Since there wasn’t an overwhelming majority response for the Tuesday topic, I decided to just go with something I feel needs to be better publicized: Buying For Equality 2010. Since 2002, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has issued an annual report card on corporate America’s treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. You’d be surprised how many major companies have failed to even respond to the survey, year after year (e.g. Lowe’s, Publix, Tupperware, Blockbuster, and IAC which has dozens of huge sub-companies).
In the past couple of years, people have become more conscious about the source of the products they buy, not just where to find the cheapest deal. I do my best to patronize sustainable and HRC-friendly organizations. It’s not an easy task, especially when you find a company that supports one, but not the other. The Buyer’s Guide website makes it a lot easier to find LGBT-friendly businesses. This year, they’ve created an iPhone app and you can also text “SHOP [name of business]” to 30644 and get a rating in response. Any business with at least 500 employees can be rated and there are 590 companies in the 2010 report.
For the past two years, I’ve downloaded the buyer’s guide PDF and I search the latest one before I shop. The guide has motivated me to contact organizations directly and ask them to respond to the survey (specifically Meijer and Vimeo). In case you were wondering, I haven’t been able to find a similar guide for green-friendly businesses.
Knowledge is power.