Thinkshift is proud to once again to support San Francisco Baykeeper with our annual 1% for the Planet donation. This scrappy organization counts major successes year after year in protecting our hometown’s iconic bay—and they do it on a lean budget.

Here are a few of their most recent triumphs:

• Baykeeper successfully settled its long-running lawsuit against Menlo Park–based West Bay Sanitary District, and the agency significantly reduced its sewage spills as a result of the legal action. Baykeeper says the agency used to be one of the worst-polluting sewage agencies in the Bay Area, but it has made major upgrades to reduce spills.
• California Waste Solutions (CWS) agreed to reduce toxic storm water runoff from a San Jose facility that sorts curbside recycling materials after Baykeeper documented stormwater from the CWS facility containing illegal levels of heavy metals running into Coyote Creek, a key tributary to San Francisco Bay. Baykeeper worked with CWS to determine the best solutions, and the company is now implementing key site upgrades.
• Baykeeper also reached an agreement with Svendsen’s Boat Works in Alameda to reduce stormwater pollution that’s toxic to salmon and other fish, and contains common contaminants from boatyard operations. The company responded to Baykeeper’s concerns with “initiative and a comprehensive plan to protect the Bay from pollution,” Baykeeper says.

We love both Baykeeper’s eagerness to work with enterprises to reduce pollution and its commitment to go after the laggards, no matter what it takes. We’re proud to continue supporting them. You can learn about everything they do here.

If you, too, care about the Bay, check out their spring party fundraiser.

We’re so busy doing communications work here in the Thinkshift studios we often forget to talk about it. So, from the “better late than never” files, here’s a look at how we helped a client turn on a dime to take advantage of a news-driven opportunity.

Last fall, with the Occupy movement focusing ire at big banks and the emergence of the grassroots Bank Transfer Day movement (inspired by the big banks’ plans to start charging fees for debit card purchases), New Resource Bank saw an opportunity to promote its sustainability mission and customer-friendly approach to a receptive audience.

The challenge: the bank’s Move Your Money campaign had to happen fast to catch the news swell and stay within a small discretionary budget.

The Thinkshift team pulled together the bank’s great ideas with our own to develop a tightly integrated cross-media campaign to spur new accounts and raise New Resource’s visibility. A new Move Your Money landing page would be fed by an e-mail blast seeking referrals from existing customers; a postcard; blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts; and messages on the screens in the bank’s windows. Time from initial discussion to launch: one week. With all elements in place, we did a PR blitz that netted local TV, radio, and print coverage.

The result: Record numbers of new clients opened New Resource accounts in November. We can’t claim full credit for that, of course—change was in the air and numbers had already started to tick up in October. But we feel confident that the compaign contributed. For a full five weeks after the launch, the Move Your Money landing page was the fifth most-popular page on the bank’s website, behind Contact Us, About, Personal Checking and Personal Banking.

Those mainstay pages also experienced a huge jump in visitors during the campaign, with an increase of as much as 130 percent compared with a comparable five weeks. In addition, the customer e-mail requesting referrals had an open rate of 19 percent (615 viewers), and the media coverage put a spotlight on the bank that could cast a lasting glow.

The upshot: never let a news hook go to waste.

See the full wrap-up on the bank’s Planet-Smart blog—and while you’re there, move your money!

All kinds of media covered the California Benefit Corporation Inauguration Day event. We gave you our take on being one of the first benefit corporations in the state; here’s a sampling of what others had to say:

The Start of the Revolution, a great photo essay by Debra Baida and Sven Eberlein on the Daily KOS website.

KQED radio: “Law Aims to Increase Corporate Social Responsibility”

The LA Times quotes Sandra: “A Dozen Companies Sign Up to Be Do-Good ‘Benefit Corporations’”

LA Times: “Businesses Seek State’s New ‘Benefit Corporation’ Status”

GOOD Business: “Twelve California Companies Seize the Moment…”

The Economist: “Firms with Benefits”

Treehugger.com: “Patagonia Becomes a California Benefit Corporation”

Watch Yvon Chouinard at the press event and check out all the media coverage on the B Corporation website.

“I hope that five years from now, ten years from now, we’ll look back and say this was the start of the revolution. The existing paradigm isn’t working anymore—this is the future.”

Those were Patagonia founder and CEO Yvon Chouinard’s closing words as he led a parade of companies up the steps of the Secretary of State’s office this morning to become California’s first benefit corporations. He captured the spirit of the moment perfectly—many of us got up long before dawn to be in Sacramento when the office opened so that we could become benefit corporations at the first possible moment. (What’s a benefit corporation? See this previous post.)

For Thinkshift, and I think for the other newly minted benefit corporations as well (Give Something Back Office Supplies, Dharma Merchant Services, Sun Light & Power, Opticos Design and many others), it felt like we took a significant first step in support of the kind of business culture that can build a sustainable, responsible and vibrant economy.

B Lab co-founder Jay Coen Gilbert, whose organization has been leading the push for benefit corporation legislation across the country, described California’s law as the “most rigorous” yet and “on its way to becoming the most used.”

Why is this important? Benefit corporation status ensures that mission-oriented buisnesses can honor their social and environmental commitments as they grow (and take on investors) without fear of shareholder lawsuits. Chouinard compared it to a conservation easement on a property. “It’s a conservation easement on a business, and I’m pretty excited about that,” he said. It also gives clients and customers a way to separate companies that are walking sustainability from those that are just talking it.

We’re a bit dazed here in the Thinkshift studios, since we also just became a corporation (moving up from a partnership) in conjunction with becoming a benefit corporation (benefit status relates to governance; we also needed to elect a standard corporate structure). The fact that we were able to do it all, in less than a month and over the holidays, is thanks to our lawyer Donald Simon of Wendel Rosen Black & Dean, who helped write the benefit corporation law and is a rock star.

A great start to 2012!
 

Thinkshift is proud to be a Service Partner for the Green Jobs Award program, which recognizes companies that contribute to the environment and the economy and are leaders in green job creation.

The recently named 2011 winners are Better World Books, Pacific Biodiesel, Power Partners, Sacred Power Corporation, SolarCity, Sungevity and The Taylor Companies. Applicants were judged on their environmental contribution, quality of their jobs and benefits, diversity of employment opportunities, and their level of community engagement.

Benefits for winners include a package of pro bono business services provided by Certified B Corporations. That’s where Thinkshift comes in—we’re looking forward to working with one or more of these great companies on sharpening their communications strategies.

The program is sponsored by the SJF Institute, which works to support and accelerate impact entrepreneurs. Find out more here.