Companies all over the world are talking about doing “good”. This year, 850 organizations published formal reports on their economic, environmental and social performance using the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Framework. This number is up from 50 just six years ago. But this type of reporting only goes so far.

One company decided to take it a step deeper. Beyond reporting on portions of merchandise that are “Fair Trade,” Certified™” or “Certified Organic” or amounts of money donated to programs and causes, this company asked a different question.

“What is the impact of our business practices on poverty?”

If our goal is not just to “do well by doing good” but to be agents of positive change in the world, Michael Dupee, VP of Corporate Social Responsibility at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters wanted to know, what is the positive change we most want to affect and how will we know we’re succeeding? Dupee was motivated by a desire to be accountable and to justify additional investment in specific practices.

Dupee is not unique in his curiosity. Last September, Unilever and Oxfam published a joint report on research exploring the links between international business and poverty reduction. Their report explores the impacts on poverty – both positive and negative – of Unilever’s operations in Indonesia.

The question before Dupee is more specific – it has to do with sourcing practices for one product: coffee. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters also partners with coffee-growing communities through grants and other activities.

“We want to know, if we do our job well, what happens, what’s different in the world?” Dupee said.

This terrain is largely uncharted.

Through the Sustainable Food Lab, Dupee was able to team up with other companies and NGO’s with expertise in the field to research the impact of different coffee sourcing practices on poverty. The goal was a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to measure their success going forward.

In commissioning the work, Dupee wrote, “We have often asked ourselves questions like: ‘Have these programs had the intended impact, and if so, how do we know?’ ‘Can these programs be more effective, and if so how?’ ‘What does success look like, and how do we measure it?’”

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) (also a Food Lab member) conducted the research. The organization specializes in research aimed at reducing hunger and poverty while preserving natural resources in developing countries.

Four CIAT researchers traveled through 11 coffee-growing communities, interviewing smallholder coffee producers using participatory methods and interviewing the three large-holders individually.

The researchers' first challenge was to choose between approaches to indicators of poverty. The World Bank uses single indicators (e.g. income of less than $2,00/day). Others use large lists of welfare variables. Yet another approach is to cast livelihoods in terms of capitals – social, physical, financial and natural. Finally, researchers can use indicators elicited from the people living in poverty themselves. This last approach is the one CIAT researchers chose in order to generate a set of indicators relevant to coffee growers.

“Group participation was universally lively and enthusiastic.” The researchers said. “People would conduct heated discussions in their indigenous languages before turning back to provide decisions in Spanish. Both males and females participated. Each and everyone were encouraged to participate. The participatory work sessions were usually liberally sprinkled with humorous banter and jokes,” (see Poverty Indicators Report - bottom of page).

Researchers asked respondents about livelihood circumstances in good vs. bad years, with “good” and “bad” defined in terms of coffee production and price. 

Respondents quantitatively prioritized their responses by distributing counters (100 beans or kernels of maize) relative to perceived importance. These responses formed the raw data that will inform the proposal of selected indicators of abundance, vitality, success and stability for the communities and coffee-producing organizations in Green Mountain Coffee Roaster's supply chain.

With the data and final report in hand, Dupee again did something that had never been done before at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. He invited a wide variety of company’s stakeholders connected to the well being of coffee producing communities to hear the results of the field research with CIAT and pool intellectual resources on how to put the findings to best use.

About 30 people, including many of the world’s leading coffee activists from Transfair, Rainforest Alliance, Ecologic Finance, Heifer International, Coffee Kids, Grounds for Health, Sustainable Harvest, ForesTrade, the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), met to think together about the goals of the work and which indicators would best measure success against those goals.

All of these stakeholders and activists have experience creating benefit for coffee-growing communities but the work they found themselves doing together at that meeting was new.

“To me, this seem like common sense -- to get everyone in a room to talk about results and next steps -- but I got the impression that it was actually cutting edge,” Dupee said.

Though each stakeholder brought his or her own experience and perspective to add to the findings from the field research, ultimately, participants found convergence on a few key indicators. After a long conversation, Dupee reported that the consensus emerged that these might not be perfect but if they use them, they won’t be very far wrong.

Participants concluded that tracking a farmer’s ability to stay on their farm (not have to hire out to work at other jobs) and reinvest in the farm are two powerful indicators of the success of a coffee supply chain.

Next, Dupee and his colleague Rick Peyser at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, along with Don Seville and Chris Landry from the Food Lab Secretariat will travel back to the coffee producing communities that participated in the research to share its conclusions and thoughts about what comes next.

In a farewell to the summit participants Dupee wrote:

“A deeply felt thank you to all of you for your participation in and contribution to the recent Food Lab Summit. We are committed to moving down this path towards a deeper understanding of our impact - your help makes the work easier, more productive, and, frankly, more fun. As I mentioned during your time here, this was the first such gathering of our coffee community outreach partners in one place to talk about impact - it was historic in that sense. I am confident and very hopeful that it will be historic in hindsight as well - that we will be able to look back some day and remember where and when this phase of our work began...and we'll all be glad we were there.”