2009
• The popularity of social enterprises has exploded in recent years – this is the authoritative guide to starting and running one
• Offers practical, from-the-trenches advice from two leading social entrepreneurs on confronting the challenges and seizing the opportunities social enterprises present
• The newest book in the Social Venture Network series – over 50,000 books in the series sold to date
• A step-by-step guide any organization can use to build an effective, ethical marketing strategy
• Features examples from such companies as Patagonia, General Mills, Clif Bar, and many others
• Written by two award-winning entrepreneurs known for their inventive marketing approaches
2007
• By the cofounder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies--the nation's most prominent advocacy organization for local businesses--and the founder of the internationally known children's clothing company Hanna Andersson
• Details specific business practices that will enable local businesses to strengthen both their communities and their bottom lines
• Offers a host of real-world examples from companies such as Greyston Bakery, Wild Planet Toys, Powell's Books, and many others
The first book to show small and medium-sized companies how to go green not just cost effectively, but profitably.
Offers detailed, specific advice and tools for greening every area of an organization
Copublished with Social Venture Network, one of the nations leading socially responsible business organizations
If you run a small to medium-sized business and youre wondering whether or not to go green, this book probably isnt for you. Although David Mager and Joe Sibilia do include ten reasons that sustainability makes economic and ecological sense, theyre not here to convince you why. Street Smart Sustainability is about howdetailed, nuts-and-bolts, step by step advice on how to green business green profitably.
Read cover to cover this is a comprehensive A to Z handbook, but each chapter also works as a self-contained stand-alone guide to a specific business function. So if you need to you can go right to whichever chapter speaks to your needs at the moment.
Mager and Sibilia begin by discussing how to get employee buy-in to and motivate your company into becoming sustainable. Then they cover how to get startedauditing your current sustainability position, developing a plan to move forward, and quantitatively measuring your progress.
With a plan and metrics in place, Mager and Sibilia move on to the particulars. They detail how to design products to be sustainable from the get-to, green your facilities, use renewable energy, minimize your carbon footprint, find green vendors to work with, reduce harmful emissions, and recycle waste products. The book is filled with real-world examples from a variety of businesses and industries. The emphasis is always on practicalitybesides seasoned advice Mager and Sibilia provide a wide range of tools you can use immediately to implement their suggestions
Street Smart Sustainability is a road map to the sustainable low-hanging fruit at a time when the public is hungry for businesses that demonstrate genuine respect for the environment. It provides simple tools so you can make continuous, cost-effective improvements in your sustainability practicespractices that diffuse into the organizational DNA and become fixtures, shifting the prevailing corporate culture.
2010
Shows how we can join the conversation online and share our stories to help make the world a better place.
Social networks can be so much more than a way to find your high school friends or learn what your favorite celebrity had for breakfast. They can be powerful tools for changing the world. With Share This! both regular folks of a progressive bent and committed activists can learn how to go beyond swapping movie reviews and vacation photos (not that there's anything wrong with that).
At the moment the same kinds of people who dominate the dialog off-line are dominating it online, and things will never change if that doesn't change. Progressives need to get on social networks and share their stories, join conversations, connect with others-and not just others exactly like themselves. It's vital to reach out across all those ethnic/gender/preference/class/age lines that exist even within the progressive camp. As Deanna Zandt puts it, "creating a just society is sort of like the evolution of the species-if you have a bunch of the same DNA mixing together the species mutates poorly and eventually dies off."
But there are definitely dos and don'ts. Zandt delves into exactly what people are and are not looking for in online exchanges. How to be a good guest. What to share. Why authenticity is more important than just about anything, including traditional notions of expertise or authority. She addresses some common fears, like worrying about giving too much about yourself away, blurring the lines between your professional and personal life, or getting buried under a steaming heap of information overload. And she offers detailed, nuts-and bolts "how to get started" advice for both individuals and organizations.
The Internet is upending hierarchies and freeing the flow of information in a way that makes the invention of the printing press seem like an historical footnote. Share This! shows how to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to make marginalized voices heard and support real, fundamental change-and, incidentally, have some fun doing it.