It is often thought that gift-giving and bartering are simple and primitive practices.

Yet a Christmas fruitcake is not just a fruitcake. Gifts and trades are symbolic, intentional and highly sophisticated gestures. Business-oriented gifts include such expressions as hand-written thank you cards, meaningful corporate holiday gifts and more intangible gifts like virtual introductions. Referrals are the most direct way of gift giving in the business world. In addition, many companies within disparate industries use barter on a daily basis. A widely used example of corporate barter is media coverage and advertising. Restaurants barter plumbing services for catering. Architects trade design work for yoga classes. These are strategies for strengthening relationships while simultaneously obtaining services in a way that will not threaten cash flow.

Gift-giving and bartering also support all three components of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL): a contemporary economic paradigm. In this new formula, financial profit (formerly known as the bottom line) is flanked by social justice: ”people”, and environmental justice, or “place”. By employing TBL thinking, a business can make decisions that honor these three ideas equally, all with the goal of social, environmental and financial sustainability.

People

Bartering and gift-giving promote community well-being and serve to reinforce social bonds. As businesses, we can improve our quality of life by strengthening the size and quality of our social network. This is the idea of asset-based community development, whereby a communities’ qualitative and quantitative assets are mapped and developed simultaneously. This collaborative style of development brings individual gain as well as bringing economic vitality to your neighborhood. Through intensifying social bonds within your business network, you create a reinforcing mechanism that brings health, happiness and economic vibrancy to your entire stakeholder population.

Place

Gift-giving and bartering are a way to mitigate waste, and therefore encourage environmental stewardship. In our era of disposable products, giving or trading is a timely sharing of resources that leads to less demand for new production. The gifting of a new Rolex to a loyal client does not serve this purpose. Rather, the optimal gift or trade means utilizing things that you have - reusing, repurposing or refashioning. Donating an excess of burlap sacks to a coffee shop is a way of lengthening the lifecycle of a product. While it requires time and energy to relay these unique gifts, the environmental impacts of minimizing the waste stream from your business are significant and build to a nuanced legacy of environmental stewardship. Your reputation for environmental sustainability is actually witnessed by the recipients of your gifts and barter arrangements.

Profit

A wise capitalist might argue that industrialized nations have left barter in favor of a currency-based economy for good reason. Businesses can be much more efficient without the hassles and risks associated with barter. Yes, but this short-term outlook negates that the ultimate measure of a successful business is often one small line on the balance sheet. Goodwill. It can rise with the creation of one hot you-tube video, or fall with the implosion on one off-shore oil well. It is an ambiguous, mysterious intangible asset. Intellectual property, the primary asset of many businesses such as scientific research firms and branding firms, is accounted for in this catch-all word called “Goodwill”. This word includes customer loyalty, and the financial future value of social bonds with a given company. In short, a business can reap sustained financial profit by engaging in a moderate level of bartering and gift-giving, because these activities will increase goodwill, which provides long-term customer, client and supplier loyalty.

Accountability

The last benefit of strategic gift-giving and bartering, and possibly the most important one, is the notion of accountability. Strait monetary commerce creates a global market of anonymous stakeholders. Both gift-giving and bartering involve trust. An exchange or gift usually involves individual human beings, gratitude, a handshake and deepening relationships. With honor, integrity and reputation on the line, most businesses will consider the needs and values of a much broader sphere of influence. Therefore, in bartering, giving or receiving, one spins deeper into a web of mutual growth and mutual accountability