When the dotherightthing website is launched, you will be able to access this blog and its fascinating stories about the impacts of companies on people and the world, news relevant to doing the right thing, and our team’s adventures in social entrepreneurship at its new location:
Check it out now–we’ve already posted a couple exciting new announcements at the blog’s new location.
After about a year from the scribbling in notebooks that took place at a southern California Starbucks, the vision of dotherightthing has become reality, and will be revealed to the world this week.
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In this month’s Harvard Business Review, Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer published an article that shared many of the frustrations that led to the creation of dotherightthing.
The authors provide an overview of the emergence of Corporate Social Responsibility, and of the response that has resulted in the corporate sector, which has been largely “cosmetic,” handled by public relations and media campaigns. The world needs a better way to measure the social impacts of companies, however, not more glossy Social Responsibility reports.
While rigorous and reliable ratings might constructively influence corporate behavior, the existing cacophony of self-appointed scorekeepers does little more than add to the confusion.
The authors point out serious flaws in prominent rankings of companies’ social impacts. Some examples include:
The result is a jumble of largely meaningless rankings, allowing almost any company to boast that it meets some measure of social responsibility - and most do.
To address the serious problems above, dotherightthing has created a system that allows people (consumers, employees, and members of the community) to drive the ranking of companies based on their social impacts. After all, why should we trust the “self-appointed scorekeepers” mentioned by Mr. Porter and Mr. Kramer at a time when Time writes that the Person of the Year is you. According to Time, online collaborators are “wrestling power from the few and helping one another for nothing and that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”
Exactly.
So what is left to change? Plenty.
With interest about dotherightthing spreading fast, we’ve created a do the right thing Facebook group for Facebook members who want to share with the world that they are committed to supporting people and companies that work to make the world better.
Not on Facebook? Make sure that you have signed up to be the first to know when your dotherightthing account is ready.
Over the week of Thanksgiving, the team was rewarded for its hard work with the official start of the Exclusive Launch of our revolutionary website to several participating student organizations at the nation’s top MBA programs.
Since this early launch, aimed to solicit the insight of thought leading groups with interest in responsible business, the team has begun collecting feedback from users and is implementing fixes and incorporating suggestions into its plans for the future, in real time.
In coming weeks, as Exclusive Launch participants continue to contribute to the site, the dotherightthing team will be working hard to prepare the site for its upcoming public release. Soon, you’ll be able to realize your New Year’s resolutions to make a real impact on the world, as well as learn which companies do the right thing and the ways in which they do it, all in the comfort of your own home. Stay tuned - there is so much more to come.
On behalf of the entire dotherightthing team, I’d like to offer a warm welcome to members of the Corporate Responsibility Council at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the Social Enterprise Club at Columbia Business School, and the Net Impact student organizations of Darden, Tuck, Sloan, UNC, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego. With the first invitations to participate in the Exclusive Launch of dotherightthing just days away from the email boxes of the first round of participants, excitement is building fast. Thanks to the leaders of each of the above organizations for their interest in promoting responsible business by recognizing companies for doing the right thing by pioneering our revolutionary website.
The dotherightthing development team is working around the clock to fine tune our revolutionary web application. As preparations continue to move us closer to the upcoming phases of the exclusive launch, the momentum behind dotherightthing has been continuing to build. Most recently, we’ve received confirmation from INSEAD’s INDEVOR organization, extending the reach of the launch across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Social Impact club at the Kellogg School of Management, and the Net Impact club at the McCombs School of Business. The exclusive launch will now include over a dozen student organizations at some of the world’s finest business schools.The entire dotherightthing team would like to offer a warm welcome to participating members of all of these student organizations and thank the leaders of each for their interest in participating in the exclusive launch and recognizing companies that do the right thing.
Last week, Ryan ventured up to Berkeley, California to meet in person with members of the Students for Responsible Business (SRB) club to kick off their fall consulting engagement with dotherightthing. SRB is comprised of Berkeley undergraduate students of varying backgrounds who work together to “promote corporate social responsibility and advocate high ethical standards in the workplace.” SRB is a student-run organization that is affiliated with the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business.
Members of the SRB team will be assisting dotherightthing with its upcoming launch by completing several marketing-related research and implementation projects. Ryan, Rod, and the entire dotherightthing team look forward to working closely with the talented members of the SRB consulting team to maximize the impact of the campaign to spread the word about the revolutionary website we’ll be launching later this year.
Students for Responsible Business consulting team members (left to right): Keith Loo, Stephen Choi, Ally Li, Bee Hui Yeh, Sofia Ramirez, and Katherine Lee
I am happy to share that the Social Enterprise Club at Harvard Business School, Net Impact Club at the Chicago Graduate School of Business, Net Impact Club at the Ross School of Business, and Net Impact Club at the Graziadio School of Business will all be participating in the Exclusive Launch of dotherightthing. We’d like to thank the leaders and members of these student organizations for their support and offer a warm welcome from the entire dotherightthing team.
Motley Fool author Alyce Lomax reiterated the entire vision for dotherightthing in her article, Capitalism’s Social Side, without having ever heard about the website our team is building. She even titled one of the sections of her article “Do the right thing.”
According to her article, the Internet is changing all the rules:
“Consumers are gaining unprecedented power. They’re less and less passive, given the prevalence of user-generated content like blogs, wikis, amateur video, and ratings and recommendation engines.”
Consumers care, and they are factoring social impacts into their buying decisions more than ever:
“Conventional wisdom might imply that low price or luxury brands would be the most compelling elements that drive average Americans to support certain companies. However, 52% of the respondents in the survey said that they actively seek out information about a company’s track record in social responsibility.”
“35% of the respondents said that whether a company made socially responsible products also gave them reason to buy.”
“A whopping 82% said a company’s environmental impact was ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ influential when it came to products they bought.”
She concludes, “a kinder capitalism - one in which caring about people and the world in which we all exist can, in fact, build a better long-term business and higher profits - shouldn’t be viewed as a contradiction in terms, but rather a challenge to innovate that will be rewarding on many levels. And if companies view creating good businesses with a holistic view of responsibility and giving people what they want as paths to great opportunities down the road, that sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
Sounds win-win to us too. Thanks for your article. We can’t wait until you hear about dotherightthing.
Copyright 2007 dotherightthing Inc.