Among the three pillars of triple bottom line sustainability, the social bottom line – People – tends to be the toughest to implement (and not just because it’s the toughest to measure). Donations, grants, or sponsorships represent the low hanging fruit. Building social sustainability into your business model is a whole another story.
Yesterday I attended the Portland Real Estate Industry Social at the Tanzamook Townhomes. The meetup took place in one of the 3-level 3-bedroom townhomes located at NE 11th and Tillamook Street. At first sight, the Tanzamook is just another infill development, albeit built to the Earth Advantage Gold standard. But as its name indicates, the complex has another dimension.
The sale of each townhome pays for a dorm room at a girls school in Iringa, Tanzania. Ten units equals ten dorm rooms; the price of a unit in Portland incorporates (about 1%) the cost of a unit in Iringa. I did get a chance to chat with one of Tanzamook’s architects, Ben Hufford. “These are 4-bedroom units,” he said. “Except you can’t use the fourth bedroom because it’s in Tanzania and there are six African girls living in it.”
In fact, each residential project of Ben’s firm, Design Department, builds a school dorm room in Tanzania.
Beyond cause marketing
The primary characteristic of cause marketing is a company’s “public association with a social or charitable cause or organization to promote the company’s product/service and raise money for the cause or organization”.
While Tanzamook does raise money for a specific purpose, the association with the cause features less prominently in its marketing (most people I talked to at the Meetup had no idea about the Tanzania connection). Rather, the social benefit is built into the business model. In cause marketing, both company and cause would function without the association. By contrast, in social (or social-like) enterprises, the company and cause are inextricably linked – they’re two sides of the same coin. There is no Tanzamook without Tanzanian dorm rooms, and there are no dorm rooms without the townhomes at Northeast Tillamook.
Social sustainability and PR
The Tanzamook has attracted decent press, both on- and offline, positive and negative, before and after completion. Unique among the Tanzamook’s aspects, the development’s social benefit – Tanzanian dorm rooms – passed the public and media scrutiny without controversy. Social sustainability thus comes with a tangible in-bound benefit as well.
- OregonLive.com
- The Oregonian
- Portland Architecture
- Coroflot
- Portland Mercury – Blogtown
- Jack Bog’s Blog
- Global Greenie
- Daily Journal of Commerce
- Neighborhood Notes
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Good to know about such a project. This show’s how corporate social responsibility need not be a project external of the day to day functions of an organizations. An entity can be socially responsible while executing a revenue/sales generation model in line with financial objectives and without causing too much disruption on the resources by requiring new initiatives or business activities.
@Caleb: My point exactly. Triple bottom line sustainability must be built into the core business model – inside-out – for it to realize its full potential. You can be environmentally conscious, socially responsible, and make money at the same time. Mere implementation of sustainable practices – outside-in – and calling yourself a sustainable business is a variation of greenwashing.