JJ Ramberg Turns Social Responsibility into Business Success
July 5, 2011 – 1:12 pm
Some people are said to have ice water in their veins, while most of us just have the regular five to six quarts of blood coursing through our bodies. But JJ Ramberg said she and her big brother Ken have “entrepreneurship in their blood” as a way of explaining one of the motivating factors for starting their search company GoodSearch.com in November, 2005.
JJ and Ken come from a family of entrepreneurs. Ken and their mom sold their company JobTrak (the largest player in career placement for college kids) to Monster.com in 2000. But they were not only destined to be entrepreneurs; according to JJ, “We were brought up to give back.”
While studying at Stanford for her MBA (with a focus on corporate responsibility), JJ started a camp for inner-city kids and worked with microfinance companies overseas. So it was just a given someday to start a business designed to do good.
The challenge, said JJ, was to come up with a way “to make it easy for people to give back and help support causes [beyond] just writing a check.” The proverbial light bulb came in the form of a search engine, something that “people use every day.” The result was the Yahoo-powered GoodSearch, which donates 50 percent of its sponsored search revenue to a charity, nonprofit, or school of your choice.
As JJ explained, “It is important to let people pick and choose [whom to donate to]. It’s an opportunity for everyone (big or small) to earn money, and for people to donate to causes close to their hearts.”
If JJ looks familiar, it’s because she hosts Your Business, a television show devoted to small business and entrepreneurship, airing at 7:30 Sunday mornings on MSNBC. (Disclosure: I have appeared on the show.) But it was while she was covering Hurricane Katrina for CNN that JJ was compelled to do something. “Being there just made it hit home that we needed to help,” she explained. “We had the ability and the background to change the way people do good.”
In 2007 they added GoodShop.com, where when you shop via the GoodSearch toolbar (which is easy to download), and a percentage of every purchase again goes to the cause of your choosing. Over 2,000 retailers participate in GoodShop, and if you’re a bargain hunter, there are plenty of coupons and good deals on the site.
Positive word-of-mouth enabled GoodSearch to take off faster than anticipated. At the beginning some people thought the idea was “too good to be true,” but today GoodSearch receives “hundreds of applications every week” from places that want to participate.
As an entrepreneur (GoodSearch has less than 50 employees and just hired a CEO, Scott Garell, from Ask.com fame) JJ understands how important giving back is. In fact, she believes “just being a small business owner and [hiring people] is the best way to give back.” She also suggested “being environmentally aware and making your business a good place to work.
“People,” said JJ, “like working for a socially-responsible company, and it makes employees and customers more loyal.”
She cautioned business owners “to incorporate [giving back] in a way it seamlessly helps you and doesn’t take away from your company vision. It needs to make sense for your company; you can’t shoehorn it in.” In other words, it’s all about authenticity. As JJ explained, “Giving back has to be authentic to who you are. It has to be part of your corporate culture.” Entrepreneurs, she said, need to make social responsibility “a part of the conversation at your business, and make sure it’s valued — and that your people know it’s valued.”
Your Business has been on the air five years, and JJ has increasingly seen businesses include giving back as part of their pitch to be on the show. “The entrepreneurs are more mission-driven,” she said. “They’re intertwining their product and their mission.” But she warned, “You can’t offer a mediocre product and think people will buy it just because it’s associated with a charity.”
The “most fun day of the year” for GoodSearch is the day they “write the checks.” We’re not talking chump change, either: GoodSearch has, for example, given $40,000 to the ASPCA. Nor is this a passing fancy. “We’re in it for the long haul,” JJ insisted.
GoodSearch is dedicated to Ken and JJ’s mom who passed away from cancer in 2001. But JJ described what they do (freely admitting to stealing this quote) as “Standing on the shoulders of Ben and Jerry.”
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