59. Buddy Teaster on Building Trust Through Transparency and Dignity Through Shoes

Purpose and Profit with Kathy Varol

Buddy is President & CEO at Soles4Souls, a not-for-profit social enterprise creating opportunity through the collection and distribution of shoes and clothing around the world. Teaster’s experience at Soles4Souls, along with the organization’s global economic impact, is chronicled in his book, shoestrings: how your donated shoes and clothes help people pull themselves out of poverty.

Previously, Buddy was President of StarKart and the National Association of Local Advertisers, and served as Chief Network Officer for the nonprofit Young Presidents’ Organization. In 2012 he joined Soles4Souls to rebuild the organization after a period of leadership turmoil.

In this episode we discuss:

● How to regain trust after it’s been lost

● The surprising impact new shoes have on kids experiencing homelessness

● The business case for partnering with Soles4Souls (from my adidas days)

Key Takeaways:

● One important pathway of impact Soles4Souls uses is to foster economic empowerment by supplying micro-enterprises with gently used shoes and clothing. There is a strong case for using this approach to alleviate poverty, versus giving products away. While giving products away is important during times of crisis, poverty is a systemic issue and therefore requires a systemic solution. Some academic research points to evidence that free donations can flood a market, ruining demand for local businesses. As Michael Matheson Miller, the director of PovertyCure says, “When you give away something free, you’re giving away a band-aid. You’re not addressing deeper causes of poverty and you may be inhibiting long-term solutions. Poor people aren’t poor because they lack stuff; they’re poor because they lack the infrastructure to create wealth.” This is an important distinction that explains why supporting economic empowerment is so powerful.

● Dignity is a powerful word. Each person deserves to be treated with dignity. It’s important to keep that word front and center when helping others, and when seeking help ourselves. Each of us will be on the receiving and the giving end of help countless times throughout our lives. Too often the foundation of dignity is lost when the numbers of need exceed our ability to imagine the individual. In these cases, emotion gets lost in faceless numbers and is replaced with efficiency. But it’s acting on the foundation of dignity that keeps humanity on both sides of the equation. It’s a standard worth holding ourselves accountable to in every interaction.

● As consumers, it’s important for each of us to take accountability for the lifecycle of the products we consume. It takes time and energy to sort and recycle items. It takes time and energy to drop off your old clothing and shoes at a donation center, instead of throwing them away. It’s these small acts of time and energy that are needed from each one of us to enable a circular economy. A circular economy is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible—keeping the material out of landfills and letting material be repurposed for a second life.

References:

• Connect with Buddy on LinkedIn
• Soles4Souls
• Learn more here about how you can contribute to the Soles4Souls mission
• shoestrings: how your donated shoes and clothes help people pull themselves out of poverty by Buddy Teaster
• For deeper insight into how charitable donations may impact economic development, I recommend “The One-for-one Business Model: Avoiding Unintended Consequences”, Knowledge at Wharton, February 16, 2015.
• Connect & Share:

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading them!

If this episode resonated with you, I ask you to send it to a friend. Help bring even more visibility to these leaders that are using business as a force for good!

Subscribe to the Purpose and Profit newsletter to make sure you don’t miss future episodes.

This podcast is for you, the listener. I’d love to hear what resonated with you, or if you have a suggestion on who would be a great guest for this show. Please send me a note at [e-mail].