Blogroll
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Bridging the digital divide
It’s high time to re-imagine how and where we work By Matthew Bauer As originally in the May/June Sustainable Industries Issue, Bridging a Digital Divide If you have been following the news as of late, it is likely that you have seen one or more articles on the virtues or the downside of telework, all taking cues from Yahoo!’s (Nasdaq: YHOO) recent decision to recall its teleworkers back to the “factory.” The debate has covered the pros and cons extensively, so I will spare you the emotion here and focus on the past, present and future of work as we know it, and where it’s going, whether you like it or not. Just the facts, ma’am! ... -
BizWestMichigan Interview – BALLE 2012
BetterWorld was out making change with fellow local businesses at this year’s BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The 2012 BALLE Business Conference: Real Prosperity Starts Here conference connected more than 700 community innovators, business owners, and investors to people, resources and ideas to unleash local prosperity.... -
American Sustainable Business Council
BetterWorld Telecom was excited to attend the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) Business Summit this past June in Washington DC. ASBC is an organization dedicated to the creation of public policy that acknowledges the large and growing community of sustainable and socially responsible enterprises. ... -
Why Your Company Needs Remote Work – The San Francisco BART Closure
Business and commutes are at a standstill today after an extreme fire in West Oakland put the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system completely out of service between the East Bay and San Francisco. The resultant traffic and chaos from commuters attempting alternate methods of ferry, buses, and carpooling will likely result in something of a local holiday – as highways turn into parking lots. The growing density of the Bay Area and many urban corridors, puts individuals and businesses at the mercy of transit systems that are both fallible and already pushed to capacity.... -
The Garden of Business
Being a good business is like being a good gardener. Or so says William Rosenzwieg, 2010 recipient of the Oslo Business for Peace Award. Rosenzwieg is the Co-founder at Bay Area-based Physic Ventures and works with purpose-driven businesses like Recyclebank, Revolution Foods, GoodGuide, and Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy.... -
Historic Benefit Corp Legislation Passed in SF
Board of Supervisors Unanimously Approves City Incentives for New Type of Socially Responsible Corporations Legislation Provides Bid Preferences to Benefit Corporations Contracting With the City San Francisco, CA – The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to support an ordinance sponsored by Board President David Chiu that will provide bid preferences on City contracts to Benefit Corporations, a new form of a corporate entity recently authorized by the State of California. The ordinance will be voted on for a second time next Tuesday, April 24, with passage expected.... -
Inevitable Change – Part 3
As originally featured in SustainableIndustries.com by BetterWorld President Matthew Bauer. A three part series: Reading the tea leaves, accepting the inevitable and bringing focus to the most promising sector of our economy. _Part One discussed how we got to where we are. Part Two focused on Trends and Facts helping support the shift to a small business-focused economy, Part Three now pulls it all together and discusses concrete solutions for moving forward into the new Access Economy. _ All too often we are just looking at the issues in silos and not seeing the opportunity for truly shifting our economy, society and our species’ detrimental and growing impact on the earth’s biosphere. Taking a page from the wisdom of E.O. Wilson, his book, Conscilience, touches brilliantly on a new approach – managing strategy and policy across multiple silos of specialty at the same time.... -
Inevitable Change – Part 1
As originally featured in SustainableIndustries.com by BetterWorld President Matthew Bauer. A three part series: Reading the tea leaves, accepting the inevitable and bringing focus to the most promising sector of our economy. For eons, civilization on Earth evolved slowly, innovation and change took place over decades and centuries, until the past few hundred years. Suddenly, an explosion of invention and progress gave society airplanes, cars, global wars, computers, skyscrapers, the Internet, global movement of goods and money, beauty, opportunity and destruction on a level never imagined. For the first time since we pulled our knuckles off the ground, humanity had gotten way out ahead of itself. So who could blame us for buying into the religion of growth for growth’s sake, materialism, globalization and all the ensuing collateral damage. ... -
Happy New Year from BetterWorld Telecom
Excerpted from BetterWorld Insights Newsletter. Happy New Year! Delancey Street Donation On behalf of our customers, we're celebrating this holiday season with a donation to the Delancey Street Foundation. Now in it's 40th yr., Delancey is a community where people with nowhere to turn, turn their lives around. If every community had a Delancey Street it would truly be a BetterWorld.... -
BetterWorld TechSoup Global Program Case Study
We were thrilled to receive this review from one of our newest TechSoup Global nonprofit customers, FishWise: FishWise provides innovative market-based tools to the seafood industry, enabling consumers and grocery retailers to support marine conservation through their seafood purchasing decisions. Letter from Fishwise: I was hired to organize a growing non-profit office of eight. ... -
San Francisco Steps up Big for B Corps – Board of Supervisors President, David Chiu, Proposes Incentives for CA B Corps
San Francisco Board of Supervisors President and SF Mayoral Candidate, David Chiu, today held a press conference at the Hub SoMa and laid out his plan for San Francisco to become the beacon and capital of Social Entrepreneurialism, starting with a plan for the City to provide contract bid preferences to CA B Corps or Benefit Corporations. BetterWorld has stood by Supervisor Chiu through this process, which began at a Silicon Valley Leadership Group event a few months ago and culminating recently in a roundtable with Supervisor Chiu with many SF Access Economy and B Corps leaders, including Jeff Marcous of Dharma Merchant Services, Brian Back of Sustainable Industries, David Brodwin from the American Sustainable Business Council, Alex Michel from the 5M Project and others.... -
Virtual Work, Real Success
** Telecom for Good** BetterWorld Telecom provides services that enable and support a virtual work environment, as a donation partner with TechSoup Global. However, BetterWorld itself works as a virtual team, with team members scattered literally across the U.S. With TechSoup’s focus on virtual work this month, we thought we’d share some of the tips and practices we use to make ‘virtual work’ work for us.... -
Giving Back – Ashoka Youth Venture, Berkeley Food � Housing Project
Part of what makes us passionate about our work here at BetterWorld Telecom is our company commitment to use business as a lever for good and to give back to our communities through volunteering and donations. One of our donation recipients is Ashoka Youth Venture, an inspiring program that enables young people to learn early in life that they can lead social change.... -
BetterWorld Celebrates Earth Day Building Green Houses with Habitat for Humanity in Oakland
As part of Habitat for Humanity’s 2011 Earth Day Build-a-Thon, some of BetterWorld’s team was on hand for executive build day. We were joined by executives from many of the Bay area’s leading companies including Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab, Coldwell Banker, Chevron and Cisco. Habitat for Humanity is an extraordinary non-profit organization building simple, decent, affordable housing and organizing myriad events and opportunities for volunteers to have a hand in the process alongside Habitat families.... -
WorldBlu: Most Democratic Workplace!
What if companies were evaluated not just by their profits, but by the way they treated their employees and the democracy of their workplaces? WorldBlu does exactly that by providing in-depth surveys for organizations and their employees to anonymously rate their workplaces on transparency. Working to create happy, engaged workplaces – their rating system creates standards for what would otherwise be largely intangible.... -
BetterWorld Telecom 2010 Signpost
As is our annual BetterBlog tradition, we mark the passing of each January 1st with some reflection and highlights of the previous year. As we make the turn into 2011, the BetterWorld team is excited as 2010, on almost every front, was our best to date – from new partnerships, to customers, expanding our mission and furthering our efforts to provide a concrete example and direction for how the telecoms industry can be a social and environmental leader, our pathway has never been more clear....
