It’s capitalism with a conscience. Nordstrom recently opened a test store where all profits go to charity. Starbucks has three coffee shops where a big chunk of the money made helps the needy.
For decades, this kind of corporate kindness was the exception, but in the past few years, dozens of America’s biggest brands have embraced social generosity as an unusually effective way to sell themselves to consumers, employees, even stockholders.
When Roger Simmermaker went shopping for clothes at a Florida mall in the mid-1990s, he wanted to buy American, but to his frustration, he couldn’t find anything made in the U.S.A.
It motivated him to write “How Americans Can Buy American: The Power of Consumer Patriotism
The pendulum has swung back toward a wider choice of American-made products — often without a higher price tag.
(READ the story in Reuters)
After a three-year battle with cancer, Joshua Jones may be living his final days.
A group of family and friends pooled their money to buy four front-row seats so he could see his beloved Dodgers one last time.
Dodger player Matt Kemp had promised to sign an autograph after the game, but instead was moved to do more, including give the shirt off his back — and his shoes.
Johnson & Johnson executives were handed 30,000 signatures from consumers in February who, instead of complaining, were praising the company.
As one of the world’s largest producers of personal care products, it had followed through on an August pledge to remove toxic chemicals from its baby products — and by doing so, signaled a change in corporate America.
“Smart companies that are marketing to children are in a footrace to phase out chemicals of concern,” said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, an environmental group that presented the signatures to the corporation.
What’s unfolding in Nevada is a fish story about the one that didn’t get away, a tale of loss, discovery and restoration that reaches from Utah across the Great Basin to Pyramid Lake and up a river into the snow-clad Sierra Nevada around Lake Tahoe.
The largest inland trout in North America, the salmon-sized cutthroat, went from near extinction to stunning recovery in a rare comeback orchestrated by a decades-long odyssey of biological risk and scientific discovery made possible by the commitment of a fisheries biologist laboring in one of the most remote corners of the West.
Russians – like people everywhere – are good, often helping strangers without any notice. Russian vehicles are required to have dashboard cameras due to the high rate of insurance fraud there. But the cameras have captured something else – the high rate of humanitarian goodness.
Obviously people like watching this type of good news. This video, showing 18 separate displays of helpfulness, has received 2.4 million views on the original YouTube page alone.
On July 22, 2008, Harris’s little brother Michael was rushed to the emergency room with a serious bacterial infection. His condition quickly worsened –- septic shock, a coma, and oxygen deprivation to his four limbs — resulting in quadriplegic amputation.
The two both played sports.
“I’ve even won some awards, but that’s nothing in comparison to my brother. He wins the cake for being awesome.”
Despite losing his hands, and having prosthetic devices where his feet once were, he still competes.
“He doesn’t let anything stop him,” says Harris.
Ask Wall Street bankers the net worth of hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, and they’ll tell you, $3.6 billion. But ask a homeless child or a struggling family and they’ll tell you that a spreadsheet is no way to measure a man.
Mr. Jones wondered why, if billionaires, like him, are such geniuses, do nearly two million people in New York City live in poverty? In 1988, he started a charity called the Robin Hood Foundation. Twenty five years later, Robin Hood has given away more than one and a quarter billion dollars.
(WATCH the video from 60 Mins, or READ the story from CBS News)
A new product designed for its social good uses the principles of a salad spinner to make less back-breaking and time-consuming the work of washing clothes for millions of people in poverty.
The patent-pending GiraDora is a human-powered washer and spin dryer that increases the efficiency and improve the experience of hand-washing clothes.
It’s a “miracle” for a couple whose cat bolted out the door six months ago after Hurricane Sandy forced the family to flee their New Jersey home.
No one can detail the cat’s amazing journey, but the feline somehow managed to travel eight miles to find his Toms River home.
A man has made it his mission to make Washington, D.C. smile — especially on Monday mornings.
This 5-minute video documenting the Make DC Smile project won the 2013 Pendragwn Youth Film Festival’s Grand Prize Award.
Tyrell Clay, the football quarterback, is the most popular boy at Miller High School in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Adam, on the other hand, has been picked on and called names – and was nominated to the prom court as a joke.
Adam, who is already book smart, decided to try to boost his social smarts a bit, by actually attending the prom.
The Norfolk area of Broadland has been named the most “peaceful” area of the UK.
The tranquil district, which has a population of about 125,000, had only eight violent crimes reported in 2012 — about a third of the national average.
A largely rural area north-east of Norwich, Broadland includes some of the city’s suburbs along with picturesque villages and handsome market towns.
Muscular dystrophy robbed Nick Torrance of his ability to walk, which would be hard enough for a teenager to handle. But it also hindered his everyday capabilities such as opening his locker at school.
Fortunately, Nick’s high school classmates were clever enough to create a solution as a homework assignment.
Two Pinckney Community High School seniors used their robotics ingenuity and created an electronic automatic locker opener.
LeBron James said he always knew if he became an NBA professional, at some point in his life he would make sure the antiquated gymnasium at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School was renovated.
Now a top star in the sport, he has donated $1 million to build a state-of-the-art gym for his alma mater to be completed this fall.
LeBron graduated from STVM in 2003 after spending four memorable years playing basketball and winning three State Championships for the Akron area school under the leadership of Coach Dru.
A Dutch artist is cheering people in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor with a yellow 50-foot-tall rubber duck.
The motto of the Rubber Duck Project is ‘Spreading Joy Around the World’.
And indeed it has done that brilliantly.
Since 2008, Florentijn Hofman’s giant floating toy has glided its way into San Paolo, Auckland, Sydney, Amsterdam and Osaka.
Cooler temperatures helped firefighters battling a wildfire in southern California on Sunday and an official said the blaze was expected to be fully under control within 24 hours.
The blaze had been spreading rapidly due to the region’s high heat and Santa Anna winds since it started on Thursday in a coastal area northwest of Los Angeles.
In one of nature’s best comeback stories, endangered green sea turtles have multiplied in Florida during the past two decades and are now thriving in protected waters.
Intense conservation efforts have helped these 300-pound vegetarians flourish, with females laying hundreds of eggs along Florida’s east and southwest coasts and returning every two or three years to the exact same spot to nest again.
Instead of reaching for cookies or cake when stressed out, you might want some dark chocolate instead. New research from Australia has found that the polyphenols in dark chocolate increase calmness and contentedness.
Polyphenols are found naturally in plants and are a basic component of the human diet. These compounds have been shown to reduce oxidative stress which is associated with many diseases. They may also have beneficial psychological effects.
“Anecdotally, chocolate is often linked to mood enhancement,” said Matthew Pase of Swinburne University of Technology, the lead author of the study.
“This clinical trial is perhaps the first to scientifically demonstrate the positive effects of cocoa polyphenols on mood.”
Participants drank their assigned drink once a day for 30 days. After 30 days, those who drank the high dose concentration of cocoa polyphenols reported greater calmness and contentedness than those who drank either of the other drink mixes.
Only those who consumed the highest amount of polyphenols (500 mg per day) reported the positive effects.
The research is published in the May 2013 issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
An 8-year-old girl with brain cancer found herself surrounded by a flashmob of love yesterday and it’s all thanks to a man who lost his daughter to the disease.
His name is “Tattoo Tom” Mitchell and he became Tara Sankner’s Prince Charming for a day, directing almost a thousand people to come line the streets and chant the name of their Princess Tara.
