Innovations in Social Entrepreneurship

New innovation grant opportunity (Ashoka)

Grants of up to $5,000 will be awarded to individuals and organizations for their innovative projects and ideas to engage citizens in building strong communities across the United States and Canada. They are due August 11. Here is the RFP link.

Microsoft continues tradition of giving back

Beginning with Mary Gates, the mother of Microsoft’s co-founder and longtime leader in the United Way, a legacy of philanthropy has been passed down within in the company and continues evolving even today.  Company founder Bill Gates now pursues philanthropy full-time through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Microsoft alumni have founded and supported more than 150 nonprofit organizations and social ventures working around the world, according to its alumni foundation, and the nonprofits Jolkona Foundation, Givology and CRY America are all run by current Microsoft employees.  Microsoft matches employee donations and volunteer time up to $12,000 a year and last year employee giving and company matching funds totaled nearly $90 million. 

 All this and more contributed to the company’s ranking of fourteen on this year’s Corporate Responsibility list which evaluated performance on a range of issues such as environment, climate change, employee relations, human rights and philanthropy.

 According to the company’s senior vice president for human resources, Lisa Brummel, making social entrepreneurship part of the company’s DNA is a vital recruiting tool and gives the company an advantage over competitors.  “There are certain companies that give their employees 20 percent time to spend internally to make the company better, “ Brummel said, referring to Google. “And there are some companies that give their employees 20 percent time externally to make the world better.”

 Rob Salkowitz, author of “Young World Rising” writes that a younger, globally connected workforce demands a new organizational model that blends social and commercial goals, and attracts talent with visionary leadership and social mission.

 A company with this mission must carefully align the benefits it gives to society with its business goals in order to thrive and Microsoft’s model seems to successfully do just that.  One example of this is a project called PhotoDNA, where Microsoft researchers combined with Dartmouth College computer science professor Harry Farid to create a system that identifies and filters out know images of child pornography from search engines. 

 Tim Cranton, associate general counsel who worked on the PhotoDNA project  said, “Microsoft employees truly believe they can change the world with software, even sometimes in an arrogant way, but there is an abiding belief that we can change the world.”

Learn more.

Creating Large Scale Change (Dees)

Great new peice by J. Gregory Dees, cofounder of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University (go Blue Devils)  Creating large-scale change: Not ‘can’ but ‘how’

What Nonprofits Can Learn from Social Entrepreneurs (Social Velocity)

Description of a new white paper from Social Velocity:

"The social entrepreneurship movement is taking America by storm. But we can't forget those who were working on saving the world long before it was cool--nonprofits. And in fact, there is much that the social entrepreneurship movement can offer to rethink, reinvigorate, and remake the nonprofit sector. Social Velocity just released a new white paper detailing what nonprofits can borrow from social entrepreneurs to finance, articulate, plan and think about their work"

Microcredit under scrutiny (NYT)

Microfinance, the movement that aims to help lift the world's poor into better lives, has grown so popular that some of its most ardent supporters are wringing their hands over the direction it has taken, the New York Times reports.

Muhammad Yunus, the economist who received the 2006 Nobel Prize for his pioneering microfinance efforts in Bangladesh, has said that microcredit interest rates should be 10 percent to 15 percent above the cost of capital. According to Yunus, anything beyond that rate constitutes loan sharking. By that measure, 75 percent of microfinance institutions worldwide would fall into that category, according to data from the Microfinance Information Exchange.

Read the full Times article here.

Can social entrepreneurs create real change? (McKinsey)

McKinsey quarterly asked these leading philanthropists if they think their efforts can create large-scale change. 

Great interviews with Bill Drayton, chairman and CEO of Ashoka: Tipping the world: The power of collaborative entrepreneurship

J. Gregory Dees, cofounder of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University: Creating large-scale change: Not 'can' but 'how'

Scalepassion.com

New to me - an online service for ‘change-the-world’ entrepreneurs.

Here is their speed pitch: We realize not every entrepreneur needs a full coaching service, so we offer a full menu of of do-it-yourself ("DIY") blogs, lessons, podcasts and vlogs — along with do-it-with-me ("DIWM") courses and coaching.  This ensures that the change-the-world entrepreneur chooses the level of tactical and practical help that they are able to absorb based on their unique situation and the content that is relevant for their particular stage of business and issues they are facing.

Check them out here!

Crowd Sourcing - new take on SE competition

248 young social entrepreneurs from 45 countries submitted applications to attend the Unreasonable Institute's 10 week summer incubation program to be mentored by proven entrepreneurs and investors, receive rigorous training, and acquire access to the seed capital they need to measurably improve the lives of millions around the globe. 35 finalists from 19 countries have been chosen to vie for 25 spots. These 35 finalists now have to prove their entrepreneurial mettle by galvanizing hundreds of people around the world to vote for their ventures with their dollars to they can raise the $6,500 it costs to attend the institute. The 1st 25 to do so will be selected to attend the Unreasonable Institute. Visit the Unreasonable Finalists Marketplace to support the young entrepreneurs!

Dell Student Social Entrepreneur Competition

Two weeks left for students to enter the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition for a chance to win $50,000 in funding. The University of Texas at Austin and Dell are searching for student social entrepreneurs to dream up ingenious ideas to change the world. College students worldwide are invited to enter the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition for a chance to win $50,000 to turn their ideas into a new business or nonprofit with a mission to change lives for the better.  The deadline to enter is March 1, 2010. Submit your ideas online at http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com.

 Along with students, citizens worldwide are invited to comment on, vote for and discuss the ideas in the online community forum.

http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com

http://twitter.com/dellsocialinnov

http://www.facebook.com/DellSocialInnovation

 

BBC series on SE debuts

BBC World News will be launching this weekend an 8-part series on social entrepreneurs around the globe. Alvin's Guide to Good Business will follow financial expert Alvin Hall as he visits a different social entrepreneur each week. He'll look at business models, impact, and the challenges of scaling. Featured organizations include Riders for Health, IDE-India, Marine Stewardship Council, Apopo, Partners in Health, Friends International, Camfed and Kiva. The Skoll Foundation partnered with RockhopperTV on the series.

Watch the series on line here.

News from Indian SE conference (Skoll)

Main points from the gathering of social entrepreneurs at the Indian Business School in the heart of HITECH city in Hyderabad via the Skoll foundation
Scaling strategies have to be derived around the "needs" of the beneficiaries rather than "wants"
As one establishes a for-profit to address a social mission there needs to be a strong emphasis on accountability
Need to demystify the margin structures in manufacturing and distribution – provide more clarity on costs throughout the value chain.
Often organizations seek just grant funding which subsidizes opportunities and thereby does not allow for creative financing (of mixing soft and hard funding / and where they need to be effectively applied)
There is still an acute shortage of flexible, early stage, risk-taking capital for for-profit social enterprises
Keep the ultimate beneficiaries central to negotiations between the social enterprise and the company
Don't approach profit as a "dirty word" – it is fundamental/central to a company's existence
Have to educate companies to look at non-profits on multi-aspects beyond just reaching a new market/target population and encourage them to be "co-creators" – companies need to be prepare for financing Have a rationale, transparent revenue sharing model as there is inherently a power imbalance with the companies. So it is important to be clear on pricing and a realistic timeline (how long it will take to scale/reach volumes)
CSR must be recognized as integral to business – not a charity program on the sidelines
Present opportunity in the language of the company ie: business plan, financial models – often NGOs may have all the data but present information in a manner that is not educative to the companies
Sometimes the partnership does not make sense – if it is not viewed as an integral strategy to both organizations. So, to save future headaches and heartbreaks and failures, there need to be milestones that assess the health of the partnership and decide on clear go-no go criteria.

Business Week Social Entrep Contest now open!

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2010/02/poll_test.html

Great example of SE (NYT)

Instead of millions of dollars in unused gift cards going back to the corporation, this firefighter wants them to go to charity. Sounds like a great idea ... unless you are one of the companies! Read about the struggles of this social entrepreneur here.

Philanthropic Leadership in Uncertain Times (Skoll)

Highlights from a confernce attended by Dan Crisafulli from Skoll on the future of philanthropy

"In light of my philanthropic audience, I emphasized the importance of core operating support in scaling innovation. Providing core support that is aligned with an organization's strategy for maximizing impact – rather than project funding that can distract and distort – is probably the biggest thing a foundation can do to help build a scalable institution. "How big would Microsoft be if Bill Gates had to create different products for each of his investors?" I asked.

Another speaker evoked the collective power – in support of innovation - that would be unleashed if foundations applied 100 percent of their balance sheets toward impact, rather than the more typical 5 percent. A quite reasonable suggestion, against which you'll find no argument here.

As a closing note, I encouraged foundations to approach social entrepreneurs with a healthy dose of humility. Posing the question, "does social innovation originate with foundation officers?", I encouraged the audience to look beyond deterministic, top-down models of social change and instead think about empowering the innovators. Well-intentioned as we may be, we're only investors in innovation – social entrepreneurs have the solutions.

New Social Entrp. Initiatives (Skoll Foundation)

The Skoll Global Threats Fund, created by Jeff Skoll last year and led by Larry Brilliant, announced today its first grants and latest executive hire, as well as launched a new website. The site gives a good overview of the Skoll Global Threat Fund's mission and its approach on the five global threats it will focus on initially: climate change, water scarcity, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict. The Skoll Global Threat Fund's first grants are to Ploughshares, to promote nuclear weapons elimination, and J Street, to encourage moderate voices in support of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Larry's first executive hire is Eric Nonacs as VP, Alliances and Partnerships, who arrives with a strong background working on social change issues with, among others, the Clinton Foundation.

Social Investment Loan Fund (NCB Capital Impact )

Kicking off a three-year, $75 million initiative that will help finance community health centers serving vulnerable communities, Washington, D.C.-based NCB Capital Impact has announced a $5 million social investment loan with favorable terms and conditions from MetLife.

The funds will support the Healthier California program, which will work to attract capital to finance community health clinics throughout the state in order to maintain healthcare services for low-income and uninsured patients. Roughly 20 percent of California residents are uninsured, and more than two-thirds of community health center patients fall below the federal poverty line.

Sponsored by the California Organized Investment Network, a program of the California Department of Insurance, the initiative is part of an effort to offset the impact of the state budget crisis by investing not only in healthcare access but also in a source of local employment and economic growth.

3Skoll Social Entrepreneurs in Chase Community Giving Challenge

Three Skoll award recipients - Camfed, Half the Sky and Kiva - are among 100 organizations in the final round of the Chase Community Giving challenge. Chase Community Giving, hosted on Facebook, is an initiative designed to harness social media for fundraising, as well as to generate exposure for social change organizations. Each of the top 100 has presented a "big idea" on what they would do with $1 million. Winners will be chosen via an online vote. Chase will award a $1 million prize and five $100,000 prizes to the top vote recipients. Voting opens January 15. Vote!

The history of SE (The Institute for Social Entrepreneurship)

This is an excellent report that presents the history of social entrepreneurship. You can download it here:

The decade's top 10 Social Entrepreneurship events (change.org)

You can read the full article here -- but these are Nathaniel Whittemore's top ten moments in the field of social entrepreneurship for the decade:

#10: Launch of the Office of Social Innovation (April 2009)
#9: First Issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2003)
#8: Andrew Zolli Joins Pop!Tech (2003) and TED Talks Move Online (June 2006)
#7: Unilever's Acquisiton of Ben & Jerry's (April 2000) and Cadbury's Shift To Fair Trade (March 2009)
#6: The Launch of the iPhone (June 2007)
#5: Teach For America's 2009 Recruitment Class Numbers (May 2009)
#4: Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (September 2008) and launch of the Social Capital Markets Conference (October 2008)
#3: Muhammad Yunus And Grameen Bank Win Nobel Peace Prize (October 2006) and Kiva.org Founded (March 2005)
#2: David Bornstein Publishes "How To Change The World" (February 2004)
#1: eBay Goes Public (September 1998)

Social entrepreneurship is stupid?

From Penelope Trunk's feed on Top 50 Companies:

It's stupid because you don't' need to be calling yourself a social entrepreneur in order to save the world. We no longer divide the world into non-profit people who are do-gooders and for-profit people who are money-grubbers. We are all here to do good. After all, what else is worth living for?

So we all want to work at companies that enable us to be doing something good. We gauge this by tracking which companies have green programs. Green programs aren't the only way to do good, but it's a decent indication of how companies see their place in the world.

If a company has a strong green initiative it's because they understand the value of being a good corporate citizen. And companies like that know that employees want to feel good about the organization they work for, and the difference they make in the world.