Mission History

History

Why did a group of thinkers decide to make sustainability for smaller employers a priority? And how did that initiative develop into Green Plus, a nonprofit with a network spanning across 12 states and with over 250 enterprises doing green better?

The seed was planted in 2004.

Back then, magazines from Fortune to Newsweek plastered “new leaders in business” on their covers. These executives saw sustainability as a way to make money, and the best way to make money was to make big organizational changes. Buildings got energy audits and upgrades, experts began looking more closely at the “life cycles” of products, and the public started asking critical questions about where and how the things they buy are made.

Production shifted. Big businesses started making things more efficiently, sourcing from people who took care of their employees responsibly, and even let employees drive innovation.

Results were too compelling to ignore: saving dollars, revolutionizing business models, breeding goodwill, lowering risk. Business prospered as a direct result of doing green better.

At about that time, an observant leader, Tony Waldrop, at the University of North Carolina looked around the small town in which he lived and wondered how this opportunity would make its way to the small businesses and nonprofits he frequented.

As he spoke with more business owners, he discovered a disconnect. The networks, trainings, and conferences driving change in big business were simply not geared toward smaller enterprises. They were impractical. Simply out of reach.

Although UNC excelled in teaching sustainability, there was not a ready conduit for connecting that expertise with local communities. Tony saw a gap.

And made it a personal goal to seal it.

To better understand smaller employers in his community, Tony asked his local chamber of commerce, the group working closest with these businesses, what they thought of this goal. He quickly found them to be a ready and enthusiastic partner.

Joining forces and finishing its due diligence, the team approached UNC’s business school.

They asked UNC to write a business plan to help smaller employers earn more money, and do better work for their people and the planet by taking smart steps to be more sustainable.

UNC finished this plan in 2007. The seed now beginning to sprout, all that was needed was some investment capital and someone to make it happen.

The group soon found more partners: departments at Duke University, other local chambers of commerce, and philanthropists. In 2008, a social entrepreneur, Chris Carmody, with a history of getting community initiatives off the ground, was hired to pilot and launch the program. After partnering with small businesses in the area and several iterations of the business plan later, the program, now known as Green Plus, launched in early 2009.

Since its inception, Green Plus has expanded beyond North Carolina to more than 12 states, attracting over 250 smaller employers to participate. The program maintains its early ties with a regular group of graduate students from UNC and Duke supporting it through internships, and enjoys board support from a mix of academic (NC State and Elon University included), business, and sustainability movers and shakers.

People who work with Green Plus today are the heroes of green for small enterprise.

Green Plus continues to bridge the divide between being small and doing green.