscar Robertson Co. of Indiana, a small contracting business in Indianapolis owned by Oscar Robertson, a former professional basketball player and all-American from the University of Cincinnati, and Rodney Bynum. Though the region offers a lot of construction opportunities, the Oscar Robertson Co. lacked the administrative skills and financial wherewithal to bid on large jobs. Smoot has entered into a five-year partnership with the company, in which Smoot's professionals work alongside and train Robertson and Bynum's staff in a new, separate Indianapolis office called ORS. The Smoot Corp. also brings its superior financial position -- and bonding ability -- to the jobs the partnership bids on. Initially, Smoot will get 70% of the profits, and the Oscar Robertson Co. will collect 30%. The goal is to bring that ratio to 55% to 45% at the end of five years, with Smoot receiving the larger share to compensate for the computers and ser-vices it provides. Oscar Robertson is the second minority-owned company the Smoot Corp. has taken under its wing.
The catch to being a Smoot apprentice is that you are required to return the favor to another needy company. "When we're through with this contractor, it will have the responsibility to do the same with a young contractor emerging in Indianapolis," explains Smoot. "If I do one mentorship, and the person who works with me does one, and we continue that, then we will have far more successful entrepreneurs than we had before."
HARD LABOR
Elliot Hoffman puts ex-convicts to work
San Francisco bakery Just Desserts' social consciousness was inspired to take a new direction two years ago, when owner Elliot Hoffman took a walk in the San Francisco County Jail's 10-acre organic garden. Hoffman, having just finished a fairly depressing tour of the institution, gazed at the healthy plants and listened to one of the convicts talk about the garden. "Here's this big guy, who a few years earlier would just as soon have slit my throat, talking about how he wants to change his life," recalls Hoffman.
Working with Cathrine Sneed, the counselor who established the jail's garden, Hoffman turned the one-acre piece of dirt in back of his bakery into a working garden tilled by ex-convicts. On any given day 20 to 30 former prisoners or street people work there. They are paid a daily stipend drawn from grants and city funding. It's a commercial enterprise, also: Just Desserts buys strawberries from the garden, and a trendy restaurant buys its produce.
If it had stopped there, this social experiment might be a lovely story with some nice symbolism. But because Hoffman's project is so near his company and he and his employees rub shoulders with the gardeners every day, an unusual alchemy took place. "The ex-prisoners see and touch and talk with people like me every day," Hoffman says. "There's a lot of mutual respect. And they see people leading productive lives." He grew so confident about 6 of the garden workers that he hired them as full-time bakery employees.
Remembering one of his most recent hires, a woman who had done time for dealing marijuana, Hoffman says: "When she found out we wanted to hire her, she came over and gave me the greatest big hug. It really changes your perception of social justice, of the disenfranchised in this country. You begin to see that the people that have grown up in this environment might as well be on the planet Mars. Drugs is not a fun life. They want a job. They want a shot at a decent, productive life."
Just Desserts' garden project has propagated other proj-ects, too. The city of San Francisco has subcontracted the planting of 2,000 trees around the city to a rotating group of 10 of the company's garden workers.
Hoffman feels the wear and tear of balancing business, family, and community needs, but thinks companies are in a special position to act. "I really believe that business has to play a larger role in changing our society," he says. "Businesspeople, especially those in smaller companies, know how to get things done. We tend to think outside the box. We need to bring that creativity to our community. Disenfranchised people need on-ramps into society. Those aren't going to come from the federal government."
