By Carolyn Gray Anderson
UCLA Anderson’s second annual Social Innovation Week culminated in a day of events that included a keynote address by Priya Bery, chief of staff of TOMS, the one-for-one shoe company setting an example of how for-profit businesses can be part of the solution to global problems.
TOMS is a giving company, plain and simple. Without giving, there would be no business. Period.
In a conversation with Anderson lecturer Gayle Northrop, Bery explained that the company didn’t start with shoes or any other product. From its inception, she said, TOMS was not a “business idea.” This distinguishes it from companies that produce and sell first, then tack on a separate foundation or nonprofit for their giving. Formerly, said Bery, “business only ever came to the table to write a check.” At TOMS, giving is integrated into every level and facet of daily operations. It’s the raison d’être.
So, what TOMS makes and sells is incidental to everything else it achieves. Getting shoes onto kids’ feet — in part by donating a pair of shoes for every pair purchased by a customer — means keeping children in school, enabling them to join team athletics and other forms of play, and staving off infections and disease. People who could not otherwise afford shoes get shod, as it were, and the truly important things in their lives — education, health, self-esteem — are possible. All because founder Blake Mykoskie wanted to help solve a world problem but didn’t want to ask for donations or write grants to do it.
TOMS is what Bery calls a “storytelling brand,” and loyal to that brand are consumers who become participants. Students at Pepperdine initiated the first One Day without Shoes barefoot walk event to raise awareness about the importance of hygiene and sanitation for people in places where deadly diseases are contracted because they can’t cover their feet. TOMS embraced this idea and now sponsors it. In 2015, the campaign will last from May 5 to 21, and at its heart is a drive to get people’s barefoot photographs on Instagram with the hash tag #withoutshoes. Northrop gamely doffed her TOMS and agreed to model for the campaign as Bery snapped her shoeless feet on stage.
Net Impact’s Allison Faris (’15), who organized Social Innovation Week, said, “Priya's explanation of how TOMS integrates the giving function across the entire business, from marketing to finance to logistics, [is] a perfect example of what I was hoping to achieve.”
A common misunderstanding about TOMS is that what’s given away is identical to what the customer buys. Most recently, TOMS started selling canvas bags and knapsacks. The corresponding giving supports better maternal and neonatal health in places where the mortality rate is high. But new mothers don’t get a purse or tote bag; a network of giving partners provide them with birth kits to prevent infection at the time of delivery and offer training to skilled birth attendants to aid in safe delivery of babies. This is what you’re really shouldering when you throw on that TOMS backpack.
Northrop, president of Northrop Nonprofit Consulting, a firm specializing in strategic planning, organizational development and leadership development for NGOs worldwide, has used TOMS as a case study in her social entrepreneurship class. Introducing Bery, she said, “TOMS is a perfect example of a game-changer.”
Bery, whose background includes corporate philanthropy and work that falls at the intersection of business and government, was visiting the UCLA campus for the first time, and said she was excited to get involved just as a Center for Social Innovation is in the works at Anderson. Outgoing VP of Net Impact’s campuswide social impact initiatives and chair of the Center for Social Innovation Planning Committee Devon Dickau said, “Social Innovation Week is our biggest opportunity of the year to engage the whole Anderson community in important conversations about social impact. For the past several years, Anderson students have been working with alumni, faculty and administration to build a foundation for what will eventually become a new Center for Social Innovation. We are creating energy around the nexus of business and social impact through partnerships between Net Impact and other professional clubs; encouraging integration of social innovation discussions into our coursework; and hosting a diverse array of impact-focused events throughout the year.”
Faris said, “By having social innovation panels and events over a week, instead of a day-long conference, we are able to reach more students that can pick and choose what sector they are interested in learning about. Because positive social change can really be made by anyone, no matter what their title or function is.” Dickau agreed that “We have been able to demonstrate the need for a formal mechanism to ignite and support our students' passion for making the world a better place.”
In traditional for-profit models, bottom lines are easy to track. Determining the “social ROI” Net Impact encourages, Bery said, is much more challenging. “Community engagement is fundamental to TOMS,” Bery said as she described the extent to which TOMS local giving partners drive decisions about how the company inserts itself into their local economies. Needs are assessed locally so TOMS can avoid undermining local merchants, for instance. Giving partners qualify on the basis that their organization, usually an NGO, is up and running and has shown a certain amount of success in the location in question.
TOMS as a company commits to what it calls “the last mile,” whereby partners who agree to distribute free shoes are also given an essential financial contribution to make that happen. TOMS supports the partner until the shoe has crossed necessary borders and is actually on the child’s foot. Regarding the NGO giving partners that manage the final distribution, she said, “Trust is a really big part of making this all work.”
Is the one-for-one model a movement? Bery hopes so. “For us, anyone who’s become part of the TOMS story through a purchase is part of our movement.
“Giving is cool,” she laughed, “we never want it to go out of style.”
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