Better Business Bureau: Past, Present, Future
During 2010, your Better Business Bureau of Northern Indiana has celebrated 90 Years of Service to this community. Imagine….since 1920. We had an outstanding video made for our 2010 Torch Awards for Marketplace Ethics and Student of Integrity Scholarship Awards that took place in April. Please click here to view if you have not already viewed it on our website.
I want to recognize this 90-year milestone by crediting those seven BBB leaders who took it upon themselves to accomplish this historic community goal, beginning December 2, 1920 with their first Board of Directors meeting. Two years later, the 1922 membership list consisted of 92 businesses, a great accomplishment considering the number of businesses at that period in time. Today, your BBB serves over 3,200 businesses.
These individuals were busy managing their own businesses, undoubtedly actively involved in other community organizations and they took on the monumental task of forming an entirely new organization! To say that I am honored to have served northern Indiana in this capacity as President & CEO and continue to carry the torch that these businessman began is an understatement.
In a New York Times article in 1962, writer Peter Bart stated “The B.B.B. has come to represent perhaps private industry’s single most concerted and most durable effort at self-policing.” Certainly, the BBB organization has had shortcomings and cynics over the years, but one difference between good and bad organizations is that those worthwhile recognize their weaknesses and then set out to correct them.
With that aside, we have received praise far beyond the criticism. Just one call from a business owner saying that we saved his company thousands of dollars from being scammed or a consumer who “almost” took the bait of a fraud, it’s worth it. The overriding component: BBB does and will deliver on its promises of assisting businesses and consumers.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those BBB leaders who came before, who had a vision to establish a great organization for our community. They donated their time, their money and their talent. They believed in the work of the BBB and they wanted a BBB all of their own for the citizens and businesses of northern Indiana.
Ninety years later our generation is drinking from the wells they dug and we too are digging wells for the next generation of BBB leaders. We have much to be grateful for and many to be thankful to.