Why to Avoid a Triple Bottom Line for Bike Programs

I’m fairly well fed up with the concept of the triple bottom line. The idea goes that a company or social enterprise can do a good job of ensuring all three of these at once: profits, environmental stewardship, and social good. Bull. As long as profits are in that bottom line, someone will always fudge the other two.

Here’s an excerpt from Defying Poverty with Bicycles that explains a bit why we do not recommend using this concept for Social Bike Business programs:

“As the terms social enterprise and social business have gained popularity, so has the abuse of these terms. Major corporations have been under greater scrutiny lately and often attempt to hide behind these terms to present an altruistic image. Just as many corporations have employed “green washing” to create an illusion of environmental stewardship as they continue to devour natural resources, some are learning to use “social washing” to combat claims against the social harm they are causing worldwide. So, as you do further research on these concepts, keep a wary eye out for false models. As long as a company or corporation prioritizes a monetary bottom line, social needs will always fall by the wayside.

This explains why One Street does not use the term “triple bottom line” i.e., monetary-environmental-social. We have found that many companies and corporations that tout a triple bottom line fall short of carrying it through. The monetary bottom line often overrides the other two as companies under pressure to make the most profit seek out the most desperate, impoverished people to make their products, force them to work long hours and pay them the very least they will accept, thus heightening their poverty. The pressure to meet the monetary bottom line also tempts outsourcing to new, more desperate countries leaving a wake of laid-off employees behind. On the environmental side, practices that truly protect the environment, such as replanting trees and reclaiming waste are always more expensive than environmentally destructive practices. With a monetary bottom line included, many companies can only give lip service to the other two.

Instead, One Street’s Social Bike Business model focuses on the social bottom line: the number of disadvantaged people served by the program. By following proven and successful businesses practices to increase the number of disadvantaged people served, the monetary and environmental bottom lines become unavoidable. In order to serve as many disadvantaged people as possible, the business must have strong and reliable profits. And because harming the environment harms people, this would subtract from the number of disadvantaged people served, so environmental stewardship becomes mandatory to achieve the bottom line.”

Could you envision running a bicycle program with a single, social bottom line?

Sue

Can Impact Investing Benefit Bicycle Programs?

I’ve spent the last few days studying up on the latest in the impact investing world to see if there are any new opportunities for One Street and our partners. Let’s just say, I’m glad to have resurfaced. I suppose it’s no surprise that an industry that is springing from the financial industry has entrenched itself in so much jargon and so many self-congratulating events. In recent years, I’ve also attended some of these events only to be disappointed by their lack of vision and ability to reach into the communities they claim to want to support.

Even so, through the blinding glitz and endless mazes of the websites, I did hit on a few organizations that seem to genuinely want to shift the world of investing toward supporting social enterprises that are changing the world of business. The general idea of impact investing is to invest in social businesses that ideally include all of these elements:

• Producing products that help alleviate a social problem such as water pumps for clean water or sturdy bicycles for transporting goods,
• Providing job training and jobs for impoverished people, and
• Ensuring that the products they produce help lift those same impoverished families out of poverty.

One Street’s Social Bike Business program, which includes our Bike Shift Levers, is based on these social business principles. We look for local partner organizations who also strive toward this three-fold vision.

So, I was hoping that circling back to the impact investing community would land me on likely partners for us as well as our bicycle program partners around the world. Time will tell as I prepare to send out a handful of letters to the most interesting impact investment firms. I also dug out some old files that reminded me of a few creative impact investment organizations that could directly help our partners:

Kiva.org works much like a crowdfunding platform, but instead of giving your money, you lend it. You won’t make any interest, but you do get all your money back so you can “invest” in another project. All the projects on Kiva are small businesses owned by struggling people around the world. Even a loan of $25 can push them into success.

ACCION.org is similar to Kiva as it offers small loans to small businesses and social enterprises, but their loans are larger and the lending system is a bit more complicated.

I also found some very good articles that came out in the last few months. Most claim that 2014 will be the

year of impact investing because of all the energy that has been focused into these efforts. If you want to read about some of the most active and effective impact investing organizations, read:

Is Social Impact Investing The Next Venture Capital? – Forbes, September 20, 2014

WEF Offers Impact Investing Road Map for Wealthy Families – Bloomberg, December 4, 2014

2014 in Impact Investing: The Big Bang and its Aftermath – Huffington Post, December 16, 2014

Beyond profits: Millennials embrace investing for social good – LA Times, December 7, 2014

As I wove my way through websites and articles, I was also not surprised by the lack of bicycle programs listed in the programs supported. I did find a few and you can bet that those organizations made my list to contact.

Unfortunately, most of the products that were being supported were technology based. Not that there’s anything wrong with that... But we know how much benefit bicycles could bring to an investment movement bent on alleviating poverty.

Do you know of any success stories where impact investment lifted a bicycle program into a significantly higher level of effectiveness? I don’t. The few I have come across over the years seem to show little gain from the investments made. Please share your stories and links. Even just a few great examples could inspire other similar partnerships between impact investors and great bicycle programs.

Sue

Bike Shift Levers in the Spotlight

I am very happy with all the attention our Bike Shift Levers are getting from the press release I sent out earlier this week. All of the articles are creative and the authors each chose their own favorite element of the project:

For Gizmag, the author emphasized the significant need for these shifters for the millions of people who rely on their bicycles everyday (he also fit in lots of photos).

For Bicycling the author gave the project one of its best compliments yet, right in the title: The Simplest, Most Versatile Shifter Ever. I like that!

For BikeBiz, the author seemed just as excited as I am to see these shift levers finally hit production. He has been following the project since our Kickstarter campaign – very cool.

The author of the BikeRumor article kindly noted that purchasing these shifters from us helps support our service to bicycle programs around the world. This article has also created the most buzz so far with lots of passionate comments. I hope these curious readers look into the project more.

The author of the BikeRadar article seemed to like the bottle cap most of the six parts and appreciated the shifter’s simplicity.

I love how each of them took our story and made it their own, adding their enthusiasm for particular elements of the shift lever as well as the project as a whole.

Let me know if I missed any. Great stuff!

Sue

Bike Shift Levers Available for Purchase

For the past few months I’ve focused much of my time on casting, preparing, assembling, and shipping Bike Shift Levers; all of them to our wonderful, patient Kickstarter donors who helped make the project possible. They had to wait a full year before finally seeing their shift lever arrive in the mail. Even though I understood the delays that had kept the mold from being machined, I couldn’t expect these great folks to be that patient. You have no idea what a relief it was to drop the last donor-shifter package in the mail.

 

Not only am I celebrating the end of that task, I can finally say that these lovely levers, designed for easy production and repair by people who rely on their bicycles, are available for sale! And they are already selling!  

So my casting and production continues, but the stress of obligation has been replaced by excitement to build One Street’s bicycle program support through sales. Two nights ago I watched as these two frames slid into the molten pool, on their way to becoming Bike Shift Levers.  

I’m also looking forward to finally reaching out to potential license partners who can produce these shift levers for their region of the world. Our book for the program, Backyard Aluminum Casting, is also available for sale in our web store at www.OneStreet.org as well as through book vendors around the world. Using that book, anyone, license partner or not, can build their own aluminum casting foundry.

Tonight I posted to our home page our collection of Gift Ideas from One Street . These include the Bike Shift Lever, our books, and even a scholarship fund to help us connect with potential license partners and cover half of their one-time license fee. If you’re looking for a fun gift for a bike enthusiast, a Bike Shift Lever made from scrap aluminum cans and bike frames could be just the thing. Or if your friends and family members are tired of opening gifts, covering a scholarship in their name could be their perfect gift.

I’m so relieved to finally have the chance to offer all of these great resources. Let me know if you don’t see the combination that suits your needs on that Gift Ideas form and I’m sure we can figure something out.

Sue

Detroit as Bicycle Business Model

I’ve been intrigued by the potential of Detroit for many years now. Its slip away from car manufacturing and abandonment by motorized corporate investors has torn the city open into a place where just about anything could happen. Bleak, empty factories can glimmer like castles to the right visionaries. And sure enough, many of those visionaries have entered the scene on two wheels.

A recent article in Fortune magazine shines the spotlight on a few of these new bicycle manufacturing and distribution businesses. Another recent article, this one in Bicycle Retailer & Industry News (unfortunately, not available to nonsubscribers), also noted the renaissance of bicycle manufacturing in the former “Motor City.” That article even features a retail storefront called The Hub that supports Back Alley Bikes, a nonprofit community bike program.

Between these two articles, I was most fascinated by the second-to-last paragraph in Bicycle Retailer that follows a reality check of low bicycling numbers and a dearth of bike shops:

“Still, there is a prevalent optimism that radiates from Detroiters. Some say that Detroit’s renaissance today is coming from within the residents—which sets it apart from past efforts to ‘save’ Detroit.”

This strikes me as the very sort of example I was looking for in my last post, Does Charity Suck Energy Away from Solutions? Charity is not “saving” Detroit. Detroiters are doing it for themselves. And because of this, I believe they will succeed. And I’m darn pleased that many of them are doing it through bicycle manufacturing. Enabling impoverished and struggling people to develop and implement solutions themselves is at the heart of Social Bike Business. Detroit is becoming a proving ground that shows that principle succeeding.

Sue

Does Charity Suck Energy Away from Solutions?

This morning I received an excellent e-newsletter from our local poverty-relief nonprofit, the Coalition for Compassion and Justice (CCJ) here in Prescott. Their efforts to provide warm clothing and to weatherproof houses for impoverished people are so important, especially as winter descends. Incredibly, nearly one third of our county’s children suffer from hunger every day. This has not changed at all over the last 20 years. Their parents, who are struggling to feed their children, certainly do not have the resources to buy warm clothes or repair broken windows, walls, and roofs.

 

These statistics and the photos of needy families inspire us to help. The jobs are easy—deliver some extra clothing you don’t need or spend an afternoon fixing windows. CCJ and organizations like them have armies of volunteers and donors helping out.

Even as one of their donors of food and clothing, I am bothered by charity programs. I often wonder if even a fraction of the energy spent through one-way charity programs that give to “the needy” was spent working with impoverished people to solve poverty, we would be a lot farther along than we are today.

Leaders I work with through our Social Bike Business Program often bemoan the lack of helpers and donors they have. In order to start strong, these business-minded organizations need help. But their long-term visions of careers through profitable sales don’t yank heartstrings like immediate needs.

How are some of you overcoming this with your social bike business programs? Have you found ways to entice people to help that do not rely on urgent response to people in need? Does your program have good examples of messages that have drawn helpers and donors? If so, please share them in the comments box. Let’s start shifting some of this reactive energy into long-term solutions that help impoverished people lift themselves out of poverty!

Sue

Assembling Bike Shift Levers

Prescott’s unusually wet summer of monsoon thunderstorms finally ended a few weeks ago, which allowed me whole days of casting our Bike Shift Levers. These Bike Shift Levers are designed for people who rely on their bicycles every day with just six common parts, two of which are cast from scrap aluminum. I’m starting production here in Prescott, but soon our partners around the world will get their own permanent molds so they can produce them for their regions.

This summer, I couldn’t cast if there was even a threat of rain because molten aluminum explodes when water contacts it. So I’ve done a lot of casting in these past few weeks to finally cast the shifters for our wonderful Kickstarter supporters. These supporters contributed a full year ago, making this project possible. I’m sure appreciative of their patience waiting for their collector shift levers from Mold #1!

Mold #2 will be back here next week after more refinements at the machine shop. Once I’ve caught up with our supporter shifters, I’ll start casting some for sale with that mold.

Not only am I finally sending these shifters out to our supporters, this ramped-up production offered some fun photo ops. Here’s a pile of shift lever parts in various stages of assembly, some still stuck to the extra aluminum from the mold sprues, others ready for assembly, others assembled ->

Sometimes these casting days stretched into the night, which wasn’t my preference, but at least I was treated to an incredible light show every time the melt was ready to pour – check out that neon pink!:

 

Here’s a photo of today’s assembly line as I prepared to assemble a batch:

I’ve still got several batches to go before all of our Kickstarter backers are taken care of. This has been a great reminder of how many fabulous folks stepped up to make this project possible. A huge thanks to all of you!