‘Fast Company’: Demise of Business Group

Business Enterprise Trust, a nonprofit group founded by the television producer Norman Lear, went out of business in June, reports Fast Company.

The organization, to which Mr. Lear provided $10-million, was founded in 1989 to encourage corporate social responsibility. While it was one of the first groups to take on that mission, others followed — and did so in ways that were often more ambitious than the awards ceremonies and case-study publications that were the main thrust of the trust’s operations. As a result, support for the Business Enterprise Trust became hard to muster, the magazine says.

Bob Dunn, president of Business for Social Responsibility, said the trust can take credit for helping to make a company’s social obligations a major topic of discussion throughout corporate America. A decade ago, Mr. Dunn told Fast Company, “people thought corporate social responsibility was something attached mostly to small businesses led by owners-founders and linked to political or social activism.”

The article is available at http://www.fastcompany.org