A For-Good Economy: It’s Good Business to do Good in Business

For just a second, I’d like you to imagine a planet-positive economy.

I’m imagining a world where every transaction resulted in positive change.??

You buy a pair of shoes that funds a pair of shoes for a shoeless impoverished youth.

??$20

You buy a cup of coffee that plants a tree.

??$0.094

You buy a bottle of water that funds 1/10th of a water project in a remote village with no access to such a luxurious service as clean drinking water.

??$0.1

Wouldn’t you feel good every time you put on those shoes???

Wouldn’t you want to shop at that coffee shop more often???

Wouldn’t you feel encouraged to encourage 9 others to drink that specific bottled water?

Studies show that people are willing to spend 14% more if they know there is a for-good cause behind your product or service.??

It’s good business to do good in business.??

Question:? How could your business attach a for-good component to their day-to-day transactions?

This concept is unlike the circular economy in which we aim to reduce our plastic usage, reuse it where possible, and then recycle it.??

A Positive Economy is a logical way for our planet and the things on it to heal themselves, and not just more effectively manage the poisonous activities we’ve introduced.

?What’s holding us back from widely adopting this mentality change?

I think it’s three things:

1. Cost - is my money being spent well?
2. Transparency - where exactly does my money go?
3. Sustainability - will this actually make a difference?

Most people reading this will have given to many for-good companies before - Can you answer these three questions about your personal contributions?

Recently, I met an experienced environmentalist at an airport in Africa.? After 20 minutes of waiting in line with her and my brother, I left the conversation inspired to write this article.

She said things like:?

“People need to trust that we’re professionals and know how to do our job and to stop asking questions like what’s the cost per tree”.??

And

“We ended up planting about half the amount of trees as forecasted because some people on the ground screwed up and we ran out of money”

And

“We manually count our (millions of) trees and estimate the survival rates”

Can you see the problem here?

Shameless plug: At For Trees Club , we are able to fix problems like this by:

1. Hiring an in-house team to develop AI-Tree Counting Software that can count millions of trees per day and upload the data to the blockchain so no one can change it
2. Putting our expenses online for public review and scrutiny
3. Knowing that we’ll never know everything so partnering with as many companies as possible to expand our capabilities is key to our ongoing success

My advice: ask yourself three questions before putting money into a for-good company:

1. Is my money being spent well?
2. Where exactly does my money go?
3. Will this actually make a difference?

Once you’ve found an organisation that you like, find a creative way to tie in this for-good activity into your transactions:

1. Financial - when someone buys $X worth of products or services they’ll contribute to Y Cause
2. HR - congratulate a new hire with a 100-tree forest for $9.4
3. Marketing - do something good for the planet with every referral, new product launch, or limited-time-only offer (instead of a financial discount)

I’m positive you’ll see more customers buying from you, more often, leaving everyone feeling better about themselves.

Let me know your thoughts.