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Saturday, September 02 W hen American capitalism works, it can really be a great engine for doing good. There is no reason why a corporation can't do good things for the public as well as for itself.
Take, for example, the case of a new group called Good Works Insurance Agency. When I first met Joe Grochmal, the CEO of this company, I had my doubts about what he was telling me. He said that, in his new business, half of the total operating profits would be expended on doing good works. He has recruited an outstanding board of directors, who, he assures me, have a great deal of integrity and will insist that the 50 percent mandate be adhered to. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said to myself. "That's what they all say." But it turns out these people mean business and their new model has been making national waves. In short, it amounts to this: Doing good makes for good business. We need a lot more of this. Once a business like this succeeds, it will incentivize other businesses to do the same thing. When that happens, we will see a true example of enlightened capitalism.
Unlike certain biblical tenets of anonymously doing good work, it is obvious that for a business plan like this to work, the company needs to get credit for what it does. Let's take...