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Commerce with Compassion

(Winter 2007 Newsletter)

Little did J-Vann McCoy realize when he enrolled at Thomas Aquinas College in the mid-1980s that he would not only convert to the Catholic faith during his freshman year, but also discern a vocation as a contemplative monk before his graduation in 1988. As unlikely as it may have seemed back then, Fr. Bernard McCoy is now a Cistercian monk and the Superior of the Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank in Sparta, Wisconsin.

In 2001, searching for ways to support the Abbey, Fr. Bernard, who is also the Steward for Temporal Affairs, combined his business acumen with Catholic social teaching and founded LaserMonks.com, an internet-based business that sells printing and imaging supplies at reduced prices. Operated by the Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, with Fr. Bernard as CEO, LaserMonks.com’s gross annual sales have increased from only $2,000 in its inaugural year to $3.5 million just five years later. Its unique profile and rapid growth have attracted the attention of a variety of media, including CNN, ABC World News Tonight, Reuters, USA Today, Entrepreneur magazine, National Public Radio, Zenit, the National Catholic Register, and EWTN.

In addition to sustaining the Abbey, profits from LaserMonks.com are now providing funding for Fr. Bernard’s new charitable project called The Torchlight Foundation. The idea for this non-profit organization came to Fr. Bernard while he was at prayer and thinking about how much better it is to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. “What if we could push that envelope one step further?” he mused. “Instead of just teaching them how to fish, what if we could help them teach others how to fish?” That idea was the genesis of his whole plan—to encourage good in the world by helping others to do good, not simply doing it for them. Torchlight now provides either programming or resources to encourage people to help other people. “We’re subtly teaching people how to love other people,” Fr. Bernard explains, “to seek the good of others. We liked the idea from a monastic standpoint as well, since monks, by and large, tend to be quiet, behind-the-scenes folks.”

It may be that a group of seventh graders from a cash-strapped Catholic school in Minneapolis want to raise awareness of Celiac disease, or that abused girls in a group home want to help girls like themselves in another domestic abuse shelter. The Torchlight Foundation requires only that an organization prepare a fully-written business plan for its charitable venture, that it stipulate the resources the group has and doesn’t have, and that it document how it will be accountable for the entire project. Under the guidance of Fr. Bernard and his small staff of monks, business advice is then given, funds are dispersed, and good works ensue.

In addition to observing his daily duties as Superior of the Abbey, including four hours of chanting the Divine Office, teaching mystical theology and monastic spirituality, and contemplative prayer, Fr. Bernard is preparing two books. One is about the LaserMonks.com success story, and the other about the Abbey’s retired Abbot who escaped Hungary during the revolution in 1956. Fr. Bernard also travels across the country giving talks about social entrepreneurism and “commerce with compassion” to business executives and groups such as Legatus, an organization of Catholic CEOs and business leaders.

-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2007