Helping Kids Is Key for Baby-Food Company

Company: Happy Baby, a business in Brooklyn, N.Y., that sells organic and healthy baby food. It has eight full-time and 45 part-time employees.

How it gives: For every baby meal it sells, the two-and-half-year old company donates five cents to Project Peanut Butter, a nonprofit group that fights childhood hunger in Malawi and Sierra Leone.

How it got the idea: Shazi Visram and Jessica Rolph, recent business-school graduates, wanted their company to demonstrate a sense of social responsibility. Even before they sold any products, the pair contacted Project Peanut Butter and said they wanted to help.

“It made so much sense for us to help people feed not only their baby, but also a starving baby in Malawi,” says Ms. Rolph.

The company touts its support of Project Peanut Butter on its Web site, products, and posters at trade shows. Happy Baby also developed a laminated flyer that employees sometimes place in grocery stores that sell Happy Baby meals.

How much it has given: Happy Baby donated several thousand dollars to Project Peanut Butter last year. Its founders declined to provide an exact amount.

How the business benefits: New companies often have to give free products to retail stores when they start out out, so the store doesn’t lose money if the company’s products don’t sell. Because of Happy Baby’s charitable work, many stores agreed to reduce the number of meals the company had to provide for free.

The company’s support of Project Peanut Butter has also helped build loyalty among customers, says Ms. Rolph.

Why it has worked: Ms. Rolph says she likes that the charity, run by Mark Manary, a medical professor at Washington University, and his wife, Mardi, is small and entrepreneurial. She also says that the challenge of donating a percentage of revenue is “so small compared with the challenges of starting, growing, and running a new company.” Says Ms. Rolph: “We feel like this is actually what keeps us excited and passionate.”