USA TODAY International Edition
For corporations, a new mission
More businesses making social issues a top priority
WASHINGTON – As the U.S. edges away from globalism and initiatives to fight climate change and social issues such as poverty, hunger and inequality, corporate America is moving aggressively to fill the void.
Supermarket giant Kroger is feeding the hungry. Electricity company Entergy is voluntarily reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. And an outdoor apparel and gear seller named Cotopaxi is training Sudanese refugees in Utah to be computer programmers.
They were among the companies showcased at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s fourth annual corporate citizenship conference last week, titled “Opportunity Forward.”
“The planet is screwed,” Neil Gaugh, founder of British corporate consulting firm Neil Gaugh & Associates, said of global warming at the opening session of Wednesday’s program. “We are aware this is a problem. A lot of people are looking to businesses to solve the problem.”
Gaugh and other speakers cited a growing realization among corporations that helping others is good for business and should be part and parcel of a company’s core mission, not relegated to a must-do list.
Social and economic goals “can be combined into one thing,” Gaugh told an audience of about 500 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
Gaugh said he once worked at BP and was involved in the oil giant’s efforts to burnish its image on the environment with the “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign. But it was undermined by company accidents in Texas in 2005, Alaska in 2006 and the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Today, BP is working to balance its commitment to shareholders and what it sees as its responsibility to help ensure a future where power is generated in a way that meaningfully reduces the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from conventional fossil fuel energy production.
“For all companies, especially publicly traded, we’ve got this quarterly demand for results and performance, and that certainly drives the day-to-day thinking often, but we also recognize there is this real long term we have the responsibility to contribute towards,” said Ray Dempsey Jr. chief diversity officer at BP America and president of the BP Foundation in a separate session.
During the conference, a parade of company executives took the stage to describe how their corporate social responsibility programs arose from personal experiences that sparked heartfelt commitments.
Stephan Jacob, co-founder Cotopaxi, decided to weave citizenship into the company’s mission because his earlier efforts at a nonprofit were chronically underfunded. Besides donating 2% of Cotopaxi’s revenue to “health, education and livelihood” causes, the company, based in Salt Lake City, uses llama wool to make some clothing to help Bolivian llama farmers. It asks company software engineers to train refugees from Sudan and other countries to be software programmers.
Other corporate efforts:
❚ Life is Good, which makes T-shirts with that and other upbeat slogans, channels 10% of its profits to its children’s foundation.
❚ In their home base in Atlanta, Chick-fil-A executives grew weary of seeing poverty and blight in the Northside Drive neighborhood, which sits in the shadows of one of the nation’s top corporate hubs. “We said, ‘We can do better than this,’ ” said Rodney Bullard, the company’s vice president of community affairs. So it’s donating $20 million to revitalize the area while striving to keep many residents there.
❚ Entergy is reducing its carbon emissions to 2000 levels, said Patty Riddlebarger, director of corporate social responsibility. She said the effort has attracted investors who seek out environmentally responsible utilities.