Blog: Business With a Heart

American big business is often portrayed these days as the villain: hoarding capital while it lays off workers; sending its manufacturing work overseas; using offshore mechanisms to avoid paying U.S. taxes; having a general disregard for the plight of small, voiceless Americans except when it wants to sell them something.

It’s not always this way, of course. There are still noble entrepreneurs at the head of Fortune 500 companies. Consider Howard Schultz, chairman and ceo of Starbucks. This summer, he called for a boycott of political contributions until Democrats and Republicans began to act in a nonpartisan way.

Schultz now has a more practical, more proactive suggestion in mind. He says the unemployment gridlock in this country is partly a result of the tight credit market small businesses face. And rather than waiting for government or the banks to fix this, he has a plan to fix it himself.

Here’s the plan: Starbucks customers are invited to donate $5 or more to Create Jobs for USA. That money goes to community development financial institutions (CDFIs), non-profit lenders that specialize in underserved communities such as small businesses unable to get credit elsewhere.

At an expected leveraging ratio of 7-to-1, 10 million Starbucks customers donating $5 each will produce $350 million worth of lending. The Starbucks Foundation has kicked it off with a $5 million donation and Schultz is hoping to convince other national retail chains to participate, as well.

There’s also something very democratic about the Starbucks plan. It was created by a brainstorming session among various Starbucks employees who gathered at Schultz’s home this summer. He laid this challenge onto the table: “Let’s try to take a big swing at job creation that will be unprecedented and unorthodox.” He served them pizza.

Impressive what a group of American citizens can do when they’re not burdened by obligations to lobbyists or the need to be re-elected.

In December’s VMSD, you’ll be reading about the new Treasure&Bond store in lower Manhattan, which was actually the creation of a similar focus group of employees gathered by Nordstrom and handed the challenge, “If we were to create a store in New York, what would it be?”

Part of the Treasure&Bond model is that it contributes all its profits to charities that benefit the most vulnerable parts of our society, such as children and the homeless. That’s an admirable, if unusual, model for a retail venture. At the heart of it is Nordstrom finding a way to donate to the needy and improve someone’s life.

Starbucks, Nordstrom. I’ve always suspected there’s something in the Seattle water the rest of us ought to be drinking.