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Dean’s Beans was founded on the principle that business can and should be a vehicle for positive social, environmental and economic change.  Every decision we make gets filtered through that ethical lens.

Since we have long term, respectful relationships with all of the farmers we buy from in fourteen countries, we know that they give us their best coffee in return.  That’s not just hype, that is what the farmers tell us and our independent cupping bears that out.

A consumer can be assured that everybody in the supply chain is being treated respectfully, fairly and being assisted to realize their life’s goals as well.  We do this through our People-Centered Development program, where we co-design with the farmers development projects that address their highest community priorities.

Charity is an important thing, but it is not about change, it is about maintenance and help.

Many smaller companies don’t have direct relations with the farmers, buying through brokers instead. So charitable giving to organizations like Coffee Kids (which I co-founded in 1988) or Grounds for Health is the only way for those companies to give something back.

But charity does not require the giver to change their own behavior, only to give when they feel moved to do so. In order to participate effectively in social change, we must look at our own part of the equation and realize that we are participating in a system that will keep coffee farmers poor and disempowered forever.  Social change requires us to change our behavior as well, to break the cycle of trade relationships that took advantage of or even created underdevelopment in those lands.

Many businesses are trying to incorporate aspects of social responsibility into their operations. I applaud all of those efforts. At the same time I have to make two observations.

First, social responsibility is not just another product on the shelf, it is an ethical construct that should inform all of your behavior.  So it is really not enough to be “socially responsible” in your labor relations with your workers while you are a massive polluter. It can’t be compartmentalized if there is ever going to be real, lasting change.

Second, many companies use social responsibility as a marketing tool, with no serious commitment. Some companies spend massive amounts of money advertising their meager participation on fair trade or other socially responsible movements, but they have no company-wide commitment.

As a social movement, however, social responsibility is here to stay. It has evolved into an integral part of corporate thinking, and I have seen this all over the world through my work with FAO and the UN Global Compact. Now the fun begins as the battle between serious integration of the concept and manipulation for marketing purposes gets into full swing.  But that is always the tension in social movements.

Change is like a wave on the shore. It starts somewhere out there and swells with momentum. We only see the end product.

Companies only change their behavior in response to momentum from the public. The most clever or responsible ones see the momentum sooner and take action out of sincere commitment or just to capture an emerging market.

So it really begins with society at large, not necessarily the particular company’s consumer.  How it all begins is a mystery, but where it goes from there is not.  I have heard so many companies say they respond to consumer demand, that’s when they will change their behavior. Yet at the same time these companies put out information that lulls the consumer into believing that the problem is being addressed, even though the change at the company level is cosmetic and the commitment meager.

If the companies truly integrate social responsibility into their decision making, the benefits are enormous.

First of all, our environment benefits, as an important aspect of social responsibility is care for the environment.  That benefits all of us, although it is so difficult to quantify the benefits for an individual (they are there!).

Second—and again, this is hard to quantify, but that to me is not the final judge of something’s worth—social responsibility can go a long way towards peace-building in the world.

Believe me, I have seen so many times the result of treating people in the developing world with respect. People who feel respected and hopeful that their lives and their children’s lives will be better are far less likely to blow themselves up or firebomb a church. I don’t take that lightly.

By teaching the world to read, and helping save the environment.

Here’s how we do it: First, Better World Books takes “unwanted” books that would otherwise have ended up in landfill and finds new homes for them. We do this through library discards and donations, campus collections, and community book drives—so far we’ve diverted over 26 million books from landfills.

Then, when we sell the books a portion of every sale benefits our nonprofit literacy partners who use the funds for scholarships, to build schools, and to get books to people who need them. So far we’ve raised over $6.5 million for our nonprofit literacy partners.

We work very closely with our nonprofit literacy partners. For example, we regularly send college textbooks to Africa through Books for Africa in addition to funding much of their operation.

We recently worked with NCFL to develop a grant program—the BWB/NCFL Libraries and Families Award—that will make 3 awards a year of $10,000 to libraries. And of course, Invisible Children and Better World Books ran the biggest book drive in history last year, bringing in 1.9 million books.

But the greatest indicator of our commitment to our nonprofit partners is our new initiative to grant stock options to several of them. So now as Better World Books grows, our nonprofit partners stand to benefit.

People want to be socially responsible—it shows in our employees who are passionate about their work making a difference, and it shows in our customers who choose us over other alternatives because of our social mission.

What’s been lacking is a model where people can apply these principles to their daily work while not being divorced from the capitalist engine that forms our society. Triple bottom line companies, for-profit social enterprises, b-corporations—these are all part of a movement to change the way business is done to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

So ultimately, the commitment comes from the desire to have what we’re spending our time on matter in a profound way in the world.

We’ve grown from nothing to $31 million in sales in 5 years, and it is technology that has enabled us to scale effectively. Under the hood, we are actually a very sophisticated technology and analytics company.

For example, we constantly benchmark millions of prices across the web, and we measure supply and demand to arrive at fair, competitive prices. We list our books on 21 different Internet marketplaces, again facilitated by technology. And we use our technology combined with our logistics expertise to enable free shipping in the U.S. and low cost shipping around the world.

It’s hard to generalize from a specific business instance, but I think there are a couple of principles that small businesses can think about.

First, we take an unwanted resource—used books destined for landfill—and we turn it into a valuable product. There is something to say for thinking of society’s waste streams as a valuable opportunity not only through re-cycling, but through “up-cycling” or re-using first.

Second, the way we create that value is by leveraging the Internet. It provides us a potential customer base of something like a billion people, and our business is all about getting “unwanted” books where people can find them, which suddenly makes them very wanted indeed.

Finally, when you find the right way to build social benefit into your business, it isn’t a burden—it is the business. That’s a tall order, but there are a lot of very smart, creative entrepreneurs out there who can figure out how it applies and help fast-forward the social enterprise movement.