Conservation International
Ξ October 22nd, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Philanthropy |
In my last post, I wrote about my company’s new campaign to create a totally new and unique customer experience that seamlessly integrates philanthropic donation into the purchasing process. Every customer is able to choose the charity that speaks to their heart as they click their way through checkout. We give more with each item added into your cart and the donations come straight from our wallet, not the customers’. We’re confident that the power of our customers’ charitable passions will help us become the sort of new breed of business that puts social improvement right next to profit on the bottom line.
To help introduce this new campaign, I thought it would be a great idea to feature one of our charities each week on this blog. We’re passionate about every one and we’ve looked long and hard to find a range of charities that we think includes something for just about everyone. This week I’ll be writing about Conservation International.
This was one of the first charities that we absolutely knew we had to get behind. Most people have images of dreadlocks, granola, and some kind of hemp running through their heads whenever they hear the words conservation or environmentalism. You don’t get that with these guys. In fact, Conservation International is the kind of organization that is so pragmatic, forward-thinking and optimistic that they make you wish they were running all of the world’s governments.
They broke the mold of traditional conservation from “keeping places intact as relics of the past” to a “working model of the future – a future in which people lived in harmony with nature.” In order to accomplish this, they realized that they needed to add effective business practices, partnerships with national governments and major corporations and scientific innovation to their significant passion for the environment. This strategy of combining the best parts of science, technology, business and social outreach has catapulted them past more traditional environmental organizations to become a leader in their field. In fact, they’re now on charitynavigator.org’s “10 Best Charities Everyone’s Heard Of”.
What has set them apart more than anything, though, is their vision of nature as all-encompassing - from the boardroom to the playground to the ocean, every square foot of the earth is a connected part of this ecosystem. So, they understand that it doesn’t make sense to just retreat into the wilderness to face the problems that can start anywhere and affect humans, plants and animals everywhere. To CI it’s just as important to ensure that businesses and citizens are creating a human culture that’s in harmony with the earth as it is to repair the damage we’ve already done. This involves everyone from the largest company to the smallest village.
The scope of their projects and the way in which they tackle today’s biggest problems make them a charity we believe is deserving of all the funding we can provide. We believe this particularly because they don’t cling to any dogma about how things are o should be done, but concern themselves with the problems at hand and how to solve them. That’s the kind of charity we think is worthy.
