BBB 40th Anniversary story

1983-1989: Off on the right foot, from day one.

In 1983, CSU student Lisa Curtis was working on a Master's degree in Consumer Sciences and serving as the Director of the student center’s Consumer Services Office. While she enjoyed advocating for student consumers, she realized what Fort Collins needed was a Better Business Bureau (BBB) that could serve the entire community.

Curtis focused her Master's Thesis on researching the viability of a local BBB branch. After surveying both consumers and businesses in the area, it was clear that there was both a need and plenty of support. 87% of those surveyed said “yes” to establishing a local branch.

Curtis got to work inviting local business leaders to become charter members and/or Board Members. She also recruited a team of independent sales associates to speak with local businesses about the opportunity to join.

As it turns out, it was an easy sell. Many businesses wanted a way to communicate to both consumers and their employees that they cared about ethics, and were willing to hold themselves accountable to a higher standard.

On May 17, 1983, the Better Business Bureau of Northern Colorado, Inc. officially opened its doors, operating out of an office at 140 Oak Street (above the Fort Collins Museum). There was no ribbon cutting or party – just a lot of hard work by a dedicated team of staff members and business leaders, including Curtis as the branch’s first President. Together, the BBB welcomed 215 Charter Members.

“One of the things I did that was so helpful to me when I was just starting out,” Curtis explained, “is that I visited four different Better Business Bureaus in the first year: Austin, Dallas, New Orleans, and Denver. I observed what they did and listened to their CEOs. I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I could just take the best things that they did. I didn’t make many mistakes that first year, and we got off on the right foot.”

With vision and grit, the BBB of Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming quickly became one of the fastest-growing and innovative Better Business Bureaus in the country. Within a few short years, BBB expanded services to communities across Colorado – from Craig, CO to the Nebraska border, and from Evanston to Pine Bluffs, Wyoming. This included a branch office in Laramie.

An early focus was fraud prevention. Curtis and her team investigated businesses, educated the public on common red flags and scams, processed complaints, and served as an information clearinghouse so that consumers could call and verify the legitimacy of a business.

The BBB also spent a lot of time and resources educating the public through PR campaigns, public service announcements, journal articles, and public speaking events. Curtis, in particular, spoke to many groups like the CSU School of Business, churches, service clubs, women's groups, and more. She handed out pamphlets to inform people about how to protect themselves, how to verify if a business had a positive or negative record with the BBB, and how to report a negative experience. Regular PSAs were produced and aired on local radio, newspaper, and in business journals to educate the public and encourage them to call for help.

And call they did – by the thousands. Callers would sometimes reach a busy signal - the technology just couldn’t keep up. This was one of the biggest early challenges – everything was phone and paper-based. After a few years, BBB established its first membership database on a stand-alone 8-bit Apple II computer which, at the time, was more advanced than many other BBB offices operating without computers.

Despite the challenges, BBB continued to grow. By 1986, membership had climbed to over 1,700 businesses of all sizes and sectors. That summer, the Board approved the opening of the Cheyenne office to serve southern Wyoming better. Two years later, the total instances of service more than quadrupled and the BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming won the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ (CBBB) Outstanding Award for Communications for the third consecutive year.

With the end of the decade approaching, BBB sought to expand its consumer education and information programs. In 1989, BBB hosted a consumer fraud seminar, "How to Tell the Good Guys from the Bad", sponsored by U.S. West and Colorado National Bank. This event became the official launch of the BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming Foundation. The Foundation allowed for the expansion of philanthropic advisory services to better monitor and evaluate local charities and solicitations, educate the public on wise charitable giving, and train BBB paraprofessionals to counsel their peers on various consumer issues.

In 1990, Lisa Curtis resigned from her role as President to accept a position with The Nature Conservancy in Boston, Massachusetts. The Board selected Ann Cathcart as the next President and CEO.

1990-1998: As technology upgrades, so does our impact.

The early 90s continued to be a time of service expansion. In 1992, operations were established in Steamboat Springs, Summit and Eagle county territories were acquired from the Denver BBB, and the Mountain States Mediation Center for Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming opened. Operations in Vail began shortly after.

With continued growth, outdated technology became a major challenge. In 1993, BBB purchased equipment and software that allowed the staff to fax business alerts to members. Yet, on a limited budget, service capacity continued to be a challenge.

When Pam King was selected as President and CEO in 1994, she quickly identified technology and funding as the most pressing obstacles to growth. She explained, “Nonprofits need resources to operate properly – they need office facilities, qualified and well-paid staff, and financial reserves. When I first started, we had a large territory, but not a lot of money to expand the staff or invest in technology.”

King continued, “We didn’t have an integrated computer system. Instead, we had dummy terminals – basically typewriters. And, everybody answered the phones to read company reports, [yet callers often] got a busy signal. That was a big problem as we were trying to expand – knowing our services weren’t really available. We had to figure it out. So, the first thing we did was write a grant to invest in technology.”

“[In 1995} the BBB invested in the first automated voice response system,” King explained with a chuckle. “Back then it was a very mechanical voice – not like the AI you hear today. We had to hire a staff person to review how the system was [pronouncing] the content back to callers. Getting this integrated into our phone system (which, of course, had to be upgraded) was a huge challenge. But, we got it done.” 

Giving consumers 24/7 access to business and charitable reports via phone was a big step in the right direction. The automated system read information to callers on more than 9,600 businesses and charitable organizations. Nine area businesses underwrote the cost including First National Bank, Kodak, HSI Health Plans, First State Bank of Fort Collins, Anheuser Busch, Fort Collins Auto Dealers Association, Bank One, Fassett Nickel Ford Toyota, and 1st Choice Bank. With the new phone system, we were able to field many more calls - from 72,000 in 1995 to 158,600 in 1996.

Not long after, people started talking about the internet.

King remembers, “We didn’t really know what it was or what it was going to do. The world wide web was more like the wild wild west. But, once the internet was widely available, this evolved into the BBB Online program.”

BBB Online was a national site, hosted by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, that allowed local branches to create a home page and list current members. Shortly after, member businesses were also able to establish their own homepages at a discounted rate. The cost of the new site was $160,000.

“With an organization like ours that relies on getting the attention of big numbers of consumers and businesses in the marketplace,” King explains, “the internet was huge – allowing our membership to skyrocket.”

King and her team wasted no time leveraging the power of this new tool, while still relying on tried-and-true collaboration practices. “A lot of the base-building was going out to the communities – Sterling, Fort Morgan, Casper, Laramie, Cheyenne, and up to the mountain communities. We spent time meeting one-on-one with people to explain what we were doing [for them].”

We established local advisory boards within each community to understand which industries and businesses were most important to each area. The staff met with political and government leaders and key business people to be sure they were excited about the idea of a BBB presence in their community.

The sales team received national recognition for many years for Outstanding Online sales. In 1997, BBB Fort Collins was selected as one of three BBBs in the country (along with Massachusetts and California) to test the National Information System prototype, allowing staff to create and publish individual business reports online. By the end of that year, the CBBB launched its national online system, allowing consumers to access company reports online. Locally, every staff member had a networked, Hewlett-Packard computer on their desk and could send email for the first time.

With increased access to information (over 15,000 reports were listed on BBB Online), it was much easier for consumers to read about and log instances of unethical business practices from across the country. This was a big win for both consumers and businesses. 

Yet, there remained an occasional tension between the drive to carry forth the mission and some businesses’ comfort with transparency. King explained, “Some companies didn’t feel that we had a right to report on them, even though our work is protected under the first amendment. Many of the communities we worked with were very small, so it could be shocking for some when we had to downgrade a company or revoke its accreditation. For us, it wasn’t a popularity contest – we had to be objective about the information, and it’s our responsibility to report the information we have.”

Despite any tension, King and her team never strayed from the mission. “In a lot of ways it was really easy to stay the course when it came to truth and honesty – it was who we were, as an organization. The team did such solid work on the background checks – making sure we had the correct information before we ever went public with it. [We could tell the business], “This is what your customers are telling us. We’re not judging. This is just your opportunity to correct something that isn’t working.” We tried to build bridges between customers and businesses.”

Up until this point, efforts were focused on fraud education and prevention in the marketplace. With the rise of new technology tools, the staff began to place a greater emphasis on driving consumers toward trusted companies – evolving from calling out businesses to calling them into partnership. 

King reflected, “From the very beginning, I was not comfortable being the business police. I didn’t want businesses to be afraid to get a call from us. Instead, I wanted them to understand what we were trying to achieve. That doesn’t happen overnight – you have to have lots of conversations based on trust. We never diverted from the intent that we wanted the business community as our partners, not our adversaries.”

The updated complaints process also allowed the staff to look at industries, as a whole. For example, the team worked to bring more transparency to the collections agency processes to help consumers understand their rights and responsibilities. BBB also launched the Workers Compensation Safety Group Dividend program, in partnership with the Colorado Compensation Insurance Authority (now known as Pinnacol Assurance), to reduce workers’ compensation costs by promoting safety and claims management in the workplace while providing incentives to participating businesses.

In 1998, the CBBB reversed an 85-year-old policy restricting member businesses from disclosing their membership status to customers. Now, businesses could proudly display their BBB membership seal in print, television, and electronic media.

With Y2K around the corner, our BBB’s reach had expanded to the Eastern Plains, including Morgan and Logan counties in Colorado. With 97 new charter members, the total membership had reached 2,400 businesses.

1999-2011: Celebrating ethics and expanding services

The turn of the century brought an unprecedented expansion of information access and global commercial activity via the internet. This heightened the public’s awareness of ethical issues in the marketplace such as unsafe labor practices, corporate handling of personal damages, financial mismanagement and fraud, and emerging challenges of cyber crimes and intellectual property theft.

BBB identified these challenges as an opportunity to expand its focus on ethics and celebrate area marketplace role models. The Board of Directors discussed creating a business forum on ethics that would include newly-hired Colorado State University ethics professor, O.C. Ferrell. Pam King suggested creating an ethics award in conjunction with the forum.

So, in 1998, the BBB of Northern Colorado Torch Awards for Ethics was born. O.C. and Linda Ferrell, who were already best-selling authors of books on marketing and business ethics, were instrumental in solidifying the criteria that businesses had to demonstrate to be considered for the Torch Awards. 

After the success of the initial event, BBB prepared to host an official Torch Awards for Ethics celebration. When we approached area businesses to solicit nominations, many responded by asking, “What is an ethics award?” It was clear that more education was needed for both consumers and businesses. So, the Farrells connected the staff with students at Colorado State University who could put their ethics education into practice by analyzing the behavior of companies that were nominated. Soon after, the partnership was expanded to the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Wyoming. This model (utilizing student groups as evaluators) was truly innovative – which was recognized with another Outstanding BBB Award.

From here, a focus on ethics education became central to the BBB’s efforts. As King explained, “We really needed to capitalize on the fact that we had a 501 (c)(3) organization [the BBB Foundation]. So, we hired a team member, went through strategic planning, appointed an advisory board for the Foundation, and involved the Board. We also got a big grant from the Daniels Fund.”

With a stronger BBB Foundation, we continued to form strategic partnerships to further educate the public and provide a greater number of fraud-prevention services. In 2000, Colorado BBBs and the state Attorney General partnered to create the Colorado Consumer Line, which served as a central collection point for consumer complaints. Staff from the five Colorado BBB offices worked to process the complaints. That year, the CBBB released the Code of Online Business Practices, and the staff participated in an international effort to identify suspected business opportunity scams. 

In addition, BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming  joined the CBBB in a strategic alliance to fight consumer fraud. The alliance included the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), and the Federal Trade Commission. Together, members could access and utilize an investigative cyber tool and complaint database called Consumer Sentinel, which reached more than 240 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Canada.

In 2001, five Colorado BBBs committed to join efforts with ElderWatch – a program created by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the AARP Foundation to provide a more unified and sustained effort to target senior financial exploitation in Colorado through education, consumer assistance, and extensive community outreach. A partnership with Rotary Clubs in the Northern Colorado/Wyoming service area began, which launched the BBB/Rotary Ethics Scholarship program, awarding a scholarship to a high school student based on their essay using Rotary’s Four-Way Test: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? And, will it be beneficial to all concerned?

In 2004, the Board approved a motion to purchase a new building, located at 8020 S County Road 5 in Windsor, CO. King recalled, “Moving to the Windsor location helped us step into a better reputation, as an organization. This happened at the same time our Workers’ Compensation program was gaining traction and visibility. There were so many events and programs that captured the public’s attention – they could see we were much more than a complaint processor. [Especially] after the Torch Awards were established, it wasn’t difficult at all to get companies to align with us.” 

In 2007, the CBBB rolled out a bold new brand initiative letting consumers know they should “Start With Trust.” Each member business would be known as an “accredited organization” and would be held to the BBBs eight Standards for Trust. With this change, more emphasis was placed on vetting businesses to ensure they met each of the eight standards, which would be reflected by a new letter-grade Rating System. Now, it was easier to communicate a more precise level of consumer satisfaction with each accredited business – allowing for a greater incentive for businesses to self-regulate and achieve the highest letter grade possible by effectively addressing consumer complaints. 

As the decade progressed, the BBB continued to play an important role in the local community through service, partnerships, and philanthropy. In 2008, when Windsor and surrounding communities were struck by a devastating tornado, the staff stepped in to help by putting out signs and distributing flyers to protect consumers from roofing and repair scams. The BBB also raised over $5,000 for tornado relief through the annual BBB/Pinnacol Workers’ Comp Golf Tournament. 

In 2009, a contribution of $10,000 was made  to the Pinnacol Foundation, which provides scholarships to the children of Colorado workers killed or severely injured on the job. The same year, the BBB/Rotary Ethics Scholarship program was named "Best Cooperative Project" at the 2009 Rotary International Convention in Birmingham, England. Later that year, BBB held the first “BBB Secure Your ID” event (later known as the Shred, eCycle & Share Community Event) to allow community members to safely dispose of sensitive documents and computer equipment as well as donate food and coats.

With an ever-expanding community presence, the BBB expanded its physical presence as well. The Board of Directors approved the purchase of the adjacent condo in the building, the organization’s name was changed to Better Business Bureau Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming, Inc., and the first social media pages were launched. Social media was important because “consumer generated media,” a term coined by author and CBBB Board member Pete Blackshaw, was a growing phenomenon. Social media platforms and sites like Yelp and Google Reviews were becoming more popular and people started to get recommendations from their peers. 

In response to an increased demand for information, BBB began publishing complaint details and, eventually, customer reviews in the online BBB Business Profiles. As always, BBB led the way by proving that the “Start With Trust” model was exactly what the public was looking for – trustworthy information in a sea of noise.

2012 marked a century of service for the BBB brand – fostering trust in the marketplace by helping consumers make smarter buying decisions, resolving disputes between consumers and businesses, and educating the public on scams and fraud. 

Locally, BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming celebrated by hosting an ethics symposium featuring Stephen M.R. Covey as the keynote speaker. This led to a natural expansion of the mission of the BBB Foundation to include programming around character ethics, preventing scams and fraud, and best practices for nonprofit excellence. This also included the Torch Awards for Ethics – an annual awards program that publicly recognizes organizations that have practices in place that elevate their commitment to ethical operations.

2012 is also the year the local Military and Veterans Program was launched, which started as a national program. Through this program, the staff was invited to the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne to share information about avoiding scams and fraud with new airmen during their financial readiness training. BBB also hosted a booth at their monthly Right Start fair, providing airmen with resources on BBB and how to avoid scams and fraud.

Two years later, in 2014, Charity Accreditation launched, a program that promotes high standards of conduct among organizations that solicit contributions from the public by evaluating them against the CBBB's 20 Standards for Charity Accountability for practices related to financial management, fundraising and information materials, governance and oversight, and methods for measuring effectiveness. That year BBB partnered with United Way of Weld County, which required nonprofits seeking United Way funding to first seek certification as a BBB Accredited Charity. This win-win partnership helped launch the Charity Accreditation program in Larimer and Weld Counties. After creating a similar partnership with United Way of Larimer County in 2015, BBB won an Outstanding BBB Award for Charity Review.

That same year, the BBB Foundation received a $150,000 grant from the Daniels Fund for the In Pursuit of Ethics program. This gave rise to the first Thought Leadership Event in 2016, in partnership with the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at Colorado State University, University of Northern Colorado, and University of Wyoming – Business Ethics in Social Media. Between 2015-2017, our team reached 6,099 students with the In Pursuit of Ethics program. A few years later, the Ethics Scholar Internship Program launched to provide students with an in-depth look at trust and ethics in business.

In addition to educating students and consumers, the staff began putting more focus on directly educating the business community. The greatest need was education around online reputation management – how to respond to reviews and work to resolve problems with their customers. This, of course, was an area of expertise for BBB. In 2017, BBB signed Memorandums of Understanding with both the Colorado and Wyoming Small Business Development Centers to cross-promote one another’s services to the building community.

In 2018, BBB saw a need to continue casting a wide net and serving businesses of all sizes. That year, the BBB Spark Awards for Entrepreneurship began to recognize emerging businesses (in operation for fewer than three years) for demonstrating ethics in character, culture, and community.

The following year, 2019, Pam King celebrated 25 years of outstanding service to the BBB and announced her retirement. The BBB Board of Directors selected Shelley Polansky, then Vice President of Marketing and Communications, to succeed King as President and CEO. Polansky was ready to dive into her duties – guided by the latest Strategic Plan for the coming three years. 

Part of those plans included her vision for the launch of the Community Center – a place where like-minded ethical businesses and nonprofits could convene. This project, which required major renovation, allowed the BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming to begin to offer in-house events and seminars for the first time.

Of course, 2020 would have other plans.

Despite the ensuing chaos of the global Covid-19 pandemic, Polansky quickly transitioned her staff to work from home – avoiding any interruption in services to the community. In fact, during the 2020 stay-at-home orders, BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming set records for website traffic as more people were investigating trustworthy solutions from the marketplace. The team also processed more complaints and customer reviews compared to any of the years from the previous decade. That year, the team converted all in-person events to virtual, including the first-ever virtual BBB Torch Awards for Ethics. With an all-hands-on-deck approach, the team was dedicated to serving consumers and businesses across the region. Polansky stated, “I was very proud of our team during this unprecedented time. I was proud of how we responded and helped businesses and consumers in the communities we served.”

As we reflect on the last 40 years, BBB knows that the world has changed, but values have not. Although the quantity of consumer-generated content and reviews has exploded across many commercial websites, BBB is confident that what they offer is truly unique and critically important within the marketplace – trust. 

As President and CEO Shelley Polansky declares, “We have a lot of competition, [with the many ways] people get information today. Yet, because we rely on the public to bring things to our attention, we can maintain neutrality. We were founded on self-regulation, and that continues to be how we approach businesses – allowing them to change a pattern or practice and effectively address complaints. Business is going to change enormously over the next decade, but values will always matter. That’s why the frameworks BBB provides for making ethical decisions will be a critical strategic asset for all organizations, leaders, and consumers, now and in the future.”

From the founding in 1983 until today, BBB’s unique advantage has always been the strong partnerships with local business leaders and consumers. In fact, BBB is proud to say that 26 of the founding business members are still accredited today. As a nonprofit, BBB listens to the needs of the community and aligns their efforts accordingly. BBB still provides foundational services like investigating businesses, educating the public on common red flags and scams, assisting to resolve complaints, and maintaining accurate information about area businesses. And, BBB continues providing ethics-based assessment, training, and recognition programs for businesses, nonprofits, consumers, and students. This has not changed.

What has changed, among many things, is the public’s overall level of trust in  institutions – government, the media, corporations, and, sadly, even one another. The good news is that, according to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, private businesses can be the leaders in changing the direction of marketplace trust. 

The report concludes, “Business must lead in breaking the cycle of distrust. Across every single issue, by a huge margin, people want more business engagement, not less. The role and expectation for business has never been clearer, and business must recognize that its societal role is here to stay.”

That’s why BBB is proud to announce its newest initiative – BBB4Good. 

Today, more consumers seek to buy from purpose-driven businesses, and more employees seek to work for companies with a positive social impact. To address this growing demand for business and markets to solve social and environmental problems, BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust has partnered with local BBBs to launch the BBB4Good initiative to support and elevate purpose-driven businesses. The program will empower consumers with the ability to identify purpose-driven businesses; recognize and support organizations that integrate social impact into their business plans; and expand the growth of this powerful new marketplace sector through research and strategic partnerships.

BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming is one of six BBBs in North America participating in this pilot program. Through BBB4Good, BBB will evaluate local social impact organizations against a new set of standards – helping true change-makers to stand out from organizations that participate in “cause washing” (simply using purpose as a marketing tool). Through these efforts, BBB hopes to support the “new consumer” as well as the emerging 4th Sector (i.e. purpose-driven or for-benefit organizations).

Polansky says, “We already know the power of uplifting and celebrating our marketplace role models – businesses and nonprofits that go above and beyond to operate ethically and in the best interest of consumers. We believe that our local business and nonprofit leaders can help restore the trust lapse that has occurred in the last few years, and we will be there with our community partners to lead this charge.”