Jean Case blogs for Fast Company about how and why pro bono service should be the norm, and not the exception, in corporate culture and business practice. An excerpt:

Twenty years ago, the corporate sustainability movement was just gaining traction. Now, a company that doesn’t track its environmental footprint is the exception. Employee skills-based pro bono programs should have the same ubiquity.

In 1994, “radical industrialist” Ray Anderson had what he called a “spear in the chest” moment: while preparing for a speech on environmental compliance, he realized just how significantly his company, Interface, was damaging the environment. At that moment, he decided to make Interface (a manufacturer of modular carpeting) the most sustainable company he could. For more than 15 years, he worked to grow a movement pushing corporations to think differently about how their operations impacted the planet.

Ray Anderson’s evangelism paid off: thanks to Anderson’s fearless efforts along with a few like-minded first-movers in business, a movement grew, and in 2012 attention to environmental sustainability is now a core activity for most corporations.

Read the full article.