War on Greenwashing

Almost every company wants to go “green” these days, and perhaps even more are claiming to.  The term “greenwashing” comes to mind.  Greenwashing refers to companies masquerading as green companies or spending more money and time advertising being green than actually being green.  Yuck.  I know.

So this brings us to the question, how do we know if a company or product is actually as green as it claims to be? In 10. Ecological Intelligence Bryan Walsh gives the example of buying an organic T shirt.  A conscientious consumer buys an organic T shirt because of course organic is supposed to better, but the label “organic” doesn’t take into account the fact that the amount of organic cotton required for one T shirt is 2,640 gallons of water or that the dye used on the T shirt has harsh chemicals that are now polluting groundwater.  

So what do we do?  Not buy anything? Luckily the answer is no.  Walsh goes on to discuss how we are beginning to more concretely measure one’s carbon, social and biological footprints.  Famed psychologist Daniel Goleman calls it Ecological Intelligence.  According to Walsh a new science called industrial ecology is using a method called life-cycle assessment (LCS) to actually calculate the total impact of products, companies, etc.    

Pretty awesome, huh?  But I have to admit it sounds a little too complicated for my weekly jaunt to the grocery or drug store.  Walsh also discusses a great website Good Guide.  Good Guide is a great, easy to use, consumer web site that rates everyday products from milk to makeup to toys so that we can make more educated consumer decisions.  I highly recommend you check out the site.  It will revolutionize the way you shop.  

Also to help average consumers discern greenwashing Good Housekeeping has adopted a Green seal of approval.  In addition to the requirements for the original Good Housekeeping seal such as quality and safety, the Green seal indicates that a certain product has met criteria such as energy efficiency, packaging reduction and water quality.

Consumers today mean business when it comes to holding companies accountable for their actions and the products they sell.  Consumers today are an overwhelming face for sustainable change.  While it used to be only companies started by dreamy-eyed hippies tried to build green supply chains and invent sustainable products, now the largest companies on the planet are getting serious about detoxing corporate commerce.  Now consumers are getting armed with intelligence to separate the pretenders from the genuine future-friendly products.        

The Power Revolution

We’re going to be investing billions in a smart energy grid.  That’s our power infrastructure that right now is grossly outdated, wasteful and vulnerable.  But what if we didn’t need a grid at all?  What if each of us has a power cell that delivered cheap electricity to our homes and ipods without being connected at all?

Well, it’s not a dream.  It’s the real science project of a rock star MIT professor, Daniel Nocera.  He begins with some sobering facts.  It takes 15 terawatts of energy to run our planet currently.  How much is a terawatt?  I don’t really know but it must be a giga-bunch.  What the real point is that it will take twice our current output of energy to operate our world in 40 years, that’s right…30 terra-whatevers.  That, he tells us, would require building a 2 billion watt nuclear plant every 3 days for the next 40 years.  Not going to happen.  Now comes the problem of sustainable abundance.  We need power to light our world and lift billions to self-reliance.  But relying on coal, gas, oil or plants just won’t get it done.

So…here comes the sun.  It sends us 800 terawatts of energy every hour!  The problem isn’t even capturing it.  New solar technology is rapidly lowering the cost of a solar watt to less than a buck.  It’s the storage and transmission of that energy that remains expensive.  So Dr. Nocera has developed a super-cheap system of electrolysis which uses a single volt of electricity and a chemical catalyst in water to recombine an H20 molecule split by sunlight to create a fuel cell that is as close to perpetual energy as humans are likely to see.  The big news is that this will make energy completely decentralized and cheap.  Seems impossible?  Well how much does it cost for us to look up something using Google?  Technology is disruptive.  Dr. Nocera has attracted lots of venture capital and notoriety.  Maybe Exxon-Mobile will become what the railroad became with the invention of airplanes.  The biggest changes are always the most unexpected.  The future will be different than the past.  Way different.

Giving and Getting

There is a lot of compassion boiling under the surface of our own fears about the future.  Staggering rates of unemployment, foreclosures and job insecurity have reduced direct charitable giving over the past six months.  But increasingly polls report we feel guilty about not doing more to help both our neighbors and strangers with their suffering.

That social compassion is upping the payoff of cause marketing, when retailers give a specific percentage of their revenue to charities consumers approve of.  In a recent test using average consumers by Cone Marketing, people exposed to cause related retail ads bought more of the brands engaged in a cause than products that only touted themselves.  One shampoo jacked up sales 74% by linking with a cause.  It works if done right.

But most businesses are too indirect or too quiet about their cause supporting contributions to be noticed.  Few Target shoppers are aware that Target has been donating a whopping 5 percent of its net income since 1942 mostly to local schools.  They are considered the gold standard of retail giving, but who knows it?  Target’s in good company with others like Macy’s, Kroger and Wal-Mart that do a lot but engage us little.  It’s a shame.  In tough times when our wallets are flat it would be great to know that at least part of what we do spend goes to the United Way, Make-A-Wish or a local school.  It would make us all feel a little better.

Sustainability and A Launch Pad for Growth

A Sustainable America and a Launch Pad for Growth by Will Marre

When do we realize that the greatest good does not arise from a mythic invisible hand balancing out our short-term selfish acts and unquenchable greed?  That is the wrong-headed story of kings, aristocrats, industrialists and lately Wall Street bankers who have been selling the man-on-the-street America for the past 50 years.  But we all know trickle-down economics doesn’t work very well.  In fact, it’s what brought us to our current catastrophe.  This is what I mean.

A friend of mine is supplying tile and granite for a new 40,000 square foot $20,000,000 mansion.  That is supposed to be good news for all of us because after all my friend has a job as well as all the carpet layers, carpenters and landscapers employed by Mr. Big Bucks to build his industrialized-sized house.  Not only that, when he moves in he’ll hire nannies and servants.  That’s job creation you see.  That’s why whenever anyone brings up taxing the wealthy their front-men scream we’re destroying the economy.  It’s the rich and successful that creates jobs they tell us.  It’s the same argument that whatever is good for the nobleman is good for his peasants that work his farm.  Whatever.  Of course that’s true.  It’s just not relevant.  You see it’s not true enough.  We know that 80% of new jobs are created by entrepreneurs on fire with a new idea and small business owners growing their core business.  Trickle-down doesn’t build broad based wealth or a thriving middle class.  It doesn’t spur entrepreneurialism or new job creation.  Trickle-down stagnates the status quo and creates a nation of servants.  We used to know better.  When I grew up no one had butlers, drivers or nannies.  Our country had different goals.

So what does work?  Well consider the same $20,000,000 loaned out as micro loans among the world’s poor.  Grameen Bank tells us that it takes about $200 in borrowed capital for a dirt-poor entrepreneur to become self-sufficient.  The repayment rate at 8% interest is 98%.  This means $20 million launches 100,000 people into self-reliance who pay back their loans launching another 98,000 entrepreneurs in a virtuous explosion of decent lives.  80% of children of micro-entrepreneurs become literate.  Some become doctors or engineers in a single generation.  As opposed to trickle down economics, it’s called launch-pad economics.  So there you have it.  We can either celebrate the super-consumption of the super wealthy or celebrate the creative capacity of individuals to become self-reliant.

Don’t you think it’s time for a new launch pad in the good ol’ USA today?  Times of high unemployment stimulate lots of entrepreneurism.  If no one will hire you, hire yourself.  But starting a new enterprise takes money.  Money that family and friends don’t have anymore.  We need to free up credit for Main Street instead of pay bonuses to the creeps who sold out our economy for 30 pieces of silver.

How about this:

1.    Break up the Big Banks. Four big banks control 50% of all bank assets in the U.S.  Four CEOs plus a few leaders like the heads of AIG and Wall Street investment banks, less than 10 people, held so much concentrated economic power that all of us have become vulnerable to their greed and misjudgments.  So now we have banks that are too big to trust.  Our society cannot afford to allow the concentration of economic power to create banks and insurance companies that are too big to fail.  Community and regional banks are thriving and more and more are making attractive loans to small and medium sized businesses.  Their balance sheets are strong.  So instead of bailing out the very clowns that have crushed the economy, break up the Citi’s and Bank of America’s into 20 or 25 smaller regional banks that have to live or die based on sound business practices.  Doesn’t this make more sense than flushing more of your and my money down a financial toilet?

We learned this lesson the hard way once.  Teddy Roosevelt ushered in an era of trust busting to end the oil cartel of Standard Oil.  Franklin Roosevelt passed regulations to separate investment banks from commercial banks.  But over the past 30 years our anti-trust laws have withered and unrest rained mergers and acquisitions have led to Frankenstein companies like AIG.  So these monster financial firms allowed by our mad scientist congress have created a horror movie we can’t escape without lots of financial violence.  Let’s get it done.  If not now, when?

2.    Don’t be afraid to invest in our future. Lots of loud voices are trying to scare us that running a deficit that’s the same percentage of our economy as World War II’s will bury our future.  It didn’t then because those dollars were invested in the productive capacity of our nation.  World War II didn’t drive us to the poor house. Just the opposite.  It ignited post-war growth and productivity that launched an economic miracle.  The World Bank has studied what brings debtor nations out of debt over the past 50 years, and guess what?  It’s investments in education, access to health care, access to capital and infrastructure…every time.

So yes.  I believe our current direction is the only direction that will lead us to a sustainable future.  What worries me is the asymmetrical power of the power and greed lobby who are throwing millions at our congressmen to shake and bake instead of provide real leadership. As a nation we voted for change.  Now it’s time to make change happen.  Not some watered-down fake change but real fundamental launch-pad change.  Like change that re-sizes our banks and gives entrepreneurs a chance to get the money we need to create new solutions and new jobs.

So we must decide what we all want.  It’s time to quit flirting with our mutual commitment toward building a sustainable future and start doing it.  It’s time to build a launch pad for the real strength of any thriving society.  It’s time to re-democratize economic and political power so that good ideas can live, great ideas can prosper and no one ever again is too big to fail.

So what do you think?  Do you think Obama’s policies are the best way to re-invent America?  Are they focused enough, efficient enough, tough enough…what would you do?

Faith in our Future with Social Responsibility

Recently I was invited to attend a faith-based meeting of social entrepreneurs. It somewhat surprised me to meet some clear-eyed battle seasoned CEOs running multi-million dollar companies that had integrated their social mission, social responsibility and their core values into their business models. Mama Mellace’s, for example, is a wildly successful nut company that is run by young Christian business owners who have been helping poor Islamic Indonesians clean and process nuts through micro-loans. They are also going to be producing “plumpy nut,” a peanut based nutrition food that is going to help millions of African children stave off malnutrition. Another CEO runs Café Halo, an on-line coffee company that has focused its coffee sourcing from an impoverished area of Honduras in order to help bring a decent life to a whole community. It was all inspiring.

Then I heard a presentation that warmed me like a warm Jacuzzi on tired muscles. It was basic, really. But sometimes the brightest light goes off when we’re reminded of something we already know. It was simply this. Our greatest fear is that we are living a meaningless life followed by non-existence. Annihilation. In fact it’s our potential non-existence that makes our human lives potentially meaningless because nothing we do and no one we love will matter if the end of our everything is the end of our lives. And if this is all there is then what does matter is how much pleasure and self-satisfaction we can drive right here, right now. After all, if the only thing that matters is the “Am I happy?” question why put up with a grumpy spouse or a relationship low point? Why put off buying anything that would give us a buzz? What’s the point of self-control when self-gratification is the only sensible strategy to a finite existence? Why in the hell would we even care about Honduran coffee growers, Islamic villagers or African children?

On the other hand, if the point of life is beyond our current line-of-sight horizon; if who we become is more important that what we do; if how we love is more important than being important….then the significance of life’s challenges take on new meaning. And today challenges are lurking on all our doorsteps. Our shared challenge is our own dignity in the storm of stress. We can make suffering noble, patience a virtue and self-sacrifice sacred. Most importantly we can strive to make tomorrow better without being undone when things beyond our control upset our plans. We can hold to our vision even when our future is foggy. And most of all we can eagerly choose a higher path even when it’s going to cost us personally.

I am acutely aware that blind faith can make us stupid, judgmental, and guilt ridden. But I can also be inspired by a mature faith that is compassionate, wise and inclusive. The kind of faith that makes us free.

Times when our plans explode and our confidence is shaken is exactly the time to free ourselves from the world’s insanity to consider deeper things. What’s the greatest thing we can do for ourselves? Ponder beauty, meditate on meaning, give thanks for love, life and our ability to choose. And most of all pay close attention to the opportunity in every challenge.

Most Admired Companies

Last week Fortune Magazine came out with its list of Most Admired Companies. And in my opinion, this is the list that counts.  The judging criteria are innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment, quality of products/services, and global competitiveness. Right on.

The companies that made the top nine on the list are:
1. Apple
2. Berkshire Hathaway
3. Toyota Motor
4. Google
5. Johnson & Johnson
6. Procter & Gamble
7. FedEx
8. Southwest Airlines
9. General Electric

In this day and age no one really cares about who is solely making the most money.  Yes, profits are important, after all a company must be sustaining, but profits are only part of the equation.  No matter how much profit a company can boast, what everyone is paying attention to is who is leading the world to a better future with qualities such as innovation and social responsibility.  And when companies focus on these qualities, profits are sure to follow.  I know.  These companies are not perfect.  But neither am I.  What most of them are doing is facing in the right direction.  These are the companies we want to buy from, work for, and see succeed.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Fad or Here to Stay?

When it comes to CSR, the argument keeps arising, is CSR just a fad or actually here to stay?  Well, let’s see….

In Creating Corporate Social Responsibility That Makes Sense, Michael Laff quotes Peter Hesling, assistant professor of management and organizations at Southern Methodist University:
“[To the question of] whether this is a fad that will fizzle out, I think the answer is no.  I don’t see companies going in reverse.”

In Surprising survivors: Corporate do-gooders in which Lawrence Delevingne discusses how several companies are staying committed to their CSR programs despite the economic turmoil he quotes Bennett Freeman, senior vice president for social research and policy at the Calvert Group, who states, “Corporate responsibility is a nearly recession-proof commitment because it’s become so mainstream.”

In the same article, Delevingne states, “Corporate responsibility’s surprising staying power is illustrated by a recent survey by Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship. It found that half of companies believe corporate citizenship will “become more critical to corporate reputation and business success” and less than ten percent forecast a lesser role.”

In The Washington Post article, Responsibility Is Still Good For Business, Christopher Flavelle states, “However you define CSR, and whether you agree with the financial arguments in favor of it, as a cultural phenomenon the idea seems to have some staying power.”

These are very optimistic approaches, and not everyone agrees.  Also in
In Creating Corporate Social Responsibility That Makes Sense Laff states, “According to a survey on the issue conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, most organizations continue to sponsor community service activities several times each year—a sign that such efforts are more like singular events rather than strategic, long-term initiatives.”

CSR Doesn’t Pay by David Vogel suggests that CSR is not here to stay because it simply does not produce the results we are led to believe.  He states, “The belief that corporate responsibility “pays” is a seductive one: Who would not want to live in a world in which corporate virtue is rewarded and corporate irresponsibility punished? Unfortunately, the evidence for these rewards and punishment is rather weak. There is a “‘market for virtue,” but it is a very limited one. Nor is it growing.”

In CSR: More Than A ‘Management Fad,’ It’s A Movement of History and Pedigree Joe Sibilia discusses an article that appeared in the Financial Times by Stefan Stern that challenges the lasting power of CSR.  He quotes the article: “In the inevitable life cycle of management fads CSR is now heading for the exit. Customers are generally unconvinced by the hype. And “social responsibility” was always too flimsy a concept to gain serious traction with business leaders.

That gives us a clue as to the identity of the next Big Thing in management: sustainability. Unlike CSR, this concept has some meat and commercial potential to it. Innovations that make money while helping to reduce carbon emissions are actually worth pursuing. So here’s one further prediction for next year: the urgent rebranding to be carried out by all those CSR consultancies, which will be replacing the old acronym with the more contemporary ‘sustainability’ label.”

Will Marre, couldn’t agree more.  While CSR efforts should be applauded, the way to make CSR more than a fad is to expand the definition from its traditional meaning associated with writing a check to what he calls, socially strategic enterprise.  In Corporate Social Responsibility Becomes Strategic he states, “The imperative is to recreate your core business model, the way you make money, as a Socially-Strategic Enterprise.  This means your products or services will cause 1) human wellbeing and 2) save our planet.  To make money by saving the future.  This should be our goal.”

So to answer the question, CSR: Fad or Here to Stay?, it seems that the answer is both.  For CSR efforts to truly remain a driving force for the long haul, CSR initiatives need to become more than short-term efforts and become an integral part of the business model.  Furthermore, CSR needs to transform into socially strategic enterprise, making money by saving the future.  Because, let’s face it, for the majority of companies, CSR efforts aren’t going to last unless they are truly sustainable, and that means producing a profit.

As for me, I will continually hold on to the hope that no matter how one defines CSR, it is here to stay because no matter whether it’s popular or not, it will always be the right thing to do.  I have three children, and for their sake, it has to be here to stay because the reality is, the world cannot sustain itself otherwise.

Economies that favor the Middle Class — The Path Forward?

I grew up in a pretty conservative family.  We were ranchers after all.  We weren’t rich but felt strongly middle class.  We had a pickup truck and a station wagon.  My mom bought clothes for us children twice a year.  Once for school and once for summer.  My play pants sported patches to go with all the grass stains.  Oh yes, we were happy.  One reason was all our friends were pretty much in the same boat.  The middle class society of the 50’s and 60’s didn’t happen by chance.  It was the direct result of public policy that made bank deposits safe, state college education free, 30-year mortgages available, a GI bill and a manufacturing economy that made the best stuff in the world.  It turns out these middle class building public policies were very good for society.  Now we know.

The Economist magazine, capitalism’s public voice, recently reported research that economies that favor the middle class are not only the healthiest economically, they are the most free and democratic.  They report that where government policy helps the growth of the middle class through education, affordable health care, infrastructure and access to capital we see an increase in tolerance, a reduction in violence, more free speech, religious freedom, free press, equality under the law, a concern for the environment and more happiness and optimism.  Period.  (A Special Report on the Middle Class). Not only that, middle class societies also create more jobs and invent more useful technology.  What’s insightful about the research is that it’s not capitalism that fosters freedom; it’s middle class building.  The Economist also advises us that America needs to change course because our real middle class has been shrinking since 1979.

That’s right.  According to the OCED America has the smallest per capita middle class of the 20 most developed nations except Russia!  We’ve pursued policies that have created a bipolar society not only of rich and poor but also of asset owners and debtors.  And it’s getting worse.  The children of the wealthy usually start adult life without college debt, a free car and a big down payment on a house in a nice neighborhood.  The rest of our children have a very difficult time ever catching up.  So wealth turns into privilege and privilege into political access and influence, which becomes aristocratic power.

This is not new.  Policies that are designed to create a stratified society that concentrate wealth and power at the top and also suffering and fear at the bottom have been around since the invention of government.  In our nation’s history the competition for policies that promote the middle class versus an aristocracy of wealth was the driving force of our first American Revolution.  Consider this:

1.    During the first American Revolution the focus of the wealthy and the powerful mostly supported the English rule of America.  These were Tories who were in cahoots with the English industrial cartels who corrupted the British monarchy to keep the colonists peasants and the slave trade booming.
2.    After the American Revolution this group of bankers and city living industrialists supported the policies of Alexander Hamilton who insisted our national security demanded strong centralized power, a national bank and little true democracy.  He was adamant that the smart guys with all the money should run things because they were sure that common farmers were too stupid to.
3.    On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson valued equality, liberty and democracy over a monied aristocracy.  He saw virtue in the common citizen and the promotion of opportunity as great new American values.  He envisioned a great middle class of farmers instead of a bipolar society of rich industrialists, banks and plantation owners ruling over masses of ignorant factory workers, dirt farmers and slaves that knew no better.
4.    Lincoln believed passionately in ending slavery and creating universal opportunity by establishing free land grant colleges and large public works projects of roads, bridges, and railroads to spur mobility and commerce.  He was vigorously opposed to industrialists who wanted financial monopolies by building profitable toll roads but leaving out the rural farmers access to eastern markets.  He opposed the monied class who considered freeing the slaves confiscating wealth.  (That’s what you think when people are considered property.)  These voices also fought against universal education as a waste of taxpayer money and cried that the end of child factory labor would destroy our economy.
5.    Most people today forget these same Herbert Hoover loving industrialists who ran America after Teddy Roosevelt attacked Franklin Roosevelt as a socialist.  (Later these same people claimed Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist.)  These neo-aristocrats said famine relief and unemployment insurance in the Great Depression would turn America into a country of freeloaders and that regulating Wall Street would destroy both capitalism and personal freedom.  These attacks were vicious and unrelenting
6.    So today these same voices, these descendants of early American Tories who financially benefited from the concentration of power and wealth, are suddenly screaming for fiscal austerity and further tax cuts.  They claim that tax cuts for the wealthy and for big business will create market solutions to our collapse (caused by unregulated markets!).  These are the same table pounders who spent a trillion dollars on non-strategic war and played with our nation’s bookkeeping worse than Enron’s off-balance sheet debt and championed a bank bailout that was little more than welfare fraud of America’s richest bankers are now sanctimoniously calling for financial conservatism.

You see the voices of neo-aristocrats always say the same thing.  We can’t afford it.  We can of course afford wars, no-bid contracts and corrupt sweet heart deals made by multi-millionaire former Congressmen lobbyists, but we can’t afford to invest in our real future.  When these strident voices of fear are asked what policies created our current collapse they change the subject.  You see the theory of “trickle down” economics has little basis in fact.  Instead healthy, free and vibrant societies get that way by “move up” economics driven by high quality, universal education, good health care a strong infrastructure and reasonable access to capital.  These in fact are the public policies that give us the platform of life, liberty, and the opportunity to pursue happiness.

Does this mean the far left whose bleeding hearts and victim-centered view of reality have the answer?  Absolutely not.  In many cases they are as corrupt as their opponents.  Too often they indulge mediocrity and perpetuate dependence.  The ideologies of right and left are simply out of step with our future.  But in America’s great moments of crisis there has always been a higher middle way.  A way up that brings more.  Both more genuine opportunity and more responsibility for all.  If we want a sustainable future we must pursue a society that is both fair and wise.  One that works on the basis of common sense and uncommon morality.  Corruption, greed, fear and selfishness have brought us to where we are.  As long as “me” is enthroned above “we,” we will suffer.

–Will Marre, Founder American Dream Project & ThoughtRocket/REALeadership

So what’s the best we can do? Be a voice for common sense.  Be an advocate for the common good.  Don’t become fearful because of the shrill voices of the extremes.  So what do you think?  Am I right about the neo-aristocrats?  Do you support Obama’s vision? Do you believe it’s an investment in our future or a futile waste?  Or some of both?  Where do you find hope today?

Corprorate Social Responsibility and Generation G

I have heard the younger generations called many things from “apathetic, lazy and spoiled” (A Stereotype of Generation “Y”) to narcissistic and disloyal.  In a 60 Minutes piece, The “Millennials” Are Coming they are described, “They multitask, talk, walk, listen and type, and text. And their priorities are simple: they come first.”  In fact, in Generation Y’s Goal? Wealth and Fame found in USA Today, it states, “Eighty-one percent of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll released today said getting rich is their generation’s most important or second-most-important life goal.”

I must strongly disagree, not only as a Generation Y’er myself, but as a concerned citizen deeply aware of the consequences my generation is inheriting from the decisions of our parents.  While some of the above observations may be true of certain individuals, my generation, as well as the generation to follow, is more socially responsible than ever before.  After all, we have to be.  The world cannot sustain another generation of Boomers.

A great publication by www.TrendWatching.com was recently brought to my attention titled, “Generation G: That would be G for ‘Generosity’, not G for ‘Greed’.”  It explores the new trend of “the growing importance of generosity as a leading societal and business mindset.” According to Trendwatching, while the current economic conditions has left Generation G disgusted with the greedy corporate world and longing for institutions that care, “in essence, Generation G isn’t about anger and recessions; the larger and more lasting trend is passionate, empowered individual (if not entire generations) being more willing and able to give, to share, to collaborate; to be more ‘generous’ in many ways.”

In Generation Y Gets Involved Sharon Jayson also explores this trend.  She cites the following  data from an online study conducted by Cone Inc. and AMP:

•    61% of 13- to 25-year-olds feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world.
•    81% have volunteered in the past year
•    69% consider a company’s social and environmental commitment when deciding where to shop
•    83% will trust a company more if it is socially/environmentally responsible

Jayson also found that two-thirds of college freshmen (66%) believe it’s essential or very important to help others in difficulty and volunteerism by college students increased by 20% from 2002 to 2005.

Penelope Trunk in What Gen Y Really Wants also states, “Generation Y’s search for meaning makes support for volunteering among the benefits it values most. More than half of workers in their 20s prefer employment at companies that provide volunteer opportunities, according to a recent Deloitte survey.”

So what does this all mean to Corporate Social Responsibility?  Everything.  “Generation G” states it best: “As always, companies can learn from consumers, though it’s not a ‘want’ but a ‘need”; companies need to mirror this societal shift if they want to regain their relevancy.  We’re talking truly becoming a caring brand—one that is generous to customers, generous to employees, generous to the environment, generous to social causes, and so on.”