Bant Breen:

Scott is the Head Dot Connector and the Co-Founder of Doing Good Works, which is a company we’ve had on the show before. You have this background and you kind of evolved into the space. And tell me more about how you guys have cracked this. How I guess it’s been described to me as the 10, 20, 30 models, but maybe the broader model as it goes forward?

Scott Henderson:

Getting to where we are today to have this conversation has not been without a lot of trial and error. We have probably perfected the art of the pivot, as I’m sure you’ve heard from Jordan, my co-founder. Along the way, we have been truly building blocks to what we have here. As I mentioned, we established ourselves in California as a benefit corporation, which just allows us to focus on one of two things, either a social initiative or an environmental initiative. As we think about shareholders and stakeholders and directors and operators, it allows us some flexibility in how we think about repurposing our profits. There are some pretty broad guidelines, which can be good or bad. Ultimately, it’s what led us to to incorporating 10, 20, and 30 models. Very quickly 10 to 10% is our corporate mandate to make sure that we are always investing 10% of our corporate profits, pre-tax back into mission-related activities. As your listeners may know, our entire purpose of Doing Good Works was to help change outcomes for kids and youth that were involved in the foster care system, in anybody in the foster care system. Again, we can talk about this later. The results have typically been pretty horrific for a long period of time. That was the impetus to starting the business was, can we start a for-profit entity that has intimate in its goals and in its DNA, social change. That’s kind of the background so that’s the 10%. It’s kind of nice because it allows us a tremendous amount of flexibility to identify what are sometimes best practices, other groups, other nonprofits, and other organizations that are doing some unique things to change outcomes, and allows us to come alongside from a financial standpoint and both support them and learn from them which is which has been great. That’s our 10%. That 20% side is about creating space for our employees, both for volunteering, but also for mentoring. A big part of what we’ve learned over the last really two years is the value of mentoring and the relationship aspect of working with kids from the system, in order to run a business, talk to customers and satisfy customers to the nth degree, which is the business imperative. We had to do things like creating space. I explained it as we’re over capacity, which from a business perspective, sometimes is a little tough, because we always know we’re always cutting costs and thinking about the bottom line first. We’ve got capacity built-in. When a life event happens, or a court hearing happens for one of the kids, we stop what we’re doing and make them the number one priority. 

Bant Breen:

I think this idea of social responsibility, social, and social good, is part of the ways that progressive business leaders are thinking. How do you find businesses are thinking about this today? Are they pushing it far enough? What would you like other businesses to be thinking about in this space?

Scott Henderson:

I think there is a growing movement, which is exciting to see. There’s an organization B Labs is one of those that are trying to help identify organizations globally that are thinking differently, that is not only just thinking but acting differently, which is exciting. Again, there are 3500 or so in our global business world. We did see the Business Roundtable group come out maybe a couple of years ago, and very clearly state that as the s&p 500 companies. We’re going to start taking more and more responsibility to act differently. The challenge that happens there is they’re still beholden to shareholders. Shareholders require a return. Sometimes there’s a competing priority when it comes to reinvestment or thinking about how they might address social issues. That’s a traditional model. I would tell you that what happens, and certainly, what we’ve seen, is the culture in our business is one of the things that is a great business imperative is driving great cultures for great business outcomes. It works. And I don’t think those two are mutually exclusive. I do believe that there are ways that we can invest in our organizations invest in our folks and our employees, and invest in benefit packages that are there pretty aggressive and positive. 

Bant Breen:

Scott, thank you so much for being on UNCAGED today and we look forward to having you back. 

To see the full interview on the Uncaged YouTube channel, go to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8y0yD-JXik

 

 

 

E: qstudio@qnary.com