Social Responsibility

Consumers have the power to change the world. If they demand corporate responsibility from those who provide goods and services, corporations will become more socially responsible.

Whoa! Just what do you have to do to lose your place at a nonprofit? Greg Mortenson has been ordered by the Montana attorney general to repay $1 million to the Central Asia Institute he founded because he misspent the charity’s money. By agreement with the Montana attorney general, Mortenson resigned as executive director and can no longer be a voting member of the board.

When you sign up for a box of Thin Mints or Samoas, do you realize that you just helped an entrepreneur-in-training? And that she and the 100-year-old Girl Scout organization may have some ideas that could help your business?

I’m sure you are all aware that the cost of advertising is just plain…well…outrageous. Placing ads in magazines, newspapers, and on the radio can cut deep into a business owner’s pocketbook. So what are small- to medium-sized businesses supposed to do? You sure can’t compete against the advertising budgets of the big guns! And if you try to say, “Why bother advertising or marketing at all?” you risk going completely unnoticed, which could put you out of business.

Impact investment suffered a blow to its credibility last week with the news about SKS, the Indian company that took micro-credit from the realm of nonprofits to the stock exchange, has been linked by its own investigations to the suicides of over-extended clients who were allegedly bullied to death by debt collectors.

Read all of Social Enterprises and Solving the World's Problems: How Impact Investing Needs to Change on Huffington Post.

by Bruce Arbit

I have spent the majority of my professional career helping organizations of all shapes, sizes, and structures (for-profit, nonprofit and newer hybrids) raise money. That’s why I am particularly interested in the ongoing conversation about growing the sources of financial capital that support initiatives with a social/environmental benefit.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Cause marketing is a great way for small businesses to build their brands, increase customers loyalty, and grow. Successful entrepreneurs know this.

Cause marketing seems so simple... until it's not. How Susan G. Komen could have avoided a public relations disaster.

I’m a long-time advocate of impact investing. It brings new money to the nonprofit world, supports social enterprises, and can provide services and products that would otherwise be unfunded or unresolved.

I try to practice what I preach so I keep an eye on my website metrics. And I’ve noticed some trends, the most notable being that people want easily accessed information about social media, aggregated in a useful collection. My most popular website pages were curated resources to help people learn about social media.