February 22, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
NEW BOOKS
Growing Local Value: How to Build Business Partnerships That Strengthen Your Community
by Laury Hammel and Gun Denhart
Values-driven business practices “help ensure your company’s profitability and long-term success” by building strong relationships with customers, employees, local government, other businesses, and nonprofit groups, write Laury Hammel, founder of the Longfellow sports clubs, and Gun Denhart, founder of the Hanna Andersson clothing company. To that end, they say, both charities and business can greatly benefit from collaboration.
The authors suggest ways “to design a community program that allows you both to give from the heart and to maximize the impact of your contributions.”
Companies can donate money or products, provide long-term support to a single group, and even establish new charities.
The authors discuss the successes, trials, and errors they encountered while building companies and seeking to support the towns where their businesses were based. They also include examples from other entrepreneurs. Each chapter closes with a summary of lessons gleaned from studying the successes and failures of each venture.
Ms. Hammel and Ms. Denhart offer the example of Roger Brown and Linda Mason, co-founders of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, a for-profit child-care provider, who established a nonprofit group called Horizons for Homeless Children to offer support services and child care to homeless families. They used their experience as entrepreneurs, their knowledge of child care and education, and their corporate connections to create a successful charity that now serves 1,100 youngsters every week.
“Entrepreneurs like you can help transform the world of commerce so that human values lead business growth, not only the drive for higher profits,” the authors say. “As an entrepreneur, you can build a business that contributes to your community in ways that go far beyond selling a good product.”
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, Calif. 94104; (415) 288-0260; fax (415) 362-2512; http://www.bkconnection.com; 176 pages; $12; ISBN 0-57675-371-9.
