His name is Dan Pallotta .  I heard him do a short commentary last night on Marketplace, and I was really surprised at his veracity and passion, which you frankly don’t often hear on public radio.  What’s more, his premise makes a lot of sense.  He says that we hamper the ability of charities to produce social benefit because we impose on them what he calls a “puritan ethic of deprivation.”

Listen to his remarks here.

In my view we need a third category of corporations, beyond the “for profit” and “not for profit” designations.  Some have suggested a new category called “for benefit” corporation that would allow charities to make money, receive donations, and have access to capital like the for-profit sector does.  Bill Drayton of Ashoka argues that this is inevitable, that charities and social entrepreneurs MUST begin acting more like businesses and regulations must catch up.  In short, tax law and donor expectations need to catch up with the emerging reality that social causes are best served when charities are allowed to use the tools of capitalism to succeed.

Dan Pallotta’s new book could be the start of something great.  And remember, you heard it here first.

And by “Green Christmas” I don’t mean the kind of “green” Christmas advocated by the Heat Miser, that fictitious perpetrator of global warming…

Rather, I mean the kind of green Christmas advocated by Cyndy Yu-Robinson, my Lenovo colleague who joined us in 2008 after several years at the Environmental Protection Agency. Cyndy recently created a wiki page on the Lenovo internal network with tips on how to be more environmentally responsible during the holiday season. I re-post it here for your use.

But first, as I was writing this entry, another Lenovo colleague, Greyson Davis, saw a picture of Heat Miser on my screen and quite naturally asked “what on earth are you doing?” I explained that I was writing a blog post referencing Heat Miser. He claimed that he had no idea who Heat Miser was. I found that hard to believe, particularly because he actually resembles Heat Miser, don’t you agree?

Also, the year the Heat Miser movie was made was the same year Greyson was born.  Coincidence?

Anyway, here are Cyndy’s tips, or as I call her, Sustainability Cyndy:

Greener holidays 2008

A list of helpful hints to save energy, materials, and money

The holidays are full of excitement and joy for most people. They can also deplete natural resources and your wallet if you’re not careful. The most fashionable gift this season may be frugality!

Gifts

Alternatives to tangible things that become more stuff to maintain

• Adopt an acre of biodiversity or wildlife with a donation to a conservation organization.
• Make a tax-deductible donation for greeting cards or to support a cause like sustainable agriculture, cancer research, literacy, etc.
• Gather a holiday basket of locally farmed foods.
• Give (and eat) organic, fair-trade chocolate.
• Give a set of decorative “LED” holiday lights. (They use 90% less energy than conventional holiday lights and can save up to $50 on energy bills per holiday season.)
• Give gardening supplies and seeds and a gift card to a nursery/garden center.
• Give an act of service: Offer gutter cleaning, house repair, or pet-sitting services to a neighbor in need.
• Prepare a full meal for a busy family, a favorite teacher, or a friend.
• Assemble a book of your favorite recipes or give preserves you made yourself.
• Give carbon offsets. This purchase negates the energy footprint of carbon emissions.
• Give music and books from iTunes or similar vendors of downloadable content.
• Give tickets to a concert, show, sporting event, or museum, or give an annual pass to a national or state park.

Gift wrapping

Fact: Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in landfills. Instead, try some wrapping alternatives. If every family wrapped just three gifts this way, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. Innovative or re-usable gift wrapping:

• Scarves, handkerchiefs or bandanas
• Old posters and maps
• Pages from a child’s coloring book taped together (nice for relatives)
• Old sheet music
• Newspapers (the funnies and foreign newspapers are great)
• Last year’s holiday paper (press with warm iron if wrinkled)
• Wallpaper scraps
• Fabric scraps
• Pictures or advertisements from magazines and catalogs
• A present in a present (for example, cookies in a reusable tin or cookie jar, barbecue grill utensils or picnic supplies in a tablecloth, kitchen gifts in towels.)
• A cake pan, basket or a wooden box
• Reusable grocery bags
• Purchase wrapping paper made from recycled paper.

Bows, ribbons and gift tags

These items make an eye-catching final touch:

• Bows saved from other gifts
• Reusable items, such as hair bows, ornaments, shoe laces or toys
• Stencils or pictures from holiday cards pasted onto a plain brown paper bag or box
• Last year’s holiday cards cut up for gift tags
• Old neckties as ribbons
• Spices, such as bundled cinnamon sticks or cloves in mesh cloth
• Scrap fabric, lace, yarn, rickrack and seam tape
• Scarves
• Combinations of beads and buttons
• Dried or silk flowers

Packing

• Dry, popped popcorn (include a note explaining that birds can eat it.)
• Biodegradable starch packing peanuts
• Used packing peanuts from previous gifts (unwanted packing peanuts, if they are clean, are accepted by many packaging stores for reuse)
• Crumpled ads from the newspaper (The ink on glossy paper won’t smear as it does on the rest of the newspaper)

Greeting cards

• Replace paper cards with E-greetings sent by E-mail.
• For family members, share a link to an online photo gallery of your family’s activities through the year.
• E-mail a slideshow of your company or division’s annual accomplishments.
• Call your mother! Say Happy Holidays instead of writing it.
• Cut the covers of the cards and write thank-you’s on them; you can mail them as postcards or hand deliver them the next time you see your friends. Use a 20-cent stamp on postcards. This saves money in postage, the cost of note cards, and a tree.

Holiday tree and decor

• Consider buying a potted Norfolk pine, fig tree or indoor house plant that can be used every holiday season as your evergreen tree.
• Purchase a tree from a tree farm rather than cutting one down in the wild.
• Use trimmed branches from your tree for decorating around the home or making wreaths.
• Consider buying an artificial tree that can be reused every year.
• Decorate evergreen bushes or pine trees outside a window with removable, reusable decorations.
• Use memorabilia, such as a child’s first shoe or grandma’s hankie scented with perfume.
• Use an old full skirt as a tree skirt.
• Display items collected on vacation.
• Display small stuffed animals and toys.
• Use cookie cutters as tree ornaments.
• Create edible cookie ornaments…Use gingerbread or sugar cookie dough baked with a hole; thread a ribbon through hole and hang on bough of tree.
• Make popcorn and cranberry strings (can be eaten by animals after the holidays).
• Use reusable glass icicles instead of disposable tinsel (keeps tree clean for mulching).
• Display spices from the kitchen instead of commercially prepared and packaged products or aerosols (for example, create pomander balls by placing whole cloves in oranges or lemons to create decorations that look and smell great).
• Create gingerbread people and reindeer from leftover brown paper grocery bags placed on windows and walls for decoration.
• Create a tin can or paper bag luminary (punch holes into empty metal can; place candle inside.)

Party waste reduction tips

• Buy baking goods and snack food in bulk or large volumes.
• Use reusable tableware; if you don’t have enough, ask to borrow reusable tableware from friends or family.
• Rent dishes, napkins, cups and saucers, tablecloths and glasses instead of using expensive disposables.
• Cut up last year’s holiday cards and use as place cards.
• Use outdated calendars taped together to make a unique New Year’s tablecloth.
• Place easily identifiable recycling containers at your celebration so guests can recycle their pop cans, bottles, etc.
• Find a local farmer that you can buy a turkey from. Order ahead of time and be aware that it will cost more than grocery store turkeys.
• Try to buy organic ingredients for your other dishes. Too expensive? Have a potluck and see if other guests might be willing to bring organic dishes.
• Think about what you normally buy in decorations and extras. Reduce it by 25% and see if anyone notices.

Energy-efficient holiday errands and travel

• Research gift ideas, availability, and pricing by internet or phone first.
• Group errands by geographic location and make a travel plan that reduces time in the car and miles on the road. According to the Department of Energy, several short trips taken from a cold start can use twice as much fuel as a longer, multipurpose trip covering the same distance when the engine is warm. Do like FedEx; maximize right hand turns to reduce vehicle miles traveled.
• Shop during non-peak times…Standing in a long line or sitting in rush hour traffic wastes time and gas. If possible, adjust your work schedule so that you avoid rush hour traffic and shop at unusual times (early morning, Saturday after 9 PM).
• Look into the public transportation options in your area, and use them as much as possible.
• Keep Your Car in Shape…A well-tuned car burns less gasoline. Get your oil and air filters changed regularly and properly inflate your tires.
• Carpool for shopping if you can…Share holiday time with a friend or family member and get errands done.
• Drive Smart…When you drive aggressively, you waste gas and put others at risk. Observe the speed limit, avoid rapid acceleration and braking, and maintain a constant speed on the road.
• Park at the First Place You See…Research has shown that drivers who try to sniff out lower cost parking or closer to the mall parking are adding an average of a half mile of vehicle miles traveled per trip. The gas prices, air pollution, and traffic congestion add up.
• Pack Light for Road Trips…According to the Department of Energy, a loaded roof rack on your car can decrease fuel economy by approximately five percent. Also, every 100 pounds you carry in a car reduces a typical car’s fuel economy by one to two percent.

These ideas were assembled by the Lenovo NC Green Team from the Sierra Club, Celebrate Green by Lynn Corey Colwell-Lipson and Lynn Colwell, ezinearticles.com, and the U.S. Department of Energy

Another Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us here in the United States.  I trust that you all did your duty and shopped like crazy to help the global economy.

But perhaps some of you are still looking for the perfect gift for that special someone.  Fortunately we can use this forum to help one another come up with some great alternatives.

This time of year my thoughts often turn to a classic Seinfeld episode in which George receives a “gift” that is simply a card telling him that a donation has been made in his name to “The Children’s Alliance.”  At first he is offended, but then he realizes that the concept of giving charitable “gifts” has a lot of money-saving potential.  So he proceeds to make his own cards saying “a donation has been made in your name” to a fictitious charity he called The Human Fund (their slogan:  ”Money for People,” which Jerry says has a certain “understated stupidity”).

Believe it or not, these Festivus cards are available on eBay

In my view George’s concept is an example of a good idea, badly executed.

I have everything I need, and then some.  If you were thinking of getting me a Festivus gift this year I want you to know that I don’t wear ties, I don’t eat fruitcake, and I don’t have the discipline or memory to make good use of gift certificates.

So instead, if you insist on giving me a gift, please make a donation (in my name or not) to Africa Rising.  They are an intriguing new nonprofit that supports indigenous African social entrepreneurs, and they are currently trying to raise enough money to hire their first full-time Executive Director by January 1.  Africa Rising was recently profiled on our local PBS station, so you can learn more by viewing this short video, and you can make a secure donation here.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am on the board of Africa Rising, and the handsome, articulate bald man in the video is me.  Unlike George’s “Human Fund,” I assure you this organization is legit!

That’s one example, but there are many more.  I need your help in compiling a list of meaningful gift giving options to share with all Heart of Business readers.  Submit your ideas by clicking the “comments” link below, and the full list will be compiled and published later this month (certainly before sundown on December 21st, the beginning of Hanukkah).  I encourage any of you who have your own blogs to also publish the list.

Here are a few (in addition to Africa Rising) to get us started:

Heifer International, through which you can give a goat, cow, flock of ducks, a llama or many other “meaningful gifts” to needy families, of course in honor of your loved ones.

Kiva gift certificates.  You knew I would mention Kiva, didn’t you?  I gave a bunch of these last year for Christmas. With Kiva gift certificates, you are introducing your loved ones to a really great thing:  the opportunity to loan money to poor entrepreneurs who will start or expand businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.  One nice feature is you can figure out who has redeemed their gift certificates, and send reminders to those who haven’t.

Alaffia, natural skin care products produced from Shea butter by women in Togo, sold online and in many fair trade shops in the US.

And of course I should point out if you are in the market for a PC that Lenovo donates 1% of its profit from all sales to worthy causes, including those discussed exhaustively on this blog!

Let’s start a revolution in gift giving.  I look forward to your ideas.

I am not quite finished with it yet, but so far I have to say that this is one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time.  Check it out, and let me know what you think.

Welcome Greg Hunt, a sales manager at Lenovo Australia, to the Heart of Business.

Australians are legendary travelers; it is common, darn nigh expected, for them to put their careers on hold for a year to travel the world.  But you will not likely find them at Disney World; they are serious about making their travel meaningful.  For example, I had an Aussie friend who told me that it is shameful to return home from your year of travel without having taken the pilgrimage to Gallipoli.

Greg was one of several employees from our team in Australia / New Zealand who recently traveled to India in order to participate in an Insight Trip through Opportunity International.  This is a great way for employees to learn about what one of our key nonprofit partners is doing to alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship, and we thank Opportunity International for making it happen.

I have no idea what kind of a sales manager Greg is, but he clearly missed his calling as a travel writer.

————————————

Take your passport back from the immigration officer at Chennai airport, take four steps, just four, four is all you need and you’re outside, immersed in the balmy Indian night, surrounded by hopeful taxi drivers. Have a look around: there are a line of cars straight from the 1950s parked neatly in a row; there are people everywhere, a massive crowd just hanging around; over in the corner of the parking lot, standing there like it belongs, is a long-horned Brahmin bull hitched to a cart with large wooden wheels. You are in a different world.

We pile into a creaking van to drive from the airport to the hotel. We have our first experience with the Indian traffic. An Indian road stretches from one curb to the other. There is a line down the middle of the road but that line is just a suggestion, mere decoration. At any time cars, trucks, motorcycles or auto rickshaws may be coming at you, at other times, three vehicles are jammed into the space for two, at all times the traffic is weaving in and out, everybody has their hand on the horn. It’s mayhem.

While the girls cruise Spencer Mall, a maze of tiny stalls in a concrete hi-rise, which bills itself as ‘paradise for shoppers’, I go for a walk. There’s a main road that I walk along, I come to a major intersection. The road is being re-surfaced. One corner of the intersection is roped off, within it bitumen is being made, there is a large, hot machine, there are puddles of steaming liquid and sitting to one side in the carcinogenic funk is a little girl of about five. She’s caring for her younger brother. No parents to be seen. A few more steps down the street, a small boy, about the same age as my son appears by my side, hand out, a pleading look in his eyes. I immediately want to give him something, surely I can help. But then I look down the street, I can easily see another twelve children with the same outstretched hands and pleading eyes. Twelve children, in the space of one hundred metres. I realise that I can’t help. Although the look in the child’s eyes makes me want to weep, I harden my heart and keep my money in my pocket.

We meet with the people at Opportunity International. They provide very small loans to groups of women. They explain that each loan improves the lives of up to fifteen people as the cash is spent in the women’s immediate community. A large portion of the Indian populace are living on about $1.30 a day, it is estimated that two hundred million Indians are malnourished, they can’t afford to eat. The loans provided lead to repayments of one hundred rupee a fortnight, about $3. The numbers are shocking. I’m doing a little arithmetic, I have $100 on my feet, $1,000 on my wrist, and don’t forget the $1,500 camera slung over my shoulder. How many people is that? How many lives could be improved? I can see others in the group doing the same sums.

Over the next few days, we meet groups of women taking part in the micro-financing programme. They explain to us that they use the money to run businesses, they buy and sell saris, they make and sell jewelery, one runs a beauty salon. We ask them how their lives have changed and they light up talking about their feelings of self-worth, their confidence in the future, their ability to put some more food on the table and send their children to better schools. These women are inspirational.

A debate rages in the car: we are arguing about the source of happiness of these women. Eventually we decide that it comes from their sense of place. They are not aspiring to great wealth, they are content with small improvements to ease the burden of their lives. It makes me think about how lucky I have been in the lottery, born into a middle class Western family with access to high levels of education and high paying employment.

After a few days, we are taken out of Chennai to Temple Bay, a couple of hours to the south. We are used to the mayhem now we handle the near misses, the constant horns, the strange vehicles and the on-coming traffic in our lane calmly. We are now experts and have formulated our own three rules for negotiating Indian traffic successfully: a good horn, good brakes and good luck.

Greg Hunt

Lenovo Australia / New Zealand

This has been a good week for quotable one-liners.

I have been corresponding recently with Rob Katz, one of the founders and editors of the fantastic Next Billion blog and a thought leader in strategies to alleviate poverty.  Rob now works for Acumen Fund, of which I am becomming a huge fan. (By the way, if you want to learn more about what Acumen does and help in their mission, consider attending their annual Celebration / fund raiser).

We were discussing the economic downturn and he wrote the following:

“Sitting in New York it has been amazing to see the impact of the financial crisis on everyone around us, and at the same time we know that when the rich stumble, the poor run the risk of falling off a cliff.”

I also received an email from Jamie Amelio regarding Caring for Cambodia (which has a really cool web site, by the way).  She told me about the beginning of the school year in Cambodia, full of excitement and optimism.  They are making good progress in training teachers and in providing clean water to all of their schools (and you thought YOUR school had issues).  Their enrollment is “over the top,” according to Jamie.  Clearly enthusiastic, she ended her note with:

“Much has been done, but so much to do!”

Last night I had dinner with my friend Brian Bramson, formerly a doctor with Partners in Health in Malawi, and a guest blogger on the Heart of Business.  We were talking with our weekly Bible study group about what hope there is for “changing the world,” and how you can be optimistic in the face of huge challenges.

He recalled when he arrived in Malawi in the early part of this century that AIDS and hunger were so pervasive that carpenters had created a sort of “death row” along the roadsides, selling coffins, many of them child-sized, because that was the piece of “furniture” that was in highest demand.

Just a few years later, those carpenters are now selling tables, chairs, and beds along the roadsides.  Signs of life have replaced reminders of death.

This because Partners in Health and others began distributing free ARV drugs for AIDS patients, and because Jeff Sachs at the Earth Institute helped the Malawi government start a free fertilizer program to improve crop yields.  Nothing complicated, no magic, just simple solutions that produced good results.  Brian’s conclusion:

“I don’t like pessimism; it’s just so boring.”

Since some of you might have missed it, I post here a video summary of the Carolina HopeFest.  Be sure to watch it in full-screen mode – the hi-def looks great!

By the way, this video comes from Nate Clarke of Fourth Line Films , whom I HIGHLY recommend.

In the category of juxtapositions:

Yesterday I had to stay home with my seven-year-old daughter Emma Grace who has had a fever for  the last eight days (no worries, she is back at school today thanks to azithromycin, whatever that is).  Lenovo is very accommodating in these kinds of situations, thankfully.

I had several conference calls, so I spent a lot of time on the phone.  One of the more interesting conversations was with the World Bank.  I don’t get the opportunity to talk with the World Bank every day, so I was trying my best to prepare and focus, giving the meeting the attention it deserved.  

At about 2:30 PM it was my turn to talk, so I was pacing around the house while I spoke, using hand gestures nobody could see to help make my points clear.  I was outlining Lenovo’s efforts to alleviate poverty through our “Hope through Entrepreneurship” program, and suggesting ways we can collaborate with “The Bank” (as insiders call it).  

Things were going very well.  They were asking good questions, and I was providing what I thought were all the right answers.  I was really “on my game,” or “in the zone,” as they say in sports.  

And then…

EG

“Daddy,” said a little girl, still in her pajamas, tugging on my sleeve, “can I have a peanut butter sandwich?”

I try very hard to be an attentive father, and to keep my priorities straight.  I realize that Emma Grace is more important than the World Bank, at least to me.  And we always try to avoid using the television as a babysitter.  But all I could think to do at this point was to say, “Emma, can you watch SpongeBob until I’m finished with this call?” 

I tried to be quiet, but I’m pretty sure the World Bank people caught the words “peanut butter” and “SpongeBob.” 

Poverty reduction, entrepreneurship, global development, peanut butter, and SpongeBob.  On balance it was a highly productive meeting.

I just came across an interesting entry on the Marketplace “Greenwash Brigade ” blog.  (Full disclosure:  Lenovo is an underwriter of Marketplace).

You may be familiar with “tax freedom day ,” the theoretical day of the year that marks when we have earned enough money to pay our taxes (April 23rd this year).  The rest of the year we make money for ourselves instead of the government.

The concept described in the blog, overshooting the earth , is similar, but sort of the opposite.  Earth Overshoot Day  (September 23rd this year) is the theoretical day of the year when we have consumed all of the resources (oxygen, water, food, forests) that the earth is able to produce for the year.  The remainder of the year we run a deficit, dipping into past resource reserves that can never be replenished as long as we continue to consume as we are in 2008.

To help understand this concept, suppose that the oceans’ fish population can naturally grow by 100 million fish between January 1and December 31 2008 (I made that number up).  If we consume more than 100 million fish, then we have “overshot” that resource and start reducing the population so that there are fewer fish on January 1, 2009 than there were on January 1, 2008.  You can see how this problem can snowball, because fewer existing fish at the beginning of 2009 means fewer additions to the population throughout the year, so we will overshoot supply even earlier.

Interestingly, we started overshooting our resources in 1986.  Prior to that we were actually in balance.  Now we are overshooting by about 40%.  That means we need 1.4 earths to sustain our lifestyle.  Or 1.4 years to produce everything we consume this year.

That’s a global number, by the way, reflecting consumption by all people in the world.  If everybody lived like me, it would be much worse; we would need 3 earths to sustain us, according to the Consumer Consequences game on the Marketplace site.  That would make me feel bad, but it’s actually below average for people who have played the game.

One thing I can’t find on the Earth Overshoot site is how long we can keep this up.  How vast is our store of resources?  How quickly will it all be depleted at this rate?  Will it last a billion years, or be exhausted in our children’s lifetimes?  An important question, I should think.

As many of you know, Lenovo is a strong supporter of Kiva – a non-profit website that lets you make $25 micro-loans to entrepreneurs living in poverty.  

Kiva is a Top 5 finalist in the American Express Members Project competition. ( You may have seen TV commercials for this competition in the US featuring Jim Hensen, Jerry Seinfeld, John Cleese, and Ellen DeGeneres).

If enough people vote for it to win, Kiva will receive a $1.5 million grant from American Express.  This money would help Kiva reach 60,000 more entrepreneurs so that they can lift themselves out of poverty.  If you have an AMEX card, I’d really appreciate you voting sometime this week here:

 http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/P6KQEI