SVN Series

You already know why your company should go green. This comprehensive guide tells you how to do it profitably. It details every step of the process—from getting employee buy-in and conducting a current sustainability audit to developing a plan of action and measuring progress. Nuts-and-bolts guidance helps you make continuous, cost-effective improvements and shift the prevailing business culture by infusing green practices into your organization’s very DNA.

Through illustrative examples from a wide variety of industries, this book shows how to
• Design sustainable products • Green your facilities • Find green vendors • Use renewable energy • Reduce harmful emissions • Recycle waste products, and more

The emphasis is on practicality—stand-alone chapters you can read when you need them and tools you can use to implement change in any area of your organization.

Your business plan is only going to get you so far. When you’re actually running a values-driven business, problems come up that you never could have anticipated. The whole experience can be incredibly isolating and draining.

Margot Fraser and Lisa Lorimer have been there, and they’re here to help. Together with five of their colleagues—including Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg and former Ms. Foundation president Marie C. Wilson—they offer the kinds of personal insights and seasoned advice you just can’t get in business school. It’s like sitting down at the table with some of the nation’s top socially conscious entrepreneurs.

The book tackles the kinds of challenges every entrepreneur struggles with. How open and honest can you really be with your employees and still run an efficient business? At what point do you seek outside expertise? What do you do when things go terribly wrong? When is it time to leave? The authors and their fellow travelers share their experiences—not just what worked, but sometimes what spectacularly didn’t. Some of these stories are harrowing: a worker getting killed by factory equipment, a false accusation of intellectual property theft , a crucial distributor running up a $195,000 debt with no way to pay it back. Others are simply day-to-day conundrums: meeting payroll when you’re always in debt, deciding how to expand in a responsible way, balancing business needs with your commitment to the triple bottom line. At the end of each chapter, Lorimer and Fraser offer practical tips that can guide you through similar situations.

This is a book you can look to for affirmation, hope, and tools. No book can cover every challenge that might arise, but if you learn from the attitudes, techniques, and coping mechanisms these seasoned leaders offer, you’ll get through the tough stuff with your sanity and your business intact.

A new breed of business is springing up across the land: social enterprises, whose primary purpose is to support the common good. Organized as for-profits, nonprofits, and everything in between, they see businesses as the means to a better world for all.

In this groundbreaking guide, Kevin Lynch and Julius Walls, Jr. draw on their own hard-won experiences and those of twenty other social enterprise leaders. Exploring ten key paradoxes of social enterprises, they show how to navigate the extreme challenges and seize the tremendous opportunities these organizations present. Whether you're looking for guidance on choosing a structure, finding and hiring talent, marketing, finances, operations, or scaling, this practical, accessible guide offers clear and compelling answers that light the way.

Sales and distribution are the lifeblood of any business. But how can a values-driven, socially responsible business compete with those for whom the bottom line is the only measure of success? The answer: get creative!
In this practical and inspiring guide, Nadine Thompson and Angela Soper draw on real-world examples–from Tom's of Maine, Seventh Generation, Honest Tea, and many other innovative companies–to detail concrete steps for designing sales and distribution strategies that fit the needs, interests, and habits of your target customers. They show how to turn your stakeholders into enthusiastic partners by ensuring that all of your relationships–with your salespeople as well as other employees, your customers, and your suppliers–are beneficial and fulfilling on more than just an economic level.

Growing a successful business is about meeting the needs of customers—and, by extension, the needs of the entire community. Turn your business into a good citizen and you can help ensure its success and contribute to making your community a great place to live and work. Growing Local Value shows how to build a values-driven business that is deeply embedded in local life.

Drawing on real-world examples from Greyston Bakery, Wild Planet Toys, Powell’s Books, and many other companies, Laury Hammel and Gun Denhart show how you can leverage every aspect of your business—from product creation to employee recruitment, vendor selection, and raising capital—to benefit both the community and the bottom line. Growing Local Value explores in depth how your business can contribute to its community—and the benefits it will receive when it does.

Whether you're an entrepreneur building a new enterprise, the leader of an established socially responsible business, or a marketing professional at a Fortune 500 company who wants to make a difference, this "in-the-trenches" guide provides action steps for creating marketing programs that benefit your company and the world.
Using real-life examples from Patagonia, General Mills, Clif Bar, and many other companies, Marketing That Matters shows how to define your company's mission, goals, and potential audience in ways that are flexible, creative, and true to your organization's core values. They offer ten practices to engage customers using innovative marketing techniques–from discovering how customers make decisions to building committed communities of customers, employees, and strategic partners who will spread the word about your company–and potentially change the world. Marketing that Matters is the definitive handbook to help you incorporate social responsibility as a core element in your company's marketing strategy.

The bestselling author “frames his advice in terms of compassionate, socially responsible leadership, though a lot of it is just plain good management” (Publishers Weekly).

How do you build the kind of company you’ve always wanted to work in—one that serves people and the planet while being financially successful, too? What do you do when you believe that business should serve the common good, but everyday business pressures—meeting payroll, battling competition, keeping customers and investors happy—are at a fever pitch? Leading a small business when you measure success more broadly than with a single financial bottom line is no easy task. True to Yourself is a practical guide to doing just that. It provides tools you can use to combine profit with purpose, margin with mission, value with values.

“A perfect blend of inspiration and instruction. A must-read manual for anyone who aspires to a position of leadership.” —Alan M. Webber, Cofounding Editor, Fast Company

“If you want to build a values-based business, as I did with Kinko’s, Mark Albion provides you with the practical know-how to avoid mistakes and lead your company’s growth.” —Paul Orfalea, Founder and Chairperson Emeritus, Kinko’s

“If you want to build a business with social conscience, a company that reflects your core values and that people are proud to work for, True to Yourself will help you pour your heart into doing just that.” —Howard Schultz, Former Chairman, Starbucks Coffee Company

In Values-Driven Business, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen and Social Venture Network chair Mal Warwick team up to provide you with a way to run your business for profit and personal satisfaction. This practical, down-to-earth book details every step in the process of creating and managing a business that will reflect your personal values, not force you to hide them. It includes:

A self-assessment tool to determine what it will take for you to start a values-based business or transform your company into one
Hundreds of examples of business policies and practices that are both ethical and business-savvy
Checklists crammed with practical suggestions you can put to work today in your own business

Values-Driven Business outlines how virtually any business can be efficient, competitive, and successful while adhering to a “triple bottom line” of profit, people, and planet.