Double bottom line is a business term used in socially responsible enterprise and investment.
While all businesses have a conventional bottom line to measure their fiscal performance—financial profit or loss—enterprises which seek a second bottom line look to measure their performance in terms of positive social impact. The double bottom line approach can be applied to both public and private sector organizations. An excellent application of this is seen in Bernardez (2009) (Bernardez, M. (2009). Minding the Business of Business: Tools and Models to Design and Measure Wealth Creation. Performance Improvement Quarterly. 22(2) pp. 17–72)and his other work that includes Kaufman's Mega level strategic planning ( Kaufman, R. (2006). Change, Choices, and Consequences: A Guide to Mega Thinking and Planning. Amherst, MA. HRD Press Inc. to Refinor in Argentina, the Sonora Institute of Technology, and lately for the strategic planning of a transformation of the City of Colon in Panama.Bernardez, M. (2005). Achieving Business Success by Developing Clients and Community: Lessons from Leading Companies, Emerging Economies and a Nine Year Case Study. Performance Improvement Quarterly, Vol. 18, Number 3. pp. 37–55.)
Increasingly companies big and small are incorporating a "cause marketing" strategy as a means of differentiating themselves from their competition. The increased usage of social media is allowing these "company helping a cause" promotions to expand rapidly as people who support the cause easily "share" the information with their friends.
Examples of big Double Bottom Line campaigns include the Pepsi Refresh campaign and the Clorox Promoting a Bright Future Contest where each company is giving away money to causes that are submitted by and voted upon by normal everyday citizens who are trying to make the world a better place.
By doing things that are socially responsible, they are also benefitting in a way that significantly increases their ROI. This also allows them to build a more loyal customer base, what some are calling a "strong tribe" - internally and externally. According to marketing strategist Gina Carr, "This is THE differentiating strategy for 21st century businesses."
Another formulation is Blended Value Promulgated by Jed Emerson one of the leaders in Social Return on Investment or SROI. It attempts to get out of the binary thinking of double bottom line.
Famous quotes containing the words double, bottom and/or line:
“... the next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard?”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“In things abstract, men but differ in the sounds that come from their mouths, and not in the wordless thoughts lying at the bottom of their beings.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“When I had mapped the pond ... I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)