Russ Stoddard
Boise
As seen in:
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The Drum,
Idaho Statesman,
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B The Change - Blog
and
Articles by Russ Stoddard
Knowing When You Suck
I don’t normally abdicate writing responsibilities to point you to a podcast, but I’m going to do exactly that this week. And no, I’m not being lazy, I simply want to share this with you because I think there’s a lot to be gained by listening to it. I just listened to an episode of the How I Built This with Guy Raz podcast, who interviewed Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
Product and Life Pivots: A Q&A with Jennifer Field Piette of Narrative Food
I first met Jennifer Field Piette at a dinner she hosted for We The Change, a group of female Certified B Corporation owners. Somehow I was lucky enough to be included, along with a few other men, and I was treated to a fantastic meal and further reinforcement — as if it’s needed — of how smart and dynamic the women of the B Corp movement are. Jennifer is Founder and CEO of Narrative Food, which sells gift boxes of delicious foods crafted by small-scale makers.
An Impact Report Planner for B Corps and Other Socially Responsible Companies
It's what I lovingly refer to as "Impact Reporting Season," that three- to four-month window of time where companies with a fiscal year-end produce and publish their annual impact reports. In recent State of Impact Reporting research conducted by Unit of Impact, a startup formed by Certified B Corporations Roundpeg, Unity Web Agency, and Oliver Russell, planning for your impact report is listed as one of the top challenges that small businesses face.
The State of Impact Reporting 2023
5 Key Findings from Companies Using Business for Good If an impact happens in the forest and no one is around to report it, did it really make an impact? Riffing on the age-old philosophical test of a tree falling in the forest, of course the impact occurred — but if the impact wasn’t reported, it didn’t pack near the wallop it could have by amplifying the action and transparently demonstrating its veracity to the world.
City of Good works to feed hungry mouths in Boise. And they need your help to do it | Opinion
As I reflect on the trauma of the pandemic, I am reminded of how our community can come together so quickly and cohesively in times of need. It’s one of the defining things I love about Boise. We founded the nonprofit City of Good in 2020. As the world sheltered in place, a group of businesspeople came together for an exploratory phone call in March of that year. The motivation was simple: our city needed help and fast. Restaurants were closing and people in isolation were going without food.
My Crazy X
Symbols can be so powerful. I'm veering from social impact today to talk about branding, my stock in trade for several decades. I've been on twitter since 2007. I LOVED it during the early, 140-character days; put up with it during its T-rump teenage years; and more recently have been hanging on to the runaway train wreck, by a "thread," since the King Who Has No Clothes purchased it last year. I was willing to see where twitter went, as I'd been with it a long time and had a lot invested in it.
What’s the Best Thing About Being a B Corp?
B Corp Leaders Share How Their Businesses Go Beyond the Norm to Create Positive Impact What’s the best thing about being a Certified B Corporation? To celebrate B Corp Month, we posed this question, along with a couple others, to B Corp leaders that are customers of our impact measurement and reporting platform, Unit of Impact.
Industry Professionals Kick Off Impact Reporting Season with Online Event
Learn Best Practices and Trends in the Business of Creating and Reporting Social and Environmental Impact It’s impact reporting season, and impact professionals from around the world recently gathered online for a LinkedIn Live event to discuss best practices and trends in the business of creating and reporting social and environmental impact.
3 B Corp Veterans Launch Social Impact Reporting Platform for Small Business
A startup led by Certified B Corporation veterans Polina Pinchevsky, Alisa Herr, and Russ Stoddard has launched Unit of Impact, a new impact reporting platform for small businesses. Under development for more than two years, the Unit of Impact SaaS (software as a service) platform has been created specifically to help the fast-growing market of public benefit corporations, B Corps, and socially responsible small businesses measure and report their impact.
B Corp Collaboration Creates Best Sustainable T-Shirts in the World
When Russ Stoddard, founder of Certified B Corporation Oliver Russell in Boise, Idaho, set upon producing T-shirts to celebrate the B Corp movement, he didn’t intend to create just any T-shirt. He aspired to do it in the most sustainable way possible. He was committed to multiplying impact by collaborating with a fellow B Corp. And he wanted these T-shirts to give back financially to the B Corp community.
3 Impact Trends We ‘C’ for 2022
How Carbon Accounting, Collaborations, and the Climate Generation Are Powering Positive Change With full-on fandom for (and acknowledgement to) Sesame Street, this 2022 trends report is brought to you by the letter C (and the atomic number 6). At Unit of Impact, a startup platform co-founded by three Certified B Corporations, we’re building a new way for small businesses to measure and report impact, so we’re digging deep into the drivers of actionable purpose.
Public Benefit Brewer Aims to Put People Back to Work During Corona
While starting any new business is challenging; Works Progress Administration believes it’s always a good time to help people and benefit your community through social impact — especially during this time of chaos and crisis. “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” — Sun-Tzu, from The Art of War With the world at war against the coronavirus — which is shattering economies, cultures, and lives — it’s possibly not the best time to start a new business.
My Plan B for All the Big Corporate Bailout Proposals
Here’s a B for Boeing. One for Bank of America, too. And one for all the other mega-corporations that are elbowing at the table for billions in government Bailouts (with a capital B) via the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act.
It’s Time to Kill Cause Marketing
By Russ Stoddard As a marketing guy who’s spent a large portion of a long career forging connections between companies and causes, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the state of cause marketing. And I’ve come to the conclusion that cause marketing needs to die.
Want to Change Bad Corporate Behavior? Try Using the “Sanberg Effect.”
If you, like many people, are fed up with the way countless corporations behave, this Black Friday — the largest shopping day of the year — use your mighty little spending stick to hit the corporate pinata and catalyze the “Sanberg Effect.” So what exactly IS the Sanberg Effect?
These 4 Social Enterprise Success Stories Are Sure To Inspire
We’re all likely aware of the highly publicized successes in the social enterprise movement, from Patagonia’s mission to save our planet to the one-for-one model of TOMS shoes. These pioneers have tilled the ground for a new class of equally exciting conscious companies that are making bold change in the name of good. The companies presented here couldn’t be more different. All Good’s natural skincare products help save coral reefs.
How To Build A Socially Conscious Business
Welcome to the world of the purpose economy, where employees and consumers alike search for relationships that are meaningful beyond a paycheck or a purchase. In today’s world, companies of all sizes are being asked to proactively “do good.” They aren’t being forced to this end by the government or lawyers. No, companies are being pushed to create public benefit by consumers and employees, two powerful audiences that are exerting newfound control over businesses large and small.
Does Your Agency Pass The 'Good' Test? Four Types Of Purpose-Driven Agencies
At year’s end, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) selected “brand purpose” as its word (or, ahem, words) of the year. It also recently established the ANA Center for Brand Purpose to "fuel business growth by helping marketers create purpose-driven, strategic programs and solutions for their products and services." There’s a continuum of so-called purpose-driven agencies.
Social Media May Be Habit-Forming -- And For CEOs, That's A Good Thing
As a serial entrepreneur and agency president, my days are hectic -- and that’s how I like it. I always have something on the backburner, whether it's my next idea for a company, a tweet that I’ve been noodling on or chores to do on the urban farm where I live. I start my day at 4 a.m. and work until I collapse into bed around 9 p.m. Part of my work is to find creative ways to share what’s going on in my world -- what I’m reading, thinking, growing or doing.
Are You Maximizing Your Impact By Supporting Other Conscious Companies?
We social entrepreneurs are big on reminding people to vote with their wallets and invest their talent with companies that create social impact. Yet we often fail to do this ourselves. It’s a classic case of, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Social entrepreneurs should be the first to support their own kind through business-to-business purchasing. Of course, companies can’t be expected to buy from social enterprises to their own detriment.
Can Purpose Save The Advertising Agency Business?
It's widely said that the traditional advertising industry is on the decline. Last year, according to an article published in The Atlantic, ad agency jobs declined by 5,000, while firms that focus more on strategy, design or video haven’t grown since 2013.
How the blockchain could transform sustainability reporting
Forget Bitcoin. I’ll let the get-rich-quick crowd focus on this and its cryptocurrency cousins.I’m excited about the hard-working underlying technology that makes Bitcoin possible — the blockchain ledger system — and its potential to revolutionize corporate sustainability and social impact.Right now, we are experiencing a crisis in cultural confidence. We don’t trust our institutions because they are all talk and no action. We view corporations with suspicion.
3 Things CEOs Must Understand When Pivoting to Purpose
I know it’s lonely at the top. Each day you contend with a boiling stew of global competition, digital transformation, labor issues and challenging board members, to name a few. You walk this tightrope while hewing to a notion of shareholder primacy that has guided you throughout your career — the need to maximize financial profits and consider shareholders above all other stakeholders.
Can Being Socially Responsible Get You a Date?
In my book, Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Company, I made a number of predictions about the future, ranging from the rise of women to a more equitable and influential role in the workplace to the growth of worker collectives, such as co-ops and employee-owned companies, in the marketplace. I also predicted that ratings systems would proliferate in every walk of life, from companies to cities to individuals: Well, guess who’s launching that individual ratings system first?
GoodWell Certification Using Machine Learning to Boost Employee Satisfaction
The world of social enterprise is full of surprising stories. How each of us landed here, pursuing purposeful work that helps solves the world’s most pressing problems, never ceases to amaze me. One unlikely member of our socially responsible tribe is my friend Pete Gombert, founder of GoodWell, a workplace certification company (and legal Benefit Corporation).
5 Social Responsibility Trends to Watch for in 2018
Call it what you want — mission-driven, purpose-driven, or socially conscious business — social entrepreneurs and their market-based enterprises are driving real change in the marketplace. I predict 2018 will be the tipping point for social enterprise. Here are five specific trends I expect to see in 2018 for the sector and the positive gains it will create in the workplace and the world.
We are all social entrepreneurs
The following is an edited excerpt from "Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Business" by Ross Stoddard (Elevate Publishing, 2017).There’s much to be hopeful about in the rise of socially conscious companies around the world.And it’s not just my generally sunny optimism; this trend is backed by substantive statistics.The first public benefit corporation legislation in the United States was passed in Maryland in 2010.
Carol Cone's The Purpose Collaborative Welcomes Oliver Russell
Carol Cone, known as the "Mother of Cause Marketing," has long been a leader I've admired. Cone Communications, the company she founded (and sold to Omnicom Group), is to corporate social responsibility as Nike is to the sports world. Today, I'm thrilled to announce we're joining forces through The Purpose Collaborative to elevate socially responsible brands around the globe.
How to build a socially conscious business
Millennials make up more than 50 percent of the global workforce, leading businesses to jump on the social enterprise bandwagon in part because it's the right thing to do, but also because it now makes economic sense. Younger workers want to derive a sense of meaning from their work and are starved for the engagement ...
How to build a socially conscious business
Millennials make up more than 50 percent of the global workforce, leading businesses to jump on the social enterprise bandwagon in part because it's the right thing to do, but also because it now makes economic sense. Younger workers want to derive a sense of meaning from their work and are starved for the engagement ...
Be a Purpose-Driven Business by Being a Purpose-Driven Workplace
This is an excerpt from Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Business, released this week from Elevate Publishing. Purpose-driven companies regard employees as their most critical resource, one to be nurtured and sustained rather than exhausted and played out like a mine with a short-term life expectancy. Perhaps what’s most important here is to change your view from top-down.
Organizational Culture *Is* Strategy
It’s said that Peter Drucker, world-renowned business management superstar, once famously commented, “Culture beats strategy.” While neither version has been authenticated as being said by Drucker, I understand the proposition, which places an importance on the value of culture to a business. That said, I think it’s really missing the point because organizational culture is strategy. Your company’s core values and its purpose are the fundamental building blocks of your culture.
Boise author imagines radical path to peace | Idaho Statesman
“Radicalizing Peace” by Mark Traylor (Boise); Elevate ($13.99)The news and media are full of discussions about religious radicals. Their extreme actions dominate our headlines and political conversations because their behavior is so far from society’s comfort zone. Much of this kind of behavior that we see is negative and destructive, but maybe there’s something we can do about it.Perhaps it’s time to think about a different kind of religious radicalism.
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