Premier Soccer Academies and the Good World of Soccer

Early on we posted about Eurosport's Passback program. Simple, effective, awesome.

I used to get three or four soccer catalogs growing up as a young footballer: Acme Soccer and Widget Works, TSI, and of course Eurosport, which has outlived the other two and a slew of competition, rightly earning its url (www.soccer.com). They've succeeded strategically and along the way done some good with a awesome program that rounds up used gear from footballers (who seriously love their gear) and gives it to kids who need gear.

It won't be the last time we post on the good business side of soccer. The Beautiful Game lends itself to a spirit of giving. A few potential reasons: 1) the truly global nature of the game, which fosters an ambassador-y attitude among those who love it and a cultural kinship between soccer (futbol, etc.) lovers everywhere 2) the underdog position of the game in this country, which maybe motivates companies to support the sport as though it were a charity 3) growing recognition of soccer as a quintessential learning experience for kids: multicultural, team-oriented, fitness-intensive 4) the great, giving personality of those who love the game (an admittedly biased option.)

Whatever it may be, here's another example: Lorain (OH) Morning Journal writers Jennifer Bracken and Alan Ingram cover the opening of the new $8M Premier Soccer Academies in Lorain, Ohio, which is going to be a life-changing experience for a diverse group of young student-athletes.

The Great Lakes town, known for sailing, Ford, and iron ore-receiving near the end of the St. Lawrence Seaway, may not have been where you'd expect to hear about of one of the most deluxe soccer academies to be established outside of Florida's IMG Academy or The David Beckham Academy at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles- until you realize that Brad Friedel, one of the United State's most accomplished international soccer players, a longtime fixture of our national team and the goalkeeper of Blackburn Rover in the English Premier League, grew up just up the road in Bay Village.

To bring it full circle, Friedel's Premier Soccer Academies are supported by Star Trac, CenturyTel, adidas, and the Cleveland Clinic, further perfect examples of strong corporate support for the Beautiful Game.

BONUS: A phenomenal book about soccer as a reflection of nationalism, religion and culture all over the world: How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer. It's as rich with world history as it is with history on some of the international game's most legendary clubs.

Google: Doing Good, Locally

Google. Do No Evil. Google.org. There are so many "Optimist" facets to one of the most fascinating and fastest growing companies out there (and one with unbelievable brand-building momentum, according to Interbrand.) Here's another:

If you believe that small business is the life blood of this country, which we do, then this project, Google Local Business Referrals, is an example of a technology company doing good while probably also doing well. Google is enlisting paid local representatives to take digital photos and collect information about local businesses for integration with Google Maps (with the participation and permission of the business, of course.) This is a win for the small business, the end user looking for a solid referral, and certainly, in some way, Google.

If promoting small business doesn't meet your definition of doing good, consider:

• Free AdWords advertising for non-profits through Google Grants
• The business world-leading solar installation at the Google campus (see BoingBoing)
• How Googlers and non-Googlers like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum have teamed up to use Maps to track Darfur and the genocide tragedies of the region (also see StopGenocideNow.org)
• Google releasing a version of the Apps suite for non-profits and educators
• Google planning to go Carbon Neutral by next year (see Shiny Shiny)...

...and of course, the legendary treatment of its employees, from work-life balance to the fabled amenities to a stipend for buying a hybrid, all well-document on the Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For list and even on Oprah...

...and underlying it all, Google.org, the philanthropic arm which, lead by the legendary Dr. Larry Brilliant and endowed by Google cash and equity, is focused on public health, climate change, and global development, and supporting or launching great programs from the Acumen Fund (supporting entrepreneurial pursuits against poverty) to RechargeIT.org, which targets auto emissions.

(Equal Opportunity: Yahoo! For Good is a great program for using Yahoo tools to make a positive impact. No one could say it simpler or better than that!)

Critics point to privacy concerns, click fraud, or other standard criticisms, but that's not what this is about; they may also scoff that any company with Google's cash position could do such good things.

To which we say, to all other huge companies with lots of money, "Great, so do it like Google does it."

Disclaimer: The Optimist Company doesn't reflect Google's position and in no way are they connected; the only things they have is a vision that companies can make money while doing good. Even though The Optimist isn't about journalistic integrity (which I respect as a trained journalist) and instead simply celebrating companies that make money while doing good, this bears mentioning, because I can't go much further without mentioning Google.

Target: Quietly Dominating Educational Philanthropy

For a huge company that is known for getting it right with design, and even changing big-box discount retailing by offering customers great design, rather than treating them like slobs with leftover-quality slop in a sloppy setting, Target should be known be known for something else it really gets right.

Target is the ultimate corporate activist in several critical areas: social services, the arts, and most notably, education.

One problem: other than it's own occasional PR, who's talking about it? The Minneapolis company, at 33 on this year's Fortune 500 with $59B in annual revenue, gives away $3M weekly to a variety of education-focused and other social programs, according to their website and the wikipedia snippet below:


Target Corporation is consistently ranked as one of the most philanthropic companies in the country. According to a November 2005 Forbes article, it ranked as the highest cash-giving company in America in percentage of income given (2.1%).^[54] Target donates around 5 percent of its pre-tax operating profit; it gives over $3 million a week (up from $2 million in years prior) to the communities in which it operates. It also gives a percentage of charges from its Target Visa to schools designated by the cardholders. To date, Target has given over $150 million to schools across the United States through this program. Target's corporate by-laws state it must give 5 percent of its pre-tax profits to charity.

So here are some blog posts and articles on Target's educational activism.

(cue crickets)

There AREN'T ANY. Isn't it enough to simply give away a lot of money in a bunch of ways to a bunch of deserving recipients? Not that they do it for the press...but a little press is nice recognition for a deserving company. Is it that they don't get it because they're a huge company, or because they're relatively quiet about it, or because education itself isn't as sexy as green?

UPDATE: Forget to link to this BusinessWeek article about one of Target's scholastic programs. I guess they're getting some press anyway, on top of the cool, if slightly conceptual, tv spot about designing classrooms that just shows a guy drawing a 3D visual of a classroom on a 2D surface...

General Mills and Box Tops 4 Education

General Mills has been an Optimist Company since long before it was trendy to integrate philanthropy into a marketing plan. The Box Tops 4 Education website doesn't even brandish the General Mills logo or any trademark cereal characters. The program is so entrenched that it's apparently not sexy enough to warrant much mention in the blogosphere (although here is one mom blogger's plug for it, plus a newsletter post from an Alaskan school). Yet it's so effective that General Mills has given $200M to primary schools in a simple purchases-for-cash program in 11 years.