After listening to the program with Jonathan Greenblatt, it occured to me to complain about your choice for the week's program. But of course, you were just having a discussion. No one knows what is going to be said until the discussion has been had.

Now that we know, I for one am impressed and dismayed at Mr. Greenblatt's ability to foster attention for his projects. The fact that he was able to have a free hour on public radio disappoints, especially when he shares the stage with voices like Prabhu Guptara, George Ellis, and Katie Payne, three voices for good (business optional).

The business of doing good, is of course, apparently very good for Mr. Greenblatt. I don't begrudge him for his success in business, but I do find that his voice would be a better matched with his University of California comrade, John Yoo.

It seems to me that for Jonathan Greenblatt and his ilk, it is good to continue the cycle of poverty and hunger and disease and war in the world. It keeps them in business. This becoming yet another capitalist ploy, another way of making money for the few on the backs of the impoverished. There are even graduate courses. Whatever happened to making the world a better place for the sake only of making the world better place? Hardly ethical in my opinion.

It seems to me that for Jonathan Greenblatt and his ilk, it is good to continue the cycle of poverty and hunger and disease and war in the world. It keeps them in business. This becoming yet another capitalist ploy, another way of making money for the few on the backs of the impoverished. There are even graduate courses. Whatever happened to making the world a better place for the sake only of making the world better place? Hardly ethical in my opinion.

I listened to the unedited version of Krista's interview of Jonathan Greenblatt. Something that Krista said during this conversation quickly and strongly tapped into the motivation behind my sabbatical. Here are some excerpts of what she said:

I've observed that some organizations that do the best work in the world can be most dysfunctional… I've actually thought that there would be a show to do called 'The Problem of Evil in the Workplace'… I mean, it's just that any institution becomes a place that we interact with each other, and we bring the dark side of the human condition to work as well as the great side.

We are sitting here in disbelief. Here is a guy who started his money making by permanently polluting the earth. His products still are being made and polluting. The containers pollute. Drinking too much water is bad for the human body. It damages the kidneys etc. Athletes die from drinking too much water not from not drinking enough. These are facts. Shame on you for promoting this and not doing research. He brags about one million dollars being given to "good" purposes. He sold the company for 8 million dollars. He could have given a million dollars of the money from ill gotten gains instead of trying to make more money. He condemns companies and people for doing exactly what he did in starting his Ethos water company.

If the owners of Ethos Water were driven primarily by ethical concerns, why would they sell the company to Starbucks without insisting that the new owner continue to apply the original commitment to give 50% of profits to third-world water projects benefiting children? (Could the 5 cents per bottle that Starbucks now donates be equivalent to 50% of profits?) Don't these enterprises simply increase the dependency of the water-deprived on those with the financial and technological capacity to exploit areas with current water surpluses? Isn't this likely to discourage home-grown solutions which are, in the long run, better for the planet as well as for countries with dangerously low water supplies? In the end, don't projects like this smack more of marketing novelty than of any long-term commitment to finding durable solutions that do not deplete natural resources nor increase the burden of circulating plastics within the global environment.

You have to be kidding tonight Ms. Tippett with this so-called business of doing good ad, this obviously phony (social engineering capitalist) Mr. Greenblatt. Pleeeaaasse! Speaking of faith, whatever happened to examining the bottom line: stealing the time and labor of people in a factory to make profits for a few — your Mr. green (cough) Greenblatt included. Ugh!

I enjoyed the program with Mr. Greenblatt. However, I was a little disappointed that the whole context of this new movement did not come up in the conversation. Such a context would include the AT&T executive Robert Greenleaf's seminal essay on servant leadership published in 1970, which has set the stage for what is now a worldwide movement that sees serving those who are deprived and stewardship of our world as important goals of an successful organization. And more recently, there are books such as Profit for Life by Joseph (Jay) Bragdon, which show that stewardship is the major factor that has kept certain companies alive and well, in some cases, for centuries. Another recent book is Spiritual Capital by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, which argues that spiritual wealth is essential for keeping capitalism alive and well into the future.

All these ideas are being taught in hundreds of colleges and universities around the world. In Georgia we have the Georgia Servant Leadership Alliance and it is exciting for "old guys" like me to participate in discussions with our Gen Y generation about their commitment to making a difference in the world rather than acquire material goods as their major objective. I would also call your attention to the book, Values Shift, by John Izzo, which documents the shifting values from pre-boomers to Generation Y. There are profound and exciting changes taking place in the values of our society, especially the young, which I hope and pray will become the dominant views before long.

I also have to question the implication on the show that the U.S. is a leader in this area. From my personal experience as well as my investment experience, there seems to be more awareness, and action, among Canadian companies in adopting this new mindset and the values that underlie them. I enjoy Speaking of Faith very much and hope that you continue to inspire those of us trying to live out our faith within the world with conviction, tolerance, and humility.

The ideological position of the presenter is left-over 1970s Reaganism: i.e. government is the problem; let trickle-down supply-side economics feed and water the rich first, eventually the poor will get their "just desserts." Here is the Missouri mule test: show us your numbers. Let us verify your profits, losses, contributions, tax breaks. Anything less is smoke, mirrors and arrogant, self-serving stinginess. The best thing Reagan ever said should apply to the business of doing good: "trust but verify."

I began listening to the show but was so turned off by the cliche-ridden, self-promoting statements of your guest that I turned off the radio. Why are you giving this man free advertising?

Perhaps I'm really uneducated about the good this water project will do, but it seems the wrong way to attack the problem of lack of clean water for the marginalized. Working with corporations and big business seems more than risky. There is way too much corruption in all these huge corporations. Groups of high school students have done great progress in creating ways to get clean water to the poor. They use the ways that are more compatible with the culture and lives of the people. Look at the horrible consequences of bottled water — the lack of recycling, the price of recycling, the harm done to the earth, the billions made by water companies who use regular tap water to fill the bottles, etc. I do not think this is a good idea.

I appreciated your program on "The Business of Doing Good." Many faith traditions and religious leaders have spoken to the need to integrate our economic lives with our spiritual lives. Some have seen some signs of progress in the growth of social responsibility and the growth of "social entrepreneurship."

But in the end I was very troubled by Greenblatt's examples of this new paradigm. For example, he mentions that the efforts the new entrepreneurs are standing on the shoulders of companies like Ben & Jerry's, Anita Roddick's Body Shop, Stonyfield. But what isn't recognized is that each of these brands has become nothing more than a sub-brand or subsidiary of large publicly traded corporations. Each has become a tool for green-washing for a parent corporation that sees the potential for increased profits from products with a social mission. And in the process, the promise of these enterprises for helping us create a new approach to business has been co-opted, smothered, and absorbed into the existing system. The end goal is not the mission of the enterprise, it is the generation of profits for investors.

This "ethical brand architecture" is a thin veneer over business as usual and doesn't often extend into the structures and assumptions that underlie and guide conventional enterprise.

Interestingly, when Greenblatt speaks of the possibility of businesses that are organized for benefit as opposed to profit, he is speaking of a business model that is all around us — the co-operative. Co-operatives are member-owned and controlled enterprises based on the principles of democracy, participation, and empowerment. And they have been used for nearly every need one can think of. There are farmer co-operatives, worker co-ops, healthcare co-ops, credit unions and food co-operatives. Co-ops don't get a lot of attention in the media, which is somewhat surprising given that four in ten Americans are members of co-ops, though they may not be aware of the unique nature of the enterprise that they are part of. Globally, about 750,000 cooperatives serve 730 million members.

Central to what sets co-ops apart from conventional business is that it is a movement based in values and principles. In its modern form, co-operativism arose at around the same time as communism and capitalism — during the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution in England of the 1800s. And the purposes of the co-operation are centered on the empowerment of working people, the pooling of their economic and social assets, and the development of business skills and experience. The movement quickly became a global phenomenon, and the breadth of the modern movement can be see by taking a look at the website of the International Co-operative Alliance (www.ica.coop).

I think that the topic of co-operation would be very interesting for a future episode of Speaking of Faith. Around the world, religious leaders, businesspeople, and movements have used the co-operative model as a mechanism for articulating spiritual ideals in the economic world (for example, see http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/info/uwcc_bulletins/bulletin_09_03.pdf). Examples include Gandhi in India, Father Moses Coady in maritime Canada, the Mondragón Co-operative Corporation in Spain, Ernest Bader in the UK, and many others.

For over a decade, I was a member of Equal Exchange, a worker co-op that was a pioneer in Fair Trade and worker democracy in the U.S. But what was most exciting about this work was that way in which we were part of a global system of economic democracy and participation — we purchased our raw goods from farmer co-ops and a large part of our customer base was food co-ops across the U.S. During this time I also developed a program of partnership with congregations and faith-based relief, development, and human rights organizations that became a major aspect of our business. As a Quaker, I came to see the potential of economic democracy as a tangible expression of the ideals of my faith.

These experiences led me to see the potential for co-operation to offer solutions to modern challenges and I now work with a technical assistance organization that supports the launch, growth and development of co-operative enterprises (www.cdi.coop). We support community activists and businesspeople in a very different kind of entrepreneurship — one that is more community-based than focused on the individual businessperson. While not perfect by any means, co-operatives offer an alternative approach to enterprise that has as its central purpose the meeting human needs as opposed to the accumulation of profit. The history, values and principles of co-operation meanwhile encourage co-operators to act in solidarity with others, to support human development, empowerment and participation. This to me is a closer approximation of the appropriate purposes of business and of doing good in the world.

Thank you for your program. Please feel free to contact me if you're interested in exploring this idea.

Great show. I have been doing development work since 1985 in Peace Corps, CDC, and The Carter Center. There have been businesspersons doing this for many years with much less visibility than Ethos. You should look into Torben Vestergaard-Frandsen, a Danish textile manufacturer who has been doing great things for years. You will find his company on the web at http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/philosophy.htm Wonderful man. Committed socialist. I would be happy to speak with you about the balance of marketing, donations and training that we are all doing together, even if some like to paint things as being in competition and new ideas being better than other ideas. The more people who work in this area, the better. Thanks for your show.

First of all, thank you for your wonderful program that continues to inspire and inform. I noticed that some listeners seem to feel that programs about those that are "doing good" are less than spiritual, or about faith itself. I would just like to point out that Maslow once said that the highest form of spirituality is transcendence in meditation or helping another person unconditionally, with no thought of personal gain (much like the 12th step of the AA program).

To put it succinctly, our spirituality is born in the silence but forged in the crucible of our relationships. Or, as Mother Teresa once said: "Stop talking about Jesus and start being the Christ." Over 30 years in the program and 20 as a minister have taught me that true spirituality involves much more outreach than church attendance. So keep up the good work, good luck on the move, and blessings to all.