Turns Out Bike Lanes Are Really Good for Local Business
- Meghan Neal wrote in Business, Transportation and Cities
Good news for bike activists: Making a safe place on streets for cyclists (and pedestrians) boosts sales for the small businesses in the area.
This according to a recent report from the New York Department of Transportation. The study found that on commercial blocks where new bike lanes were built, the businesses saw a nearly 50 percent increase in sales.
Join us for our Fix Your Street Challenge on the last Saturday of May. Click here to say you’ll Do It and be sure to share stories of transportation innovation all month.
The GOODEST: Make a Pro Bono Commitment
-Alessandra Rizzotti and Jessica De Jesus contributed in Business, Culture and News
The GOODEST can be so many things, but why not just narrow it down to one thing each week? We’ll change it up and keep it fresh. After all, we consume so much daily, so for the weekend, why not just take away one great learn and do from the week?
Help Your Company Add a Pro Bono Service Program
Public Architecture wrote this downloadable letter so that you can urge your CEO tomake meaningful work a part of actual work.
Will you fill out the letter and send it off? Tell us here.
Illustration by Jessica de Jesus. Original image from Auctiva.
Zara Pledges to Eliminate All Toxic Chemicals After Greenpeace Campaign
- Adele Peters posted in Design, Business and Sustainability
Zara, the world’s largest fashion retailer, has agreed to remove toxic chemicals from its clothing by 2020—thanks to a week of intense pressure from consumers (including the GOOD community) in a campaign led by Greenpeace.
YOU GUYS,
We won the Gold Prize for Innovative Digital Marketing at the Internationalist Awards this year for The GOOD Company Project, a program—in collaboration with IBM—that celebrates mid-size businesses changing the world!
Congrats to all the teams that collaborated on this project and special thanks to Tim Fernholz, the Business Editor and Correspondent throughout the program.
GoldieBlox: A Toy To Inspire Young Girls To Become Engineers
After being a part of a male-dominated engineering program, Stanford alum Debbie Sterling founded GoldieBlox, Inc. to create a toy that would inspire young girls to be more interested in math and science. After much research, she concluded that combining reading with a construction toy would make the toy more attractive to young girls. The production of the toy was funded on Kickstarter within five days, and now Sterling is writing the next few books in her series. www.goldieblox.com
Thanks Alessandra
The GOODEST: Our Favorite Things to Learn and Do This Past Week
Illustration by Jessica De Jesus
This Black Friday, Businesses Can Choose to Help Sandy Victims
- by Sandy Friday
Even the most visceral and striking images and media coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy do not do justice to the situation on the ground. One needs to go in person to fully comprehend the gravity and magnitude of the challenges facing communities like Rocakway Beach.
I had the privilege of being able to volunteer to aid some residents with demolition and clean up work on their homes last weekend. Even with 10 people, it took us two hours to clear out a ground floor of soggy drywall and insulation. A gentleman named Tom and his son Eddie were working on their house across the street. The man’s basement was an unrecognizable darkened pit, wreaking with an overpowering chemical odor, which came from the oil that spilled out of his fuel oil tank when the floodwaters rushed in. We worked in the dark, stripping soaked sheetrock off the ceiling with our hands. This was just one block out of hundreds where the recovery work is just beginning and will require months of effort.
That’s why we started Sandy Friday, a national campaign that asks for donations from individuals and business owners on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. The money raised during Sandy Friday will directly fund community-based organizations on the ground working in some of the most devastated areas since immediately after the storm hit. We have chosen to partner with these organizations because of the amount of volunteers they have been able to mobilize, their ties to the community, and most importantly, the credibility that they have garnered for themselves within the neighborhoods they are serving.
While we launch on Black Friday, we know that any effective campaign has to be sustainable with a vision for long-term success. We believe that volunteerism can happen in many different ways. This is a grassroots mobilization that starts with our collective desire to help. We call on you to ask your family, neighbors, and bosses to pledge with Sandy Friday. We ask you to donate cash or in-kind supplies as individuals. Anyone can participate, and everyone should.
As the winter comes into full force, media attention on relief efforts will inevitably start to fade, and volunteer attendance will begin to wane, but there is still rebuilding and recovery work left to do. This makes it especially important to consider which long-term options we have in place to support these communities. We must ask ourselves what we are doing on a personal level to rebuild this city and how our actions can make a positive difference in the long run. With your help, we hope that Sandy Friday can provide individuals and businesses with an ongoing channel to show solidarity with affected communities through cash and in-kind pledges in the darkest days of winter. Those who pledge can rest assured that their donations are not only tax-deductible but are also going straight to those who need it most.
We believe that while these communities have transitioned out of a pure survival phase, they are still a long way from returning to life as normal. The rebuilding phase has just begun, and once that is underway, we will see a return of the arts and culture. It is our goal to be a source of funding for the organizations that are committed to a long-term vision of rebuilding in these communities in the days and months ahead. Let’s do this for the small organizations that do not have the visibility that Red Cross does, and for the people out there like Tom and Eddie who are just taking the first steps towards recovery.
If you own a business, we ask that you donate 10 percent of your Black Friday/Cyber Monday profits to Sandy Friday. If you are unable to give a full 10 percent there are many ways to still participate in Sandy Friday which include:
For individuals, we ask that you mobilize yourselves. Retweet and like, share and pin, but then put your computer to sleep and start a conversation with your boss, your neighbor, the owner at your local bar, a perfect stranger. Specifically, we call on you to do one of the things listed below:
Illustration by Fatim Hana
UPS Stops Donating to Boy Scouts Because Ban on Gay Scouts and Leaders
Props to UPS Foundation for standing against discrimination. The UPS Foundation seeks to support organizations that are in alignment with our focus areas, guidelines, and non-discrimination policy. UPS and The UPS Foundation do not discriminate against any person or organization with regard to categories protected by applicable law, as well as other categories protected by UPS and The UPS Foundation in our own policies.
Thanks, Kuzie
Infographic: What Do Small Businesses Mean to You?
Quick, can you name five small businesses in your neighborhood? If you’re like most Americans, you can probably think of even more than five. After all, small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms in America – that’s nearly 6 million companies. Small businesses (defined by the Small Business Association as companies with less than 500 employees) employ about half of all private sector workers. But aside from employing millions of Americans, studies show that many of us also think highly of these types of businesses and even have an emotional connection with them. Here’s what Americans have to say when it comes to small businesses.
Design by Deeplocal
This post is brought to you by GOOD, with support from UPS. We’ve teamed up to bring you the Small Business Collaborative, a series sharing stories about innovative small businesses that are changing business as usual for their communities and beyond. Learn how UPS is helping small businesses work better and more sustainably here.
London’s Rushing to Copy New York’s High Line Park for Its Economic Effects - by Dave Burdick
I don’t know what else could possibly make a city consider plans for a park “as a public experience and urban mushroom farm,” but that’s precisely the result of a contest called A High Line For London. (For my part, I’d rather luxuriate atop abandoned elevated rail lines than in abandoned subterranean ones, but maybe they’ll be laughing in London in 12 years, too—see also the “Low Line.”)
Welcome to a new, connected, more collaborative good.is!
Let’s learn and do more good — together.
San Francisco Embraces the Pop-Up for Neighborhood Revitalization
In San Francisco, pop-up incubator SQFT attempts to showcase the potential of temporary business for economic development
Infographic: What’s a B Corporation?
With the number of companies in the world today, it can be hard to discern which truly embody social and environmental values worth supporting. A certified B Corporation is a company that voluntarily meets certain standards of transparency, accountability, and performance.
