September 21, 2020
Dear Business, Brand, Corporation or Company,
I am reaching out to you today about your incredible generosity as a brand. By committing to give back in the manner that you are, you have shown the power that commerce can have. That each transaction is an opportunity to give back to the charitable organizations serving our communities, locally, nationally and globally. I want to commend you and your brand on your altruism.
It is this act of philanthropy, this transactional charity, that inspired me to write this letter to you today. I have created and am about to launch a membership and certification program that highlights, lobby’s for, legitimizes, and most importantly brings together these acts of transactional charity, these acts where businesses commit each year to give regardless of what the bottom line is going to be. I am hoping that you would want to join our cause at Commerce for Change. Our mission is simple, to weave philanthropy into the fabric of our economy, connecting the acts of commerce with the acts of giving by linking the shoppers’ actions to the corporations’ philanthropic reaction.
When our actions are singular and absent of community, they can easily be ignored or forgotten. But when we can pool our collective energy, our collective activism, or specifically our collective philanthropy, we can create a movement that can’t be ignored. Ryunosuke Satoro once wrote, that ‘individually we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.’ Transactional charity, right now is dozens and dozens of businesses that believe in the same core belief, that great change can happen through the purchase of their goods and services. By implementing philanthropy into your business plan, businesses like yours are using commerce to help fund the organizations that are working to make our lives, locally to globally, better.
Commerce for Change wants to collect all of these incredible businesses practicing transactional charity, because a single drop can be ignored, a few drops can be wiped away, but as an ocean, we will create a wave of change where our businesses will be known, the causes we support will be highlighted, and the act of transactional charity will be shared, taught and spread throughout our capitalist society. Because, in the words of Mother Teresa, ‘together we can do great things.’
Commerce for Change was born out of a business my wife and I launched together. Like many entrepreneurs of this era, we wanted our business to have a purpose greater than our own profits. As we began to research how we wanted to use transactional charity for good and as a tool of change, we began to realize how many businesses were already giving back. What we also saw, was how many businesses were giving in what felt like a vacuum. That although these businesses were making important impacts in the livelihood, health, and even survival of so many important causes, movements and organizations; their behavior, by being singular in action, was neither creating a movement nor was it helping in influencing new businesses to follow suit. There’s an old African proverb that says ‘If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ Vice President and environmental activist Al Gore expands on this idea, adding, ‘We have to go far, quickly. And that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world’s consciousness about exactly what we’re facing, and why we have to work to solve it.’ Join us and let's go far, quickly.
As the means to help launch this movement and nonprofit, Commerce for Change will launch our program with two different levels that businesses can participate in; one as a member and one as a certified giver. The Commerce for Change Members program will be a temporary program that will exist for the next couple of years and will help educated both businesses and charities alike on the power that commerce can have in creating philanthropic dollars. It will be an honor system and a place where businesses will be ‘held’ as they wait to become Commerce for Change Certified. Not all Member businesses will chose to go through the certification program if they don’t wish to. Our certification program, which will begin in 2021, will be a straight forward, transparent and completely confidential process that will happen annually. Joining Commerce for Change won’t cost you anything financially. It will mean joining a program that will have a lasting effect in how we shop and how we give. It will mean joining a movement, not on the notion of, ‘I want to help, what can I do?’ But on the understanding that ‘I have to buy something, how I can help!’
As we have created this organization from the ground up, we have looked to B Corp and One Percent for the Planet, among other nonprofits, for guidance. We understand that we are not the first to come up with the idea of corporate certifications but believe that by using these organizations as an inspiration, we can help in facilitating the raising of millions if not billions of dollars for charity through commerce. These nonprofit organizations have demonstrated how effective advocacy can be in making lasting change in how we conduct business. This advocacy is a roadmap for the social and cultural impact that we can have when we work towards a common and just goal and by ushering in a new type of commerce we can begin to destroy the myth that all businesses only care about profit. While Commerce for Change may look like and act similar to the organizations above, what makes us different and important is twofold. First, we do not want to replace or compete with organizations like One Percent for the Planet, but instead want to work with them and help to highlight the incredible work they and their business members are already doing. Second, unlike One Percent, our scope of transactional charity isn’t tied to a single cause. While your brand may only support charities and causes fighting climate change, we at Commerce for Change, want to make sure the transactional charitable donations also make it to organizations fighting for the homeless, for racial equality, for feeding the hungry, climate change, and so many more. If your brand is already certified by B Corp, One Percent or other nonprofits looking to advocate for corporate change, we ask for you to join our cause to help build on what these amazing organizations have already done. If your brand is not certified or a member of an organization, join ours and help launch a movement that will change how we shop and give and by doing so, will support nonprofits and charitable organizations around the globe.
We were a few weeks from launching Commerce for Change, when COVID-19 came to our shores. As the coronavirus hit our marginalized and our forgotten in a manner so much worse then other communities, we felt that our organization’s time wasn’t right. But as the days turned to weeks and then months, as boredom turned to outrage and then into a numbed malaise, it became more apparent than ever that now was the time that we needed to change who our economy worked for. I sit writing this letter some six months into this global pandemic that has turned our lives upside down and horrifically has left more than 200,000 dead in the United States. I write these words, more than three months to the day that George Floyd’s death showed a much needed mirror to a country who’s reflection did not match its perception of racial equality. Our brands can’t stop a global pandemic; however, they can support organizations like Direct Relief and the CDC Foundation that are working day and night to fight COVID-19. Our brands can not end an economic recession or depression; however, they can support organizations like Feeding America and local food banks and pantries, as millions of Americans found themselves needing help to put food on the table. Our brands can not end systemic racism; however, they can support organizations like Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and The Marshall Project, that are fighting against police brutality and the unjust murders of Black and brown people. Our brands can not end climate change; however, they can support organizations like the NRDC, Sierra Club Foundation, and Environmental Defense Fund as they fight the next great challenge our country and globe face. Finally and just as important as the money we raise through commerce, is how we can use our brands as the means to educate our shoppers about these incredible causes. While our country mourns, reflects and tries to stay safe, we feel like no time is better than right now to launch an organization like Commerce for Change. With your help we can take the incredible work your brand is already doing and transition it into a movement. By doing so, together we can make transactional charity in the form of the Commerce for Change label into one of the most important symbols of change and philanthropy.
Please visit our website and contact us if you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts. I hope to hear from you. Together, lets change how and who our economy works for.
Best,
Search for more Commerce for Change Brands