The Center for Socially Responsible Business (CSRB) at Mills College is home to a permanent Internet-based repository of information about socially responsible business.
This site is an online resource center for socially responsible business. It provides lists of services, online education material, an intellectual clearinghouse for case studies and research, and a place for practitioners to share best practices.
The site specializes in the San Francisco Bay Area, and includes information about people, companies, nonprofits, government, and colleges and universities where social responsibility is practiced, advocated, and studied.
The site is home to a regular compilation of news items and research findings on socially responsible business.
Consulting
Do you need help crafting a CSR strategy, starting a CSR program, optimizing your CSR activities, educating employees and executives about CSR? Contact us: csrb@mills.edu
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News
Read why Thomas N. Gladwin and David Berdish of the Financial Times feel that MBAs are unprepared for a morally complex future.
In the Reputation Institute’s 2009 Global Reputation Pulse study, ethics and transparency rose in importance around the world to their highest levels ever. Governance—perceived as “a responsibly-run company that behaves ethically and is open and transparent in its business dealings” moved from the number four driver of reputation globally in 2007 to number three in 2008 and number two this year. In Canada, India, Thailand and Turkey, governance is now the number one driver of reputation.
The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College release their "State of Corporate Citizenship 2009" survey. It shows that CSR is well-integrated into corporate activities and is still considered important despite the economic downturn.
Paul Hawken's commencement speech at the University of Portland—profound, inspirational, a call to action on behalf of all life on earth.
Two professors from the University of Michigan wrote an inspiring manifesto about the proper moral education of MBAs to help them lead businesses that consider society in everything they do.
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Hottest Places For Green Jobs
From 1997–2007 green jobs grew faster than any other kind in the US economy, 9.1% versus 3.7%, according to a June 2009 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The U.S. gained more than 750,000 green jobs in 2006 and is set to add millions more in the next few decades, according to a new report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Global Insight, a Boston-based economic research firm.
California has three of the nation's 10 largest green job markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
Read the Forbes article.
Search for Green Jobs
Environmental Defense Fund special report: Less Carbon, More Jobs
Oakland author Van Jones' "The Green Collar Economy," on the NY Times Best Seller list, argues that
green jobs will revitalize our economy as well as help the poor, minorities, and the unemployed. See the story in Oakland Magazine.
Social Responsibility and Sustainability at Mills
Our President, Janet L. Holmgren, has signed a national Climate Commitment with more than 300 presidents and chancellors of U.S. colleges and universities who are "deeply concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of global warming and its potential for large-scale, adverse health, social, economic, and ecological effects."
Visit our site and read the Sustainability Newsletter which comes out monthly during the academic year.
See the "Sustainability issue" (Spring 2009) of the Mills Quarterly.
We are pleased to announce that Mills, in addition to being named one of the best colleges in the nation by the Princeton Review for the fifth consecutive year, was also ranked at the top of the ranking for "green campuses." Colleges were rated on a scale of 60 to 99. Mills ranked an impressive 98, achieving a nearly perfect score. The criteria for the green rating included "whether the school's students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable, how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges, and the school's overall commitment to environmental issues."
Mills, for the second year in a row, has been named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for innovative and effective community service and service learning programs.
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CSR/Green Events
If you would like us to list your event, send an email to csrb@mills.edu with title, description, and a link if you have one.
Lecture Series: Ethics of Food and the Environment, presented by the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford.
Social Impact Speaker Series, Walden University, these events are online; also see the archived presentations
The Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) at Stanford offers a series of free events open to the public, conversations with practitioners.
Nonprofit Day 2010: Sharing Our Stories, Creating Our Future, Tuesday, August 31, 2010, Hotel Nikko, San Francisco. Join over 500 members of the nonprofit community from around the region for a day of learning, reflecting, and inspiration.
SOCAP 10, October 4-6, 2010, For Mason Center, San Francisco. Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) has spent the last two years defining the social enterprise movement. This year, more than 1,200 investors, donors, entrepreneurs, and innovators will decide What's Next?
Nonprofit Management Institute: Leading During Times of Change, October 5-6, 2010, Stanford. Today nonprofit executives are leading their organizations during tumultuous structural change. The recession has permanently changed the approaches organizations need to take to raise funds; nonprofits have to work with government in new ways; traditional governance models are shifting; and social media has turned communication upside down. This year’s Nonprofit Management Institute will address these important strategic topics and emphasize the new leadership skills needed for managing and growing nonprofit organizations during times of dramatic change.
GreenBiz Innovation Forum 2010, 19-20Oct2010, San Francisco. Combine world-class discussions, facilitated workshops, hands-on exercises, and small-group consultation to provide you with insights and tools that can be put to work inside any company. Participants will be encouraged to bring their own green innovation challenges to the Forum to share—and learn—with others.
Business For Social Responsibility annual conference, November 2-5, 2010, New York. Innovation is crucial to building sustainable business success. But in our fast-changing world, innovation alone won't get the job done—it must be integrated into strategy and core business. This is what companies need to do to inspire and mobilize customers, employees, business partners, and other collaborators. The BSR Conference 2010 will provide the insights and connections you need to make this happen.
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Standards
There are many national and global CSR and Green Business standards. Standards are helpful to companies, to consumers, to those seeking jobs, to nonprofits, to government agencies, and to investors.
This section lists some of the major standards.
Wal-Mart has announced its Sustainability Index, a global effort to create a product "scorecard" for everything it sells.
Ceres Principles: a 10-point code of environmental conduct that obligates companies to report periodically on environmental management structures and results.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to standardize corporate reporting on the triple bottom line.
CR (Corporate Responsibility Index) to help companies assess their impacts on the community, marketplace and workplace through their operations, products and services, and interaction with key stakeholders, and the Environment Index.
Dow Jones Sustainability Indices tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.
FTSE4Good Index Series is designed to measure the performance of companies that meet globally recognized corporate responsibility standards.
The Global 100 is a list of publicly-traded companies based on research and analysis on 1,800 companies by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. The companies are deemed to have the best developed abilities, relative to their industry peers, to manage environmental, social and governance risks, and to take advantage of new business opportunities in this area.
UN Global Compact: Based on 10 principles across labor, human rights and environment.
ISO 14001: International Standard for Environmental management systems, focused on procedures to minimize environmental risk and harm.
Fairtrade labeling is a certification system designed to allow consumers to identify goods which meet agreed standards.
Climate Counts will independently evaluate leading consumer-products companies' efforts to manage their climate effect.
Social Accountability International’s SA8000 is a voluntary, universal standard for companies interested in auditing and certifying labor practices in their facilities and those of their suppliers and vendors.
Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability’s AA1000 addresses the need for a single approach that effectively deals with the qualitative as well as quantitative data that makes up sustainability performance plus the systems that underpin the data and performance. It is designed to complement the GRI Reporting Guidelines and other standardized or company-specific approaches to disclosure. It is the first non-proprietary, open-source Assurance Standard that covers the full range of an organization's disclosure and performance.
The bluesign standard has been adopted by various leading textile manufacturers, and is supported by several key players of the textile chemical industry.
Environmental Paper Assessment Tool establishes consistent language and metrics for environmentally preferable paper and facilitates communication between the buyers and suppliers of paper products.
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Organizations
The Women's Network for a Sustainable Future provides a forum for business and professional women to congregate, reflect and act on the convergent issues of corporate social responsibility and sustainable development.
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University does research and dialogue on ethical issues in critical areas of American life. They have a great deal of information on ethical business practices.
The mission of Corporate Ethics International is to transform the role of corporations so that they are once again in service to and under the control of civil society. They have a great deal of information on the expanding role of corporations in society and perspectives on the role of corporations in society.
The mission of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford is to inspire and educate social innovators, providing knowledge and ideas that strengthen the capacity of current and future leaders to champion social change. They have a great deal of information—basic and applied research, cases, courses, and publications—and some interesting events. They also publish the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
The mission of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy is to lead the business community in raising the level and quality of corporate philanthropy.
Green Drinks is a network of people from NGOs, academia, government and business. They meet in the East Bay and in San Francisco.
The mission of the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association is to be the leading provider of ethics, compliance, and corporate governance resources to ethics and compliance professionals worldwide.
The Aspen Institute's First Mover Fellowship Program is looking for extraordinary social intrepreuneurs who have the vision, tenacity, and courage to achieve remarkable changes in business practice and impact. They come from different countries, industries, areas of functional responsibility. What they will have in common is a demonstrated passion and capacity for working at the intersection of business growth and positive social change.
Corporate Responsibility Officer Magazine has articles, blogs, events, and more.
Ethical Corporation Magazine, from Ethical Corporation, which sells "competitive intelligence for business sustainability," has articles, events, podcasts, reports, and more.
The Presidio School of Management offers degrees and executive education is sustainable management. They also have useful links, including to jobs, metrics/policy/standards, and socially responsible investing.
Dominican University has a Green MBA (Sustainable Enterprise) program.
San Francisco State has an MBA with an emphasis in Sustainable Business.
GreenBiz is the leading source for news, opinion, best practices, and other resources on the greening of mainstream business. It has several sites, and publishes news. opinions, analysis, resource and job listings, among other green-related materials.
Development Crossing is a community dedicated to CSR and sustainable development. See their very interesting video overview of why businesses need to think about and act on CSR.
Vertical Farm is a site dedicated to an innovative solution to the need for more food with less environmental impact, and which expands the definition of "eating local."
Cone, a socially responsible branding and marketing company, has a blog "What Do You Stand For?" devoted to cause marketing.
The Center For Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan has a superb set of one-page Fact Sheets designed to give a brief but complete picture of the environmental impacts of a particular system, as well as sustainable solutions and alternatives.
The MIT Sloan Management Review has interesting articles on sustainability, including their 2009 survey, The Business of Sustinability
CECP (Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy) is an international organization of CEOs that sponsors, among other activities, an International Corporate Philanthropy Day.
Association of Climate Change Officers: Our mission is to advance the knowledge and skills of those dedicated to developing and directing climate change strategies in the public and private sectors, and to establish a flexible and robust forum for collaboration between climate change officers.
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