By: Emily Glazer, www.marketwatch.com
Now that the financial system has been rocked to its core, “social capital” is getting a lot of buzz. But what is it? It boils down to putting your efforts into jobs with a socially positive impact, connecting money with meaning and investing with those principles in mind.
People of all ages are pursuing those mantras — from twenty-somethings seeking socially responsible jobs straight out of college to Gen Xers in their 30s and 40s leaving highly paid posts in major corporations to launch socially aware start-ups, to baby boomers investing or advising companies on how to be more socially aware.
“A lot of organizations are forming social enterprises in a way that they didn’t used to to highlight their social mission,” said Amy Benziger, co-producer of SoCap09, a San Francisco-based conference on social capital. “It might be perceived as potentially sacrificing profit, but now it’s looked as a positive thing.”
Kate Tierney was on top in the traditional corporate world. As senior vice president of organic food distributor United Natural Foods Inc., she had been in a position to move to president. But Tierney sought more impact, not power. “I recognized my job wasn’t filling my mission part of my soul, and I knew I needed to go and find something that could fill some part of me,” she said. “I had made the big bucks.”
Tierney, 42, now works as the national director of sales at Alter Eco, a fair-trade start-up.
Interest in social-capital career moves such as Tierney’s is likely to swell, said Beth Lester, vice president of marketing at Washington-based consulting firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, especially among those age 18 to 24, who are more likely than older people to take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company.
“Most people are interested in working for and buying from companies that they judge are a good company,” she said. “Particularly for young people, that means having an ethical, socially responsible and sustainable company.”
In a June 2009 “Corporate Citizenship Study” conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates in conjunction with Landor and Burson-Marsteller 40% of about 1,000 participants said they were willing to take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company.
And of those workers ages 44 to 70 not already in second careers focusing on a social impact, almost 50% are interested in one, according to a 3,500-person survey by Civic Ventures and the Metlife Foundation.
Millennials: seeking social impact first
After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Las Vegas shortly after graduating from Stanford University in 2008, Kanyi Maqubela’s life changed. “I realized that any sort of work I did from then forth had to have a social aspect, not to necessarily be altruistic, but whatever my impact was had to be a social impact first and anything else second.”
But socially responsible jobs are not easy to find because it is an emerging interest and covers a range of industries. Companies do not have formal recruiting programs geared to socially responsible jobs, said Rich Wang, University of California, Berkeley’s Career Services account manager.
Recent graduates who get jobs with a social mission often need to bank on their personal connections, often alumni-related. Maqubela’s job with Virgance, a for-profit company acquiring companies that combine activism and capitalism, came through a Stanford alum.
William Walter, a 2007 graduate of Williams College, got his job at EarthWater Global, which locates, develops and manages large-scale, sustainable groundwater resources internationally, through a fellow Phillips Academy Andover alumnus. Walter added that the company’s interns also come through personal connections.
Dave Chen, principal at Equilibrium Capital Group and member of the Portland, Ore., branch of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Board, said for baby boomers and forty-somethings the idea of making an impact and having a financial return is often seen as two different ideas. But twenty-somethings look at this ideas as an “and statement,” and will work to accomplish both.
Millennials, generally those in their 20s, are coming out of college and seeking jobs with a social mission in droves, said Abby Conover, postgraduate program coordinator at Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service. Though data is sparse, in a Partnership for Public Service study focusing on federal jobs, 74% of more than 3,200 students from six different schools said they “wanted an opportunity to make a difference.” “It may not be an identifiable population yet,” Conover said. “It’s still an emergent enough niche that is not well-researched.”
There’s no particular clearing house for these types of jobs, but sites like change.org and idealist.org are collaborative efforts that fill some students’ needs, she said.
Though millennials say the idea they are taking pay cuts to work in socially responsible jobs is a misconception, for many it is a first job, which can be low-paying regardless.
“Our generation grew up in the information, technology and science age where with each day we know more and more about our impact on others and the environment and different countries and their impact on us,” Walter said. “So with that new perspective comes a new framework for investing and growth.”
Gen Xers: breaking free from corporate mold
Kevin Jones, co-founder of SocCap09 and founding principal of venture-capital firm Good Capital, said many people in their 30s and 40s are stuck with a mortgage, marriage commitments or child-rearing obligations that “keep them in the regular economy” but want to break free.
Marc Mathieu, former head of global brands marketing for Coca-Cola Co., left the company 10 months ago to form Be Do, a company helping both individuals and companies find social meanings. Mathieu compared the move to the decision to quit smoking.
“It takes a lot to acknowledge you are a smoker, you need to really feel that change that’s going to make you discover how much better you feel to become a nonsmoker,” he said. “In terms of social or environmental responsibility — we’ve kind of all been smoking for the last several decades.”
Many Gen Yers have already banked on previous high-level jobs in major companies, and find an often necessary pay cut — between 15% and 30% — is worth it.
John Ujda, former vice president at Primedia Inc.’s Rentals.com, said most people devote a large share of their lives to working, and he wants that time to matter. Ujda, 36, works as vice president of marketing for Better World Books, an online book seller that supports literacy. “There’s definitely an extra spark right now,” he said. “There’s a huge get-out-of-bed factor because what I’m doing right now matters beyond a paycheck of a shareholder return.”
Boomers: leaving a legacy
With a retirement income subsidizing her current — lower — wages and no longer putting children through college, Phyllis Segal, 62, began her second career focusing on social impact. “Many people are able to work for less compensation after their midlife careers, relate to different stages in their life and economic responsibilities and the possibility of savings to subsidize one’s income,” said Segal, vice president and director of research at Civic Ventures, a think tank on boomers, work and aging, who was formerly an attorney.
“A lot of boomers who want a legacy are coming in as advisers and angel investors of socially responsible companies,” Jones said.
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