Hello Conscientious Consumers!

It's almost spring and a BuyBlue.org blog is just around the corner. On it we will report on the latest CSR news and our issues as we explore the corporate research rabbit hole. Our focus is to combine all of the elements of business behaviors that a conscientious consumer cares about so you can have it all in one convenient place. To do this, collaboration is compulsory. Please send ideas to suggestions@buyblue.org with a nifty descriptive subject line.

What To Expect from the New BuyBlue

Buyblue.org is revamping its ratings system to tally progressive points applicable to every company in its industry. That means that each company will be weighted against the others in its industry. This way we can shop at and reward the best company, encouraging the others to follow its example. Human rights, environmental stewardship, labor rights/equality, relevant industry practices and political contributions will all factor into our ratings.

Buyblue is effective only through community involvement. We strive to incorporate other organizations that have been working on CSR related issues so that we can be THE hub of online activism for the conscientious consumer. Let us know what orgs you would like to see included and why.

In the meantime...

While we get back up and running with our new site there are many incredible related resources that you can use, we've listed some of our favorites here.

• Federal Election Commission: FEC.gov. The FEC was the primary source for all of our information. Federal election law requires that any donation over $250 be recorded and be publicly available at this web site. Therefore if you search for specific individuals or for specific employers you can always find where large political donations are going.

• Open Secrets: Opensecrets.org. Open Secrets presents a large variety of data. They use the FEC as their primary source and we found them particularly useful to study and record donations from political action committees (PACs) which many corporations operate with the explicit purpose of influencing legislation and public policy.

• MAPLight.org: Maplight.org. MAPLight.org, a groundbreaking public database, illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws. This common practice is contrary to the public interest, yet legal. MAPLight.org makes money/vote connections transparent, to help citizens hold their legislators accountable.

• The Blue Fund: The Blue Fund. The Blue Fund is the only mutual fund out there which in addition to creating a portfolio of companies based on traditional social responsibility indicators also uses a methodology similar to ours to rate companies on their political giving practices. Necessarily they have to maintain a list of blue companies in their portfolio which can be found here.

• Public Integrity: Public Integrity. Public Integrity is a good place to investigate lobbying dollars spent by various companies. Open Secrets also has some of this data.