Cause & Effect |
The return on your community investment depends increasingly on what you choose to support. So choose wisely
by Anthony A. Davis
Mogens Smed was going out on a limb, but there was no hint DIRRT Environmental Solutions’ CEO was fretting that he might soil his company’s reputation with his brash brand of corporate social responsibility. Smed is, after all, a confirmed believer. And the organization he believes in is the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, better known for its controversial captain, Paul Watson, a guy the Government of Canada has likened to a terrorist.
So here was DIRRT, a Calgary-based manufacturer of movable wall and flooring solutions for office buildings, sponsoring – what? – a second annual fundraiser for Watson called For the Oceans. This was CSR with an edge. The night of music, auctions and face-painting for kids at Calgary’s Red and White Room raised nearly $80,000 for Sea Shepherd last October. The money, Watson says, will help pay for fuel the organization needs this winter to take on Japanese whale hunters in the Antarctic.
With his white beard and tousled hair, a belly bulging underneath a thick-ribbed black sweater adorned with assorted Sea Shepherd badges, Watson, 59, looked more like a security guard at the event than its main attraction. But, for many marine lovers, he’s the oceans’ righteous vigilante, a heroic eco-warrior who, since founding Sea Shepherd in 1977, has thwarted or sunk numerous illegal fishing, shark-finning and whaling ships around the world and clubbed Canada’s own seal hunt with visceral negative publicity. As seen in Whale Wars, now Animal Planet’s top-rated series, Watson and his volunteer crew have, for six years now, harassed, even rammed, Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic, slathering their decks with cannonades of slippery, rancid butter in repeated attempts to stop the annual effort to slaughter 1,000 whales in a hunt international governments condemn as illegal (without doing anything tangible about it).
When the event’s co-sponsor, real estate adviser CresaPartners, sent out an email blast inviting clients to support the event, “We had a guy,” recounts Gary Jones, managing principal and an avid scuba diver, “who emailed back that he considers Sea Shepherd to be criminals, terrorists. And he could not do business with a company that associates itself with them.” When Jones discussed sponsoring the Sea Shepherd fundraiser in 2008 at his boardroom table, the conclusion was, he says, that “This is not something where you are going to get a business payback.”
So what were DIRTT and CresaPartners doing promoting Sea Shepherd instead of the sort of warm, fuzzy charities corporations normally throw their reputation and money behind as part of a CSR strategy? Typically, the beneficiaries of CSR are chronic diseases, universities, arts, sports and hospital foundations. It’s either those or the societal problems (poverty, homelessness) tackled by the United Way and other “safe” charities.
