The Sherpa Sustainability Institute, headquartered in Durango, wants to give businesses, nonprofits and governments the tools to improve their social responsibility and become more sustainable.
Andrea Hoffmeier and Holly Duckworth co-founded the institute focused on education and research, in 2015 and opened an office in Durango in January.
The institute offers online courses on how to improve internal governance, human rights, operating practices, labor practices, environment, consumer issues, and community involvement and development.
The institute is a benefit corporation, a for-profit business formed for a public benefit.
“We’re really looking at the whole picture of social responsibility and the goal of social responsibility is sustainability,” Hoffmeier said.
Social responsibility failures within large corporations tend to make headlines, such as when a police officer dragged a United Airlines passenger off of a plane or when Volkswagen vehicles were found to have software that allowed them to cheat on their emissions tests.
The company’s Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility methodology was “designed to prepare an organization to prevent those types of debacles,” Duckworth said.
The methodology also helps organizations better serve customers, employees and other stakeholders.
For example, one of the institute’s students improved the operations and the layout of the sales floor at the Rebuilding Center in Portland, a nonprofit. The changes improved safety and reduced congestion.
Hoffmeier and Duckworth started collaborating on the methodology after they met in 2010 and discovered they both had been working on adapting the principals of quality improvement used in manufacturing to improving the social issues within organizations.
Duckworth is an engineer, with a background in the automotive industry. She is also the chief learning officer for Kaiser Aluminum. Hoffmeier was a chief marketing officer for a consumer product company before founding the institute.
The two co-authored “A Six Sigma Approach to Sustainability” in 2015 and their course work is based on the book. After publishing the book the started working with organizations on improving their operations, through workshops, before developing online courses.
The institute also has offered four terms, a full year, of its online courses and attracted international and local students.
The institute employs ten coaches from a variety of backgrounds, such as the director of product development at Interface Carpet, a carpet tile designer and maker, and a certified quality engineer and auditor from Sanmina Corporation, an electronics manufacturer.
The institute staff encourages large clients, such as private companies, to identify problems and potential issues in a confidential setting.
“The good thing about that is that it provides the organization a framework to really look very plainly at the problems that they have,” Hoffmeier said.
The institute also encourages organizations to think about sustaining themselves for 1,500 years rather than just 5 or 10 years.
Students who receive the institute’s certification lead projects focused on change within their own organizations, which is unique compared to some consultancies, the founders said.
The founders envision Durango as a model of social responsibility improvement across nonprofits, schools, governments and businesses.
To further that goal, they are offering free courses to those in nonprofits, schools and governments.
Registration for an Continual Improvement for Social Responsibility practitioner course is $2,950.
For more information visit www.sherpabcorp.com.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
