The socially responsible business: an ad-venture where profitability and conscience meet.

That ideal has stirred the imagination of activist-inclined entrepreneurs since the late 1970s when pioneers like Patagonia, The Body Shop and Ben & Jerry's burst onto the national retail market. Their business model was as wild-and-crazy as their products. Being enslaved to THE bottom line suddenly seemed so yesterday. A fresh wave of values-led companies boasted their adherence to a triple-bottom line: people, planet, and profits.

Boy, the times sure are a-changin'. In the past few years, corporate conglomerates have swallowed up many of the successful social ventures. The cascade began in 2000 when Ben & Jerry's was acquired by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch giant that is the globe's biggest consumer-products company. Before we could blink, Coca-Cola absorbed Odwalla and Samantha, General Mills snapped up organic food leader Cascadian Farm, and children's clothier Hannah Andersson sold its assets to a consortium of private equity firms.

This dramatic shift makes one wonder whether labels like "socially responsible" and "organic" are nothing but niche marketing exercises that serve to diversify consumer shelves. Need more depressing data? Two companies, United National Foods and Tree of Life, today control the distribution of over 75% of "all-natural" food products in the U.S. retail market.

To satisfy my own curiosity ? or was it to salvage my ideals? - I set a goal to personally interview a gaggle of high-profile social entrepreneurs. I wanted to understand better why some sold out...uhm, I mean, sold their companies...and why others rejected that path. I also was dying to know how, looking back, they evaluate the decisions they made.

It feels appropriate to start with a true believer. Gary Hirschberg, the co-founder and CEO of the organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm shocked the business world when he announced in late 2001 that the company was selling 40 percent of its stock to food giant Groupe Danone. The French parent of Dannon yogurt reserved the right to buy all non-employee stock in 2004, which it did this past January when it lifted its stake in Stonyfield to 80 percent.

Hirschberg is an ardent environmentalist and one of the most outspoken advocates of - in his own words - "the potential of business to change the world." He tirelessly promotes organic, lambasts genetically modified foods, and puts the social mission of Stonyfield front and center in the corporate brand. Stonyfield even channels ten percent of its profits to environmental causes.

So can a major multinational tolerate the quirky policies and uncompromising social commentary (its yogurt lids regularly protest SUVs and GMOs) that distinguish Stonyfield? "Absolutely," Hirschberg tells me with fervor. "In fact, I view the Danone deal as an opportunity to take our mission to a larger arena."

Hirschberg is the prototypical big-picture guy. Before launching Stonyfield, he ran a non-profit institute that promoted alternative energy and ecological farming. His career reached a turning point on a visit to, of all places, the Epcot Center in Florida. He bumped into a Kraft-funded exhibit at Epcot that demonstrated a vision of how food would be grown in the future. Needless to say, Kraft and Hirschberg did not share the same vision.

As horrified as he was by Kraft's prophecy, Hirschberg was even more appalled to learn that close to 25,000 people visited the Kraft exhibit each day. That was around the total number of visitors that came to his institute for an entire year. "I realized to make an impact on the future of food production on this planet, I had to become Kraft foods."

Though he confesses that selling a majority interest in Stonyfield was painful - "It?s like selling your child" - Hirschberg is still convinced several years into the deal that Group Danone offers him a global platform to make a real difference. The ethic of Stonyfield and its cousins in the social venture network does not disappear after an acquisition, he argues. Their force can grow more powerful and inspire major corporations to embrace social responsibility.

Hirschberg nonetheless carefully guards the Stonyfield agenda. He negotiated with Danone a governance structure that gives him the right to appoint three of the five board seats as long as he remains at the helm of the company. The terms of his dismissal only can be triggered by two consecutive years of steep decline to the bottom line.

In other words, as long as Stonyfield continues to turn a handsome profit, Danone is likely to indulge the company's social mission. What happens if the Stonyfield's yogurt sales turn sour is anyone?s guess.

Ben Cohen is nowhere near as confident that Ben & Jerry's values will prevail at Unilever. "In the corporate environment, what matters most is increased profitability," he tells me with obvious frustration. The "caring capitalism" that he and his co-founder, Jerry Greenfield, once promoted often conflicts with Unilever's aim to maximize short-term earnings. "Although there are some wonderful people with a social conscience inside Unilever, most of what was the soul of Ben & Jerry's has been lost," Cohen laments.

If he could rewrite history, Cohen would pursue alternative routes that would have enabled him to keep his company independent. Ben & Jerry's went public in 1984, and the founders progressively lost their ability to keep control of the company?s board of directors. Once Unilever made its bid to overtake the company, Cohen and Greenfield had little recourse but to acquiesce.

The fact that Unilever bought both Ben & Jerry's and Slimfast (weight-loss products) on the same day speaks volumes. Brand diversification, not social values, appears to have motivated the buying spree.

Cohen remains an icon of the social venture movement despite the unexpected detour. Social entrepreneurs often seek his advice when evaluating whether to sell their company. "I urge them to do everything in their power to stay independent," Cohen frankly admits.

Read the full article - including features on ClifBar founder Gary Erickson and Odwalla co-founder Greg Steltenpohl - in the current issue of Worthwhile magazine. Now available at a Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods, and Borders near you. Or subscribe online.

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