I wanted to change things up on the blog and talk about why I started Shop Social Good.
The origins of this website started back during the holiday shopping season in December 2017. If you know me at all, gift giving is most certainly NOT my love language. I am a total procrastinator when it comes to buying holiday gifts. What may also surprise you is that I actually do not enjoy shopping all that much, even shopping for myself. I honestly dread the process.
This particular year, I was feeling extremely discouraged and unmotivated to shop. I was bored by the regular “mall” brands that didn’t offer anything interesting or unique. I just could not bring myself to buy yet another shirt from the Gap or lotion from Bath & Body Work (no offense, but I’ve seriously given a lot of money to both those companies). Plus, I was finding the Christmas consumerism super depressing. Was this REALLY what Christmas was about?
Shopping with Purpose
At that point, I decided to try something different. I wanted to only buy gifts from brands and companies that gave back or supported good causes. I had seen that you could gift your loved ones with a donation to a nonprofit in their name. But, I really wanted to gift my family and friends with a thoughtful present. I knew of several brands that were for-profit, but also do good and/or give back. I wanted to support those companies, because deep down, I’m still a capitalist (apologies to my college sociology professors who tried to convert us all to socialism. The brainwashing didn’t work with me). Call me crazy but I do believe that capitalism and socialism can happily co-exist. And one of those forms of co-existence is the social enterprise.
Using My Hidden, Nerdy Talent
One problem… unless you’re amazing at doing Google searches, these companies were not exactly easy to find. You needed to know exactly what you’re looking for. Thankfully, from my years of stalking people online, I am really awesome at online searches. KIDDING. Another not that well-known fact about me is that I have a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from UCLA (Go Bruins!) Don’t be hating, Berkeley folk. Cal is still #1 in my heart (Roll On You Bears!). While searching for brands, I noticed there was no single repository where social good brands were listed. There were plenty of blog posts and top 10 lists, but let’s just say, you had to jump around a lot of figure out your options.
I started keeping a list of the social good companies I found. I also started to organize them by product type, causes they support, and how they give back. In library and information science parlance, this is called cataloging and classification. So nerdy! But really, it’s just taking unorganized information and organizing it by providing categories that make them more findable. I’ve totally oversimplified this definition (apologies to the MLIS purists), but you get the gist. Sounds pretty geeky, but I LOVE this kind of stuff. And this is how Shop Social Good got its start.
The Joy of Discovery
For me, Shop Social Good is about DISCOVERY. I love discovering new brands that give back and learning about the causes they support. Honestly, causes like water borne illnesses, fair trade, fast fashion, and the crisis in Haiti are all topics I learned about through social good brands that support them. I created the Shop Social Good directory as a tool for others to discover social good brands. Hopefully, it will help in creating a movement to inform consumers that we can use our wallets to support companies that are trying to make the world a better place AND provide an awesome product or service.
I hope you will join me on this journey of discovering how we can support social good companies. Check out the directory that started from my little list that could: The Shop Social Good Directory!