>> susie: capitalism by its very nature is about making money but what if you could make money and make the world a better place? >> tom: tonight, we tackle just that with a look at how young entrepreneurs, big companies and even everyday investors are changing the world with their decisions. this is "conscious capital" an n.b.r. special edition. "nightly business report" is made possible by: captioning sponsored by wpbt

>> susie: good evening, everyone and welcome to this "nightly business report" special edition: "conscious capital." more and more businesses are following this principle of creating companies not only to build the bottom line, but to build a better world. tom. >> tom: we've found several young entrepreneurs, susie, who are doing well by doing good. but it's a strategy not just for start-ups. from giant chains found on every corner to socially responsible investing funds, tonight we profile companies embracing the dual goals of "conscious capital." >> susie: we begin in northwest indiana at a company that buys and sells used books and donates a portion of its profits to literacy projects. diane eastabrook reports. >> reporter: better world books is an orphanage of sorts for used books. they come into the company's mishaiwaka indiana warehouse by the hundreds where they get sorted, recycled, re-sold or donated to charity.

better world's shelves are crammed with some four million hard covers and paperbacks with nearly 2.5 million unique titles. >> right here we're looking at a book understanding nutrition that could have come in from the university of nebraska or who knows where. and it's right next to a book about donald rumsfeld, yep it's a completely random put away. >> reporter: kreece fuchs is one of better world's three co- founders. the trio of former university of notre dame students hatched the idea for the company in their dorm. they found they could make more money selling their used text books over the internet than back to the school bookstore. >> over the course of that summer after i graduated, i would get an email saying your book sold and i would run to the post office and ship the book and you know a few days later i sold another book. >> reporter: last year better world made about $55 million buying and selling new and used books. the company donated roughly $2 million to literacy programs and to libraries which give better world their unwanted inventories. the public library in evanston, illinois has netted about

$4,600 over the past couple of years for the 20,000 books it discarded. >> these books will end up in the hands of people instead of landfills. so, it's really not for the money i would say. it's just a couple thousand dollars a year, but it inspires another generation of learners and readers. >> reporter: better world is also making northwest indiana a better place to live. the employee-owned company is providing more than 200 jobs in an area where unemployment tops 11%. shipping clerk rick gonzales feels fortunate to be working. >> it took me roughly a year- and-a-half to find a job, let alone one i could rely on. >> reporter: jennifer thompson is researching book titles until she can find a teaching job. >> i vastly prefer it to subbing. the books don't talk back as much. >> reporter: better world celebrated a milestone a few months ago. in less than ten years the company has donated ten million dollars worldwide. not bad for this young entrepreneur who passed up

medical school to hawk books. >> how many people have benefitted do you think over the last ten years. we think it's millions of children you know. >> reporter: diane eastabrook nightly business report mishawaka, indiana. >> tom: social awareness is finding its way into a growing number of investor portfolios. sustainable, responsible investing known as s.r.i. is an investing style looking beyond the bottom line focusing on social, religious or ethical guidelines. it has attracted an estimated $3 trillion from investors. sylvia hall looks at how s.r.i. works and who is doing it. >> reporter: in the world of investing, everything has to add up. but a growing number of investors are calculating a new bottom line into their decision- making. >> the core principles are you need to evaluate non financial factors. investing can't just be about what's your return, and it can't just be about what's your return in the short-term. >> reporter: what started as a movement to protest human rights

violations in south africa in the 1980s has grown into a $3 trillion world of pensions, mutual funds and other investments. in s.r.i., investors pick companies that uphold their values. it's a broad field, one investor could avoid companies with grimey environmental records, while another favors companies with transparent corporate governance. >> today, you've got firms like blackrock, deutsche bank, goldman sachs, t.i.a.a. cref, big what i call big institutional actors who have a piece of this going on, who are trying to integrate environmental, social, and governance issues more broadly but have small s.r.i. shop. >> reporter: the s.r.i. trend has also taken hold in the religious community as a way to fund retirement benefits, missions and community outreach without breaching commitments to good works and social justice. >> there is i think a sense of well-being and integrity and piece of mind that i think people are looking for that they do actually want to look behind the curtain to see where the product came from and where the profit came from because that has to do with their own sense of well being.

>> reporter: most s.r.i. funds are set-up for long-term stability and not necessarily for short-term rewards. most studies show that socially conscious investments perform just as well as others over the long-term. sylvia hall, "nightly business report," washington. >> susie: calvert investments is one of the largest s.r.i. fund companies. i recently spoke with c.e.o. barbara krumsiek and began by asking her what tests a company has to pass in order to qualify as a socially responsible investment. >> there are about seven different areas that we look at. the environmental, environmental practices of the company, diversity practices, broadly speaking workplace practices, human rights policies at overseas operations. indigenous people's rights. governance and community activities. there's a whole range of analysis that together form a profile of a company from a corporate social responsibility view point. >> susie: is it fair to say that

if it's not investing in a company than it is sociallyer responseable? >> we don't like to at it this way because we think every company has the potential to be a socially responsible company. in fact, one of our strategies is called sage. and in that strategy we will own almost any company but we will dialogue, we will communicate with the company and let them know where we think they could do better. so i think there's hope that every company can have a very strong environmental social governance profile. >> susie: so i since that talbert has been an advocate. it petitions and lobbies companies, encouraging them to make positive change. how successful have you been of that? >> one example is dell. going on about seven or eight years ago we worked very closely with dell. at that time there were no take-back programs by computer manufacturers or distributors for used waste. as you can imagine that creates

environmental issues in those count wrez those waste products are disposed of after some negotiation dell to their credit agreed initiate the first take back program for computer waste. >> susie: barbara, over the last decade there has been huge growth if funds specializing in socially responsible investing. has this made a difference in corporate behavior? to what extent are companies puting more'm if fa sis on social responsibility and corporate responsibility? >> i think there's been a huge up tick. ten years ago 800 companies produced sustainability reports. it's been reported 5,500 companies have produced sustainability reports that provides day to investors and consumers interesting in knowing how companies operate and what kind of environmental foot prnt they leave and governance and social practices they support.

so there's been a huge uptick. >> susie: i'm sure you hear this comment quite a bit. investors want to do the right thing such as put their money in socially responsible funds but they're afraid they won't make as much a return as they did on a mainstream fund. what do you say? >> we believe our funds should achieve at or above benchmark averages over the long run. over shorter periods of time there may be differences in patterns of return. for example, we tend to overweight the technology sect orelive the to other sectors in our work and that could lead the some change in pattern. however if you look over the last three years, the annual return to the calvert social index is 20.7% versus 19.4% for the s&p 500 so we do believe a competitive firm can be achieved. >> susie: very interesting information. barbara, thank you so much for coming on the program. >> thank you, susie.

>> tom: from charitable investing to charitable giving, there's a company in chicago turning it into an art form. threadless sells t-shirts designed by artists from around the world. what started as a novel idea a decade ago, has grown into a booming business. diane eastabrook is back to explain how threadless uses its e-commerce clout to help charities. >> reporter: you are witnessing the marriage of art and commerce. inside a massive warehouse with wall to wall t-shirts, workers are frantically filling holiday orders. threadless is a community-based design company on chicago's west side. artists submit designs to the company's website. and its online community votes for the best ones. winning artists get paid for their work, then 31-year-old co- founder jake nickell mass merchandizes the designs. >> we started with tee shirts and we've expanded quite a bit. we do i phone cases, water bottles, backpacks, dresses, tons and tons of stuff and we're exploring more. >> reporter: threadless estimates it has a global

audience of nearly two million people, so recently it decided to tap that community for a greater good. the company is now partnering with charities through a new unit called atrium. it's currently printing tee shirts benefiting a breast cancer awareness group called men for women now. the charity will get a quarter of the profits made from sales of the $20 shirts. >> right now, we're printing about 850 and we always sell out our first batch. and depending on the velocity of those sales we chase into it and print more. and we regularly do reprints of products that sell well. >> the idea to sell cause based t-shirts came to nickell after hurricane katrina. the company designed a t-shirt to benefit hurricane victims and ended up raising over $100,000. >> reporter: since launching atrium ten months ago, threadless has raised nearly a half-million dollars for 16 charities including the red cross. c.e.o. tom ryan says promoting causes was a natural for

threadless because it's community of artists and consumers tend to be young and socially conscious. but, he admits it also made good business sense. >> doing designs for causes specifically is one great way to bring in people who are already supporters of a cause. when they support that cause, sure, they will probably find other thing on threadless that they are interested in, but it wasn't the primary motivating factor that made us do this. >> reporter: threadless wants to host at least one cause-related design challenge a month next year. it thinks harnessing the passions and pocket books of its own community can help make the world a better place. diane eastabrook, "nightly business report," chicago. >> susie: if it is going to be more than a slogan, a company's social responsibility campaign requires deep partnerships with people and charities delivering services to people in need. one of those charities is the american red cross. darren gersh talks with the group's president and c.e.o. gail mcgovern for a glimpse at what corporate social responsibility looks like from

the other side. >> reporter: when companies come to the red cross to lend a helping hand, they are also trying to burnish their brands. showing customers the company cares enough to help out. but american red cross c.e.o. gail mcgovern has found another motivation behind these corporate campaigns. >> i also think they do it because there are employees who are starting to demand it. this generation of young people were brought up on volunteerism, community outreach, and they want to do it. >> reporter: which is a good thing, because the red cross needs help from businesses large and small. >> we rely very heavily on these kinds of corporate partnerships. from the very simple, keebler gives us cookies that we use in our blood drives, it's between a million and $2 million gift. and our blood donors love it. >> reporter: the red cross also

looks for companies to provide expertise. industrial supply giant granger is helping with i.t. wal-mart, u.p.s. and fed-ex with logistics. with an army of 650,000 volunteers, the red cross finds it is easy to get in a c.e.o.'s door, but it still has to ask for help. so it's been a tough economy lately. are companies being more generous or are the being more tight-fisted? >> we're finding that our corporate donors are sticking with us. some are making larger donations. but we're not seeing a pullback. we're also doing more outreach, making more asks than we had in the past. but i think the organization is starting to realize that giving someone an opportunity to give is actually a gift in and of itself. >> reporter: you guys actually went through a tough time and companies were a little reticent about doing things with you. so what do you have to do on your side to make people feel

that we can be socially responsible with you? >> so when i first got the american red cross, we closed our books eight days later with a $209 million operating deficit and about $600 million worth of loans on top of that and so we had to get financially stable. >> reporter: that meant consolidating services provided at 650 red cross chapters. it also meant getting smaller. >> it was tough but at the end of the day the reason everyone rallied around it was because i said to the organization, how can we look a donor in the eye and say we have this redundancy. >> reporter: after restructuring her own organization, mcgovern is now in a better position to give other c.e.o.s advice about social responsibility. >> i would tell them make sure you support the brand and what you stand for and make sure you engage employees in ways that are meaningful and be sure that whatever you're doing you can

measure the impact of it. whoever you're volunteering for or whatever initiative, you're involved in really-- you can tell the impact. that it's measurable and you can feel good about it once it's done. >> tom: tonight, we've met small businesses doing well by doing good. now our focus turns to a big business that's helping fund small business. starbucks began its "create jobs for usa" campaign in november, 2011. customers get a wristband when they donate $5 or more to help fund small business lending. plenty of people have been ordering those wristbands along with their lattes and iced coffees. in the first three months of the program, it has raised more than $7 million in donations. that was added to money from other sources to wind up with $50 million in loans for small companies. starbucks estimated the money was used to create or keep an estimated 2,300 u.s. jobs.

we spoke to starbucks c.e.o. howard schultz a few weeks after the program began. what role does a public company that essentially is in the restaurant and services industry have razing money for business lending when it's traditionally been a financial services and a banking industry role? >> i feel very strongly that washington has let us down. i do not to be a bystander and watch america drift towards mediocrity and i want starbucks to be the kind of company that perhaps can be a model for others to say we can make a difference. and at the same time we can build shareholder values. starbucks is having a record year. record revenue, record profit. our stock is close to the all-time high yet we're doing the kind of things not only for the communities we serve but at the same time giving health care to every single employee. >> tom: some would point out that it's that success you are having on the bottom line that has allowed starbucks to make the contributions on the benevolent side of the social ledger. >> i think the consumer wants to

support those companies or products whose businesses they trust and whose values are compatible with their own. and at the same time, i think business has to recognize that we are in business to make a profit and build shareholder value. >> tom: according to associated press, the corporation, starbucks, spent over $100,000 lobbying in the third quarter on such things as health care, food labels and debit card fees. is business too influential in politics in your estimation? >> we are a for-profit business. we have issues that we have to deal with and we have to protect our interest but i think that when i look at the numbers that were spent in 2008, over $4 billion, and then $6 billion estimated to be spent on this election cycle is something significantly and seriously wrong with the system and i don't want to be a part of it and i think most americans are disgusted by it. >> pelley: couldn't you argue, though, it's a market economy when it comes to politics? >> i think it's a market economy that needs reform.

i think it needs balance. and i think most importantly we have a crisis of confidence in this country. we have a crisis of leadership across the board. i want america and the people being left behind to have a voice and i'm not satisfied with the direction and leadership that we are receiving. >> tom: howard schultz, thank you for your comments. he is the chief executive officer of starbucks. >> susie: from philanthropy at the world's biggest coffee house chain to a small coffee importer, it's cashing in on the premium coffee craze in a unique way. diane eastabrook shows us how crop to cup is making money by empowering coffee farmers. >> reporter: there are coffee hounds and then there are coffee connoisseurs. they flock to ipsento on chicago's northwest side where coffee is roasted on site then served up with steamed milk or without. >> wow, it's big, it's unique this is espresso. >> reporter: coffee is 30-year- old jacob elster's life.

he co-founded crop to cup four years ago after working on social projects with coffee farmers in africa. the company buys coffee directly from growers in uganda and burundi who practice sustainable farming. it then sells the product directly to coffee houses like ipsento and to consumers over its website. videos let customers see who's behind their coffee. and that personal relationship helps the farmers command higher prices for their crops. the concept is called traceable or relationship coffee and elster says it's a win-win for everyone. >> not only does that allow us to get coffee profiles that are more in tune with what the market wants, but the process is very engaging and it highlights some of the differences of what we provide versus the commodity coffee importer. >> reporter: the untied states imports over 130,000 tons of coffee a month. it comes from roughly 60 nations and most of it is traded like any other commodity >> by the time a cup of coffee

like this gets to a consumer like me it's hard to say where it came from. >> with this coffee, we're getting just tons of chocolate. >> reporter: neil balkcom is sort of a coffee sommelier. he sniffs and slurps the coffee crop to cup buys, looking for unsavory beans. if he finds any he'll trace them back to the growers and help them identify potential problems. in one case the beans weren't to blame, but a washing station was. >> there was a piece of machinery that needed to be calibrated and it wasn't being calibrated. therefore it was letting through certain defects. >> reporter: elster says that kind of information is critical to farmers. to him crop to cup is as much about empowering rural africa as it about selling coffee. >> working with and living with the communities i worked with in uganda i came to realize that they really wanted jobs and good jobs. as a first starter with a lot of pride and a lot of dignity to take care of themselves. >> reporter: recently crop to

cup brought that philosophy home to chicago. it's paying developmentally disabled adults at the misericordia home to package coffee. assistant executive director lois gates says the jobs have made a big difference in the lives of the workers. >> they like to have a reason to get up in the morning, they like to accomplish and they like to be proud of what they do. >> reporter: this year crop to cup will turn a profit for the first time. elster admits that's a big accomplishment for him and the company. but an even bigger goal is becoming a model for other businesses at home and abroad. >> i'll consider crop to cup successful if we can get people to copy us. if we can help grow the market for traceable coffee. if we can really reintroduce a new way of dealing with the people who provide all of our commodities. >> reporter: diane eastabrook, "nightly business report," chicago. >> tom: when it comes to giving, two of the world's richest men have championed a plan to get their rich friends to donate more to charity. it's called "the giving pledge." it was started by bill and melinda gates six years ago and supported by their good friend

billionaire warren buffett. the pledge challenges the wealthiest people on the planet to pledge at least half of their wealth to charity. so far buffett and the gates' have convinced 69 of the world's richest people to sign the pledge, promising billions of dollars to charity. the list includes people like microsoft co-founder paul allen, new york city mayor michael bloomberg and facebook's mark zuckerberg. >> susie: and finally, tonight's money file has a unique investment with a conscious capital twist. here's manisha thakor, co-author of "on my own two feet-- a modern girl's guide to personal finance." >> are you frustrated by stock market volatility and paltry rates of return on cash equivalents? do you want your hard earned dollars to make a bigger impact on the world at large? if you are looking to generate a lasting return on investment, i'd like to suggest invest in

the education of a girl. according to the non-profit "the girl effect," a unique collaboration between the nike foundation, novo foundation, and others. when a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. when women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90% of it into their families, as compared to only 30%-40% for men. per the coalition for adolescent girls, investing in girls starts a virtuous cycle that reduces poverty, aids, hunger and perhaps even war. yet of the world's 130 million out-of-school youth, 70% are girls. organizations such as the girl effect and kiva seeking to change history by giving girls in developing countries access to education or loans to start small businesses. studies show that when you improve a girl's life, you improve the health, hygiene, and overall lives of her brothers, sisters, parents, and beyond. now that sounds like a great

return on investment to me. i'm manisha thakor. for more information on this nbr special edition "conscious capital" and of course, our daily market coverage, head to our website.. you'll find us at nbr.com. >> tom: that's it for this special edition of "nightly business report." i'm tom hudson. goodnight, everyone and goodnight to you, too, susie. >> susie: good night tom. i'm susie gharib we hope to see all of you again tomorrow night. "nightly business report" is made possible by: captioning sponsored by wpbt captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> tom: when we're not on the air, join us online at nbr.com. there, you'll find full episodes of the program. you'll find complete show transcripts and all the market stats on our facebook page at bizrpt. and don't forget to follow us on twitter @bizrpt.