Shortly after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, a small group of experts convened in New York to discuss topics ranging from interpersonal to organizational trust and trustworthiness. We recognized that history repeats itself. The 2008 crisis was not the first time trust had been tested.
In the early 1980s, many people lost faith in Corporate America and believed that America was "broken" and could not effectively compete with Japan. Malcolm Baldrige, Secretary of Commerce, had a vision -- to canvass companies across America and identify "best in breed" practices. President Ronald Reagan and Congress named the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in his honor. The awards remain an important annual event thirty years later.
Trust Across America's mission is to help enhance trustworthy behavior in organizations. We like to think of ourselves as social innovators. We are neither a non-profit nor a profit-seeking entity - rather, we seek to be self-supporting through modest and voluntary fees for some of our services. We are not trying to build a business around trust - we are trying to help organizations become more trustworthy. Most of what we do is "open source" and our work cuts across organizational and disciplinary boundaries. We seek to unite previously separate individuals and organizations under the common cause of furthering organizational trust. We maintain a five-member informal steering committee.
2009 Trust Across America website launches. Its mission is to help enhance trustworthy behavior in organizations.
December 2010 Issues first annual "Top 10 Most Trustworthy Public Companies"
January 2010 Issues first annual "Top Thought Leaders in Trust"
October 2012 Launches the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts (ATBE) to collaboratively advance the cause of organizational trustworthiness around the world (name subsequently changed to Trust Alliance)
May 2013 Repositions Trust Across America as a global program: Trust Across America - Trust Around the World
December 2013 Publication of the first award-winning book in our Trust Inc. series
January 2014 Publication of our first annual Trust Poster
October 2014 Publication of the first issue of TRUST! Magazine
July 2015 Publication of Trustlets, our first series of short case studies on trust
June 2016 Licensing of FACTS® Framework begins
September 2016 Publication of our first White Paper: The State of Trust in Corporate America 2016
December 2017 Publication of "The Impact of Trust on Financial Performance"
April 2018 Ten year anniversary celebration begins with the publication of TAP (Trust Alliance Principles), a collaborative project of our Trust Alliance
October 2018 Publication of our 10th anniversary research report (50 pages) on Trust & Integrity in Corporate America 2018
October 2018 Publication of the Country Trust Index™
February 2019 Introduction of Building Trust One Principle at a Time, a new survey tool. Take our Quiz.
April 2019 Introduction of AIM Towards Trust, a simple yet comprehensive trust assessment for leaders, teams and organizations.
January 2020 Workshops added
January 1, 2021 Commencement of the Trust Action Project 2021 tap#2021
January 1, 2022 Commencement of the Language Of Trust (A Trust Alliance Exclusive)
May 2022 Coverage in Investor's Business Daily
July 2022 Ten Year Study Results Released "Trustworthy Companies Offer Superior Investment Returns"
For recent updates, please visit our Website or Press Page.