businessboomer…ahh!

Man. My post just got deleted. Here we go again.

I just left a video comment on Techcrunch because Michael Arrington wrote about Causes on Facebook. I met the founder, Sean Parker, at the event I volunteered for at Mobilize.org. I didn’t get to speak to him for very long, but I was able to interview one of his team members, Chris, about the company.

On Arrington’s article, a lot of the comments talked about whether Causes is a success with $12.5 million total donations. Well, if you ask me, that’s a huge success. I mean, gathering even $1 from 10 broke college students is a big deal. I don’t know if you remember being a broke undergrad, but I do. And $1 is a cup of chili or five pieces of chicken tenders from the Wendy’s dollar menu at the Rutgers Student Center.

But it’s not even about the amount of money Causes raised or that they’ve gained from revenue. It’s about this thing called “social responsibility” and how doing good is good for business. From serving it’s bottom line to perpetuating its legacy…doing good doesn’t hurt, it helps.

Take it from Peter Drucker.

Co-president Elisa Mann of the Drucker Society of Los Angeles wrote in her blog post on druckerla.blogspot.com:

Businesses exist to serve social purposes, according to Peter Drucker. They have to function in ways that make sense to the society in which they are situated – and in the case of multinational corporations, they often have to function in ways that make sense across more than one society, at a deep level.

Yes. And now more than ever, (perhaps it’s the war, 8 years of a crappy administration or scary natural disasters) businesses and individuals feel compelled to participate in social responsibility. Look at Salesforce.com, which I mention in the video comment, they’ve got a program that gives 1% of their time, 1% of their revenue and 1% of their services to charity. You can learn more about that here. And they’re business is doing crazy good — in the sense of the bottom line.

Elisa’s post also got a comment from Kevin Long, COO of JustMeans.com, which is a social networking site for nonprofits. It’s like a LinkedIn meets Facebook but for businesses who want to do good. We had a conference call with Kevin the other day and he told us that they just secured Series A funding.

Social responsibility and social entrepreneurship is on the rise. And companies like Causes on Facebook and JustMeans.com know that tapping into it isn’t just helping people do good, it’s helping them do good. And that’s okay…we are in business, after all. So a little revenue is good. Got it? Good.