Carrotmob is a nonprofit organization

Nonprofit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 based in San Francisco, CA. It uses buycott

Buycott

A buycott is the opposite of a boycott; that is, an active campaign to buy the products or services of a particular company or country.For example, various buycott organizations in support of Israel have been set up around the world, in order to oppose the many Boycott Israel campaigns.When Whole...

s (a form of consumer activism where a community buys a lot of goods from one company in a small time period) to reward a business's commitment to making socially responsible changes to the business. Carrotmob also refers to a global movement of community organizers who use the Carrotmob tactic of consumer activism as a way to help change businesses in their communities. In a Carrotmob buycott, businesses compete to be the most socially responsible business, and then a network of consumers spends money to support the winner.

History

The first Carrotmob campaign happened on March 29, 2008, at K & D Market in San Francisco, CA. It was organized by Brent Schulkin, the founder of Carrotmob. In the first campaign, Schulkin went to 23 convenience stores with a plan to transform one of the stores into the most environmentally-friendly store in the neighborhood. He promised to bring a "mob" of consumers to one store to spend money on one day. In order to receive the increased sales from this event, store owners were invited to place bids on what percentage of hypothetical revenue they would be willing to set aside and reinvest into making improvements which made their store more energy-efficient. The winning bid was 22%, by K & D Market. On the day of the campaign, hundreds of people arrived and spent over $9200. In exchange, the store took 22% of that revenue, and used it to do a full retrofit of their lighting system.

From May 2008 until February 2010, the Carrotmob project was funded by Virgance, an incubator company co-founded by Brent Schulkin. Virgance also incubated other projects, most notably 1BOG

1BOG

1BOG is a San Francisco, California based company which organizes community buying of solar power to make the process more affordable and transparent for residential consumers, and to foster an environment of community activism and responsibility.-Name:The name “One Block Off the Grid” is a...

.

The Carrotmob Name

The name Carrotmob is derived from the carrot and stick

Carrot and stick

Carrot and stick is an idiom that refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. It is named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind it...

idiom, which refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards (carrots) and punishment (sticks) to induce behavior. Many traditional forms of consumer activism, such as boycotts and protests, rely on the "stick" method of attacking businesses.