How These 4 B Corps Address Chronic Poverty and Break Down Employment Barriers
Innovative Business Practices Provide Employment Opportunities and Financial Support to the Communities That Need Them Most
As we have seen in sharp focus during this pandemic, marginalized communities are often put on the frontlines of our economy while simultaneously not being guaranteed crucial protections or opportunities to advance their economic station. This precarious situation is, however, one symptom of the root cause: a system built on shareholder primacy and lacking in effective stakeholder management.
Within the movement of Certified B Corporations, companies are actively creating and implementing business practices to systematically benefit communities that often are overlooked by the prevailing model of capitalism. By considering all stakeholders, B Corps examine their impact on the planet and society and work to improve wherever possible.
I spoke with several B Corp business leaders as part of my ongoing research from the book Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism to learn about the solutions they’ve developed to expand employment opportunities and deconstruct chronic poverty. These innovative practices are beginning to spread — both within the B Corp community and beyond — and will help usher in a more inclusive stakeholder capitalism.
Cotopaxi: A Two-Pronged Approach to Supporting People
Utah-based B Corp Cotopaxi combines corporate giving with effective, human-centered supply chain management to have an especially profound impact as it relates to poverty alleviation. Cotopaxi created the Cotopaxi Foundation to use a portion of its revenue every year to provide grants to organizations addressing poverty, namely the International Rescue Committee, Fundación Escuela Nueva, Mercy Corps, the UN Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign, and the Utah Refugee Services.
“Our impact portfolio takes learnings from MIT’s Poverty Action Lab and invests in areas with proven track records of alleviating economic despair such as technology access, adaptive education, health care access, and job readiness tutoring,” says Annie Agle, Cotopaxi’s director of brand and impact.
During the pandemic, the Cotopaxi Foundation has continued to invest in solutions to help those most in need.
“The stories and results generated from the fantastic work of our heroic grantee partners makes me get up every day with a sense of informed optimism,” Agle says. “From learning that our local chapter of the International Rescue Committee has helped more than 500 refugee families gain internet access since the outbreak of COVID-19 and that Fair Trade philanthropy ensured that none of our sewers in India experienced layoffs or periods without financial support, it’s really just my job as a company sponsor to ensure that our organizations have the kind of long term investment — our grants are multi-year — they need to thrive and fulfill their missions.”
As for its supply chain, Cotopaxi realizes the potential for great impact by diligently ensuring its suppliers are meeting high ethical standards.
“We know that, currently, upwards of 120 million people experience forced labor or human abuse in global supply chains,” Agle says. “While many developed nations have benefited hugely from cheap labor and distance for environmental impacts, Cotopaxi has always recognized that its biggest negative impacts occur in the supply chain. There is a tremendous opportunity in driving positive change as a value chain stakeholder. We work with our suppliers as equals and have worked towards meeting all of the UN guiding principles surrounding fair labor, humane conditions, responsible management, and environmental improvement. We don’t just feel that upholding human rights is a ‘responsibility’ but rather see it as a moral pre-condition to doing business.”
Being a B Corp and a benefit corporation helps to ensure Cotopaxi will not compromise its mission of creating positive impact through its operations for the sake of profits. Agle says these structures are crucial for creating a more just economy that provides workers with economic security.
“The benefit corporation legal designation and subsequent B Impact Assessment and B Corp Certification helps us maintain our moral center,” Agle says. “The benefit corp designation gives us the legal power to prioritize people and planet above profitability when that needs to be the case.
“There will always be a conflict of interest when C-Corps pursue corporate social responsibility in that their first stated moral obligation is to their shareholders not their wider stakeholders. Further, these structures helped align all of our value chain from our investors to suppliers around a new way of doing business. Everyday we illustrate that when you do good, you also generate value for everyone. If you’re taking one community’s social and natural capital and awarding it to your company and customers at the expense of those upstream communities, you have not created value, you’ve stolen it.”
Cotopaxi is now planning a collaboration with fellow B Corp Miir to continue expanding its poverty-alleviation efforts.
“Together, we are launching a line of sustainable water bottles that will support a grant aimed at alleviating poverty through tap and household water systems,” Agle says. “Water-borne illnesses and water collection are two of the leading disruptors of education and employment. This is a great example of how two resource-limited SMEs can come together to address an issue while also helping drive conscious consumerism.”
Genashtim: Structuring a Company Around Persons With Disabilities
Persons with disabilities often are not supported in traditional workplaces. Unless a company intentionally implements strategies to employ and support persons with disabilities, accessibility issues are commonplace — they usually go unnoticed. After joining a board of trustees for a computer school for the blind and seeing the technical proficiency of many of the students, Thomas Ng, founder of Genashtim, decided to explicitly begin hiring persons with disabilities.
“When I joined the board of trustees, I tried to go around and introduce the people I met at the school to all my friends who were running companies,” Ng says. “There was a lot of enthusiasm initially, but in the implementation stage, we were just spinning our wheels. And after two and a half years, I gave up and started a company to actually hire them.”
Genashtim, based in Singapore, provides e-learning opportunities to companies as well as online language training and IT support. It’s clients are predominantly multinational companies and government institutions who are mostly unaware of the social impact aspects of Genashtim. They compete on commercial basis.
The company’s digital offerings actually set it up well to employ persons with disabilities because they can work remotely. According to its website, 60% of the company’s workforce are persons with disabilities and 30% are refugees, highlighting the company’s commitment to hiring from communities that are underemployed.
“For a lot of these people with disabilities, technology is their window to the world,” Ng says. “Many of them are from poor environments, and it’s very difficult for them to go out. So they stay at home. For most of them, this is their first and only job.”
Ng also points out that persons with disabilities face societal discrimination which can make it difficult for them to get to work safely.
“Once we hired an accountant in a wheelchair, and I wanted him to come to the office (which we had for a short while) because I wanted him to meet a few people,” Ng says. “He told me that he waited on the roadside in his wheelchair for about three hours. Many taxis passed, but no taxi would stop for him because, basically, the taxi drivers take one look at the wheelchair, and think, ‘I’m not going to trouble myself to carry the wheelchair and put it in my trunk.’”
He has heard similar accounts from other employees, including one woman with a visual impairment who came to visit him and his wife when they were in Beijing. She was pushed while riding the bus home from a meeting and broke her collarbone.
“Unfortunately, it’s often not safe for them to go to work,” Ng says. “And sometimes it’s just very difficult for them.”
Thanks to Genashtim’s intentional hiring, many people who otherwise would not be able to easily acquire a job have stable employment and are able to work safely.
“It just comes naturally for us, and, in fact, the company exists to provide employment for marginalized communities,” Ng says.
Other Examples from the B Corp Community
Rhino Foods: Providing Advances on Income in Times of Need
When emergencies or accidents occur, many people often do not have enough money to cover the costs of whatever the situation may be. In fact, a Federal Reserve survey last year found that 40% of Americans could not easily and quickly pay for a $400 emergency. The coronavirus has likely made that percentage higher.
Rhino Foods, a Vermont company that makes frozen cookie dough and other dessert toppings for frozen treats, was an early adopter of an Income Advance program for its employees. Through Income Advance, workers can get no-questions-asked loans of up to $1000 financial emergencies. Rhino launched the program 12 years ago with a local credit union to help employees weather short-term financial challenges, which in turn helps them build long-term financial strength.
In 2019, Rhino Foods established the Rhino Foods Foundation as a nonprofit dedicated to spreading the adoption of Income Advance.
Read more about the company’s Income Advance program.
Greyston Bakery: Giving Everyone A Chance With Open Hiring
For any number of reasons, some companies will not hire someone based on their background or experience, whether it is not having a certain education level or a prior conviction. Open Hiring is a process by which a company hires anyone who applies without requiring a resume, an interview or a background check. This hiring process is aimed at breaking cycles of poverty and giving everyone a chance. Greyston Bakery, a dessert foods company located in New York, uses open hiring itself.
Two years ago, Greyston launched its Center for Open Hiring and began outreach to encourage other businesses to adopt the program. Several B Corps already have moved forward with Open Hiring, he says, while others are considering the program.
Read more about Greyston’s Open Hiring.
B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
