Fair trade coffee continues to grow in popularity. More and more people are hearing about it. And coffee drinkers find it easy to make the choice to support small coffee farmers simply by looking for the Fair Trade logo when buying coffee.
Herein lies much of the power of fair trade: people find it easy to “give” when they are going to buy something anyway.
Within the context of making a daily purchase, consumers feel very little internal resistance when paying extra to support a cause they agree with. Their frame of mind is quite different from when they are asked to make a charitable donation to a national or local non-profit.
Would you make a donation to a non-profit on a weekly basis? Most of us don’t. But we do buy fair trade coffee each week.
Our willingness to help when we are asked to make a purchase, rather than to make a donation, is a key driver of social capitalism.
Here’s a short excerpt from a recent article in Fast Company magazine:
“For guidance in this new realm, business is looking to social entrepreneurs. Not because they excel at that do-gooder thing, but because they have sophisticated, tested theories of change. They know their markets. They understand systems and levers of action as few others do. And, as many clever companies are learning, they can be great partners in endeavors that are good for the world and good for the bottom line.”
The success of the fair trade coffee movement has created a valuable case study for social entrepreneurs to explore.
If there is money to be made by doing the “right thing” through fair trade, what other opportunities are waiting just around the corner?
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