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Businesses and projects that create long term, stable, secure and steadily increasing profitability based on the provision of goods and services that effectively address real needs; and in a way that combines creativity, talent, commitment, energy and material as efficiently as possible.
Successful projects are able to adapt to the changing realities of life in a way that is deeply connected with their core purpose, values, mission and vision.
means that those materials that “re–source” or are supplied to us from our physical environment are worked with in such a way that the end result of our interaction with them is that there is more available to supply the future then there was when we began.
In organic permaculture and biodynamic agriculture, for example, soil farmed intensively for decades is more fertile than when the farm was started.
This ideal may not be immediately applicable to every situation. What do we do then? Reducing the negative impact is a great start. Use recycled paper products, compost green waste, install a solar hot water heater or lighten the color of the roof in hot climates to reduce the cost of cooling the office. It’s all important.
for vendors, employees, and community. Every business has tremendous opportunities to address its effect on the physical, mental, emotional, cultural, financial and spiritual well being of those people with whom it interacts on a daily basis. Improving the Social Bottom Line means starting and growing social progress programs along specific measurables being developed as part of the UFB Model that:
1) Are important and valued by the populations themselves as compared to what the business “thinks” would be good for them, and
2) Are improvements generated directly or indirectly by the activity and or operation of the business as compared to, say, a donation to a non-profit doing good works.
Examples include buying only from socially progressive vendors that support their employees’ continuing education and wellness, quality full working day care for small children of employees, flex hours to accommodate single parents, and internships offered to at risk youth or disabled workers to learn new skills and explore new career paths.
Educational and arts programs that empower people to become more personally effective at improving social and environmental bottom line results are another highly leveraged way to create social progress and a constructive relationship with the environment.
Perhaps the biggest cultural improvements we can support in our communities are simply to respect, be interested in, learn from and make a place for the aspects of local culture that have been there before us or are still there, often struggling with adaption to change. Our commitment is to partner with the keepers of culture so that together we may preserve the strength of ancient wisdom and values while supporting the constant renewal of their applicability to the here and now.
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