Pennsylvania is the 12th state to make “benefit corporations” a legal entity. These corporations are required by law to create general benefit for society, which includes shareholders, employees, the community at large, and the environment. Of course, rigourous third party standards are part of this.
UnTours has been a benefit corporation since 2007 when B Lab began certifying corporations before there was legislation. As you’ve heard before, UnTours is the first B Corp in the world!
This past Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s corporations had the opportunity to sign up under the state’s new Benefit Corporation laws. UnTours was the first to sign up (!) at the formal ceremony held at Independence Mall. Jay Coen Gilbert, a B Lab founder, gave a speech invoking UnTours and one of our former loan recipients, Home Care Associates. Here’s Jay’s speech!
Dr. King’s Triple Bottom Line: Remarks at the Ceremony for the Registration of the First Benefit Corporations in Pennsylvania
Sixty years ago this week, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his first sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. At his first sermon, King preached about ‘the three dimensions of a complete life’. King referred to these three dimensions as the Length, Breadth, and Height of a life, and they represented for King, respectively, an inward concern for one’s own personal welfare, ends and ambitions; an outward concern for others, and an upward reach toward God.
While not trying to claim his mantle, we do look to King and others for inspiration in our work. King’s framework for ‘the three dimensions of a complete life’ is similar to the framework for a ‘triple bottom line’ business, with Length, Breadth, and Height replaced by Profit, People, and Planet.
The inward concern of a business is for its own personal welfare, namely its profits — in King’s words, its Length. Indeed, without Profits the length of the life of a business will be short. If you want your business to have a long life, be profitable.
The outward concern of a business is its concern for the welfare of others — in King’s words, its Breadth. And this too feels right. The Breadth of a business ought to be measured by how it extends its concerns beyond those of its owners to those of its workers, its suppliers, and its customers – to all the People that are touched by the business.
Lastly, the upward concern of a business – or in King’s words its Height – might be reflected in its concern for the rest of God’s creation, the environment. And this concern might exist not simply to steward the resources of our Planet for our own profitable use over time, but to do so for its own sake, its own beauty, and to safeguard that beauty so that it can be enjoyed for our children’s children.
King concluded his first sermon by saying that ‘unless these three [dimensions] are [connected], working harmoniously together in a single life, that life is incomplete.’ The same can be said for a business. Unless concerns for People, Planet, and Profit are connected, working harmoniously together in a single business, that business is incomplete.
So, today, on the day after our country celebrates the birth of one of our greatest leaders, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the week of the sixtieth anniversary of his first sermon, we celebrate some of the leaders who embody the highest aspirations of Dr. King.
Today, we celebrate business leaders who are working to connect harmoniously the interdependent concerns of People, Planet, and Profit. Today, we celebrate business leaders who are drum majors for a more just and sustainable economy. Today, we celebrate business leaders who are using the power of free and fair markets to manifest Dr. King’s beloved community. We celebrate business leaders who inspire us to judge a business not just by how well it serves shareholders, but by how well it serves society. We celebrate business leaders who compete not just to be the best in the world, but to be the best for the world.On this day, by becoming the first registered benefit corporations in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, these business leaders have honored the memory of Dr. King and we honor them.
While Dr. King would have found many elements in each of these businesses to admire, I believe he would have been especially pleased to celebrate the profound beauty and grace of two of these leaders – a modest travel business called UnTours and a little home health care company aptly named Home Care Associates. And I believe Dr. King would have been particularly pleased to note the story that links them in a manifestation of the mutualism of which he so often spoke.
UnTours is a 30 year old travel business whose real business is cross-cultural understanding. But what makes UnTours unique is that for most of its history, UnTours has donated 100% of its profits to serve the poor. UnTours founder Hal Taussig, like Dr. King, and Gandhi, and other great men before him, believes in giving people a hand up, not a hand out. So for decades, Hal Taussig and UnTours have invested their profits, through low interest loans, to help low income people create economic opportunity for themselves. UnTours has invested in fair trade handicrafts in Vietnam; they have invested in landless peasants in Brazil; they have invested in micro-entrepreneurs in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Hal Taussig and UnTours were recognized by Paul Newman and John F. Kennedy, Jr., as ‘The Most Generous Company in America’. This recognition came with a $250,000 award. Hal Taussig and UnTours promptly used that award money, not for themselves, but to help another business get through a life-threatening period.
Hal’s wife Norma had been homebound for some time after a stroke. Her home care nurse worked for a company called Home Care Associates. The company it seemed was in danger of failing and as a result Norma’s nurse and scores of other low-income women of color would lose their jobs. Hal wondered if the nurses like Norma’s couldn’t run the company better themselves. And with a $250,000 loan from UnTours, Home Care Associates turned itself into a worker-owned cooperative and has been thriving ever since.
Home Care Associates is a beautiful manifestation of King’s vision of a ‘complete business’. It provides essential home health care services in predominantly low-income communities and the people who do this essential work of compassion and caring for those with the least among us are the worker-owners of the business. As this company grows, so grows King’s beloved community in every dimension.
Dr. King told us that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to be a big business to be great. You don’t have to be a fast-growing business to be great. You don’t have to be a high technology business to be great. You just have to have a heart full of grace and hunger to use your business to serve.