During last week's G8 Innovation Conference, Richard Branson along with the director of Kering, Jochen Zeitz, announced The B Team, a global non-profit aimed at refocusing business on people, the planet and the economy. 

The 'team' is made up of a handful of global business and political leaders including The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, Kering's Francois Henri-Pinault, Unilever CEO Paul Polman, and the Minister of Economy and Minister of Finance of Nigeria. With a goal to take the focus off of short term gains, the B leaders hope to broaden the conversation and inspire a Plan B that focuses on solving the world's growing problems of inequality, unemployment and the unsustainable use of natural resources, according to a release.Continue reading...

Pop royalty, fashion icons, princes and tech billionaires came together in London to promote Chime For Change, a equal rights movement for women and girls worldwide that utilizes an innovative crowdfunding platform dedicated to a demographic in need. 

The benefit concent, performed in London, was streamed to 150 countries and televised in the US, reaching over 1 billion people who donated more than $4.3 million to the cause, which was founded by Gucci and creative director Frida Giannini, Beyonce and Salma Hayek Pinault. The non-profit is supported by the Kering Foundation and Francois-Henri Pinault, the CEO of luxury conglomerate PPR (rebranded as Kering).

The lavish performances were interspersed with mini-documentaries about the plight of women and girls worldwide in developing countries. Those attending the concert were able to donate the value of their ticket to a non-profit of their choice, thanks to Giannini, who underwrote the event.Continue reading...

A bus-stop ad in Spain is making headlines worldwide. The client, the Fundación ANAR or Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk, is running two different messages in one campaign: one aimed at adults, the other visible only to those under 4 feet 5 inches tall—the average height of a 10-year-old. 

The innovative outdoor campaign shows two versions of a boy; one clear-faced, that adults see, and the other battered and bruised that's visible to kids' eyes, with a message that reads: "If somebody hurts you, phone us and we'll help you," along with a hotline number.Continue reading...

More than 50 million Americans are “food insecure,” according to a 2011 US Department of Agriculture study. In its latest designer collaboration, Target is partnering with FEED Projects to help change that. 

Target is joining forces with Lauren Bush Lauren's FEED Projects, which has previously partnered with Gap, Bergdorf Goodman and Pottery Barn, but the Target partnership is the largest to date. The collection is due to launch June 30. The duo just wrapped up a five-city tour of Feeding America programs that took them to food banks and local pantries in San Francisco, Minnesota, New York City and more. Target and FEED are hoping the partnership will generate 10 million meals for Feeding America.

"Target (has) such a massive reach that we just don't have," Lauren told USA Today. "So it's wonderful when we can partner with Target to really just blow it out and have such a big impact in a short amount of time."Continue reading...

Merck chairman and CEO Kenneth C. Frazier was honored in June with the “Good Scout” Award by Philadelphia’s Cradle of Liberty Boy Scout Council. Frazier grew up in North Philadelphia and credits scouting as instrumental in his life. Now Frazier, the first African American to head a major pharmaceutical company, is turning his back on the organization until it reverses its discriminatory policies.

Now Frazier and Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, have joined the growing wave of corporate leaders taking a stand against discrimination towards gay scouts and leaders in the Boy Scouts of America. 

As GLAAD notes of the corporate backlash to the Boy Scouts' anti-LGBT stance, Merck joins Intel and UPS with the following statement: “The BSA's policy of exclusion based on sexual orientation directly conflicts with the Merck Foundation’s giving guidelines.  The Foundation re-evaluated funding for the BSA when the organization restated its policy that excludes members on the basis of sexual orientation.  Merck Foundation has notified the BSA of this decision.” 

Boy Scouts of America director of public relations, Deron Smith, provided the following statement to brandchannel: “Scouting believes that good people can personally disagree on this topic and still work together to accomplish the common good. While not national sponsors, these companies have positively impacted America’s youth through support of Scouting in local communities. We respect their right to express their own opinions.”Continue reading...

Google is wielding its worldwide clout with a new platform that subtly promotes its foundation and corporate citizenship work by shining the spotlight on worthy non-profits.

The brand's first Global Impact Awards were announced today, recognizing seven startups that are applying innovation and technology to the world's most daunting human challenges.

Google is putting its money where its brand promise lies — "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" along with its unofficial slogan, "Don't be evil.”

“From real-time sensors that monitor clean water to DNA barcoding that stops wildlife trafficking, our first round of awards provides $23 million to seven organizations changing the world," stated Jacquelline Fuller, director of giving at Google, in a blog post.

The seven nonprofits winning the first Google Global Impact Awards:Continue reading...

Earlier this year, Procter & Gamble moved the global headquarters of its beauty and baby-care business and the Pampers brand to Singapore from corporate headquarters in Cincinnati. Now, the CPG giant wants to make Singapore its worldwide capital for manufacturing of water-purification products.

In fact, P&G has just announced a lofty goal for the Purifier of Water plant that it is scaling up in Singapore: to cleanse enough drinking water to "save one life every hour by 2020" somewhere on the planet. The powder is a mini water purification plant in a packet. The small packets, when stirred into water, causes heavy metals, dirt and parasites to bind together then fall to the bottom of the container. Strained through a filter cloth and after 20 minutes, the water is drinkable.

P&G has been distributing these packets in more than 65 countries since 2004, attacking the global scarcity of potable water and raising awareness about the problem. Now it's increasing its investment in this commitment with its Singapore plant opening. "We've taken [P&G] innovation power and focused on one of our world's biggest challenges, clean drinking water, a lack of which takes the lives of thousands of children every day," stated P&G CEO Bob McDonald.Continue reading...

Gilda Radner's Saturday Night Live character, Roseanne Rosannadanna, was famous for saying, "Well, it just goes to show — it's always something." Today, that something was a misleading headline on gossip site Gawker.com, which picked up a slightly misleading story from the Madison State Journal.

That story recounts the rebranding of a Gilda's Club chapter in Madison, Wisconsin, dropping the name of the cancer support organization established by Radner's husband, Gene Wilder, following her death from ovarian cancer in 1989. That chapter will adopt the name of Cancer Support Community, an organization that was founded by the merger of Gilda's Club Worldwide with the Wellness Community in November 2009, which became official in June 2011. That part is accurate; what's inaccurate is that the original story states that all Gilda's Club chapters will be adopting the CSC moniker "and the Gilda name will slowly go away."

The pioneering actress and comic, whose five-year run on SNL from 1975 to 1980 made her the Tina Fey/Sarah Silverman of her time, is an enduring icon to comedy-lovers worldwide. But Radner is also beloved for having inspired Gilda's Club. The original Gilda's Club location, a cozy brownstone with a cheery red door on Houston Street West in New York's Greenwich Village, is still active, as is the organization's mandate to provide free support and services to cancer patients and their supporters.

The CEO of Gilda's Club NYC told us they just celebrated their 17th anniversary and "would never change" their name, while CSC's EVP of external affairs also addressed the confusion and (see our update below) shared the organization's official statement on the matter.Continue reading...