Positive Power of Principled Profit
Volume 1, Number 12 - September, 2004

Positive Power Spotlight: ComfortQuilts.org

As I begin my second year publishing this newsletter, it is just days after the anniversary of the September 11 tragedies (not only what happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, but also the commemoration of September 11, 1973, when Chile's democratically elected government was brutally overthrown by terrorists whose totalitarian junta ran that country for many years afterward). For the first time, I am profiling a nonprofit rather than a business, because I was touched by this story.

I saved a message on a discussion list from June, 2003, talking about the work of ComfortQuilts.org. This organization organizes volunteers to sew quilts for every child who lost a parent on September 11, 2001.

And I tracked down and interviewed the project's founder. Debby Bullentini was a fifth-grade teacher in Reno, Nevada, US. On September 20, 2001—one week after the attacks—she was watching Oprah Winfrey. Oprah had a pair of kids whose father, another fifth grade teacher, had been killed, and she was moved to start the project. Enlisting a pool of volunteer seamstresses (she's looking for more), she started assembling the first of several hundred quilts. " I used to make US history quilts with my class every year. I figured this was a way to get each child to create a square for a date in history. I thought I could probably get people to create squares. People can create a 12-1/2 square with anything they want, a message, a poem, a picture—anything that would bring happiness to a child that lost a parent that day." Her group has delivered 170 quilts to victims of the Pentagon plane, about 100 to those who lost parents in Pennsylvania, and over 400 to children who lost parents in the attack on the WTC (including 112 that she hand-delivered to FDNY firehouses).

After 12 years in the schools, she left teaching to manage the quilt project full -time. "It has consumed my life. My family jokes that I need to go back to work so I can be less busy." But the responses from the victim families have made it worthwhile. "The reaction is unbelievable. They just can't believe that someone who lives so far away cares about them. They're so grateful! I've received many, many thank you cards, pictures of kids with their quilts."

Meanwhile, a lot of other charities have approached Debby, to see if perhaps she wants to start making quilts for children orphaned by the war, or by cancer. Debby is a born marketer (you knew I had to talk about marketing; this is a marketing newsletter, after all). She got her Congressman, Jim Gibbons, involved, and he not only spoke about the project on the House floor but also connected her with the appropriate organizations in all three locations. She's been a guest on the Today Show, a featured speaker at national conferences, and has gotten Bill Cosby and other celebrities to create squares—along with ordinary citizens from 18 countries. "I've been going to classrooms and talking about how you can change things, how you can make a difference. There I am, one person in Reno, Nevada, nowhere near, and the US Congress listened to the message."

If you'd like to support the work of this group, either with a monetary contribution or with your time, please visit http://www.comfortquilts.org

Another Recommended Book: "Co-opetition" by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff

Sometimes, your competitors aren't who you think they are—maybe not even in the same industry. For example, if the customer has a need to transmit a message to a group of people, then FedEx, videoconferencing, a corporate meeting bringing in people from different divisions, and the company website might all supply the need. And thus, package delivery services, airlines, and broadband communication suppliers all compete for the customer's decision.

At the same time, businesses must recognize the key role of "complementors"—those without whom your own product or service loses value. The car industry needs the highway industry, the fuel industry, the insur ance industry, and the automotive financing industry; decisions that hurt any of these sectors may damage its own markets. (I agree up to a point; as new technologies evolve, the gasoline industry may or may not remain a complementor; other power technologies may supplant it, but in any case, the car needs a source of power.)

This new mindset encourages businesses and institutions to see themselves very differently. For example, an academic organization must provide satisfaction to all its various "customers": the students, of course, but also the parents who pay the bills, the corporations that hire its graduates, the government agencies that commission research or provide the scholarships that enable students to attend, and the donors who seek a return in prestige or in the university's accomplishments in the world. What happens when universities ask donors what sorts of programs to fund? Typically, very different objectives than when the school decides on a project and scrambles to fund it.

And universities face competition not only from other schools, but also from other methods of learning and conducting research. But schools also are complementors, in that the universe of available high school graduates is vastly increased because so many schools create a market for these graduates, thus providing an incentive to finish high school and do well academically. Were there only one choice, many students wouldn't bother applying, seeing admission as too competitive.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of concepts explored in this provocative book. It's been around for a while (1996)—but if anything, its message is even more relevant now.

If you'd like to buy this book, please follow this link to buy from a BookSense independent bookseller:
http://www.booksense.com/index.jsp?affiliateId=FrugalFun