In 2000 Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc. was at risk of being bought by a multinational corporation with a reputation of not being socially responsible. Terry called Ben Cohen, one of the founders of Ben & Jerry’s; got his lawyers involved; and, with the assistance of Judy Wicks the founder of the White Dog Café in Philadelphia, in four days organized twenty-five leaders in the socially responsible business community to be an investment group with Terry as the spokesperson. They made an offer to buy the company which stopped the process. Over the next months Terry, with the assistance of Ben Cohen and Joe Sibilia, founder of Meadowbrook Lane Capital, negotiated to purchase the company with Unilever, the third largest consumer product company in the world, as a minority shareholder.
The board voted to sell the company to Terry’s group but before the papers could be signed someone tipped off the other company and they made a higher offer which Terry’s group could not match.
Unilever then met with Ben and Terry and offered to keep all the socially responsible agreements that had been fashioned over many weeks if they joined in Unilever’s offer to the board to buy the company. Ben and Terry agreed, Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s, and by contract the board of directors with Terry on it continues to this day. The board retained responsibility for the “social mission and brand integrity” of Ben & Jerry’s and has the right to sue Unilever if these contractual agreements are not kept. The new mission of Ben & Jerry’s is to model how to survive as a socially responsible business inside a multinational since it is now clear that to survive many social businesses will be bought by multinationals.
To further this effort Terry organized, with the assistance of Suzanne Biegel, Aspen Institute and many others, a conference in May 2008 of some of the founders of socially responsible businesses that were bought by multinationals: Selling Without Selling Out: Lessons Learned From Founders of Socially Responsible Businesses Bought by Multinationals. You can view his interviews with each of them as well as his opening and closing remarks from the menu to the right or from this website’s home page.
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