Foreword

JILL BAMBURG has taken a question critical to the future of our society and found compelling answers. She has brought them to life with rich, well-researched stories. The question is this: how can mission-driven companies grow to the size needed to make a significant difference without selling out their values? She finds nine critical issues that must be managed well to do so, and documents the secrets of success in managing each of them. This book will help anyone struggling with preserving his or her values as an enterprise grows.

Most books and courses on entrepreneurship focus on what it takes to start a business. They cover the forming of a team, writing a business plan, raising money, and so forth. These are important issues, but equally important issues arise once the venture is off the ground. This book lays out the principles for dealing with the critical issues that must be managed if a small mission-driven business is to grow to a significant size.

Jill comes to her knowledge of mission-driven business through personal experience as well as thorough research. We served together on the board of In Context magazine as it went through a flirtation with bankruptcy and a turbulent transition to rebirth as Yes! magazine. Together we learned the power of organic growth by supporting Fran Korten as she steadily grew Yes! to a financially stable size.

After Yes! became stable, Jill joined my wife and me in launching the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, one of the first business schools devoted to transforming business toward sustainability and social justice. From the beginning, Jill has led the development and delivery of our MBA in sustainable business. With few resources, she has created a 19-course program that has earned an impeccable national reputation and an average annual growth rate of 92 percent.x

Having been with Jill through the growth of two mission-driven organizations, I was thrilled when she announced that she was writing a book on bringing mission-driven businesses to scale. This is a very important book. It is both a brilliant how-to book on what mission-driven businesses must do to grow with their values intact, and a description of what I hope is the future of large sections of our economy.

While a friend of the movement for local living economies, Jill is also a realist. Despite their large numbers, the small mission-driven organizations that abound today do not yet add up to a driving force in our economy. However, if a large number of them grow to a scale where they can compete effectively with the soulless giants, companies that keep their ethics and ideals intact can become the dominant force in our economic system. This book provides the tools that make that change possible.

Today our society, including hospitals, media, the government, and even universities, is increasingly structured around the needs of big business. One popular vision of the future is a world dominated by businesses whose leaders do nothing to promote healthy ecosystems, social justice, communities, or human health and happiness except as those issues impact their bottom line. Somehow the invisible hand of the free market is supposed to take all that greed and produce a healthy society.

I believe our world has become so complex that only selforganizing systems like free markets can create the order we need. Large-scale planned economies do not work. However, I also believe that free markets will function effectively only if the people in them behave as whole people, caring about the impact of their companies and their work on society, community, and planet.xi

Fortunately, values-driven organizations have a great advantage: they can recruit, motivate, and retain people who want to make a living and serve their values at the same time. But this advantage will drive the transformation of our economy only if we find ways to grow mission-driven businesses to scale.

Without that growth, which depends on the broad dissemination of the lessons contained in this book, our future could be coldhearted and unhealthy, filled with ravaged environments and destroyed communities, and made fearsome by the crime, terrorism, and war that come from a growing gap between rich and poor. Businesses whose missions include contributing to environmental health and social justice can help to build a warmhearted world, filled with healthy communities and healthy ecosystems. Jill Bamburg shows us the way to a brighter future, in which businesses care about their impact on the larger society.

After reading this book, entrepreneurs of mission-driven ventures will be able to grow their businesses, taking market share and profitability from businesses that are motivated by profit only. Students will learn that they can build a career that serves their values rather than compromising those values. People dreaming of building mission-driven enterprises will gain courage and insight from the stories of those who have successfully done it before.

Please get this book into the hands of anyone who has a mission-driven business. Give it to educators, students, and people who are losing their faith in free enterprise. Give it to anyone considering a career in business that serves more than his or her financial needs. You can succeed in business with your values in full expression, and reap the joy that comes from doing so, particularly after you reduce the risks by learning the secrets contained in this book.

Gifford Pinchot III