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Nov 27, 06:12 pm: Buy your way to a better world

I’m too late to chime in on the Net2 Think Tank about using the social web during the giving season but, heck, tardiness has never stopped me from sharing my thoughts before.

I think it is great that we can buy Red and get yellow bracelets and that we can give to causes on Facebook. Wonderful. But, let’s face facts, buying isn’t going to change the world. It might bring awareness to problems. It might allow us to show our allegiance to a variety of causes. But it is working on the wrong end of problem.

I’d like to see something that takes the consumer interest in various issues, the burgeoning CSR trend, regulatory and other data and mashes it all up so that we can make better decisions about companies and support those corporations that are making sustainable choices that have positive social impacts further upstream in the product and production process — not just people who put marketing window dressing on a product and then donate a percent of proceeds to a cause.

Look at what the Sunlight Foundation is doing. Or Maplight. They are using mashing up data to tell us something about politicians. Where the money is coming from. Who the influencers are.

Why can’t we apply that same kind of visibility to corporations?

I’d love to see something that allowed me to look at a mix of regulatory missteps (as a company been fined for polluting, have the used poor contracting process for outsourced labor, what kind of consumer or employee complaints to they have against them), where they spend their dollars (do they donate to politicians or causes, do they have charity or volunteer program that engages their employees), their environmental impact (how green is there product, their plants, their practices) and employee practices (do they offer health insurance, do they recognize domestic partnerships, are they diverse) and see that all mashed up in some way that helps me to concretely reward companies that have the values I care about built into their business.

Maybe this looks like an index or exchange, maybe ends up being a numerical rating, I’m not sure.

I think that I’d like to interact with it by plugging in the issues I care most about and then getting a company rating that is associated with a product. So, I’m looking to buy a car — let me put in the issues that I care about and then rank the car companies. The same think can apply to a stereo, shoes, food brands, etc.

Does this already exist and I just don’t know about it? If not, where do we start? How do we mash up this data so that we have visibility into the philanthropy and impact of the corporation and not just the visibility of cause marketing?

tagged: causemarketing, csr, bsr, socialchange, mashups, net2