IKEA goes beyond talking the talk on social responsibility and sustainability. They realize that helping communities and the environment isn’t an event — it’s a process. That”s why they’ve developed a concept of a never ending list of to dos for the environment, local communities and the developing world.

Here’s one example: the beautifully designed solar SUNNAN lamp using LED technology that sells for $19.99. Charge the lamp for 12 hours in the sun and get a full 4 hours of light. The kicker is that for every lamp you buy, IKEA donates a lamp to UNICEF or Save the Children.

Will a solar lamp really make that much difference in a poor community? You bet. In remote regions without electrical infrastructure, many things become impossible after dark. Children’s ability to do homework stops after dusk, for example. Think about what activities you’d need to stop at 7pm because the sun set.

The alternative sources of light for these families is both costly and dangerous. Kerosene consumes up to a quarter of a family’s income. Overturned lamps result in countless deaths and burn injuries a year.

In the West, we banish darkness by the flick of a switch. IKEA’s SUNNAN light program gives families in developing countries this simple capacity we take for granted.

Kathy Sayers is Executive Director of hattrick, an innovative non-profit that makes it easy to show you care. Help a great charity. Make a small change to do your part for the environment. Inspire others. myhattricks.org.

But sustainability is not necessarily a top priority for the business owners I talk to. From them I hear, “Times are tough. My job is to make a profit so I can continue to support my workers and their families. ‘Saving the environment’ is laudable, but I have to look at the bottom line.”

But are making your business more sustainable and making a profit really mutually exclusive? Not according to Adam Werbach in a Harvard University video. Adam, the global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s largest advertising companies, explains how big businesses can create a “sustainability culture” that is essential to their financial success.

He says that as resources like fuel become scarcer, companies that figure out a way to manage environmental factors are companies that are going to cope best. And, he says that a commitment to sustainability results in:

. better products
. engaged and committed employees
. more sales

Werbach warns that the efforts can’t be episodic. Really creating a culture that engages workers and that encourages them to come up with ideas to solve an environmental problem is critical.

Kathy Sayers is Executive Director of hattrick, an innovative non-profit that makes it easy to show you care. Help a great charity. Make a small change to do your part for the environment. Inspire others. myhattricks.org.

Our non-profit, hattrick,  lets people help a great charity, do their part for the environment and inspire others.  We called it hattrick after the hockey term (a “hattrick” is when you score 3 goals in one game).  Since founding hattrick I’ve become more aware of great organizations that are already doing amazing hattricks.

One such organization is Tradeworks Customs Products (TCP), a 4 year old social enterprise based in Canada’s poorest neighborhood that’s doing an incredible work. Here’s how they do good, help the environment and inspire others.

Doing good. Tradeworks CustomProducts hires single moms and women struggling with poverty after they’ve been trained in a Tradeworks carpentry program.  They design and make beautiful wood products like Christmas ornaments, wine stoppers and boxes, coasters and planters which they sell on line and through suppliers.

Helping the environment. All the products are made from reclaimed wood.  The Christmas ornaments, for example are made from pine beetle wood.  The pens and wine stoppers are made from wood discards donated by a upscale furniture manufacturer.

Inspiring others. Success stories in Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown East side are hard to come by.  Many of TCP’s workers had been unemployed for years.  Most have been in abusive relationships and have low self confidence.

As Kate Stewart, who runs the program says, ” Watching these women gain skills and confidence is the biggest by-product of TCP. It’s a first step to their imagining more in their lives.”

I know a lot about TCP because I’m on the Board of Tradeworks Training Society.  It’s been been a privilege to watch this unique enterprise grow.

Kathy Sayers is the Executive Director of hattrick, a non-profit created to show it’s not that hard to make a difference.

I think the answer is both.

Every 10 years or so, events and economic conditions shape the way we as a society determine what’s valuable to us.

During the 1980s we embraced individualism. We thought that by each of us pursuing our own self-interests, society as a whole would function better. Under President Reagan, trickle down economics meant giving businesses and individuals as much free reign as possible to build their wealth and thus improve their country. Think Gordon Gecko in Wall Street. Think “Greed is good.”

In the 1990’s, as personal computers changed our lives, we believed our future would be determined by technological advances. The best and brightest of a generation were in Silicon Valley creating gizmos that made our lives easier and more productive. When the bubble burst, we had to adjust our expectations of what technology could deliver.

On September 11, 2001 we found out that the world is a scary place. We pulled back and nestled into our homes and were attracted to more conservative positions. In fact I think the home reno craze of the first decade of this century was about creating a safe and secure nest for our families. The market crash of 2008, a hangover from the policies of the 80’s and 90’s, only cemented the feeling of the insecurity.

This year, we began a new decade. We’re facing bigger problems than we have ever faced before. Most of us recognize that we have to tackle issues like global warming individually and collectively. Peak oil, global warming, and economic crises demand that we focus our energies more constructively we have in the past. Our best and our brightest of this generation are interested in “doing good” because they recognize we don’t have a choice.

Is it cool to care? Yes. But also necessary.

Kathy Sayers is the Executive Director of hattrick, a non-profit created to show it’s not that hard to make a difference.

Here’s how Time Raiser works works:

• Artists submit their work and Time Raiser, through corporate sponsors, pays for their art.

• The art is “auctioned” at a Time Raiser event. But the bidders don’t pay in cash –
they pay in volunteer hours to the charities they learn about at the Time Raiser event.

• The highest volunteer hour bids purchase the art they’ve chosen and have a year to clock in the volunteer hours they’ve pledged.

The result?

In one evening artists get paid for their art and exposure to hundreds of potential buyers. 25 Charities let people know about their work and gain committed volunteers. Volunteers learn about local charities and bid on original art they might normally not be able to afford. Win. Win. Win.

What do the artists have to say? Mia Weinberg, one of the local artists chosen to display her work says, “It’s a great way to let people to see what I’m doing and a brilliant way to support the arts community.”

Time Raiser is just one example of the idea of finding multiple wins with one effort.
I think people want to be socially responsible — but they want their efforts to have the maximum impact. In the coming years, I think we’ll see more of these win-win-win opportunities.

Kathy Sayers is the Executive Director of hattrick, a non-profit created to show it’s not that hard to make a difference.

Okay, the article makes a valid point: big efforts inevitably have bigger impacts than smaller ones. But I think it misses another point. Smaller steps — changes we make in our daily habits — have advantages too.

They are threshold events. Marijauna is sometimes said to be a threshold drug for using harder drugs — that is by having a first drug experience, you may have less resistance to trying other drugs. Changing your light bulbs, walking for trips that are less than a mile a way, having one meatless meal a week can also be threshold events. They wear down our resistance — our belief that its hard to change our habits. Completing small changes make us more willing to look for other changes we can make.

They are more than the sum of their parts. Last year I heard a memorable talk by Peter Robinson when he became the new Executive Director of the David Susuki Foundation, a prominent non-profit with an environmental mandate. He was asked: “Are you discouraged about our prospects of doing enough in time to impact global warming?” His answer: the challenge is a tough one. But the hope lies in people making changes at the community level.

They create a new ethic. When I was young, almost every year someone in our large high school was killed or injured in an auto accident during prom season, often as a result of drinking. Parents didn’t know how to stop these senseless deaths of youngsters just starting their lives. Mothers against Drunk Drivers changed the ethos of kids drinking and driving. They began kid by kid to enlist pledges not to drink and drive. Eventually it became part of general awareness that drinking and driving were not acceptable. By doing small acts to save the environment, we can change the ethos that carelessness is okay.

They’re doable. I think many of us are paralyzed by the urgency of environmental issues. Small acts give us a first step to move us out of that deer in the headlights feeling. They move us in the direction we would like to go.

It takes action, both big and small, to make a difference.

Kathy Sayers is the Executive Director of hattrick, a non-profit created to show it’s not that hard to make a difference.

As a life coach working with 20 somethings, I can tell you what they want.

More than previous generations, they want their work lives to matter. According to What Canadians Think, a book by two of Canada’s leading pollsters, 81% of Canadian students surveyed said having an “interesting” work was important to them. To put that in prospective, only 19% said having a high paying job was important. Engaging work is really, really a priority with this generation.

And, as important, they want to work for organizations that understand their prospective that businesses need a bigger vision. If they are going to give you what they value most – their life time — they want you to show you care about burning issues, both locally and globally.

It’s not that hard to make your organization one that young workers will want to work for. You just need to commit to making a difference about the issues that matter to them.

And what are those issues? For sure the environment and sustainability. Put your young workers in charge of developing your environmental company policies and you’ll be surprised how ingenious their solutions are.

For sure, it’s enriching their communities. Make it easy for them to volunteer by providing information on local charities and events in your newsletters and emails. Give them a day off every three months to volunteer in the community.

For sure it’s the larger world. Adopting a cause – whether its global warming or world poverty – will show you care about something beyond the bottom line.

This is a generation that gets more grief that they deserve, because their values are different. Make yours the kind of company they are proud to tell their friends about, and you’ll earn their commitment.

Kathy Sayers is the Executive Director of hattrick, a non-profit created to show it’s not that hard to make a difference.

“I’m overwhelmed. I hear about crushing poverty in developing countries and I don’t even know how to begin to help. ”

So I began asking “What is holding you back?” Here’s what I heard:

• “Does my money go to paying fat salaries and promotion or to people in need?”
• “What about corruption in developing countries? Do I have to worry about that?”
• “I hear stories about charities doing something that makes perfect sense in North America,
but no sense in, say, Africa. What good is a computer it can’t be repaired or there’s no electricity?”

I began looking for innovative charities that I’d be proud to tell my friends about. Charities with little or no overhead, with solid management, with focus, and with an understanding of what is needed in the developing countries they serve. How hard could it be?

Turns out, harder than I expected. I looked at dozens of small charities on line. Some were unfathomable. Really, reading their websites I couldn’t tell what they did. For some, I couldn’t find out their administrative costs. Some were so scattered, they promised, vaguely, to help poor people. Some had no local contacts in the countries they served. How could they possibly know what would help?

But I did find innovative well-run charities and chose 3 to partner with hattrick. I can tell my friends with confidence that they can give their $35 to any of them and it will affect the lives of children, guaranteed.

Take a look at their videos here on our blog or their stories at myhattricks.org.

Kathy Sayers is the Executive Director of hattrick, a non-profit created to show it’s not that hard to make a difference.

The idea for the help part of hattrick came from my friend Catherine Winckler who told me about an idea she’d seen on the BBC. Students at the London School of Design were asked to create a project for a competition. The winner that year was a merry-go-round that generates electricity while kids play on it. “The idea knocked my socks off,” said Catherine. She was so excited that she called her cousin who works for a foundation that provides aid in Africa. Could the foundation deliver, install and maintain a merry-go-round in a village? “Sure,” said her cousin.

“Wow”, I thought. A testimony to the ingenuity of the young designer, Catherine’s connect-the-dots mind, and the can-do philosophy of the foundation. I filed this terrific story away in my mind.

The save part of hattrick came the next day at the gym when I told my friend Alice Nakamura the story. “Wow,” she said. She thought for a couple of minutes then said, “Why wouldn’t this gym convert a few of these machines so they could save electricity while we work out?’ Here was another great idea – using out-of-the box thinking to save energy in our every day lives.

Three days later, I was at a networking meeting where we each stand up and talk about our business. That day, I said to myself, “I simply can’t talk about my business again. Even I’m bored.” So I talked about a charity I work with that teaches women struggling with addictions to make wooden toolkits, wine boxes and stepstools. “Can any of you help?” I asked. Eight out of 20 people stepped up with offers — to fund an open house, buy tool boxes as gifts for clients, help with a wine-tasting fund raiser, and talk to groups about the charity. “Wow,” I thought, “People really want to help. They just need to be inspired by a great story or cause.” And so the tell part of hattrick came into focus.

That week the pieces fell into place. I decided to create a non-profit organization that combined the three elements of these wow experiences. I was looking for a name that described a win-win-win situation. I asked my friend Keith Lloyd, “Isn’t there something like this in sports?” “Sure,” he said, “a hattrick is when a player scores three goals in one game.” “Perfect,” I said.

That’s how, in one week, Hattrick was hatched.