Ginger ElseaJournal #1
I am about five weeks into my 15-week internship with the ABC Home & Planet Foundation and ABC Home. The most appealing aspect of my position within the Social Responsibility Department is that I have the opportunity to work at the intersection of the private and non-profit sectors. ABC Home is an iconic mission-driven, socially responsible retail store in NYC. The ABC Home & Planet Foundation, established in 2004, allows ABC Home to support a range of visionary organizations and offer gifts of compassion that nurture people and the planet.
My boss, Amy Chender, is the VP for Social Responsibility and the Executive Director of the Foundation. I assist her with the day-to-day operations of managing the Foundation and stewarding various socially responsible initiatives around the company, such as offering organic, natural, and sustainable products in the store; pursuing eco-friendly practices in the workplace and developing a farm-to-table restaurant concept. My two main deliverables this summer will be: 1) a business plan for the new Home & Planet space to be located on the mezzanine level, and 2) a draft of the first ever triple bottom line report for ABC Home.
This is the first time I find myself working with primarily creative, vision-oriented people, and I feel like my attention to detail and organization skills are a great asset. I have already learned that a combination of beauty and mission drives everything at ABC Home. Paulette Cole, the CEO and Creative Director of ABC Home, has a goal of selling 100% socially responsible products in the store by 2015.
In just over a month here, I have had many opportunities to become integrated into the culture of ABC Home and the Foundation. Below is a sample of the activities in which I have been involved:
- Completed a cost analysis for switching to organic, fair trade coffee in the office
- Met with a Malian artist who works with indigo and provides apprenticeships for local women; his work was featured in a NY Times piece one week after our meeting
- Liaised with B Corporation on membership requirements and benefits should ABC seek to qualify
- Attended NY Society of Women Entrepreneurs event on fair trade and responsible sourcing
- Developed a year-long education strategy for marketing the new Home & Planet space
- Participated in a new employee training on ABC Home and the Foundation’s mission
- Met with a German skin care company that is certified organic by ECOCERT and offers ethically grown, powerfully pure products
In addition, I represented the Foundation and marketed our gifts of compassion at an event with Deepak Chopra – an Indian-American doctor who has written extensively about spirituality and mind-body medicine. I also attended a film screening of the documentary Fresh which celebrates the farmers, thinkers, and business professionals across America who is responsible for reinventing our food system. Furthermore, I researched local farms who can serve as suppliers for ABC’s new farm-to-table restaurant which is being developed in collaboration with a celebrity chef. And on top of all this, I saw Kate Winslet in our store last week!
I am learning a lot about the financial restrictions facing foundations and the unique considerations and challenges of a retail organization, especially during the current financial crisis. Retail is a completely new industry for me, and it is opening my eyes to a lot of issues that I had not previously considered related to marketing, competition, and profit margins.
Over the next several weeks, my main goal will be not to get too bogged down in the day-to-day tasks that arise, and instead to focus on making progress on my two main deliverables. I recently obtained the financial information I need to start the Home & Planet business plan, and in the near future, I have a meeting scheduled with the Senior Planner to review the figures. This should provide me with some clear direction on this task. In addition, I located some great resources online for triple bottom line reporting and developed a list of key questions to discuss with my boss to make sure I understand the objectives, target audience, and desired format of our report.
