Shareholders
Was sustainable economic value created for the owners and investors of the business?
Beta
Every Transaction Creates More Than Profit.
TransparenC is a marketplace of businesses committed to understanding, measuring, and improving the value they create for everyone touched by a transaction. Refer someone to a vendor you trust — then see the value that transaction creates.
The core idea
Most people think a transaction looks like this.
Customer→Business→Profit
That's the short version. It leaves almost everyone out.
A single transaction touches the people who own the business, the customer, the employees who did the work, the suppliers who made it possible, the community around it, the environment it draws on, and the generations who inherit what it builds.
TransparenC exists to make that bigger picture visible.
The seven stakeholders
Every transaction potentially creates value across seven stakeholder categories.
These are the seven relationships TransparenC asks businesses to look at.
Customers
Did the customer receive meaningful value in exchange for what they paid?
Employees
Did the transaction support jobs, compensation, opportunity, development, or meaningful work?
Suppliers
Did other businesses and partners benefit from participating in the value chain?
Community
Did the transaction positively contribute to the surrounding community?
Environment
What environmental resources were used, protected, restored, or improved?
Future Generations
Is the company creating something that leaves people and society better positioned over the long term?
The purpose of TransparenC is not to declare that a company is perfect across all seven categories. The purpose is to create transparency around them, acknowledge that they exist, and encourage businesses to continually improve the value they create across the entire ecosystem.
How it works
Six steps, start to finish. This is the whole loop.
- 01
Understand TransparenC
Learn what a transaction really touches, and what the seven stakeholder categories mean.
- 02
Explore vendors
Browse the businesses participating in TransparenC. Every vendor is vetted before it appears in the marketplace.
- 03
Select a vendor
Read the profile: what the company does, why it joined, what it offers, who makes a good referral, and where it works.
- 04
Submit a lead
Tell us who you're referring and why you think this vendor can help. It takes one short form.
- 05
The vendor takes it from there
The vendor receives your lead and reaches out. You can follow the status the whole way.
- 06
The value becomes visible
When a transaction is completed, you see what happened because it occurred — not just that revenue changed hands.
Lead status
Submitted→Received→Contacted→Qualified→Transaction Completed
After the transaction
This is where TransparenC differs from a normal lead-generation platform.
Most referral platforms stop at “deal closed.” TransparenC starts there.
When a transaction is completed, we begin showing what happened because it occurred.
Example — illustration only
A $10,000 transaction
- The customer received $10,000 of perceived value
- The vendor generated revenue
- Employees were compensated
- Suppliers received business
- The referrer received a referral payment
- A community and impact contribution was generated
- Additional value may be created over time
An illustration of the idea, not a record of a completed transaction. In the Beta, some of this information is entered manually.
Over time, this becomes a Transaction Map — a visual record of how value moves through an economic ecosystem.
The marketplace
The businesses on TransparenC
Every vendor is vetted before it appears publicly in the marketplace. Each has a profile that tells you what the company does, why it joined TransparenC, what it offers, who makes a good lead or referral, where it serves, and how to reach it.
Every profile has one button: Submit a Lead.
The TransparenC commitment
Joining TransparenC is a commitment, not a score.
Joining TransparenC does not mean a business has achieved some predetermined score or standard across all seven stakeholder categories. Instead, the company makes a commitment:
“We acknowledge that every business transaction affects an ecosystem larger than the buyer and seller. We recognize shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, communities, the environment, and future generations as stakeholders in the value we create. We commit to transparency, measurement, learning, and continuous improvement across these stakeholder relationships over time.”
The TransparenC community helps participating companies find ways to improve — not simply judge or rank them.
Progress over perfection. Transparency over proclamation.
For businesses
Apply to Become a TransparenC Vendor
If your business is willing to make the commitment above, apply to join the marketplace. The application asks you to explain:
- What your company does
- Who your customers are
- What products and services you provide
- Why you want to join TransparenC
- How you currently think about stakeholders
- Where you believe you create meaningful value
- Where you believe you can improve
- Who will be responsible for your TransparenC participation
Vendors are vetted before appearing publicly in the marketplace.
The original blueprint
Transparency starts with us.
“TransparenC began with an idea originally called the World Giving Project. We believe transparency should include our own evolution, so the original blueprint is available here in its entirety.”
The World Giving Project was written in January 2016 as a blueprint for collaborative impact — a group of small businesses marketing under one vehicle, generating leads for each other, and giving back to their communities.
It was built around five pillars: to inspire other businesses to follow suit into Conscious Capitalism, to give back to the local communities where we do business, to fund “Passion Projects” that let individuals make a difference, to create wealth and desirable, purposeful gainful employment, and to change capitalism for the better.
Not all of it survived. That's the point of publishing it.
What we're testing
This is a Beta, and here's what we're trying to learn.
We're not trying to build the entire TransparenC vision on day one. We're building the smallest working version that lets real people and real businesses complete a transaction through the TransparenC ecosystem.
The Beta is designed to answer a few honest questions:
- Will people submit leads to businesses they trust through TransparenC?
- Will businesses join because they believe in the mission — and because TransparenC can generate customers?
- Will people care about seeing the broader value created by their transactions?
- Does making the seven stakeholder relationships visible change how people think about capitalism and business?
- Does seeing their cumulative impact encourage people to participate again?
Don't build the universe. Prove the loop.
Start with one referral.
Find a business you'd genuinely recommend. Submit a lead. Watch what the transaction creates.