A mile deep: a local 'benefits corporation' gets strategic in its giving.

• Author: Beers, Heather
• Position: Lessons Learned

From the time he was young--as in four years old--Davis Smith witnessed first-hand the challenges people faced in developing countries.

"One of my very first memories was seeing children, three or four years old, completely naked on the sides of the street," says Smith. His family had moved overseas with his father's work, and even though he was young, the impact from these kinds of experiences ran deep and would become a guiding force throughout his career.

While in college, Smith made a personal commitment that he would find a way to leverage business success to make a difference in the world. Now as CEO of Cottonwood Heights-based outdoor gear company Cotopaxi, Smith and Lindsey Kneuven, Cotopaxi's chief impact officer, share their lessons learned in bringing together the power of mission-oriented business, capital, human compassion and purposeful adventure to ease poverty and improve health among communities that need it the most.

Wanting to do more

Just before founding Cotopaxi, Smith had been living in Brazil. But even though his business there was thriving, and even though he treasured the opportunity to raise his family in South America (where he'd spent much of his youth), Smith wanted to do even more. He says, "I knew I needed to leave. I didn't feel like I could keep my promise to myself to make a difference, there."

Smith returned to Utah, more determined than ever to create change in the world through his next venture.

Smith had learned from his previous experiences that it wasn't enough for him to create a viable company and then decide where to give back. He wanted to weave the mission into the very core of his next company's foundation. And having lived in countries where he had seen the devastating effects of poverty, he knew exactly what he wanted that mission to be: to alleviate poverty.

Rather than establishing the company as a C-Corp, he did something more unusual. In 2013, he founded Cotopaxi as a B-Corp (Benefits Corporation). As such, the company would be accountable to monitor its performance against its goals of inspiring social and environmental change. In other words, financial success and mission success would be directly aligned.

It wasn't necessarily the most popular decision at the time. "I was told by an attorney I'd worked with for several years not to do it," says Smith. "He said no one's going to want to invest in a company that's giving away money before you make money. But I felt like this was the way...