Using the Tools of Business to Create Public Good

Sector 4 Focus was established by Tom Levitt in 2010 to work on the intersection between charities, government and business. Although the company has not operated since 2022 this site now features Tom Levitt’s major and ongoing projects. Tom is now an Associate Lecturer in sustainable business at the Claude Littner Business School, University of West London.

Tom’s new book, ‘The Business of History, Lessons from Two Centuries of British Commerce’, is published in summer, 2025. This page contains links to the book, to its URL footnotes and to a photo gallery and guided walk.

What else has Sector 4 Focus done?

In 2021 the Chartered Association of Public Schools published ‘Business Schools and the Public Good‘, a report co-written by Martin Kitchener and Tom Levitt. They had co-chaired a taskforce for over a year which asked how and how well business schools were helping the world become a better place, through their influence on business.

Published in December 2020, the British Standards Institute Guide to Enhancing Social Value was written by a team on which Tom served for over two years. It discusses the principles of social value, how to choose the right tools for assessing it and reporting issues, for business, public and voluntary sector organisations. You can download Tom’s (free) 6-page Guide to the Guide here from BSI.

Book: The Courage to Meddle: The Belief of Frances Perkins

Who was Frances Perkins? What does the world of responsible business owe to her? What can we learn from her work on working hours, minimum pay levels, factory safety, union recognition, opposing racism and antisemitism, women’s rights and child labour? Could she be described as the most important woman in politics in the whole of the first half of the 20th century? (Hint: yes!). Find out more about Frances (1880-1965), FDR’s Labor Secretary, and Tom’s book here… or in his 45-minute conversation with the US programme History Camp in 2021. Tom spoke to the prestigious Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial Museum on the subject of Frances Perkins in 2024. You can see the video here (30 mins).
In Memoriam Tomlin Coggeshall, grandson of Frances Perkins, who was so helpful. Tomlin died, aged 70, in January 2025, just weeks after President Biden declared the Frances Perkins homestead in Maine a National Monument.

Tom’s 2018 book ‘The Company Citizen – Good for Business, Planet, Nation and Community’, encapsulated the ethos of Sector 4 Focus: 

• Almost half of the world’s biggest 100 economies are not governments but businesses – neither planet, nation nor community can survive without business engagement in the future
• Business does not have to choose between being profitable and being ethical, responsible and sustainable; it can and must do both in order to survive
• If business needs to do just one thing to put the world to rights it is: to think longer term.

Paul Polman, then CEO of Unilever, often cited as one of the world’s most responsible and sustainable corporates, has said that ‘The Company Citizen’ is:

“A compelling account of how – and why – business has to be at the centre of addressing today’s most urgent and far-reaching issues. A book, and a theme, whose time has come. Never has the case for business to step up and help solve society’s challenges been greater. And rarely has it been better put than in this excellent account”

Tom has 20 ten-minute conversations about different issues raised in The Company Citizen with former BBC journalist Linda Lewis (audio). In this 2021 video Tom explains (to Manchester Alliance Business School) what being a Company Citizen is all about… (39 mins).

Fair for You: The social enterprise Fair For You is a social enterprise dedicated to creating an ethical, responsible, supportive and fair alternative to the high cost exploitation of poorer people by the rent to own sector. It uses the tools of business to combat poverty. Tom is its co-founder, a non-exec director at the ethical lender, and chair of trustees at the charity that owns it (2015-2025). Fair for You, a Living Wage employer which started trading in 2016, expresses the values of Sector 4 Focus.

Powerplay was the first theatre production by Fourth Sector Theatre.  (53 minutes). It’s a black comedy about Brexit which enjoyed 5 sellout performances in London (Camden Festival) and Norwich in August 2018. There’s more about the play here. In memoriam Clive Stubbs, who plays Charles King, died from Covid in 2020.

More books: The second edition of Tom’s book, ‘Welcome to GoodCo – Using the Tools of Business to Create Public Good’ was published in September 2015. Tom’s first book, ‘Partners for Good: Business, Government and the Third Sector’, was published in June 2012. Click here for details.