(Image via CrunchBase)
Here's a good idea: Boosting social enterprise through a useful app. Specifically, one that helps like-minded customers find triple bottom line retailers in their area. Consumers who want to patronize such enterprises get easy access to information they probably wouldn't know about otherwise. And businesses have an effective way to market their wares.
That's the concept behind Social Impact. Created by Rolfe Larson, a social enterprise consultant who heads Rolfe Larson Associates in Denver, the new iPhone and iPad app lists retail businesses in cities around the world, according to such categories as restaurants, catering, coffee & tea, arts & crafts and miscellaneous. (And here's a Hat tip to Fast Company).
Click on a category and you'll see a list of businesses, with address, distance from your location and a map. Click on an individual listing and you get a description of what it does, its mission, and other information, like hours the store is open and a link to the web site. Plus, there's an option for shopping online, with listings organized according to such categories as books and clothing.
"I developed Social Impact to help socially-minded customers find the businesses that create the change they want to see in the world," Larson wrote me in an email. "We will be successful if we send new customers to social enterprises, Fair Trade stores, green restaurants and double/triple bottom line companies so they prosper and increase their social impact."
There's also a nice FAQ, answering such questions as "What is social impact?", "What is social enterprise?", and "What is Fair Trade?" They're nice little summaries.
It took Larson about a year to create the app and collect the data, which he mostly obtained from his own research and crowdsourcing. As you might expect, London tops the cities with more than 30 listings. In the U.S., as you also might expect, the San Francisco Bay Area is in first place with about 25 businesses.
For now, listings are still pretty spotty in some areas. Click on arts & crafts for my region, just outside New York City, for example--an area with a large assortment of social enterprises, I think--and only one choice pops up--Fair Trade Winds in Stony Brook, NY, described as an enterprise selling "Fair Trade and handmade jewelry and accessories." Mission: "Committed to alleviating global poverty through Fair Trade and empowering consumers to be part of our effort to benefit farmers, artisans, and the environment."
Larson knows that there are slim pickings in some areas and says Social Impact is a work in progress. He plans to continue to add new businesses and to create Android and web versions. "The data base grows daily," he wrote. "We receive crowdsourced suggestions and there is a place in the app to recommend additions."
He seems to be off to a pretty good start. Now, people just have to use it.
