Giving Compass' Take:

• Jason Flatt covers Numi Organic Teas and its co-founder's dream of giving back to the community while creating eco-friendly business practices.

• How can social entrepreneurs use Numi as a model to make both people and profit important?

• Learn about stakeholder orientation.

For Ahmed Rahim, co-founder of Numi Organic Teas people always come first; for 20 years, the Oakland, California based company has placed social responsibility at the forefront of its business. “Caring for people and the environment has always been central to our identity,” Rahim tells Food Tank, noting he strives to embody that through all of his work at Numi—and beyond.

According to Rahim, when he founded Numi Organic Teas in 1999, many tea drinkers had not yet latched onto the organic farming and environmental stewardship that has guided the tea company for the past 20 years. “When Numi started out, many of our ideas about real ingredients, sustainable packaging, organic certification, Fair Trade, and Fair Labor were quite radical,” Rahim tells Food Tank. Today, Numi’s global network of over 14,000 farmers practices chemical-free farming and plastic-free packaging.

Numi also strives to directly benefit its communities through the Numi Foundation, the nonprofit heart of Rahim’s social impact projects. Numi’s community of 4,000 turmeric farmers in Madagascar, for example, “experienced clean, safe drinking water for the first time in their lives,” says Rahim, thanks to Numi Foundation’s Together for H2OPE initiative which helps Numi’s farming communities with clean water access. The Numi Foundation focuses on “nourishing people and communities” primarily through improving water access and educational opportunities.

Read the full article about the organic tea company putting people and the environment first by Jason Flatt at Food Tank.