Oxford NTC Alliance Ambassador

Bouncing Ideas Around

2007-03-07T09:46:00.001Z

To develop our best ideas we need (as Paul Graham and Ravi Mohan point out below) to be able to discuss them with others. The Oxford Alliance community (oxfordalliance.ning.com) is intended to be a safe place for social entrepreneurs to meet and discuss their ideas. If you have an interest in social entrepreneurship, then consider bouncing your ideas for social innovation around with us at Oxford Alliance.

clipped from ravimohan.blogspot.com

Paul Graham says, in one of his essays (emphasis mine)

"....Why do you need other people? Can't you just think of new ideas yourself? The empirical answer is: no. Even Einstein needed people to bounce ideas off. Ideas get developed in the process of explaining them to the right kind of person. You need that resistance, just as a carver needs the resistance of the wood.

In my experience, this need for "friendly resistance" extends to far more than creating startups. Every time you have a new idea, you need people you can bounce it off. To get any real benefit out of this process you need people with a complex combination of characteristics.

They should

have firm (but not rigid) opinions on their own

have logical reasons for those beliefs and be able to articulate them clearly

are driven by ideas and not ideology

not attach their egos to their opinions.

be willing to concede a valid argument even if it forces them to possibly re-examine their beliefs

know how to listen

Technorati Tags: Social Entrepreneurship

The Sole of Africa

2007-02-24T09:28:00.000Z

The Sole of Africa is a campaign created by the Mineseeker Foundation. The Foundation works to remove landmines from old battlefields; thus, returning killing fields to agricultural use. The Mineseeker Foundation is also working to end hunger and generate sustainable economic development in 70 areas around the world. Its list of patrons and supporters is impressive. The list includes: Nelson Mandela, Queen Noor, Sir Richard Branson, John Paul DeJoria and many other notables (check its website for a more complete list).

Given the campaign's good work, I was delighted to find that The Sole of Africa campaign has posted the following comment about Nourish the Children (NTC) on its website:

The Sole of Africa is thrilled that the mega food agency, Nourish the Children, together with its worldwide empowered distributor team has joined forces to continue this quest to Make Poverty History. A child dies every 6 seconds from malnutrition, no food and dirty water.

For those of you that do not know Nourish The Children, SOA believes that it is the most complete Social Marketing program working in the world. So do a lot of other people. Since their unique business model was birthed, their growing "Force for Good" under the Chairmanship of legendary Lee Iacoca have now donated over 75,000,000 especially formulated and enriched Vitameals.

75,000,000 in only a few years!!!!!! Donated not by large fund raisers or governments but by people just like you.

Let us hope that we soon see an end to the scourage of both landmines and hunger. If NTC's teams continue to work with entrepreneurial zeal, this goal is definitely within grasp.

Technorati Tags: The Sole of Africa, Nourish the Children, social entrepreneurship, hunger, Sir Richard Branson, Nelson Mandela,Queen Noor, John Paul DeJoria,The Mineseeker Foundation, Lee Iacocca, innovation, entrepreneurship

User Led Innovation

2007-02-20T05:08:00.000Z

Here are some examples of Professor Eric von Hippel's "User Led Innovation" as collected by Nokia's Jan Chipchase:

"Rural Battery Charging Services, Uganda" A short January 2007 presentation authored with Indri Tulusan that introduces the home battery charging services to charge devices with limited access to mains power supply. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable how do people keep their mobile phones and other devices charged?
Download PowerPoint, PDF [2MB]

"Power Up: Street Charging Services, Kampala" A short January 2007 presentation authored with Indri Tulusan that introduces the street services that enable Kampala residents without regular access to mains power to keep their mobile phone's charged.
Download PowerPoint, PDF[3MB]

"Village Phone, Uganda" A short January 2007 presentation that introduces a collaboration between Nokia, Grameen Foundation USA, and Micro Finance Initiatives in Uganda to extend cellular connectivity to remote rural locations.
Download PowerPoint, PDF [2MB]

"Community Address Book & Call Log" A short January 2007 presentation co-authored with Indri Tulusan and Lokesh Bitra drawing on research between 2004 and 2006 in India, Nepal and Uganda that documents phone kiosk owner’s use of paper notebooks to record the phone numbers used by their customers - the combination of the book and the kiosk operator effectively becomes the community address book and call log for the members of the community that use that kiosk.
Download PowerPoint, PDF [1MB]

"Shared Phone Practices: Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond" December 2006 presentation authored with Indri Tulusan that introduces the results of a Nokia study of Shared Phone Use, drawing on research in Uganda, Indonesia, Nepal, India, China and Mongolia. Introduces the concepts of Sente, Step Messaging, Pooling et al..
Download PowerPoint, PDF [6.5MB]

Social entrepreneurs should find the above examples pregnant with meaning.

In keeping with my observation that the world is full of innovation, but not of people who recognise it when they see it, Chipchase states:

The tough part of the job is in using the data to inform, inspire and affect how my colleagues think and what they do.

Technorati Tags: marketing, innovation, social entrepreneurship, Nokia, Eric von Hippel

Breaking Down Resistance to Innovation

2007-02-15T11:17:00.000Z

As I stated in a previous post, I don't believe there is any shortage of innovative social and humanitarian ideas. There is instead a shortage of people who recognise and embrace innovation of any kind, and a shortage of social entrepreneurs who know how to put their good ideas across. Most innovative ideas (good and bad) are destined to go unnoticed - that's a fact.

There isn't a lot that we can do to change human nature. Resistance to change is here to stay, but that doesn't mean it's insurmountable. We can - we must - learn to present our innovative ideas in ways that overcome the natural inertia resident in all of us. In short, we need to learn to sell our ideas.

Fortunately, the utilisation of effective sales methods does not require one to engage in shallow, manipulative or other ethically questionable behaviour. One need not wallow in the muck to put one's ideas across effectively. This was underscored in an e-mail essay I received on Tuesday(along with 49,000 others) from Robert Middleton.

Robert writes:

I admit it. I watched the Grammy Awards last night. The whole thing. Let me give you a very quick rundown:

There were wall-to-wall musical performances. Some awards were given out. Heartfelt thank-yous were offered. Everyone looked beautiful. But the show is already fading from memory.

The Grammys, like most award shows, value style over substance. Lots of flash and glitz and "look at how passionately wonderful I am." It all gets a little overwhelming after awhile as one thinks, "But I don't even listen to this kind of music, anyway!"

However, I took away a valuable marketing lesson that I'd like to share with you: Most marketing messages are much like the Grammys: the substance is missing.

Everyone's trying to get the perfect marketing message, the perfect look, the perfect mind-blowing information that will compel prospects to respond in droves.

But it usually falls flat. Why?

Because it's often missing the most important thing of all: What the client actually gets from working with you. Don't think this is all that important?

Let me tell you a story...

One of the people in my current Marketing Action Group had been struggling with her marketing message. Nothing was really working. But finally she applied some of my ideas on creating a marketing message and told someone the story of a recent client success.

And the immediate response was: "Wow, I need your services. Will you work with me?"

And the great thing is that it wasn't a fluke. Now almost every time she uses the message, people want to work with her. Hey, her message was so great that I even decided to work with her!

Her message was so powerful, in fact, that I'm hosting a TeleClass program with her next month. I won't give away her message right now. That's not my point today. The point is that the substance of the message is the key.

How do you create a message with substance? Here's a 5-step process that will work for you.

1. Identify your ideal client
Your message will not work for everyone. You need to be clear exactly who your message is for. Who can you help the most? Who do you understand the best? Where do you have the most
experience? Think all of this through and develop your message specifically for this ideal client.

2. Identify a client challenge
What does your ideal client want to do but doesn't know how? What's missing for them? What are they struggling with? What is confusing or frustrating for them? Clearly articulate this: "I work with these kind of clients who have this kind of challenge."

3. Identify a service and outcome
What specific service could you offer to address the client problem and provide a desirable outcome? Keep it simple: "I offer this kind of service and when clients use this service they will get this result." A service without a promised outcome is a wast of time.

4. Prove you can deliver the outcome
If you a haven't offered this service before, then find an ideal client and perform it for them. If you need to cut your price or even offer it free to validate the outcome, so be it. But you need
to be confident you can produce that outcome consistently.

5. Use your story as your message
The most powerful marketing messages are simple stories that demonstrate that you delivered a desirable outcome. "This was a client who came to me. They had this frustrating challenge. I
implemented my service. These were the results."

This is the process my Marketing Action Group participant went through. She now has a reliable marketing message that's all substance, no style. She doesn't have to worry about perfect words or the "magic phrase." She just needs to tell her outcome story and get a positive response. Every time.

The actual response you get will depend on who your clients are, the depth of their challenge, their interest in getting an outcome, the actual service you develop and the kind of results you can deliver consistently.

But I promise you that if you follow these five steps to the letter, you'll emerge with a marketing message that's a quantum leap beyond what you're using now.

The More Clients Bottom Line: Avoid the "Grammy Factor" where your marketing message emphasizes style over substance. Deliver a desirable outcome for your clients and simply tell a story of the actual results you got. It really doesn't get any more powerful than that.

[Robert requires the following attribution statement.]

By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit
Robert's web site at www.actionplan.com for additional
marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional
service businesses.

Technorati Tags: marketing, innovation, social entrepreneurship, Robert Middleton, Action Plan Marketing

Samuelson on Social Entrepreneurship

2007-02-13T16:47:00.000Z

Last Tuesday I invited several social entrepreneurs to comment on this year's Oxford Skoll Forum theme "enabling social innovation". One especially thoughtful comment was sent to me by Peter Samuelson. I asked Peter If he would mind my sharing his insights here, and I am happy to report that he doesn't.

I want you to know a little about Peter before you read his remarks. The following is taken from his biographical entry in the 2005 Skoll Forum notes.

Peter is both a successful feature film producer, and a successful social entrepreneur. He is the founder of three philanthropies that together have raised (as reported in his 2005 Skoll Forum biography) over $150 million for disadvantaged children.

In 1982 Peter established the Starlight Children's Foundation-a non-profit organisation dedicated to granting wishes for seriously ill children. He then expanded Starlight services to provide in-hospital entertainment. Today with chapters in the United States, Canada, Austrailia and the United Kingdom, Starlight benefits over 170,000 children every month.

In 1990 Peter brought Steven Spielberg and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf together to create the Starbright Foundation. This foundation develops media and technology based programs that educate and empower children to cope with the medical, emotional and social challenges of their illness. The Starlight and Starbright foundations have now merged into the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation.

In 1999 Peter founded First Star a charity that works to improve the public health, safety, and family life of America's abused and neglected children.

Peter sent his permission to me on Sunday from the Berlin International Film Festival where his film Man in the Chair is in the competition.

Peter writes:

What I have found works, personally and in teaching social entrepreneurship, to create the self-determination to face down the constant nay-sayers, is to first fully imagine and inhabit the final built-out version of what is intended. If one fully comprehends that final 'neighborhood' in advance, it results in three productive benefits, of which the third is relevant to your point:

* It is then vastly easier to conceptualize progressive stepping-stones from here to there.
* It flushes out aspects in the plan that need refinement.
* It creates a psychological sense of certainty that the "it" will in fact work, which is mandatory in facing down the inevitable nay-sayers on the way. Me, I'm able to think "I've been to Rome; so don't tell me Rome is impossible.... I've walked around it for hours".

There are also reasons why truly forward-thinking, out-of-the-box ideas flourish better when the social/corporate environment is small, entrepreneurial and as far from a built-out business as possible: I'm on my fourth major pro-social endeavor at the moment.... it was necessary, and infinitely easier, to create #'s 2 through 4 as stand-alone enterprises, rather than parts of the prior, happily running charities (I know.... I tried both ways!) Row-boats turn faster than oil tankers and corporate conservatism most often kills fragile new ideas. And the original thin rope which became the Brooklyn Bridge was first carried across the water in a row-boat. Seriously.... I just read that!

Technorati Tags: skoll, innovation, social entrepreneurship, Peter Samuelson, Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, Spielberg, children

Resistance to Innovation

2007-02-08T16:07:00.000Z

Resistance to Innovation is the Norm: Things will Change - But Slowly, If Incumbents have a Choice! Eric von Hippel

Eric von Hipple is Professor of Management of Innovation and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is author of The Sources of Innovation, and Democratizing Innovation (ISBN: 0-262-00274-4).

Democratizing Innovation is available from the MIT Press Web site in an electronic format at no cost, provided that its use is for non-commercial purposes and proper attribution is made, otherwise it sells for $32.00/£20.95.

Technorati Tags: skollforum, MIT, social entrepreneurship, innovation

Business and the Global Poor

2007-02-07T15:11:00.000Z

This week's issue of the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge newsletter has an interview with Kash Rangan that merits the attention of all social entrepreneurs. Here's a small taster to get you started:

Even when companies do carefully consider the economic and social impacts of their products on the poor, they may still face reputational threats if their BOP ventures are seen as "excessively profitable." Of course, it can be argued that without this profit, businesses targeting the poor will not attract the level of investment necessary to be sustainable or scaleable across the entire BOP. According to this view, above-average profitability should be seen as a sign of success, one that will no doubt invite competition and thereby bring down prices, ultimately benefiting the poor. To minimize negative public perception, however, companies that find that they are "profiting from the poor" must be willing to publicly address the profit debate, work collaboratively with NGOs and governments, and also measure and report on the social value they are creating for the poor.

Technorati Tags: skoll, hbs, social entrepreneurship

Enabling Social Innovation

2007-02-06T11:35:00.000Z

This year's Oxford Skoll Forum will focus on enabling social innovation. It's an interesting problem: we aren't very good at recognising and supporting innovation (at least not in its early stages).

I've been scanning recent best sellers on business innovation, and have found them to be, for the most part, filled with innovation clichés. I'll not list the clichés here, but in the main the advice seems to be: create an environment that encourages "out of the box thinking". (I've come to hate that phrase. Almost everyone I've been introduced to this past week has been described as an "out of the box thinker.")

I'm not convinced that there is a dearth of innovation, but my hunch is that there is a dearth of investors, managers, bureaucrats, politicians and academics who are good at spotting it. Joel Podolny, a very innovative thinker (now dean of the Yale B'School) told me that when Jeff Skoll first showed him the eBay idea (at Stanford), he told Jeff the concept probably wouldn't work.

The Beatles (an innovative musical group some years back:-) were turned down by a number of labels, before EMI/Capitol signed them. In fact, EMI/Capitol had rejected them, but Sir George Martin happened (accidentally) to hear their audition tape, and rushed out to catch Brian Epstein before he left the EMI office.

I am reminded of Gray's lines:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

The creative component that most are now focused on is certainly important, but if we want to stimulate innovation, I think we need to pay some attention to developing an ear or eye for it - a George Martin ear. Our world is rich in innovation, but short on recognition of it. Mark Twain advises us not to worry about having our ideas stolen. He claims that when an innovative idea has merit, most right thinking people will reject it.

The main impediment, I believe, is that our observations are theory laden. We are incapable of unmediated observation. Theory is our vision. We see what we believe. Quid quid recipitur, ad modum recipientis reciptur.

There are, I think, ways around the problem. Sir Karl Popper, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound point to possible solutions, but I'll save that discussion for another day.

If procrastination doesn't catch me, I plan to blog on this topic over the next month, and I hope that many of you will find the time to share your thoughts on the topic.

Technorati Tags: skoll, ntc, social entrepreneurship, nourish the children

Skoll 2007

2007-01-29T15:38:00.000Z

If you haven't registered yet, know that time is running out!

Registration is under way for the 2007 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at https://www.oxforduniversityshops.co.uk/sbsCPG.

This annual event will take place March 27-29, 2007, at Said Business School at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. To view more information about the 2007 program, schedule and fees, click here: http://www.skollfoundation.org/skollcentre/swf2007.pdf

With tremendous demand and limited capacity in Oxford, we expect the event to sell out very quickly. Unfortunately, neither the Skoll Centre nor the Skoll Foundation is able to provide a wait list or accept individual inquiries for space. Those unable to attend this year will have unlimited access to streaming video, daily blogs and other resources from the Forum at www.socialedge.org.

The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship is an international event that last year attracted nearly 700 social entrepreneurs, thought leaders, policy makers, corporate representatives, financiers, philanthropists and students from more than 40 countries. The theme for 2007 is enabling social innovation, understanding how innovation informs new models and approaches for solving complex social and environmental problems. For three days, we will convene a series of plenaries, panel discussions, workshops and academic presentations designed for learning, problem solving and community building.

Among the speakers will be:

Jeff Skoll, Founder and Chairman, Skoll Foundation and Participant Productions
Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Grameen Bank founder and microfinance pioneer
Christiane Amanpour, Chief Foreign Correspondent, CNN
David Galenson, Professor at the Department of Economics, University of
Chicago and best-selling author of numerous books on creativity and
innovation
Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director, Google.org, Founder and former Director of the Seva Foundation
Bill Drayton, CEO and Chair, Ashoka
Jeroo Billimoria, Founder, Child Savings International
Fazle Abed, Founder, BRAC
Susan Collin Marks, Senior Vice President, Search for Common Ground
Ashok Khosla, President, Development Alternatives Group
Nina Smith, Executive Director, RugMark
J.B. Schramm, Founder and CEO, College Summit, Inc.
Salman Ahmad, world renowned Pakistani musician and UN Goodwill Ambassador

During the conference, you will be invited to attend the inspiring Skoll Awards Ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, which honors individual social entrepreneurs from all over the world who are creating positive, systemic change across critical issue areas, including the environment, institutional responsibility, health, peace and security, social and economic equity, and tolerance and human rights.

Technorati Tags: skoll, ntc, social entrepreneurship, nourish the children

Build a Village

2006-11-30T13:22:00.000Z

I received the following message from NSE's Elizabeth Thibeaudeau today:

Dear Ambassador,

On behalf of Nu Skin Enterprises, I want to inform you about NSE’s latest efforts to make a difference in children’s lives. As you are aware, the Build a Village project from Nu Skin Force for Good Foundation has already begun. This ambitious project has a two-fold goal: the first is to build an actual village in Malawi, Africa; the second goal is to make this village a “living classroom.” Many Malawians will come to live in the village and learn agricultural techniques, house construction, fish farming, and other beneficiary trades. Already, with your help, we have been able to bring sixty acres of arid land under cultivation as a result of the construction of a new dam.

For more information about this project and its success so far, please see the Build a Village video which is now available for online viewing on Maxcast. You can locate this by going to
www.maxcast.com/buildavillage. This video was presented during a speech by Sandie Tillotson, Senior Vice-President of Nu Skin Enterprise in the General Session of the North America Convention October 26, 2006.

These projects could not have been started without your support and participation. I thank you for your help thus far, and request your continued contributions to these projects. Your participation in the Build a Village Project will help ensure the livelihood of Malawi farmers and their families. Nu Skin believes that together, we can make a monumental difference in the lives of people throughout the world.

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, Malawi, Africa, nourish the children, entrepreneurship, hunger, agriculture

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Lost Mind Share?

2006-11-18T12:05:00.000Z

"Over the past few years, various initiatives have been proposed to equip Third World countries -- especially those in Africa -- with cheap computers. Believers in the concept that computers will solve all the world's ills are behind much of this. . . .

" 'The fact that these people need electricity more than they need a laptop is only part of the problem,' he says. 'The real problem is lost mind share. The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful.'

"To summarize, there are only so many hours in the day, and we should not be wasting them on this kind of naïve feel-good showboating. Let's face it: These high-tech gems are a laughable addition to a mud hut. . . ."
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/The100DollarLaptop.aspx

Delivering Commercial Solutions to Social Problems

2006-11-17T18:24:00.000Z

In what is believed to be the largest study of its kind, MBA students at Harvard Business School recently analyzed the financial returns generated by 110 early-stage companies backed by Investors' Circle, a national network dedicated to early-stage investments in companies that "deliver commercial solutions to social and environmental problems."
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3774.html

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Social Entrepreneur

2006-10-14T09:45:00.000+01:00

Congratulations flowed in from around the world Friday for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and social entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, the 66-year-old Bangladeshi behind the Grameen Movement micro-banking system that has helped millions in his homeland.

Yunus jointly shared the award, worth 10 million kronor (1.37 million dollars), with the non-profit Grameen Bank, which means “rural bank” in Bengali.

The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Yunus and Grameen Bank “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”

SE @ UPenn: The Wharton School

2006-10-04T10:46:00.000+01:00

$5 Million Gift from Alumnus Robert and Diane Levy to Support Financial Aid and Social Impact Initiatives

October 3, 2006, Volume 53, No. 6

The Wharton School announced a $5 million gift from alumnus Robert M. Levy, and his wife, Diane v.S. Levy. Based in Chicago, Mr. Levy is partner, chairman, and chief investment officer of Harris Associates, L.P. This gift will establish the Diane v.S. and Robert M. Levy Social Impact Fund with $2 million; provide supplemental funding of $2.75 million to the existing Diane v.S. and Robert M. Levy Endowed Fellowship Fund; and benefit the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Arc.

“Bob and Diane Levy have long been generous supporters of Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania,” said Wharton Dean Patrick Harker. “Their latest gift will help the Penn Museum create new exhibits of its world-renowned collection. At Wharton, the expanded Levy Fellowship Fund will enable generations of students to have access to a world-class business education, while the new Levy Social Impact Fund will help students and faculty pursue interests in such areas as public and non-profit sector careers, research and teaching in corporate social responsibility, and social entrepreneurism.”haeology and Anthropology with $250,000.

The Levy Social Impact Fund will provide seed and supplemental funding for student, faculty and institutional initiatives in areas such as social impact management and business ethics, including summer internships for students working in the public and nonprofit sector. The movement to support greater integration of efforts and leadership in corporate social responsibility, ethics and social entrepreneurship is broadly supported at Wharton by faculty and students. Courses throughout the curriculum, conferences and other co-curricular opportunities for students contribute to an environment in which there is broad and growing commitment to using business to advance social change.

The new gift to the existing Levy Fellowship, designated for students with less than three years’ work experience or women or under-represented minorities, will expand the fellowship to also support students who are interested in careers in the nonprofit sector. With this supplemental gift, the Levy Fellowship Fund will now be the second largest such fund at the Wharton School.

A 1974 graduate of Wharton’s M.B.A. program, Mr. Levy is a Penn trustee and a member of the Wharton School Board of Overseers, and he has served as member of the Midwest Regional Advisory Board and the Wharton Graduate Executive Board.

Harris Associates, L.P. manages $63.4 billion in the Oakmark Funds and in equity, balanced, and international portfolios for individuals and institutions. Mr. Levy also is president of the Robert M. Levy Family Foundation as well as a director of the Bill Nygren Foundation. He is committed to helping others—a commitment that goes back to his student days, when he taught evening school classes for community members and volunteered in a community education program to help small, minority-owned businesses develop business plans.

SE @ Carnegie Mellon University

2006-10-04T10:25:00.000+01:00

Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School Creates New Institute of Social Innovation

Carnegie Mellon University10/3/2006 12:21:31 PM

Students To Pilot New Curriculum for Social Entrepreneurs

October 3, 2006 - PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management has created the Institute of Social Innovation (ISI) to foster creativity and entrepreneurship in the social sector. Funded by a two-year grant from The Grable Foundation and an anonymous donor, the institute will focus on creating new courses, conducting research and establishing outreach programs aimed at promoting innovation and societal change.

The institute is being led by Denise Rousseau, the H. John Heinz II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Heinz School and the Tepper School of Business; Tim Zak, president of the Pittsburgh Social Innovation Accelerator and an adjunct professor at the Heinz and Tepper schools; and Marie Coleman, senior director of development and special projects at the Heinz School. In addition, 14 master’s degree candidates in various Heinz School programs have been selected to help develop a curriculum to train social entrepreneurs. Those students are Sarah Amador, Jessica Brazier, Samantha Bushman, Joel Campos-Alvis, Jake Collins, David Coombs, Sarah Grudevich, Sam Franklin, Jessica King, Matt Lancaster, Amy Lazarus, Andrew Place, Jennifer Schaefer and Changmei Yang.

"An entrepreneur is a packager of change," Zak said. "Social entrepreneurs are passionate, smart and motivated — just like entrepreneurs in the for-profit sector — but they apply their energies to solving intractable social problems. We want to inspire more people to pursue those dreams."

ISI-sponsored activities under way include developing and implementing new courses, such as "Historic Perspective of the Social Sector," which is being offered this fall. The course gives a historic context for studying current social movements, including social innovation, entrepreneurship and enterprise. It also provides students with an understanding of how and why current policies and practices were developed.

Several research projects as well as a podcast series, called Globeshakers, are also in progress. A student-led systems project is focusing on regional support for social innovation and studying its impact on economic development, while Globeshakers highlights people who transform the world through technology, social enterprise and sustainable solutions. The podcasts feature interviews with Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, one of the world’s leading investors and supporters of worldwide social change; Paul Farmer, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a physician with Partners in Health, an organization that works to provide healthcare to the poor; and Bill Strickland, CEO of the Bidwell Manchester Corporation youth development and adult training center, who is considered one of the world’s greatest social innovators. To listen to the podcasts, go to www.siconversations.org/series/globeshakers.html.

The ISI will sponsor a lecture and two workshops Nov. 7-9 featuring Jerr Boschee, founder and executive director of the Institute for Social Entrepreneurs and a leader of the social entrepreneurship movement. He’ll give a lunchtime lecture for students on international trends and two workshops for nonprofit leaders and their boards to explore basic and advanced concepts in social entrepreneurship.

For more information about the ISI and social innovation at Carnegie Mellon, visit www.heinz.cmu.edu/socialinnovation.

About the Heinz School: The Heinz School of Public Policy and Management is a vibrant center for the study of urban and social issues. Founded in 1968 at a time when the problems of society burst into public view in the form of violent urban unrest, the school set as its purpose an aggressive effort to understand the causes of critical social problems and to train men and women through master’s and doctoral programs to use new knowledge and technology to bring about positive change. The Heinz School advances the public interest through interdisciplinary research and education, and prepares graduate students to lead and manage organizations in the public, private, nonprofit and interface sectors. Master’s degrees for management include public policy, information security policy, the arts, entertainment, public management, medicine, health care policy, educational technology, information technology and information systems. Doctoral and non-degree professional-level programs are also offered.

The Eye Fund

2006-09-24T16:55:00.000+01:00

September 22, 2006 01:18 PM Eastern Time

Deutsche Bank to Launch Investment Fund Supporting Eye Care Hospitals in Developing Countries; Commitment to Launch the Eye Fund I Announced at Clinton Global Initiative

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 22, 2006--Deutsche Bank announced it will create an innovative $20 million investment fund to finance the expansion of eye care hospitals in developing countries. The Eye Fund I will provide loans and guarantees to support the development of affordable, sustainable and accessible eye care for the world's poor while providing a near-market return for investors. The creation of the fund was announced at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York by Deutsche Bank and its partners, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the largest association of eye care intermediaries, and Ashoka, a non-profit organization that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs.

"The Eye Fund is a real demonstration of a new market-based approach to address a fundamental human need," said Seth Waugh, CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas. "Our goal is to capitalize on our expertise in the financial markets in order to expand this approach to other large-scale projects that currently are fully dependent upon charitable contributions for funding."

"The experience we have gained in microfinance has positioned us well to raise the capital for this new Eye Fund and to help bring another social innovation to the investment community," said Gary Hattem, Head of the Deutsche Bank's Community Development Finance Group.
The Eye Fund is modeled after a proven planning and business model that has enabled approximately 400 hospitals in the last five years to become financially sustainable. The Fund seeks to replicate this success on a large scale, ultimately assisting 4,000 hospitals over the next five years to become self-financing from user fees while at the same time serving the poor. A complimentary grant fund will also be established to provide technical assistance, business planning and training.

Of an estimated 37 million blind people worldwide, 90% live in the poorest parts of the developing world. Each year an additional 1-2 million people lose their sight, and it is estimated that 75% of these incidences of blindness are treatable and/or preventable. Without proper interventions the number of blind will increase to 75 million by 2020.
www.db.com

Certified Social Entrepreneurship

2006-08-26T16:11:00.000+01:00

The Kelley School of Business at Indiana University now joins the ranks of Oxford, Stanford and Duke by providing its MBA candidates with a social entrepreneurship study option:

22 August 2006

INDIANAPOLIS and BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University announced a new graduate certificate program in Social Entrepreneurship, combining classes in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Kelley School of Business to form a curriculum focused on applying entrepreneurial practices to public needs in the nonprofit, for-profit and governmental sectors. Students will begin classes for the certificate next week.

"To link business innovation and profit with social improvement is a critical strategy for the 21st century -- for businesses as well as for social and public organizations," said Astrid Merget, dean of SPEA. "A unique feature of the IU certificate program is that it formally links Kelley and SPEA -- not only their resources, faculty and students, but also their values and perceptions. Similar programs at other universities are located either under the business school or under public affairs. With this jointly directed program, IU is working to develop new collaborative practices to meet both business and social challenges."

The certificate program is open to students pursuing a master's degree with SPEA or Kelley on the Bloomington or Indianapolis campuses. Seven students are expected to obtain the certificate this year.

In addition to classes, students will participate in paid summer internships, a speaker series, research and publishing activities, and a year-round clinic to connect with Indiana organizations, businesses and communities.

"Graduate students are beginning to explore the unique aspects of entrepreneurship in the social sector," said Donald F. Kuratko, co-director of the program and executive director of the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at IU. "Having the Kelley School combine with SPEA allows students the opportunity to tap into the very best of Indiana University. This certificate in Social Entrepreneurship is another successful effort in developing the entrepreneurial mindset throughout the IU campus."

SPEA Professor Leslie Lenkowsky is also co-director of the program. Initial funding for the program was provided through a Lilly Endowment Grant administered through the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The Center on Philanthropy at IU also provides resources for the program.

The IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs, located on eight campuses, focuses on curriculum and research that are distinguished by a vigorous interdisciplinary approach to education and problem-solving in areas such as public and nonprofit management, public policy, environmental science, criminal justice, arts administration and health administration. The Kelley School of Business has been a leader in American business education for nearly 85 years. U.S. News & World Report ranked the Kelley School's MBA in Entrepreneurship Program No. 4 among public universities and the undergraduate Entrepreneurship Program No. 1 among public universities for 2007.

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, Skoll Centre, Indiana University, The Kelley School of Business, Duke, MBA studies, academic, business schools, entrepreneurship, Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship,

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The Free Marketplace of Ideas

2006-08-20T20:30:00.000+01:00

Media critic Jeff Jarvis writes:

I’m about to cut off comments on posts having to do with the Middle East. A few people come in and take it over repeating the same angry arguments over and over until it escalates into scuds v. cruises. I don’t even both reading them. I suspect you don’t, either. I love interactivity. But who could love this?

Sometimes important issues provoke intense debate. Sometimes points need to be pressed until answered. BuzzMacine is Jarvis's blog, and he is entitled to edit/censor it however he wants, but I'm surprised to see a journalist admit that he censors what he doesn't read.

BuzzMachine Jeff Jarvis censorship

The SE Option

2006-08-14T15:55:00.000+01:00

I do not believe that terrorism can be countered by violence - it’s like cutting off the Hydra’s head, two more spring up in its place. Hizbollah is an evil organisation, and exploits the people it hides among. But terrorism, like religion, feeds off misery. If Israel really wanted to end terrorism, the best, most intelligent way of doing
so would be to make its enemies prosperous.”
Amanda Craig, author and journalist

It is said that to a man that only knows how to use a hammer every problem looks as though it requires pounding. The United States, United Kingdom and Israel all own fine hammers, but is a hammer really the best tool for ridding the world of terror?

It would appear that there are a great many people who believe just that. Ms Craig's plea seems to be falling of deaf ears. Here are a few sample comments that I've come across recently:

I’m done with ninnies afraid to confront murderers, and I’m quite done with the absence of Muslim rage. We will do what we have to do, and I hope that we do it without worry of proportionality.

I don't think commentator above is thinking much beyond giving a good hammering to the Muslim world.

I’m so tired of the damn conflicts and have no desire to sort them out. They are so complicated no one could. If every infidel disappeared tomorrow, the killing would continue as Muslims would just murder one another.
Without Islam and it’s incessant conflicts since the time it began, 98% of the violence in the modern world would cease to be.
If only we could establish an “Islamic Free” zone where the rest of us can live in peace.

This commentator doesn't seem to have much grasp of the history of modern conflicts and violence. If WW1, The Russian Revolution, WW2, The Chinese Revolution, Korea, and Vietnam account for less than 2% of the modern world's violence, then the Muslims have been remarkably adept at keeping their wars out of the news and history books. I might be misreading this writer, but his words sound like a thinly veiled call for genocide (to end the 'Islamic Problem').

On a happier note, may I remind the terrorist taqiyya talkers and their apologists here of one simple fact: there are FOUR BILLION of us you’re gonna need to ‘contend with’ if you persist in bringing on the clash of civilizations to usher in your Mahdi (spit be upon him).

Hubris is typically followed by nemisis.

Although I am not suggesting that we discard the hammer, I do think it's time to consider using a few other tools, and social entrepreneurship should be on that list of tools. Unfortunately, many who want to use the hammer feel that those who advocate the use of other tools are nothing more than apologists for evil Muslims. (George Washington accurately predicted this type of response. He writes: Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspect and odious . . . )

Most involved in social entrepreneurship believe that it is a powerful tool for creating social and humanitarian good. We do not need to bomb others indiscrimately. We do not need to stoop to the level of our foes. We have other options.

Now is a time for us to take action, to advocate social entrepreneurial solutions, and to support (whenever possible) the work of social entrepreneurs in the Middle East.

If you are aware of any social entrepreneurs at work in the Middle East, please leave their details in the comments section of this entry.

Technorati Tags: amanda craig social entrepreneurship, peace, middle east, Israel, Islam, terrorism
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Slightly Off Topic

2006-08-11T13:06:00.000+01:00

For the most part, today's post is a collection of comments I've left at Jeff Jarvis's BuzzMachine blog. It has little to do social entrepreneurship, but it does touch on a related humanitarian concern.

Jeff writes: Reuters reports that Muslims are “bristling” at the term Islamic fascists. Well, tough shit.’

So what is fascism?

British philosopher Roger Scruton in A Dictionary of Political Thought writes:

The anti-communist and anti-liberal stance of fascist movements. . .have made the fight against fascism a rallying point for the left and liberal cause, so that the label ‘fascist’ may be applied very losely, to denote almost any doctrine that conflicts left-liberal ideology. In this expletive use the term conveys no very clear idea, a fact which perhaps explains its popularity.’

In other words, 'fascism' is a catch-word - a term of propaganda. It is an emotive term that does little to help us understand our current predicament. Politicians love catch-words and phrases. Words they can use to deter honest discussion and debate.

Fascists worship the state and its leader. They embrace a devient form of socialism (national rather than international in outlook - National Socialism - Nazi) mixed with a repulsive racism.

Islamic terrorists are repulsive people, but I doubt that many are fascists. Islam, even terrorist Islam, is international rather than national in outlook, and it is not especially marked by racism.

My hunch is that many Islamic terrorists feel that they are the victims rather than the perpetrators of racism. That’s one reason why, in my opinion, the case for Israel shouldn’t be argued (as it is by some of Jarvis's fans) in terms of brown skinned Arabs and white skinned Jews. Such arguments only serve to validate the terrorist’s basic emotional assumptions. (And, of course, Jews may be white or brown skinned.)

In any case, no matter how satisfying one may find name calling, it is not likely to lead any workable solution to the problems we face. I prefer pleasing results to pleasing methods. Calling Muslims names may feel good, but it will produce little else that might be described as good.

I believe that the so-called war-on-terror now needs to enlist social entrepreneurs as much as it needs to enlist (more) soldiers.

In my opinion, Amanda Craig's comments in the Jewish Chronicle strike the right note. She writes:

I do not believe that terrorism can be countered by violence - it’s like cutting off the Hydra’s head, two more spring up in its place. Hizbollah is an evil organisation, and exploits the people it hides among. But terrorism, like religion, feeds off misery. If Israel really wanted to end terrorism, the best, most intelligent way of doing so would be to make its enemies prosperous.” Amanda Craig, author and journalist

The efforts of Jeff Skoll and Isabel Maxwell to promote peace and prosperity through social entrepreneurship are in keeping with Craig's suggestion. I hope their various projects encourage many others to fight terrorism with something more constructive than bombs, bullets and insults.

social entrepreneurship Middle East Terrorism fascism Israel skoll

Celebrity Role Models

2006-08-08T14:30:00.000+01:00

Joan Burton, Irish Labour's finance spokesman, said:
"Having listened to Bono on the necessity for the Irish Government to give more money to Ireland Aid, of which I approve, I am surprised that U2 are not prepared to contribute to the Exchequer on a fair basis along with the bulk of Irish taxpayers.
"I share Bono's desire to see more resources devoted to Ireland Aid but it is more difficult to make a case for it if everyone is not willing to be part of the social contract that stipulates that everybody should pay their fair share in what is a low-tax country."
Ireland Aid is the channel by which the Irish government helps developing countries.

I am not opposed to people taking advantage of legitimate tax strategies and ordinarily I wouldn't comment on a rock star's financial planning, but Bono is a special case.

Bono has used his celebrity status to gain audiences with presidents, popes and prime ministers. He has hectored world leaders to fund his pet projects. He has sought to make the average citizen's support of his favoured programmes compulsory (through taxation). He has enjoyed the praise of many committed humanitarians. He has posed as a moral icon. And, in my opinion, he has revealed himself a hypocrite.

Based in Dublin, U2 have long benefited from the artists' tax exemption introduced by Charles Haughey, the late prime minister. It is reported that the band's move has been made in response to a £170,000 cap on the tax-free incomes introduced in the last Irish budget.

My ire is really directed at celebrity culture, and not at any one of Bono's pet programmes. As social entrepreneurs, we need to focus more on business models, and less on celebrity role models.

End of rant.

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, Bono, celebrity,

Insights Wanted

2006-07-28T15:42:00.000+01:00

17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders

The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.

I happened upon Dharmesh Shah's OnStartUps.com and found the above. It struck me as good advice for startup-social entrepreneurs to reflect upon.

What pithy insight on social entrepreneurship would you offer those starting-up new social ventures?

The Build A Village Project - Malawi

2006-07-27T16:51:00.000+01:00

Justin M. Rose of Nu Skin Enterprises (NSE) has recently e-mailed NSE's associates announcing the company's participation The Build A Village Project in Malawi. He writes of the project:

The Build a Village Project has two goals. The first is to build an actual village in Malawi, Africa. The second goal is to make this village a “living classroom.” Farmers from throughout Malawi will come to this village and be educated and trained in numerous disciplines including fish farming, drip irrigation, sustainable farming, forest conservation and tree farming, and more.

The ultimate goal is to train a cadre of self-sufficient farmers who will pass on what they have learned in their home villages. The Force for Good Foundation is undertaking this project with Napoleon Dzombe, the owner/operator of the Vitameal plant, Malawi Project. The program will be conducted in cooperation with the Malawi Government, the Ministry of Forestry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture, and the Bunda College of Agriculture, University of Malawi. Progress on Stage I of the Project has already been made, including the construction of a dam resulting in a lake; the planting of trees; and the beginnings of a nursery, with 134,000 plants now in the ground. We have also secured the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Forestry, and the Malawi Revenue Authority. To reach Stage II of this project, we need your support to help build housing for farmers and their families, classroom and administrative blocks, a laboratory, livestock fences, and more. Your cash contributions to the Force for Good Foundation will help make it possible.

The Build a Village Project brings governmental, NGO, philanthropic, corporate, charitable and social entrepreneurial resources into action. If this project proves successful, senior managers at NSE have told me they will attempt to replicate it through the Nourish the Children initiative in other regions of need.

technorati tags:Social-Entrepreneurship, malawi, nourish-the-children, nuskin-enterprises, africa, hunger, philanthropy, charity, entrepreneurship

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Smith, Ford & Social Entrepreneurship

2006-07-04T09:47:00.000+01:00

'No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.' Adam Smith

'A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.' Henry Ford

technorati tags:social-entreprenurship, Ford, Quotations, Adam_Smith

The Skoll Forum (2006), part 2

2006-06-30T23:15:00.000+01:00

In previous postings I've stated that delegates to the 2006 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship seemed to undervalue entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, but I've not provided readers with much in the way of specifics. So, here's a concrete example.

Scaling Capacities: Supports for Growing Impact: lessons in building organizational capacity to support scaling among social entrepreneurships a study prepared by LaFrance Associates, LLC with support from the Skoll Foundation. Click on the LaFrance link to get your own copy of the paper LaFrance presented at Oxford.

In a blurb describing the presentation LaFrance writes:

The purpose of scaling is to increase impact. By identifying capacities that support scaling, our research seeks to support efforts to bring innovative models closer to the scale of the problem they aim to address.

The LaFrance paper had a pretty cover (click the link and see for yourself), and the program note sounded intriguing. I am a sucker for good graphics, so I decided to attend the session. Once there, I found it was yet another session for SOCIAL entrepreneurs.

According to LaFrance, his organisation prepared 28 case studies of 'social entrepreneurships that have scaled to a national or international level.' 'Social entrepreneurships' are defined by LaFrance (following Alvord, Brown and Letts) as 'organizations that "create innovative solutions to immediate social problems and mobilize ideas, capacities, resources, and social arrangements required for sustainable social transformation."'

In other words, almost every organisation working to create social good can be thought of as a 'social entrepreneurship,' as long as entrepreneurship is reduced to entrepreneurship. The LaFrance definition omits the 'creative destruction' that the economist Joseph Schumpter identified as entrepreneurial, and also seems to downplay the relentless pursuit of 'opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled,' that Harvard's Howard Stevenson finds so central to entrepreneurship. The LaFrance definition makes a space for the timid feeders in the lagoon of social enterprise. It de-emphasises the audacious, disruptive and risk embracing character of entrepreneurial activity, and as a consequence, it is potentially misleading.

The LaFrance research on 'lessons in building organizational capacity to support scaling among social entrepreneurships' focused on '28 social entrepreneurships.'

These LaFrance 28 designated 'social entrepreneurships' are:

ACCION
African Medical Research Foundation
Alcoholics Anonymous
Ashoka
BAIF Research Development Foundation
BRAC
Childline India
City Year
Community Voice Mail
College Summit
Delancey Street Foundation
Doctors Without Borders
DonorsChoose
Environmental Defense
GlobalGiving
Grameen Bank
Heifer International
Human Rights Watch
International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims
The Nature Conservancy
PRODECOOP
Share Our Strength
Teach for America
TransFair USA
Transparency International
YouthBuild
WaterKeeper Alliance
The Wellness Community

There is no doubt the organisations listed above are engaged in the provision of social and humanitarian good on a large scale, but it is less clear why more than a few of the above organisations are considered by LaFrance to be entrepreneurial. Of course, LaFrance's definition of social entrepreneurship is so broad that almost any well run charity or NGO might claim to be a "social entrepreneurship". However, such an all encompassing list of organisations will do little to help us understand much about entrepreneurship as applied to social and humanitarian problems.

While I applaud the work of organisations like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Environmental Defense (EDF), are such mature organisations really entrepreneurial? Henry Ford was a successful entrepreneur, but does that fact license a perpetual reference to the Ford Motor Company as an entrepreneurial venture? There may be much to learn from AA, EDF and Ford Motor on how to (or how not) manage a large organisation, but there is little that seems specifically relevant to entrepreneurial studies. It might have proven more useful to social entrepreneurs if LaFrance Associates had turned its attention to how Ford and his team (or the AA and EDF founder) turned their concept into an international business.

It is also significant that no commercial social entrepreneurships made it onto the LaFrance list. Firms like Olivio, Newman's Own (Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good), and Nourish the Children would all qualify as organisations focused on the creation of social good, and all have successfully scaled up.

In the end, LaFrance Associates found what can be found in thousands of business books that have nothing to do with entreprenuership, or social entrepreneurship. Here follows the banal conclusion reached by LaFrance Associates:

The critical scaling capacities that our research revealed include: (1) Mission - defining and adhering to core mission; (2) Structure - balancing control and flexibility in the organisational structure; (3) Model - codifying what works in the core model; (4) Culture - cultivating and perpetuating organisational culture; (5) Data - collecting and using data; (6) Money - connecting fundraising to mission; and (7) Leadership and Governance - making the right decisions for scaling.

As with LaFrance, so it is with many (if not a majority) Skoll delegates: most do not appreciate the potential of genuine entrepreneurship to create social good. Point #6 in the above illustrates this point. In Scaling Capacities LaFrance, in reference to #6, writes:

While fundraising is a perennial need for many nonprofit organisations, it becomes even more pressing during scaling when operations may be expanding. [May be expanding? Isn't that the result of scaling?] The social entrepreneurships we studied increased their resource base by viewing fundraising not solely as an activity to generate income but also as a natural outgrowth of connecting and engaging supporters. This can happen in any number of ways, such as partnering with other organisations, mobilizing new supporters to the cause, and communicating the organisation's message to new audiences. [So the social entrepreneuship doesn't try to generate income, but rather it seeks grants and donations? This doesn't sound entrepreneurial to me.] Such measures increase revenue to offset or subsidize the costs of scaling, and stabilize the organisation's finance by diversifying its funding streams. [How is this a diversification? The organisation moves from donor based income to donor based income?]

As an example of this supposedly effective social entrepreneurship practice, LaFrance refers to Human Rights Watch (HRW):

As Human Rights Watch (HRW) scaled it faced the challenge of expanding its fundraising network beyond the New York area where it was founded. As an advocacy organisation. HRW wondered how it could best connect individuals who supported human rights in the abstract to the concrete work it was doing to protect human rights around the globe. [And this generates income how? by fundraising, not entrepreneurship.] They met this challenge by developing Human Rights Watch "Councils" in cities around the world. Each Council is composed of activists and influential people who support HRW's mission. These local councils not only help HRW expand its fundraising network, but also engage in mission-related work such as advocacy and public education.

LaFrance and many Skoll Forum delegates seem to have confused effective fundraising with building an income producing entrepreneurial venture that creates a social good. This leads to social entrepreneurship becoming nothing more than a buzz word for fundraisers to use when soliciting donations. It does not lead to the production of social and humanitarian good through entrepreneurial methods and means. In the final analysis, the LaFrance approach is too conservative. It merely props up the status quo, and that's not good enough.

Technorati Tags: skoll, LaFrance, entrepreneurship, social, ntc, olivio

THE 2006 SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL entrepreneurship, part 1.5

2006-06-08T17:27:00.000+01:00

In Part 1 of this review of the 2006 Skoll World Forum On Social Entrepreneurship I bemoaned the sometimes open hostility displayed by a number of delegates towards entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Rowena Young (Director, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) seems to suggest that the root of this scorn is ideological. I think she's right.

More than a few of the delegates I met were self-described political activists, and it's my guess that a substantial majority of these activists identified with Forum moderator Stan Thekaekara's openly stated left-wing sympathies. Do not infer that I am critical of Thekaekara or his politics. His comments were offered, I believe, in a spirit of honest and full disclosure rather than political advocacy. Nonetheless, such leanings may explain why some Skoll Forum delegates have had difficulty accepting Young's social entrepreneurship formula: 'Seeking profits and doing good are compatible'. In fairness, I've noticed that those on both the hard left and the hard right stumble over Young's formula, but, of course, for different reasons.

My own plea would be that next years delegates check their ideology, activism and prejudice (left or right) at the door, and focus instead on learning how we can best yoke the power of entrepreneurship to social and humanitarian ends. This will not happen so long as evidence is sifted through ideology. The words of Jeffrey Pfeffer (Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business) and Robert I. Sutton (Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford's School of Engineering) in the Spring 2006 Stanford Social Innovation Review ring true:

Learning is difficult when people are driven by ideology rather than evidence.

Technorati Tags: oxford, skoll, social entrepreneurship

THE 2006 SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL entrepreneurship, part 1

2006-05-13T15:59:00.000+01:00

A little more than six weeks have passed since the final session of The 2006 Skoll World Forum On Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford closed. Although many delegates have already posted their reviews of this year’s event, I’ve been struggling with mine. I would like to say that it was fantastic, and that it significantly advanced the field of social entrepreneurship, but I can’t.

There is, of course, much about the 2006 Forum that is worthy of praise. It’s always a thrill to be amongst people who are committed to increasing the supply of social and humanitarian good in our world, and Jeff Skoll’s generosity in making such gatherings possible deserves our thanks.

It is a privilege to mix and mingle, if ever so briefly, with legendary figures such as Ashoka’s CEO Bill Drayton and Grameen Bank founder Muhammed Yunus. It is equally a privilege to meet and share ideas with academics such as Gordon Bloom (Director of Harvard’s Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory), Dr. David Hopkins (Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver), and Everett Hendrickson (UCLA). And, the high calibre of student this year's forum attracted is heartening. (I was especially impressed by Stephen Bardle and Ruchika Singhal. Stephen is completing his D.Phil in English (here at Oxford), and simultaneously serving as the managing director of Wear Fair (www.wearfair.co.uk). Ruchika is a member of the Oxford MBA Class of 2005-2006.)

However, I must confess, that despite the many positive moments, this year’s Skoll Forum, was an overall disappointment.

The Forum is billed as "THE SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP," but a more accurate description, I think, would be "THE SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL entrepreneurship."

The majority of delegates that I met were about as entrepreneurial as your average bank clerk. Don’t misunderstand, I am not bashing bank clerks, nor am I bashing the delegates. Indeed, most of the delegates I met are truly splendid people, but few, if any, in my opinion, are destined to have a major entrepreneurial impact on our world. I hasten to add, I am not suggesting that they will be without impact, only, that not many, if any, will have an entrepreneurial impact.

Entrepreneurs are a daring lot. They are not cut from bureaucratic cloth. Entrepreneurs disrupt the status quo. They embrace risk. Entrepreneurs welcome uncertainty.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter describes entrepreneurial activity as process of "creative destruction." Harvard’s Howard Stevenson adds that entrepreneurs, as opposed to business administrators and bureaucrats, pursue "opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled."

The efforts of Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Jeff Skoll reveal these qualities. In a time before petrol stations and highways were commonplace, Ford set out to mass produce and sell motorcars. His family and friends thought him crazy, but Ford persisted. Steve Jobs, sold his car to fund his Apple vision. He literally put his money where his mouth was. At last year’s Skoll Forum, I learned from Joel Podolny, one of Jeff Skoll’s instructors at Stanford (and now Dean of Yale’s Business School) that he (Joel) told Jeff that he didn’t think the eBay concept had much potential. Fortunately, Jeff didn’t take Joel’s comments to heart.

Although most entrepreneurs have a more limited impact on society than Ford, Jobs, and Skoll, they, nonetheless, do act boldly in pursuit of opportunities to transform the world through means of entrepreneurship. I would argue that most entrepreneurs, social or not, seek to improve the world. I see scant evidence to support any contention that Ford, or Thomas Edison, or Andrew Carnegie were opposed, or even indifferent, to the creation of humanitarian good. They were, of course, flawed individuals, just as we are, and they undoubtedly made mistakes that diminished the supply of social good, but it would be difficult to establish that such outcomes reflected their intent.

I think that there is even less evidence to suggest that Steve Jobs, or Sergey Brinn, or Jeff Skoll are hostile, or indifferent, to the creation of humanitarian good. In fact, Apple, Google and eBay, although commercial rather than social enterprises, have, on balance, increased our world’s supply of social and humanitarian good. (I’ll not argue my case now, but will return to this theme on another day.)

What alarms me is the ease with which many Skoll delegates, this and last year, ignore the humanitarian good created by commercially minded entrepreneurs. (One 2005 Skoll Award winner warned, "There is no such thing as compassionate capitalism" even as he accepted the recognition of, and funding from, a compassionate capitalist entrepreneur.)

Mo Ibrahim, Chair of Cel Tel International, and one of only a few genuine entrepreneurs at this year’s event, openly rejected the title "social entrepreneur." Social good, he maintained, is a normal accompaniment of ordinary entrepreneurship. Few appeared to accept his insight, and open derision greeted Matthew Bishop (American Business Editor, The Economist), and his critique of social entrepreneurship. Ibrahim and Bishop were voices crying in the wilderness.

To be continued . . .

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, skoll, oxford, skoll world forum

Money

2005-12-11T10:56:00.000Z

Built to Flip: "We have arrived at a unique moment in history: the intersection of an unprecedented abundance of capital and an explosion of Internet-related business ideas. But, for all of the incredible opportunities unleashed by this combination, there is one monumental problem: The entrepreneurial mind-set has degenerated from one of risk, contribution, and reward to one of wealth entitlement. We all have friends and colleagues -- often mediocre friends and colleagues at that -- who have struck gold after 18 or 12 or 6 months of work in a built-to-flip company. And we have all entertained the thought 'I deserve that too.' Here's another thought: When I and a lot of other people began talking and writing about the new economy in the early 1980s, little did we know that it would engender what we most despised about the old economy -- an entitlement culture in which the mediocre flourish. . . .

Why on Earth would you settle for creating something mediocre that does little more than make money, when you could create something outstanding that makes a lasting contribution as well? And the clincher, of course, lay in evidence showing that those who opt to make a lasting contribution also make more money in the end."
Do Something Special With Your Life

Former Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member Jim Collins is asking the right question: "Why on Earth would you settle for creating something mediocre that does little more than make money, when you could create something outstanding that makes a lasting contribution as well?"

Making money isn't all that difficult. When it comes to building a business, we in Europe and the US have a misery of choice. Money is important, but most legitimate opportunities offer more than enough financial recompense to fund a comfortable lifestyle. However, not every opportunity offers a purpose beyond, but not without, profit. Social enterpreneurship does.

Of course money is important, but it isn't the only thing that is important. If you were offered the choice between earning £50,000/yr selling lung cancer for a tobacco company as a cigar shop operator, or £45,000/yr for saving children from starvation as a social entrepreneur, which opportunity would you select? Would it make a difference if the choice was between £500,000 and £200,000? I hope not.

This blog has an affiliation the NTC social entrepreneurship opportunity, but we hope to provide all honest social entrepreneurs with ideas and insights that will help them to prosper by creating social and humanitarian good in the world.

Squidoo

2005-12-07T11:48:00.000Z

You may notice something special about Squidoo today.We have quietly — and completely — moved out of the closed beta test… and into a public beta.That means that anyone can visit Squidoo, find lenses, claim lenses, and build their own. We’re thrilled to open our doors to the public, and to let everyone use the platform that you’ve been helping us test and improve these last few weeks.But we’re not going to tell anyone yet.Except you.

Squidoo BetaBlog

I want to encourage all members of the Alliance to build a lens at Squidoo.

In the closed beta phase I have started working on several lenses:

http://balance.squidoo.com/Oxonian/

http://balance.squidoo.com/narnia/

http://balance.squidoo.com/bespoke/

Building a lens will help you indirectly promote your social entrepreneurship activity, and generate revenue for charities linked to Squidoo. For more information on how to do this go to Squidoo. (Any of the above links will take you there.)

Honest Critiques are Always Welcome

2005-12-05T13:40:00.000Z

Critics of the social entrepreneurship initiatives of NSE at Wealth Bondage (excepting the editor, Happy Tutor, and one Bulldog) were eager to indict and convict NSE of wrong doing based on negative reports from some 14 years ago. They were less eager to discuss NSE's current humanitarian initiatives. They were keen to link to unbalanced criticisms of NSE, but apparently unwilling to cite more objective comment. I don't doubt the good motives of our critics at WB, but a rush to judgement is no substitute for solid debate.

Should we be doing more? Yep. Should we be condemned and damned for our lack of perfection? That depends on your theological orientation.

This entry is my olive branch and invitation to all honest critics: discuss and debate the merit of social entrepreneurship generally, and NTC specifically, with us. Our Alliance exists to save the lives of children. If your critique of our SE methods can help us save more lives, then no matter how unpalatable the analysis, it is welcome. ("The same hammer that shatters the glass strengthens the steel.")

The following report from the New Straits Times is a little more current, and perhaps a little more objective than some we have seen in recent days.

Any comments?

New Straits Times - Malaysia "Together with his compatriots in public and private medical facilities, Dr Pirapat performs weekend and evening surgeries, and they have saved 2,354 children in the past eight years. Dr Pirapat himself cared for around 2,000 of them.

The PCSF gains funding for these efforts from various sources, not least of which is the Nu Skin South-East Asia Children’s Heart Fund (SEA CHF). The SEA CHF was set up in 2003, born out of a pledge made by direct-selling company Nu Skin.

Nu Skin sells personal care and nutritional products, and has committed to various charitable causes in the regions where it operates. Nu Skin Thailand began aiding the PCSF in 1999, and four years later the SEA CHF was launched, incorporating Nu Skin enterprises in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Brunei.

To date, the SEA CHF has amassed over RM560,000, through donations, fund-raising activities and the sale of premium products.

“What we have left of the fund, which amounts to around US$60,000 (RM226,698) is being divided into two parts,” the urbane, bespectacled doctor explains in his precisely measured voice.

“The first part is to train more medical personnel, especially surgeons. We hope to set up a fellowship or a scholarship to send people abroad for study. And the second part is for treatment directly, to help save children.”

Last year, Nu Skin helped to set up a new Children’s Intensive Care Unit at the Rajavithi Hospital, to deal with the large backlog of cases. It’s there that Ray and Jackie are currently housed, and it’s there that they receive a visit from a contingent of Nu Skin representatives, assembled from throughout the region to inspect the progress of their charity efforts.Direct-selling usually attracts a certain sort of personality — communicative, motivated, enthusiastic and outgoing — so the children are slightly overwhelmed, surrounded by well-wishers bearing shocking pink SEA CHF T-shirts and flashing cameras.

Ray appears unable to decide whether she approves or disapproves, while Jackie remains impassive.Even though so much more needs to be done within Thailand itself, Dr Pirapat believes that with enough aid of the sort that he’s been receiving from Nu Skin and the SEA CHF, the influence of the PCSF can spread further. So far, it has only aided one child from the rest of the region, a Filipina.“This region of the world is in great need of a children’s heart centre.

In Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar they have no real medical infrastructure, and there isn’t a congenital heart disease centre in Vietnam. So this would be our long-term project.It might seem like quite a big one, but the money that’s required to set up a centre shouldn’t be more than US$5 million, and then we’d only need money for treatment.” And Thailand is one of the best places in the region for such treatment.

Surgery is cheap — a corrective procedure that costs US$30,000 in an American hospital would only cost US$7,000 in Bangkok, where medical facilities are more than up to the task.In terms of the infrastructure-to-cost ratio, it’s the best place to send children from throughout the region.The obstacles ahead are more than just financial, though; there is still the need to create awareness about the problem and its solutions.

When Jackie’s irregular heartbeat was first detected he was only two months old, his parents Montha and Samphong Phansri decided not to send him for an operation, because they believed that the procedure would threaten his life.Even after he’d grown to what they believed was a safe age, his mother Montha insisted on researching the recovery rate of other children who had undergone the same procedure.

Only then would they submit their son.The delay has caused Jackie to develop pulmonary hypertension, worsening his already fragile state and necessitating a prolonged post-op observation period at the children’s ICU.Ray, on the other hand, is likely to be discharged soon, and happiness is written on her parents’ genial faces. Before this, their daughter could only walk a few steps before collapsing from exhaustion.Such relief is still rare, though, among the parents of the 50,000 children born with heart disease each year in South-East Asia.

Nu Skin is already hoping to make the SEA CHF live up to its name by sending needy children from throughout the region to Bangkok for care. Nu Skin Malaysia is appealing for cases to be sent to them for consideration, by telephoning Lee Lim Bee Yoke of Nu Skin funds at 03-21707700. Those wishing to learn more about the PCSF can visit their website at http://www.pcsf.org.

Google Talk

2005-12-03T10:24:00.000Z

Ambreso: "'There are a lot of exciting things in store for Google Talk in the coming months and we thought the best way to tell you about them was to create a blog. We'll keep you posted on new features, happenings in the community, and progress towards our goal of enabling customer choice in Internet communications through open standards and interoperability."

To read the entire announcement go to Ambreso.

Congratulations Chris

2005-12-03T09:30:00.000Z

Google Alert for: "Nourish the Children"

Join forces to provide VitaMeal specialised food to Nourish The ...
Nourish the Children has now passed the 35 MILLION VITAMEALS DONATED POINT!
Thank You! Now you can donate as little as $5 US in order to help the Nourish ...

[link]
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This once a day Google Alert is brought to you by Google.
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Chris J. has taken the Fundable (www.fundable.org) information I gave everyone last Friday (and published on the Ambreso blog), and done something with it. Today I got a Google alert advising me to check out his Fundable site. Imagine that, in one week he has managed to get Google to send his fundraising message out around the globe. He has even received a contribution for half of the amount requested. Folks, web2.0 strategies really do work, but only if you are working too. Everyone had an equal opportunity with Fundable. Action makes the difference.

Is saving a life important enough (to you) to spend 10 minutes learning how to use a few of the simple tools we have developed/discovered? There are real living breathing children that you can save from debilitating malnutrition and starvation -if you will only lend a little time and effort to helping with the work at hand. It is up to you, of course.

Tom

PS By adding comments to our blog Chris has also managed to achieve a number one spot on a Google results page.

The Inner Ring

2005-11-30T17:28:00.000Z

Today's entry falls into the guest author category. C.S. Lewis would have been 107 yesterday (29 Novemeber). Although the text that follows was delivered many years ago, its message is still timely, and not just for university students. As social entrepreneurs we must build networks, but let us not fashion inner rings.

Enjoy:

C.S. LEWIS

Oration at University of London, 1944

THE INNER RING

May I read you a few lines from Tolstoi’s War and Peace?

When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. "Alright. Please wait!" he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood- what he had already guessed- that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and more real system- the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris. Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system.

When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. I shall do my best to gratify it. I shall in fact, give you advice about the world in which you are going to live. I do not mean by this that I am going to talk on what are called current affairs. You probably know quite as much about them as I do. I am not going to tell you- except in a form so general that you will hardly recognise it- what part you ought to play in post-war reconstruction.

It is not, in fact, very likely that any of you will be able, in the next ten years, to make any direct contribution to the peace or prosperity of Europe. You will be busy finding jobs, getting married, acquiring facts. I am going to do something more old-fashioned than you perhaps expected. I am going to give advice. I am going to issue warnings. Advice and warnings about things which are so perennial that no one calls them "current affairs."

And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil, I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish: in some quarters it has already reached the level of confusion, if not of identification. I begin to realise the truth of the old proverb that he who sups with that formidable host needs a long spoon. As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.

In the passage I have just read from Tolstoi, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies. The one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. It also remains constant. A general is always superior to a colonel, and a colonel to a captain. The other is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organised secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it.

There are what correspond to passwords, but they are too spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation, are the marks. But it is not so constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline. And if you come back to the same Divisional Headquarters, or Brigade Headquarters, or the same regiment or even the same company, after six weeks’ absence, you may find this secondary hierarchy quite altered.

There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be designated, in simple cases, by mere enumeration: it may be called "You and Tony and me." When is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself ‘we.’ When it has to be expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself "all the sensible people at this place." From outside, if you have dispaired of getting into it, you call it "That gang" or "they" or "So-and-so and his set" or "The Caucus" or "The Inner Ring." If you are candidate for admission you probably don’t call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness.

Badly as I may have described it, I hope you will all have recognised the thing I am describing. Not, of course, that you have been in the Russian Army, or perhaps in any army. But you have met the phenomenon of an Inner Ring. You discovered one in your house at school before the end of the first term. And when you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your second year, perhaps you discovered that within the ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. It is even possible that the school ring was almost in touch with a Masters’ Ring. You were beginning, in fact, to pierce through the skins of an onion. And here, too, at your University- shall I be wrong in assuming that at this very moment, invisible to me, there are several rings- independent systems or concentric rings- present in this room? And I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings- what Tolstoi calls the second or unwritten systems.

All this is rather obvious. I wonder whether you will say the same of my next step, which is this. I believe that in all men’s’ lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Rind which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that "Society," in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.

People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man- it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we- we four or five all huddled beside this stove- are the people who know.

Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for because they and So-and-so and the two others are the only people left in the place who really know how things are run. But it is not quite true. It is a terrible bore, of course, when old Fatty Smithson draws you aside and whispers, "Look here, we’ve got to get you in on this examination somehow" or "Charles and I saw at once that you’ve got to be on this committee." A terrible bore… ah, but how much more terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.

Freud would say, no doubt, that the whole thing is a subterfuge of the sexual impulse. I wonder whether the shoe is not sometimes on the other foot. I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.

I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an Evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together. And it is perhaps impossible that the official hierarchy of any organisation should coincide with its actual workings. If the wisest and most energetic people held the highest spots, it might coincide; since they often do not, there must be people in high positions who are really deadweights and people in lower positions who are more important than their rank and seniority would lead you to suppose. It is necessary: and perhaps it is not a necessary evil. But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous. As Byron has said:

Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet

The unexpected death of some old lady.

The painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil. But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs is not reckoned a proper feeling, and the law frowns on even the gentlest attempts to expedite her departure. Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.

I will ask only one question- and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. IN the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it- this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing- the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer." I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in- one way or the other you will be that kind of man.

I have already made it fairly clear that I think it better for you not to be that kind of man. But you may have an open mind on the question. I will therefore suggest two reasons for thinking as I do.

It would be polite and charitable, and in view of your age reasonable too, to suppose that none of you is yet a scoundrel. On the other hand, by the mere law of averages (I am saying nothing against free will) it is almost certain that at least two or three of you before you die will have become something very like scoundrels. There must be in this room the makings of at least that number of unscrupulous, treacherous, ruthless egotists. The choice is still before you: and I hope you will not take my hard words about your possible future characters as a token of disrespect to your present characters.

And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still- just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig- the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which "we"- and at the word "we" you try not to blush for mere pleasure- something "we always do."

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face- that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face- turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.

My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel and onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made free of certain circle for some wholesome reason- if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music- then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.

Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be "in." And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.

And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can’t in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

We are told in Scripture that those who ask get. That is true, in senses I can’t now explore. But in another sense there is much truth in the schoolboy’s principle "them as asks shan’t have." To a young person, just entering on adult life, the world seems full of "insides," full of delightful intimacies and confidentialities, and he desires to enter them. But if he follows that desire he will reach no "inside" that is worth reaching. The true road lies in quite another direction. It is like the house in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Technorati Tags: c.s.lewis, networks, social entrepreneurship

Producing Results

2005-11-29T13:27:00.000Z

The following passage from Steve Pavlina's blog is filled with tips on how to go about producing results in a single season. If you are not yet producing the social and humanitarian impact that you want to produce, then follow the link to Steve's blog and read what he has to say.

Over the next 10 days this blog is going to be published on an irregular schedule. Why not add a little content of your own, let us know what you think of Steve's tips, and share any tips of your own.

Thanks for your patience.

The first step is to know exactly what you want. In a Tae Kwon Do studio where I used to train, there's a huge sign on the wall that says, "Your goal is to become a black belt." This helps remind each student why s/he is going through such difficult training. When you work for yourself, it's easy to spend a whole day at your desk and accomplish nothing of value. This almost always happens when you aren't really clear about what it is you're trying to do. In the moments when you regain your awareness, ask yourself, "What exactly is it that I'm trying to accomplish here?" You must know your destination with as much clarity as possible. Make your goals specific, and put them in writing. Your goals must be so clear that it would be possible for a stranger to look at your situation objectively and give you an absolute "yes" or "no" response as to whether you've accomplished each goal or not. If you cannot define your destination precisely, how will you know when you've arrived?

The key period I've found useful for defining and working on specific goals is ninety days, or the length of one season. In that period of time, you can make dramatic and measurable changes if you set crystal clear goals. Take a moment to stop and write down a snapshot description of how you want your life to be ninety days from now. What will your monthly income be? How much will you weigh? Who will your friends be? Where will you be in your career? What will your relationship be like? What will your web site look like? Be specific. Absolute clarity will give you the edge that will keep you on course.
Do It Now by Steve Pavlina

Technorati Tags: clarity, gtd, pavlina, tips

SE Theory

2005-11-23T11:07:00.000Z

In a comment appended to my entry Dealing With Brownshirts Wealth Bondage's Happy Tutor suggests, 'Maybe it would be helpful to post something about the whole ethos of social ventures, and link to some of the many sources and examples.' I think his is an excellent suggestion. Understanding the 'ethos' of social entrepreneurship, and the theory/theories underpinning it, is of more than academic interest. Even the most practical social entrepreneurs will at times encounter intense theory generated opposition to their effort.

Poets and novelists, though entirely ignorant of literary theory, may produce great literature. Indeed, theory driven literature is often second rate literature. I don't think the same exemption applies to social entrepreneurs or their enterprises.

A single post on the 'whole ethos' and theory of social entrepreneurship, however, is not to be desired. Unfortunately, no universally accepted theory of SE exists, and any attempt to explore more than a few select positions would, I fear, prove unduly long. Long and blog do not strike me as a happy combination. Therefore, in place of one long entry, I will instead, over time, blog an informal SE theory reader/anthology. (I find writing about theory - literary, cultural or political - tedious. Be patient)

Today's entry (and it may some days before the next theory entry is posted) presents something akin to an Austrian/libertarian theory of social entrepreneurship. Some folks with a social conscious believe that libertarianism precludes humanitarianism. In the excerpt that follows, social entrepreneur Max Borders argues against that supposition. Is Borders' case compelling? Or, is his critique more compelling than his solution? Do read the full article before reaching your verdict.

What if you could take the dynamism and prosperity of the market and inject it into social services, environmental protection, and the welfare state? What would a market for altruism be like? Enter: social entrepreneurship (what I like to call "charity on steroids").
Many of us are tired of trying to use political channels to bring about social change. We're dissatisfied with the way government handles such projects, we're fed up with the bureaucracy, and we resent having our money taxed from us every paycheck to be managed by those who only claim to know better.
Since the New Deal, we have voted away so much of our sense of responsibility for our fellow citizens to bureaucrats who may not have the proper incentives to effect positive social change. By sending our altruism to Washington, we have effectively killed many budding philanthropic industries, and probably prevented some ever from coming into existence. Don't believe me? What ever happened to:

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Altruism Boom

One last note, I will not be posting entries in any particular order. No order of merit is intended or implied.

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, wealth bondage, The Wingbeat Project

Developing Networks

2005-11-22T12:09:00.000Z

We are offering this report to the public free of charge. It's 35 pages and full of valuable information on preparing, maintaining, and supporting a social network. It also features a comparitive analysis on the various methods that some of the most popular social networks use within their design.

Social Networks Report Tidbit

The above report is must reading for social entrepreneurs who are trying to develop their mission focused support network using web2.0 tools. I urge you to click on the link and download the report now.

Thanks go to Mike Reining at Blinklist for tagging and sharing this link.

Technorati Tags: social networks, Linkedin, blinklist, web2.0, social entrepreneurship

Dealing With Brownshirts

2005-11-21T15:38:00.000Z

If you are an active social entrepreneur, you are going to encounter rejection. Some of it will be thoughtful, but far more of it will be ignorant and malicious.

How ignorant and malicious?

One recent comment on my NTC activity reads:

"There's a precise wavelenghth true bottoms give off. And a particular kind of bottom - the most egregious kind, the kind that create predicaments of chaotic violence just to please themselves and the appetite-god they serve-gives off an almost irrestibly seductive pheromone that demands it be beaten into submission. This guy drips those chemicals all over the page; no mean feat considering it's a digital representation."
Juke the Moron
Wealth Bondage

Such brownshirted and scatological remarks, when encountered, should neither surprise, nor unsettle you. The disdain of brownshirts is no disgrace, and their respect is no honour.

Visit the Wealth Bondage site (see link above) and read what Juke and others of his ilk have to say. Become familiar with their methods. Learn to combat their sophistry. And, most of all, develop an indifference to their sneers.

Technorati Tags: wealth bondage, brownshirts, social entrepreneurship

Go Big-Have Vision-Take Action

2005-11-18T23:18:00.000Z

Go Big, Have a Vision, Take Actions, and try to Change your world or even The World. Why thinking small when we can think big? I mean, this is just thinking, everybody can think, this is a question of mind-shift and focus. If we have the biggest vision and the biggest goal to drive our life, we will also try to do the actions to reach these goals. Our vision will drive our actions to reach our goals. Frederick Giasson

Although one might be tempted to snicker at Frederick's nonnormative expression and capitalisation, it would be a mistake, I believe, to ignore his advice. If you want to change the world, and what social entrepreneur doesn't, then "Go Big, Have a Vision, Take Actions, and try to Change your world."

I'd especially urge you to take action, if you want to change the world.

Practice, Practice, Practice | DIY Planner

2005-11-16T23:33:00.000Z

Practice, Practice, Practice: "Psychologists studying expert and exceptional performance found that it's not really about talent; it's about practice. The athletes and chess players we admire have practiced for around 10,000 hours over a span of 10 years.

That's just three hours of practice a day. So if you want to be exceptional, just start practicing. Step out of your comfort zone and deliberately improve your skills." http://www.diyplanner.com/node/393, also see:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jimmyd/summaries/ericsson1996.html

Building a supportive mission centered network does require skill, but those skills are within your reach. The question isn't 'can you do it?' The question is 'will you make the effort to develop the skills you need to do it?' Will you do the reading? Will you seek out mentors? Will you do the study? Will you subordinate your interest to the interests of the network mission? Will you tell people about your work? Or, are you are hoping somehow to save the world, at least those you want to save, and reap rewards without much effort or skill?

Aikido master Roger Alexander writes:

There may be nothing wrong with winning the lottery; however, the pursuit of unearned success which it represents can be a danger to all aspects of your life . . . . we want the secret to unearned success. We want to win the lottery. . . . We understand the difference between an amateur and a professional. However, our tendency is to excuse the amateur's lack of commitment, and by implication, approve of his desire for unearned success. . . . The "lottery mentality" practiced in one part of our life will soon spread to other aspects of our life like a cancer. Without recognition of this disorder, we will soon be wasting away our energy chasing "lottery tickets" rather than committing to our everyday practice.
http://www.aikiweb.com/training/alexander1.html

Have you crafted your mission statement? Or, do you just wing it when asked to explain why you are doing what you do? Are you spending time learning how to make use of web2.0 tools? Or, are you seeking mastery through ignorance? Are you reading about how to create humanitarian good through social enterprise? Or, are you relying on the osmosis a la Edgar Cayce? Are you content to let whatever will be, be? Or, do you want your life to make a difference?

10 over 100

2005-11-15T12:53:00.000Z

10 over 100: "Making a difference in the world starts with action, and there's nothing even a small organization can not achieve. I'm reminded of a classmate of mine, Patrick Awuah, who returned to his home country of Ghana to start a university to provide opportunities for his fellow Ghanians, and the quote from Goethe that inspired him: 'If there is anything you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.' Many thanks to Patrick for introducing me to that quote. It's time for the spirit of 10 over 100 to begin!"

Strictly speaking, I don't suppose 10 over 100 qualifies as an example of social entrepreneurship. However, it does reveal the deep yearning to make a positive contribution harboured in the hearts of many successful commercial entrepreneurs. Are you tapping into to this? Are you telling people about the power of social entrepreneurship every day? Or are you working like a secret agent?

If your humanitarian enterprise isn't growing, it's not because there aren't enough people interested in social and humanitarian entrepreneurship, but it might be because excessive timidity.

As James Hong puts it, 'making a difference in the world starts with action.' What actions to make a difference have you taken today?

See: He Made His Money on a Whim, but Now He's Got a Serious Idea - New York Times

Remember that the New York Times only allows free access to its articles for 2 weeks, so I urge you to read the above article today.

Announcing Ambreso

2005-11-15T11:04:00.000Z

The Ambassador now has a partner (blog). Her (its) name is Ambreso.

Ambreso will track and report on resources (especially web 2.0 resources) relevant to the interests of Oxford NTC Alliance members - and any other social entrepreneurs who happen to follow the Ambassador.

As Ambreso's focus is tools and resources that enhance entrepeneurial effectiveness, discussion on its pages will at times bear only a tangental relationship to the unique concerns of social entrepreneurs. The Ambassador will remain the Alliance's primary social entrepreneurship forum."

Don't Hold Back

2005-11-14T12:47:00.000Z

"When I was a Boy Scout, we played a game when new Scouts joined the troop. We lined up chairs in a pattern, creating an obstacle course through which the new Scouts, blindfolded, were supposed to maneuver. The Scoutmaster gave them a few moments to study the pattern before our adventure began. But as soon as the victims were blindfolded, the rest of us quietly removed the chairs. I think life is like this game. Perhaps we spend our lives avoiding obstacles we have created for ourselves and in reality exist only in our minds. We're afraid to apply for that job, take violin lessons, learn a foreign language, call an old friend, write our Congressman - whatever it is that we would really like to do but don't because of personal obstacles. Don't avoid any chairs until you run smack into one. And if you do, at least you'll have a place to sit down."--Pierce Vincent Eckhart

On The Road with Dave

My friend Dave posted the above on his blog under the title "Sunday Thoughts". I think it's a pretty good thought for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday too.

As social entrepreneurs we are in a position to save real lives today, but to do that we must risk potential rejection. Sometimes our ego's can build potential rejection into a major mental obstacle. If we don't learn to negotiate that obstacle real children will starve, and our own business enterprise will fail. The business consequence you experience may be just, but children starving is not (Nourish the Children - Click Here).

Don't let fear keep you down. Don't let fear dominate your life. Don't let fear starve innocent children.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.~Marie Curie Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop.~Usman B. Asif

Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.~Robert Louis Stevenson Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it.~Henry S. Haskins The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.~Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.~George S. Patton Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. ~Brendan Francis There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.~Andre Gide

There is much in the world to make us afraid. There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid.~Frederick W. Cropp Fear is faith that it won't work out. ~Sister Mary Tricky Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.~Arnold Glasow

TweedyFear is the highest fence.~Dudley Nichols To lead by example is difficult when you're a follower of fear.~T.A. Sachs To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.~Katherine Paterson

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.~Bertrand Russell Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day. ~Brendan Francis He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who fear life are already three parts dead.~Bertrand Russell Fear makes us feel our humanity.~Benjamin Disraeli A cheerful frame of mind, reinforced by relaxation... is the medicine that puts all ghosts of fear on the run.~George Matthew Adams

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.~Samuel Butler Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.~German Proverb If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all thinking, damages his personality and makes him a landlord to a ghost.~Lloyd Douglas

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?~Maurice Freehill I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.~Katharine Butler Hathaway He who fears something gives it power over him.~Moorish Proverb

Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death.~Author Unknown Fear can be headier than whiskey, once man has acquired a taste for it.~Donald Dowes The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1833

Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death.~Betty Bender I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change.... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.~Erica Jong The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. ~Lady Bird Johnson

Technorati Tags: attitude, action, fear, obstacles, social entrepreneurship, courage, psychology, mental obstacles

Passion is the Killer App

2005-11-12T12:01:00.000Z

According to the wildly successful Bill Joy, co-creator of Sun Microsystems in 1982, if you want to start a company, "You should do it because it's an idea that you're very passionate about, without any financial expectations. You're not anticipating failure, but you have to accept that if it's worth doing, and it's hard, you can't be guaranteed of success. You have to be doing it for the right reason." 60 Seconds with Bill Joy, Fast Company, 11/05
If you don't love your product or the idea of your business madly to begin with, how will you keep the attitude you will need during the hard times?
Check your love it madly quotient for your product and business.

KimKlaverBlogs.com

Although Ms Klaver's words are directed to commercial entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs would do well to heed her advice. A love and passion for 'the mission' is a prerequisite to our success as social entrepreneurs.

Kim Klaver is a Harvard educated network marketing consultant. Her 'tell it like it is' approach provides a refreshing contrast to the hype spun by many, if not most, 'so called' networking experts.

As social entrepreneurs we need to learn all we can (as per Podolny ) about building supportive, value centered, mission based networks, and those who have successfully developed commercial networks (e.g. Ms Klaver) have much to teach us. I encourage you to make an open minded visit to Klaver's Blog. Give serious consideration to how we as social entrepreneurs might adapt some of her ideas to our use - especially how her methods might be used to resolve Podolny's Dilemma .

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, networking, podolny's dilemma

Celebrity Endorsement - The New Evangelism

2005-11-10T10:41:00.000Z

Today’s post, “Celebrity Endorsement – The New Evangelism,” inaugurates the Ambassador’s guest blogger programme. Active social entrepreneurs are invited to submit short opinion pieces on topics of current interest to social entrepreneurs for publication in the Ambassador. I hope these guest entries will reveal both the rich diversity of opinion held by social entrepreneurs and stimulate robust discussion.

The byline for today’s guest entry belongs to Alexander “Sandy” Frew. Sandy is a successful social entrepreneur based in the United Kingdom. He owns and operates Sans Faim, a humanitarian enterprise that supplies food through Nourish the Children to the Malawi Project and other organisations dedicated to feeding malnourished children in Africa, Asia and Latin America. More on Sandy and Sans Faim can be found at: Sandy Frew .

Celebrity Endorsement – The New Evangelism

by Sandy Frew

This year, perhaps more than any other, has seen a rash of celebrity endorsements for good causes. First it was Sir Bob Geldorf along with a raft of “personalities” in Live 8, then Bono making his speech at the Labour Party Conference.

I shall not enter the debate concerning the motives of these celebrities but will examine what I feel are the unintended consequences of their actions.

Sir Bob’s original intention of “raising awareness of the plight of Africa” has brought about the evolution of Make Poverty History and the birth of the inappropriately named Trade Justice Movement, which is in reality a metamorphosis of the anti-capitalist movement.

On 2nd November 2005 over 8,000 trade justice campaigners from across the UK gathered in Westminster to warn Tony Blair that generations of people will continue to live in poverty if his promise to allow poor countries to protect their markets is broken.

The ubiquitous celebrity endorsement came from Pop group Razorlight , along with Adjoa Andoh, actress and star of television's Casualty.

Richard English, Oxfam's campaigning manager said: "This lobby is a key moment for MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY and the campaign for Trade Justice. International trade rules must be weighted in favour of poor people and developing countries must not be forced to open their markets. We ask the government to stand by its promises and use its influence to allow developing countries to choose the policies needed to protect the livelihoods of poor people and the environment."There is a fatal flaw at the heart of the Trade Justice movement’s pitch: it demands rich countries remove trade and non-trade barriers to goods and services from the developing world but insists that the developing world keep its protectionist barriers in place. Free trade for the rich, tariffs for the poor – it would be hard to imagine a better way of keeping poor countries poor.

Christian Aid which states that "we strive for a new world transformed by an end to poverty and we campaign to change the rules that keep people poor" has placed itself at the forefront of the Trade Justice lobby.This charity now devotes 12% of its £71m budget not to helping the poor but to political campaigns which propagandise against free trade in the most emotive terms. One advert says "Aids, droughts, tsunamis – can we add ‘free’ trade to that list?"

This propaganda is propped up by basic economic fallacy and selective statistics.

For example Ruchi Tripathi, Head of Food Rights for ActionAid UK, said: "We have seen the impact of inappropriate liberalisation on communities in developing countries. Indian silk weavers and sari makers' livelihoods being destroyed by cheaper imports from abroad and in some cases lives being lost. We are heading for a development disaster unless rich countries allow poor countries to protect their industries and people." Yet India for 40 years after independence languished in protectionist policies, during which time poverty and illiteracy remained endemic. Since abandoning protectionism in 1991 40m Indians have been lifted out of poverty.There is overwhelming evidence that governments that protect their industries hurt their economies and their people.
The followers of the new religion of celebrity endorsement would do well to heed the words of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:
The man of system... seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board; he does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress
upon it.

In a previous article The Raw Materials of Social Entrepreneurship the question was posed “How many people must be made to suffer needlessly in order to satisfy the whims and wooly thinking of the arrogant, the self-righteous and the sanctimonious?”

I believe this situation will continue unabated until blind faith in the new evangelism of celebrity endorsement is replaced with rigorous debate.

Face-to-Face

2005-11-08T11:16:00.000Z

It's really easy to center one's entire focus online. Why have a live event if you can have a online community? But we've learned that there is tremendous value in face-to-face team building and support that no Web 2.0 (or Web 5.0 for that matter) technology will replace. The trick is in the balance, at least that's what we've found.------------------Judi SohnOperations DirectorC3: Colorectal Cancer Coalition
TechSoup - Forums: Web 2.0

Ms Sohn's observation merits your attention. Web 2.0 compliments face-to-face team building. It facilitates rather than replaces social interaction in the physical world. Building a strong value/mission oriented network still requires (and no doubt always will) an element of face-to-face interaction.

Web2.0: Melding Online & Offline Activity

2005-11-07T13:38:00.000Z

"It’s interesting that many introverts have no trouble socializing online. In that environment they’re able to play from their strengths. But you can also use your strengths consciously as leverage to branch out into more face-to-face socializing. For example, after I graduated college, I met a woman on a local BBS (before there was much of a World Wide Web). We got to chatting online over a period of weeks. Eventually we met in person and became friends, and I soon fell into her pre-existing social group through osmosis. My social calendar went from empty to full almost overnight. That woman, by the way, has been my wife for the past 7.5 years. If you socialize online, see if you can’t use that strength to build new local relationships. While people have done this in global forums like online games, I think it’s easier to try it in local forums. For instance, there are message boards for people who’ve recently moved to Las Vegas."
Steve Pavlina

How to Go From Introvert to Extrovert

Developing a value based network to support your social entrepreneurial activity, as recommended by Yale's Joel Podolny, should ideally blend online with offline activity. Steve Pavlina, author of the above text, offers several practical tips for doing just that. If you are at all introverted (I am), then I urge you to read what he has to say about being more comfortable in offline networking situations.

Here's tip for using Linkedin (www.linkedin.com) to develop your on/offline network:

1. Search Linkedin's database for people interested in "social entrepreneurship" in your community. You may locate, as I have, several folks in your region with an active interest in social entrepreneurship.

2. Having identified these individuals, use Linkedin's established referral procedure to gain an introduction.

3. Once introduced online, arrange to meet in person to explore the feasibility of starting a community Linkedin Social Entrepreneurship Group.

Meeting for lunch or coffee once a month to support and motivate one another might well lead on to far greater deeds.

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, web2.0, Linkedin, networking, introvert

Yahoo's Packaged Solution

2005-11-06T12:52:00.000Z

Setting up a social network to provide advice can take time. But Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr and now a Yahoo executive, pointed out that virtually everyone under 30 had already created such networks. What about those not young or hip enough to have done so yet? Eventually, according to Ms. Fake, more users would create networks as the process became easier and more worthwhile. The New York Times

Those of you who are searching for a solution to Podolny's Social Entrepreneurship Dilemma should take a look at the New York Times article by Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows cited above (6 Nov 2005). (The NY Times doesn't leave its content open to the public for more than a few weeks, so click on the above link now. )

Although I am sticking with my previous recommendations (with one edit pending), you would be ill advised to ignore Yahoo's packaged solution.

My recommended tools for social entrepreneurs:
Oxford Social Capital / creation / tools

Do scroll down and read the comment left by pbh recommending AirSet. It is, in my opinion, an impressive tool.

A New Model

2005-11-05T09:23:00.000Z

'The new entrepreneurs, impatient to resolve global problems more quickly, are applying the very business models that made them rich at eBay, Microsoft, Google and America Online to battle the most vexing issues, from poverty to childhood disease. "We ought to be looking at business as a force for good," Omidyar [eBay cofounder Pierre Omidyar] said in an interview. . . .
"Who says philanthropy has a monopoly on making the world a better place?" he says. "There are lots and lots of businesses that make the world a better place by their very existence." '

USATODAY.com - Ebay founder takes lead in social entrepreneurship

We need to keep Mr Omidyar's remarks front and centre when discussing social entrepreneurship with those who want social entrepreneurship without entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship - those who are blinded by a nonprofit mentaility. The nonprofit mentality as defined by Jerr Boschee is:

The belief that capitalism and profits are social evils

Oxford NTC Alliance Ambassador: The Raw Materials of Social Entrepreneurship

Hillary believes that government delivers services well and that the quest for private profit is the root of all selfishness and vice in American life.
The Observer Review - Dick Morris

Oxford NTC Alliance Ambassador: The Nonprofit Mentality in Politics

Technorati Tags: social entrepreneurship, Omidyar, nonprofit mentality, philanthropy, nonprofit, eBay

Are You Thinking Like A Social Entrepreneur?

2005-11-02T16:06:00.000Z

Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer in her often cited study of the attitude of schoolchildren toward people with disabilities provides us with an observation worth pondering.

In one classroom Langer put up a picture of a person in a wheelchair and asked, ‘Can this person drive a car?’ The students answered ‘no’, and backed up their conclusion with a long list of reasons.

In a second classroom Langer asked students, ‘How can this person drive a car?’ The students in this class produced a list of creative ideas on how a disabled person could be helped to drive.

Are you asking yourself ‘Can this be done?’ Or, ‘How can this problem be solved?’ ‘Can death by starvation be stamped out?’ Or, ‘How can the death of children by starvation be brought to an end?’ Is the question, ‘Can I build a value centred support network? Or ‘How can I build the network I need?’

Which list of reasons do you want to own?

Professor J Gregory Dees states, ‘. . . entrepreneurs have an opportunity orientation that leads them to see the possibilities and to think in terms of how they can get something done rather than seeing the problems and thinking of excuses why they can’t.’ Harvard Business School Professor Howard Stevenson adds that entrepreneurs pursue opportunity ‘without regard to the resources currently controlled.’ This is, of course, a most unbureacratic attitude.

Commercial entrepreneurs are often advised to ‘find a need and fill it.’ That is also good advice for social entrepreneurs to heed. Our world has an abundance of social and humanitarian problems in need of a solution, and therein is our opportunity.

As social entrepreneurs we seek compensation not for humanitarian administration (profiting from other people’s problems), but for humanitarian results. If you aren’t getting the results you want, then maybe you should try thinking along the lines described by Professors Dees and Stevenson.

The Virtuous Circle of Social Capital / creation / web 2.0

2005-10-29T20:04:00.000+01:00

The social entrepreneur's efforts to build and mobilise a networks supportive of his or her favoured social / humanitarian objective typically converts relatively few to act on behalf of any cause for which they were already acting, and this weak support from the social entrepreneur's network is, according to Joel Podolny, a significant obstacle to positive change.

There must be relatively few social entrepreneurs who've not experienced a feeling of despondence after being let down by those they believed they could count on. It would be easy, but misguided, for social entrepreneurs either to despise the members of their networks, or to lose confidence in the viability of their enterprise. Strong support for social entrepreneurship from networks absent a strong focus on values and sense of community is rare. It is not to be expected.

Podonly suggests that social entrepreneurs think of networks not as 'conduits or pipes for information and resources.' Although networks are indeed conduits, such a view, he states, is unhelpful and incomplete 'in explaining the role that networks play in social change.'

It is only when a network impacts individual identity that it becomes a force for change. Hence, Podolny's conclusion that, 'The creation of the community needs to be the first and foremost priority of the social entrepreneur interested in social change.' This advice I believe cannot be overemphasised.

If it seems as though I am harping on this point, that's because I am. Bootstrapping social entrepreneurs who try to build without the support of a strong network community have relatively little hope of success. However, experience and research indicate that social entrepreneurs who work at creating a value based network community as an end in itself have much brighter prospects.

In a previous post on creating social capital, the Raising More Money mission centered 4 step model was introduced. If you have not yet been to the RRM site, I urge you to go there and acquaint yourself with the mission centered model now (www.raisingmoremoney.com/workshops/model).

I'd also suggest that you visit the archives at the RMM and read the series of features filed under the heading Point of Entry (www.raisingmoremoney.com/resources/archives). The insights offered are sound, and will, if embraced, help you create a strong and supportive network.

Building a value based network, if you follow the lead of competent advisors, need not be an unpleasant experience. However, such building does require organisation, discipline and effort. And, in my experience, no amount of discipline and effort can compensate for poor organisation. The good news is that web 2.0 movement pioneers have developed a number of FREE tools that make the task of organising and building network communities far easier today than it has been (even 6 months ago).

It would be difficult to review every web 2.0 tool that a social entrepreneur might find useful. In this entry, I will cover 5 tools that I think have great potential to help bootstrapping social entrepreneurs organise their efforts to create strong network communities. I will review other tools on another occasion. (If any of you know of other useful tools, please append a comment to this post.)

Now my five recommendations:

1. Voo2do. Voo2do (www.Voo2do.com) is a free project and task management tool. There are innumerable tasks involved in building a successful network community. If you find it difficult to design and execute detailed plans (I do) Voo2do is for you.

The influential Lifehacker blog writes of Voo2do:

Voo2do is great for those who are looking for a 'medium sized' online solution that does a bit more than simply list and tick to-dos. The estimating feature is nice and the interface is clean and fairly intuitive. Oh, and at a price of zero dollars and zero cents, it's gotta be worth seeing if it fits into your system.
Lifehacker

Over the years I've tried a number of project management systems. As a rule, I have found these systems overly complex and difficult to maintain. Voo2do is an exception to the rule. It is user friendly, and yet powerful. Its only serious shortcoming is that it doesn't have an open (public) feature, but this flaw is overcome by the next web 2.0 tool on my list:

2. Tilika. Tilika (www.tilika.com) is a combination calendar (public and private), contact manager, todo list manager, referral agent and network management tool. I must admit this has been a close call. Two other calendars deserve honourable mention. They are: www.planzo.com and www.mypimp.com.

If I were recommending a plain vanilla personal organiser, I'd recommend either Planzo or Mypimp over Tilika, but when it comes to network and community building applications, I'd say Tilika is (currently) the best tool. Its user interface is clunky compared to both Planzo and Mypimp, but neither come close to Tilika as a contact and group management tool. And, Tilika is an excellent compliment to Voo2do.

Tilika comments:

Tilika allows you to create a online calendar that you can use to manage your busy life. Additionally, you can create events on your calendar (Birthday parties, Get-togethers, Reunions) and invite everyone by email and keep track of who is coming. You can choose to share your calendar with friends so that they can see what times work for you, or if you wish, make it public so everyone can view it and request appointments on it. Public calendars are most useful for people in the service industry - doctors, tax consultants, professional photographers and hairdressers, etc. [and social entrepreneurs]

Tilika also aims to make it easy for you to build an extended list of friends that you can reach out to f or referrals. Whether we are looking for a recommendation for a doctor, an insurance agent, a realtor or a contact inside a company, we often turn to our friends. While we might not know the right person for a particular purpose, we very likely know someone who does. Equally, we often know just the right person that someone else is looking for.

And when inviting guest to a networking event, Tilika offers the following powerful feature:

Once you add your invites, they get notified by email about your event.
If any of the invitees happens to be a Tilika.com member, then this event shows up on that person's calendar.

In either case they have the option to indicate either a Yes, No or a Maybe as well as optionally leave an explanatory comment all of which are visible to you immediately on your calendar.

Your calendar is accessible to you from anywhere that you can connect to the interet, it's that simple!

And it really is that simple!

3. Blink. Blink (www.blinklist.com) is a social tagging system. At first glance the relevance of such a tool may seem obscure, but Blink is nonetheless relevant. Blink, and other social tagging systems (e.g. de.icio.us), offer the social entrepreneur an opportunity: to display their expertise; to make contact with others who share similar interests; to make use of others'expertise; to promote their activities; to back their favourites list up (on the web); and to retrieve their favourites on any computer linked to the web.

A member of the Blink team describes Blink as a "Personal Discovery Engine." It is that and much more.

4. Linkedin. Linkedin (www.linkedin.com) makes it possible for social entrepreneurs to put their profiles in front of thousands of people who may have an interest in their project, and to discover valuable but hidden links within their existing networks. The Times (UK) says of Linkedin:

FORGET those stiff business dinners, tiresome trade shows and your golf club membership. You can let your application to that Pall Mall club gather dust too and move on from learning how to shake hands like a Mason.

The business schmooze has been wired to the internet age with the emerging popularity of LinkedIn.com. The Sunday Times - Times Online

Linkedin offers a free service, but it is by invitation only. If you are not a member of Linkedin, but would like to be, then contact me. I'm not promising to issue invitations indiscriminately. However, I will send invitations to those who can establish that they are legitimate social entrepreneurs.

5. Gmail. Gmail (http://mail.google.com) now known as GoogleMail in the UK makes staying on top of e-mail easy, or at least easier. With 2.5 gigs of storage there is never a need to discard any e-mail; with Google's label system there is no need to waste time filing e-mails; and with Google's powerful search facility important e-mails from the past can be retrieved in fractions of a second. The massive storage Google provides also makes it possible for you to store (backup) important files on Google, then retrieve those files on any computer linked to the Internet. For more ideas on how to use Gmail effectively go to: http://www.gmailtips.com. (Gmail users also have access to Google Talk. It's the best talk program I've found.)

Gmail is by invitation only, but once again I am happy to supply an invitation to any legitimate social entrepreneur.

There are, of course, many other useful web 2.0 tools in existence, and many more in the pipeline. (I have been writing this entry on a pre-beta Flock browser. It has some bugs, but when they are handled, I predict it will become the browser of choice for social entrepreneurs.) Web 2.0 offers us a number of powerful tools, but that power is only realised in action. Put these tools to work. Don't talk, act! Begin building your value focused network today.

Technorati Tags: Social Entrepreneurship, Web 2.0

The Virtuous Circle / Theory & Practise / Social Capital

2005-10-26T14:51:00.000+01:00

My last entry on this topic concluded with a statement of Podolny's Dilemma (my paraphrase):

Given that supportive networks are critical to the success of a social enterprise, it behoves the social entrepreneur to build and mobilize networks. However, engaging in this activity inevitably appears self-serving, and people are most likely to respond with positive action only when they believe the "would be" networker is most interested in them, and their values. That is when they are regarded as an end rather than a means to some other end. There just aren't many people willing to serve as a means to someone else's ends.

A failure to resolve this dilemma successfully results in passive support, and passive support is inadequate support.

How might the dilemma be resolved?

Dr. Podolny's short answer:

For the social entrepreneur, the solution is to make the network itself the ends rather than means, to treat the network not as a tool for information or resources but as a community defined by a common set of values, establish his or her role as guardian of that community. When there is an affinity between the values of the community and a change agenda, the community itself becomes the agent of change by transforming the identity of individuals such that [they] pursue the change agenda.

In popular parlance, 'dig the well before you're thirsty.'

Although Dr. Podolny cites research and examples (e.g. Ripan Kapur's leadership at CRY) to backup this conclusion, I am going to skip over the academic detail, and move directly to a discussion of practical implications and tips.

The first such implication, and only one I'll delve into today, is begin building your value based network now. It is never too soon to begin building your network community.

One website that offers a number of practical tips on building a value based network is Raising More Money.

Although "Raising More Money" is a site designed to facilitate non-profit fundraising efforts, its tips on networking and building support are easily transferable. The Raising More Money model starts with building social capital (Point of Entry) that can at a later date be transformed into physical, financial, human and organisational capital. Amongst the tips:

The Emotional Hook is the golden nugget of your Point of Entry. It's been said that, as individuals, we are emotional donors looking for rational reasons to justify our emotional decisions to give. All the facts in the world, alone, won't get us to give our biggest gift. Something's got to pull at our heartstrings. . . . Rest assured, every organization has an Emotional Hook.

And if you are one who's certain that you already know your hook, you're probably thinking of the obvious possibilities: the kids, the puppies, the hunger, the stories of domestic violence, or the catchy tag-line or logo.

These may be the hooks you talk about openly. But look deeper to what basic human emotions these trigger in people: guilt, fear, sadness, joy, etc.

You need to take the time to discover what it is about your organization that really hooks people, that calls them to become involved and stay involved. As long as you're taking the time to read this, you should assume for the moment that you don't know what it is.
Emotional Hooks

At Point of Entry Events, I would recommend that you focus more on your mission and your work and less on your needs. (You can go into more depth with your needs later, after you've already engaged these people with your mission.)

In this model, you do not ask people for money until they have been fully cultivated and are ready to give. For that reason, you don't state your financial needs at the beginning of your relationship with potential donors, nor do you tell them that your organization is in need of monetary gifts. However, your Point of Entry does need to give guests an overall sense of your organization's needs and the "gap" between where you are now and your vision for the future.

Point of Entry

In the Raising More Money Model, the key to successful, terror-free asking is the answer to only one question: Is this person ready to be asked? Another way of saying it is: "Have we gotten to know this person enough so that it would feel natural to ask them to make a financial contribution to the organization now [support our enterprise]?

Raising More Money ~ Abundance-Based Asking

we have proved time and time again that loyal donors with a true connection to the organization will not skip away during a crisis.

Raising More Money Blog

For the record, neither NTC, nor I have any commercial relationship with Raising More Money.

To be continued

The Malawi Project

2005-10-24T00:24:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday I received a pack of information from Richard Stephens of The Malawi Project. I have mentioned The Malawi Project in several previous posts, and I no doubt will mention the project many more times in the future.

Although NTC provides VitaMeals to malnourished children around the world, the work of The Malawi project is of special interest to the Oxford NTC Alliance. Members of the Oxford NTC Alliance support The Malawi Project by arranging for the donation of VitaMeals produced at the Madalitso Vita Meal Plant in Lumbadzi, Malawi to feed malnourished children in the region. Thus, I was delighted to receive the 3 books, magazine and DVD about Malawi, and The Malawi Project, that Richard sent. It is good, I believe, to be reminded of the 'Why' of our work.

In That's Malawi Suzi Stephens writes:

I am confused when I listen to my friends talking about "loving their neighbors" and "helping those in need", then rushing off to an upscale restaurant to laugh, joke and talk about "how difficult life is in their economically distressed lifestyles". As they order their appetizer and wait for the main course, I remember the villages where the next meal is a few roots pulled up from the bushes near the empty grain bin.

In Walking Among Gentile People Richard Stephens begins the chapter "The Worst Famine" with these words from Isaiah:

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

There is nothing wrong with abundance, but abundance mixed with insularity produces little light. Abandon insularity, visit www.malawiproject.org

The Virtuous Circle of Social Capital / The Endowment of Social Capital

2005-10-21T11:26:00.000+01:00

As mentioned in the introduction to this series, the social entrepreneur's initial endowment of social capital is his/her network of relationships and contacts that are tied together by shared values and interests.

It is out of this pre-existing network of contacts that Charles Leadbeater suggests the aspiring social entrepreneur must forge new links that will ultimately lead to the 'physical, financial and human capital needed to get the show on the road.'

Leadbeater's counsel to social entrepreneurs when simplified is: build your network. Social entrepreneurs who fail to network effectively may not have access to needed physical, financial and human resources. Leadbeater's advice, though easy to grasp, in my experience, often proves difficult to implement.

The root of this difficulty is explained by Joel Podolny*:

We are all familiar with Kant's categorical imperative to treat people as ends and not means [only]. . . . this imperative holds special significance for the social entrepreneur who seeks to cultivate social change. For the social entrepreneur, the imperative frames both the dilemma and the solution as to how to mobilize a network behind the change agenda. . . . I can foreshadow where I am going with two simple observations:

Observation #1: what people are willing to do for you is strongly influenced by how much they believe you care about them and their values - that is, how much you regard them as ends.

Observation #2: there are few times that a person appears as self-interested as when that person is building a network in pursuit of a goal. Think about the last time that an individual told you he or she was going "to network" or do some "networking". Few words or phrases convey more strongly the idea of treating others as means.

Hence, the dilemma: We know - from experience and from years of sociological research - that networks are critical to the success of social change efforts. We know that in order for a social entrepreneur to bring about social change, the social entrepreneur depends on the experience, time, resource of a large number of others. Yet, we also know - from experience and from years of research - that when an individual attempts to build a network in support of a goal, that individual converts relatively few to act on behalf of the cause for which they were not already acting. The experience, time and resource flowing back from others is comparatively weak - in large part because few want to be the means to someone else's ends. The entrepreneur experiences this weak support from his or her network as a significant barrier to social change.

Bootstrapping social entrepreneurs who work (effectively) at expanding their network of relationships with like-minded individuals improve on their venture's odds for success. It is essential, in my opinion, that social entrepreneurs aquire network building skills. With that in mind, I intend to explore the how and why of networking in greater detail in my next entry on 'The Virtuous Circle.'

Please feel free to share any insight on network building that you have in the comments section of this blog.

*I first met Joel Podolny when he delivered the Clarendon Lectures in Management at Oxford University's Said Business School in 2004, and then again when he spoke at Oxford's Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in March of this year. The material I have quoted in this post is taken from his Skoll talk 'Social Networks As Ends Rather Than Means'.

At that time he was the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Recently, Joel has moved to Yale where he is now Dean of the Yale School of Management. That's good news for Yale, and I hope for Joel.

In conversation he is gracious. As a scholar he is profound. Our conversations have roamed from business to baseball and Shakespeare. His range and depth of knowledge is impressive. I would urge social entrepreneurs to become acquainted with his work.

Objections to Social Entrepreneurship - Repeat

2005-10-19T10:54:00.000+01:00

Given the nature of the objections to social entrepreneurship that have been posted in several of this blog's threads recently, I have decided to post this entry once more. New entries on the virtuous circle of social capital will resume in a few days.

If you have been telling people about social entrepreneurship for any length of time, you have no doubt discovered that there are folks who object to the concept. These objections to social entrepreneurship are frequently expressed in moral and ethical tones.

Although I am persuaded that many of these objections are invoked merely to allow the objector to pretend to some moral high ground, rather than expressions of real and fervent concerns, dismissing the objector does not disarm the objection.

Three common variations of the ethical objection (in my experience) are:

"I don't believe it's moral to make money off other peoples' problems."
"No one who engages in humanitarian work for a profit can have a good motive."
"Social entrepreneurship is unethical."

I have heard all three of these objections more than once.

With regard to the first objection, I agree, I don't believe it's right to seek to profit from other peoples' misery: that's why I am not in the tobacco business.

Indeed, I don't think that I've ever met a legitimate social entrepreneur who has sought to profit from the pain of others. Just as good doctors and nurses attempt to cure disease, and to alleviate human pain and suffering, social entrepreneurs attempt to solve social and humanitarian problems, and alleviate the pain these social and humanitarian problems create.

However, unlike doctors and nurses, social entrepreneurs are paid for results produced rather than efforts made. Social entrepreneurs aren't bureaucrats! Perpetuating social and humanitarian problems doesn't work to the advantage of an honest social entrepreneur.

It is only by creating social goods that social entrepreneurs reap a profit (aka as an income to live on). Social entrepreneurs are creative risk takers in service to humanity.

Those of us attracted to social entrepreneurship typically want to earn our keep by making the world a better place. We, unlike more traditional entrepreneurs, measure our success in terms of a double bottom line: mission results (the production of social and humanitarian good) and profit earned.

If social entrepreneurs earn their living off the suffering of others, then how much more so do doctors and nurses.

The second objection (no good motive) strikes me as unnecessarily dogmatic. I will concede that there may well be perversely motivated social entrepreneurs, but I know that such a categorical claim is without question false.

Although I do think motives are important, I am not psychic. Personally, Kant's deontological moral and ethical stance appeals to me, but I have given up trying to scrutinize the inscrutable.

In my case, my wife and I have a 7 week old daughter (our first) at home. I don't believe that my efforts to feed starving children abroad should involve my starving my own child at home.

I want to see this problem solved, but not enough to deny my own family food, shelter, clothing or any other normal amenity that people in the UK expect. I admit I am selfish, but would the starving children be better off if I were to fold my enterprise? (Over the past 3 years Nourish the Children has provided over 35 million meals to feed severely malnourished children around the world Nourish the Children.) Would the children we feed really be better off if I stop working to feed them until I become an ascended master?

How about you?

Assuming you are a social entrepreneur, are your motives entirely unselfish? Would the beneficiaries of your enterprise be better off if you forgot about them, and took a job with British American Tobacco?

Does anyone really believe that employees of more traditional humanitarian organisations work without even the slightest thought of gaining a personal benefit?

Are they really all saints, ascended masters or bodisattvas? Why did the Red Cross pay its former president Elizabeth Dole 200k per year? Why did she accept the money?

As you have probably noticed the "motive objection" irritates me. So does the third objection: "Social entrepreneurship is unethical." People who advance this objection, in my experience, aren't able to explain why social entrepreneurship is unethical. In most cases, when questioned they respond: "It just doesn't sound like a good idea." Now that is a powerful moral and ethical objection. (I'm being ironic.)

Moral and ethical objections are often raised, but rarely are the objections substantial. This is in part because most people don't bother to examine their own hodge podge notions about morality, ethics, and right and wrong. Many when questioned will say that they just know that they know. This moral certitude, confirmed by beliefs and prejudice may be comfortable, but is it coherent?

Ask those who object to social entrepreneurship on moral and ethical grounds to be a little more specific. Are their objections deontological? consequentialist? Virtue based? Teleological? Does the objector hold, as does J. R. Searle, that "ought" can be derived from "is"? Or, does the objector follow Hume, and argue that "ought" cannot be derived from "is"?

When evaluating a moral issue which is primary, the act, the motive or the consequence? Perhaps the objector agrees with the German theologian DietrichBonhoeffer's http://www.dbonhoeffer.org/ position as found in his Ethics, and believes that the attempt to gain a knowledge of "good" and "evil" is the root cause of all inhumanity, and that we should seek out the will of God rather than trying to distinguish right from wrong. Or maybe the objector follows Nietzsche http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ and a few other existentialist philosophers, and holds that humanitarian acts are in themselves immoral. How to best respond depends on what the objector considers immoral and unethical.

In most cases, I think the claim that social entrepreneurship is inherently unethical is rooted in the belief that the profit a social entrepreneur earns, is earned at the expense of the intended recipient (e.g. starving orphans in Africa). If that were the case, then there might be some merit to the objection. It might point to an inherently teleopathic system, but it doesn't.

That is not to say that all social entrepreneurs are supremely efficient, but rather that the marketplace does not favour inefficient, high cost, low quality providers. In time inefficient providers are driven from the field.

The administrative inefficiencies of these entrepreneurial providers, however, pale in comparison to the inefficiencies of many governmental and non-profit providers of social and humanitarian goods. I suspect there is often a latent assumption that non-profit means no or low cost. But, does it really mean that?

Consider the case of the UK's Child Support Agency (CSA). It has come to light that it costs the taxpayers 54 pence to deliver £1 (100 pence) of benefit. (Child Support Agency Failure)

It is hard to imagine any social entrepreneur operating at that level of administrative inefficiency remaining in business for long.

Business and entrepreneurial incentives, when properly applied, help to eliminate inefficiencies, and to bring more and better products and services to those who require them. The entrance of entrepreneurs into the UK communication marketplace illustrates my point.

The old system impoverished me (literally). On more than a few occasions I sold books from my library to raise the money I needed to pay a telephone bill. The new system leaves money on my table, and books in my library. The efforts of profit seeking telecom entrepreneurs have benefited rich and poor alike.

Today social entrepreneurs are working to produce similar results in a variety of social and humanitarian fields. Indeed, we might well ask given the obvious teleopathy of established governmental and non-profit efforts to eradicate humanitarian problems, if it is moral to advocate the continuance of these ineffectual, resource draining, high cost programmes. By Einstein's measure it is slightly insane to advocate doing the same thing over and over, and yet expect, and promise, a different (better) result.

In my opinion, it's time for the objectors to reconsider the morality of their opposition. It is time for them to remove the mote from their own eyes, before they spend too much time condemning the speck in ours.

The Nonprofit Mentality in Politics

2005-10-18T06:06:00.000+01:00

There will be more on creating and investing social capital tomorrow. Today, I want briefly to return to a previous topic: The Nonprofit Mentality.

Sunday's Observer (UK) ran a piece by former Clinton aid Dick Morris. Morris describes Senator Clinton in terms similar to those Jere Boschee uses to describe the nonprofit mentality:

So what kind of President would Hillary be? How would Condi handle the job? Let's start with policy. Hillary Clinton would be the most liberal President since Lyndon Johnson. Bill Clinton is a moderate by choice and, sometimes, a liberal by necessity. But his wife is the exact opposite. Hillary believes that government delivers services well and that the quest for private profit is the root of all selfishness and vice in American life.
The Observer Review An extract from Condi vs Hillary by Dick Morris

The Virtuous Circle of Social Capital / intro

2005-10-16T19:35:00.000+01:00

According to Charles Leadbeater, Senior Research Associate with Demos, successful social entrepreneurs create a cycle of development that goes through 6 stages. These stages are:

Endowment of social capital
Physical capital
Financial capital
Human capital
Organisational capital
Paying dividends

The initial endowment of social capital is a network of relationships and contacts that are tied together by shared values and interests. This social capital, Leadbeater states, is vital to social entrepreneurs because they typically lack direct access to substantial financial capital. In this phase of development it behooves the social entrepreneur to leverage this endowment by using existing relationships to create more social capital. Leadbeater suggests that the social entrepreneur should focus on building a wider web of trust and cooperation for his/her enterprise. He states, 'With this start-up fund of social capital the social entrepreneur can then get access to the physical, financial and human capital needed to get the show on the road.' Unfortunately, Leadbeater and Demos fail to provide guidance in how best to go at this, or any task related to any stage of the development cycle.

To remedy this shortcoming the next several (I'm not sure how many) Ambassador entries will discuss a stage, or stages, of the 'virtuous circle of social capital' development and offer practical tips for completing tasks relevant to the stage(s) discussed.

Readers are encouraged to share their own experience and practical tips in the comments section of the post. My next entry will remain focused on stage 1 of the cycle: building the social capital endowment.

Generous or Charitable?

2005-10-15T10:30:00.000+01:00

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
- Albert Camus

What About Results?

2005-10-13T10:25:00.000+01:00

Here are a few examples (out of hundreds) of the humanitarian good that we NTC networked social entrepreneurs have produced in our first 3 years:

Lumbadzi, Malawi … No sooner had the ribbon been removed from the grand opening, and the crowds completed their tours of the facility, than the production workers moved into position and food started coming off the end of the line.

In less than a week the workers were able to set a record to be topped; 2000 bags of Nourish the Children's VitaMeals in a single day. That is enough food to feed 2000 children for 30 days, and it was produced in a single record-setting day.

Plans call for a minimum of 1000 bags a day in production, but the work crew showed management just how far they could stretch the minimum requirements.

Nourish The Children (www.nourishthechildren.com), Feed The Children, Nu Skin Enterprises (www.nuskinenterprises.com), Force For Good Foundation (www.forceforgood.org), Lee Iacocca Foundation, Healing Hands International, Blessings Hospital, and the Malawi Project joined their efforts into one, and coupled with the cooperation of the Malawi government and local traditional authorities, the plant went from ground breaking to opening in only 10 months.

Agriculture programs that now include over 33,000 farmers will help "feed" the needs of the plant in soybeans and maize corn. Vitamins and minerals will be shipped to the plant from Nourish The Children, and Nourish The Children will purchase, and then donate to the Malawi Project the first 24,000 packages of food a month.

The food being produced in this first-of-a-kind facility is not just food to fill stomachs. Each program carried out by the Malawi Project is targeted to be the best it can be, and a program that will be a pace-setting example to other aid organizations.

The food plant is an excellent example of this effort to excel. The food that is being produced carries a highly enhanced vitamin and mineral mix that contains the following needed vitamins and minerals for the health of the children eating it. Seldom will these children have a meal that will be as good for their health as the VitaMeals that come from the Madalistso Food Plant. www.malawiproject.org

Plans for the plant will not only focus on distribution of food aid through the programs of Blessings Hospital and the Malawi Project but also will focus on assisting other aid organizations in Malawi, and in the nations surrounding this tiny spot in the sub-Sahara.

DROUGHT UPDATE
PLUSNEWS, IRIN AFRICA- “The impacts of drought, HIV/AIDS and a weak economy have combined to undermine already vulnerable households in Malawi's rural areas…

Penelope Howarth, head of the World Food Programme (WFP) suboffice in Blantyre, told IRIN that many villages in the district had "harvested next to nothing" this year, and people were surviving on wild vegetation and seeking out ganyu (piece work) across the border in Mozambique.

"Others are diving for water lilies - the danger is that there are a lot of crocodiles in the river," she added. Sam Sheku, a WFP field liaison officer, said people had to dive to the riverbed to get the edible roots of the lilies, and Howarth noted that "six members of a family died recently because they ate the wrong kind of lily". Sheku said, "Normally, this time of year they would have harvested [enough to eat] and would be planting winter maize, but there's no residual moisture in the soil [for planting], as there has been no rain."

The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) report noted that if the maize price kept pace with inflation at the average rate for 2002-2004, some 4.2 million people would be at risk. If inflation accelerated (as evidenced by the 75
percent rise in the current maize price) the situation could worsen. The worst-case scenario, depending on the speed and price of imports, could see 4.6 million people at risk in Malawi this year…

In one female-headed household in Thauzeni village, Maria Saba, who estimated her age at about 23, and her mother, Esnath, care for Maria's three children as well as her younger sister Nondo's two young kids. "Both the fathers of the children have died," Maria said.

With five children to feed, the women rely on ganyu to buy maize for the household, but with a poor harvest, ganyu has been hard to find and they have resorted to foraging for edible wild vegetation. The women tried to plant this season "but our maize dried up", Maria said. "The wild leaves we eat are bitter and sometimes they make us vomit, but we only have enough maize meal to last a day," Maria said, so the family has reduced its intake to one meal a day. Corn fields dying from the drought.
A few metres from Maria's home, two young girls, aged 10 and 11, and their 18-year-old brother have been forced to fend for themselves. Zione, the youngest, and her sister, Marianna, have relied on whatever income their brother, Masauko, is able to earn from selling firewood and thatching for homes. "We are here like this because our parents died last year - they died from a long illness," said Masauko.”
Russ Merrill and Angela Soper from the Nu Skin Audio Visual staff recently visited Malawi and Russ described Angela’s reaction:

“I was glad Angela was there to experience Malawi. At one point at the wood-carving market she broke down and cried while watching people walk by. She saw some hurtful sights and conditions that the people there live with. “And we have so much – it just isn’t right!” She was torn apart – I mean really emotionally torn apart. I tried to prepare her for those sights – but how can you really prepare anyone for something like that? She had no idea.”

Because of your donations, over 30,000 children in Malawi are being fed a nutritious meal every day through this crisis. Thank you for remembering the children of Malawi.

Nourish the Chidren is feeding children in many nations. This humanitarian good is driven by the effort and action of NTC allied social entrepreneurs around the world.

Entrepreneurs: A Force for Good

2005-10-12T11:13:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reprinted the following remarks from a Demos report authored by LSE Professor John Gray and Fernando Flores in its Daily Comment:

Guardian Unlimited Guardian daily comment A wing and a prayer:

"But another form of working life is also developing - the entrepreneur. Instead of being led by chance and talent, the new entrepreneurial life is driven by bringing value to the community."

Gray and Flores argue that the transformation of working life, and the loss of many traditional business career paths is creating moral and social risks that must be addressed, if community life in prosperous regions is to be sustained. And, as can be seen from the remark quoted above, the authors regard entrepreneurial initiative as the right medicine for the problem. Entrepreneurship, in their words, brings 'value to the community.'

I would argue that social entrepreneurs bring all the same benefits to the community that Gray and Flores attribute to ordinary business entrepreneurship plus something more.

Nourish the Children illustrates my point. NTC provides those in more prosperous regions of the world with an opportunity to work as social entrepreneurs. Those choosing to pursue the NTC social entrepreneurship path might be doing so because: they have been displaced by the 'transformation of working life'; or they need to supplement an inadequate pension; or to supplement a family income; or they are committed humanitarians looking for a more effective way to create social good. Their motivations don't matter much: their entrepreneurial activity, independent of motive, and in common with all responsible entrepreneurial activity, brings an economic and social benefit to the community.

But, these entrepreneurs are also creating something more. Again using NTC to illustrate my point about the plus value of social entrepreneurship: NTC social entrepreneurs have, in a little more than 3 years time, provided their Alliance Partners (World Vision, Feed the Children, and others) with over 35 million Vitameals to feed severely malnourished children around the world. They have also generated funding to build locally owned food processing facilities in impoverished countries such as Malawi. (The Malawi facility now provides employment to 400 Malawians, and buys grains from many thousands of Malawi's farmers. Malawi Project) NTC social entrepreneurs have even supplied over 1 million meals to feed victims of hurricane Katrina. In short, social entrepreneurs, as illustrated by NTC, create social good both in their local communities/countries, and abroad.

Although I have used NTC to illustrate my point, I hasten to acknowledge that there are many other legitimate social enterprises that might be used to make the same point.

The Nonprofit Mentality

2005-10-11T00:38:00.000+01:00

Lest anyone think that Jere Boschee is wrong to describe the "nonprofit mentality" as a 'belief that capitalism and profits are social evils,' consider the following comments by two active nonprofit advocates:

I can understand the argument that even Pablo Eisenberg makes for compensating some who are in need, but we must remember that the lack of compensation doesn't get in the way of great folks serving as stewards for any number of philanthropies.
Joe Breiteneicher
No Comp-No Problem

Nonprofits serve the public interest but are accountable mainly to boards of wealthy people. Whether the boards are paid or unpaid they are likely to be imbued with the attitudes of those who have made it. How many at that level can be upset at the way things are, since how bad can a world be that has propelled board members to wealth, power, prestige and prominence?
Phil Cubeta
I Resent the Rich

Mr Breiteneicher's assertion is absurd. The lack of compensation most certainly does get in the way of great people serving. I know quite a few people who want to be involved in humanitarian work, but who must spend there time earning the money they need to pay their bills. Social entrepreneurship allows them to do both. At least in a some cases, no comp means no contribution.

Mr. Cubeta's comments are equally absurd. Although I am not independently wealthy, I know several people who are. I have noticed that they have many of the same sorts of cares and anxieties that less well off folks have. They are concerned about the world we live in, and the world their children will inherit. They have health and relationship problems just like the rest of us. Mr. Cubeta's remarks drip with envy, and envy is a most unattractive quality.

To paraphrase MLK, 'Let us not judge others by the colour of their skin (nor by their bank balance), but by the content of their character.'

The Raw Materials of Social Entrepreneurship

2005-10-09T21:47:00.000+01:00

CELCEE - Social Entrepreneurship: Profit as a Means, Not an End

Jerr Boschee, the President and CEO of the National Center for Social Entrepreneurs, has unparalleled practical experience working with social entrepreneurs. Based on this experience he has identified what he terms the "raw materials" of social entrepreneurship. The raw materials are:

1) Candor; 2) Passion; 3) Clarity in your mission; 4) Commitment; 5) Core Values; 6) Products and services driven by customers; 7) Sound business concepts; 8) Willingness to plan; 9) Building the right team; 10) Having sufficient resources; and 11) Ability to improvise. Overcoming the nonprofit mentality with these skills is the formula for success for the social entrepreneur.

Boschee defines the "nonprofit mentality" as: The belief that capitalism and profits are social evils. How many people must be made to suffer needlessly in order to satisfy the whims and wooly thinking of the arrogant, the self-righteous and the sanctimonious?

Seth Godin's Social Entrepreneurship Experiment

2005-10-09T14:56:00.000+01:00

The legendary Internet guru Seth Godin is offering a new e-book that should interest social entrepreneurs. As Godin has given his permission to post from the book, I offer you the following extract:

[SQUIDOO IS] AN EXPERIMENT: A big experiment. It's an exercise in amplifying the voices of people with something to say, at the same time that we build a community, a site that’s free to use, a co-op that pays royalties to its members, and a way to raise millions of dollars for charity—from New Orleans to Tanzania. This is an ebook about a brand new online company and, more important, about a new sort of online tool that might very well change the way you discover (and publish) information.

I am hopeful that Godin's new effort will produce a valuable new social enterprise, and a new and worthwhile online community for active social and humanitarian entrepreneurs.

Why not take a minute now and go to:

www.squidoo.com/stuff/books/EveryoneIsAnExpert.pdf ,

and collect Godin's free e-book.

A Good Kind of Business

2005-10-07T06:12:00.000+01:00

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.
Henry Ford

I don't think it's about making money. It's more about acting as the custodian of the world's resources, both human and natural, and making sure those resources are put to work in such ways that they are useful for the survival of the human race.
Thomas J. C. Raymond

No margin - no mission
Richard Stadtherr

Nourish the Children (NTC) through one of its alliance partners, Feed the Children, has delivered over one million VitaMeals™ for the relief efforts in the Gulf Coast. These meals have been donated by Nourish the Children distributors in the United States and Hong Kong. The emergency relief centers report that VitaMeals™ have been well received by the refugees especially after they add their own Cajun spices to the recipe.

Nourish the Children is a social enterprise that makes more than money. It acts as a custodian of resources, both human and natural, and NTC makes sure that those assets are put to work in such ways that they are useful for the survival of humanity.

Over the past 3 years of its existence, NTC has provided more than 33 million meals to feed severely malnourished children through its alliance partners (e.g World Vision, Feed the Children & The UN World Food Programme). NTC has also provided thousands of people with the opportunity and platform to become effective social entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs understand better than most that no margin means mission not accomplished.

We NTC social entrepreneurs are seeking a purpose beyond, but not without, profit.

Thomas J. C. Raymond

2005-10-06T13:18:00.000+01:00

Thomas J.C. Raymond, at 88; a teacher at Harvard Business School for 37 years - The Boston Globe

Dr. Thomas J. C. Raymond taught at the Harvard Business School Business School for 37 years.

In its recent obituary of Dr Raymond The Boston Globe reports that:

In a newsletter published this spring by Harvard, Dr. Raymond discussed his business philosophy. ''I don't think it's about making money," he said. ''It's more about acting as the custodian of the world's resources, both human and natural, and making sure those resources are put to work in such ways that they are useful for the survival of the human race."

Unfortunately, amongst students of social entrepreneurship there are many who discount the value of the contribution business oriented entrepreneurs make in putting resources to work in ways 'that are useful for the survival of the human race.'

The remarks of a Ph. D. candidate (Paola Grenier) at the London School of Economics (posted at: ssireview), I believe, reflect this bias. Grenier reportedly wants to challenge 'the dominance of business schools in the development of research and and education into social entrepreneurship'. She feels that, 'social justice needs to be a bit more centre stage in social entrepreneurship.'

At this years Oxford Said Business School Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship a slight majority of the delegates I met held similar views, and one of the speakers went so far as to denounce 'the myth of compassionate capitalism.' If such attitudes prevail, and entrepreneurs are driven out of social entrepreneurship, we face yet another 50 years of ineffectual humanitarian effort.

(I will be returning to this topic in the near future.)

Maintain Your Standards

2005-10-05T11:08:00.000+01:00

Knowing that you have failed to live up to your own standards for your life is the ultimate pain, and knowing that you have fulfilled your highest vision of yourself is the ultimate pleasure.
Anthony Robbins

I haven't confirmed the attribution of the above quotation to Robbins, but I can confirm that its words bear truth.

To know that we could have, but didn't make a difference, is painful. To know that our efforts have made the world a little bit better is a great joy.

If you haven't experienced this joy recently, then perhaps the world of social entrepreneurship has something significant to offer you and yours.

NB: One need not make social and humanitarian projects a full time pursuit for one's effort to make a significant difference.

Robbins at the Harvard Business School:
http://www.anthonyrobbins.com/PDFs/Harbus.pdf

No More "Quiet Desperation"

2005-10-04T11:14:00.000+01:00

Social entrepreneurs would do well to consider the following lines taken from T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland:

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth Kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Eliot's allusion to a Dantean hell is unmistakable.

Too many denizens of our work-a-day world are experiencing a form of "death-in- life." If these people are experiencing any emotion, that is if they are not wholly dead, the emotion experienced is most likely that which Thoreau terms 'quiet desperation.'

But why?

I think it is because many people routinely end up in work that doesn't (as they see it) offer much more than a paycheck. These people, and they are legion, don't identify with the mission and values of the firms that employ them. They have chosen success (financial) at the expense of significance, and at the end of the day they just don't feel as though what they do at work, in the big scheme of things, matters much. In such circumstances, a deadening despondency is not to be unexpected.

As a banker working in the City of London, Eliot was able to observe this deadness in City employees on a daily basis.

Social/humanitarian entrepreneurship offers people a chance to combine success with significance. As social entrepreneurs we not only have the opportunity to help the disadvantaged, we, also, have the opportunity to help our neighbours escape the "dead sound on the final stroke of nine."

We enhance lives both here and abroad. We save lives, and in the same instant add new meaning to our own. I can't think of a better way to earn my keep. (see Making a difference while earning a living & www.nourishthechildren.com)

Let your neighbours know they have a choice.

Fast Company 2005 Social Capitalist Awards

2005-10-03T19:17:00.000+01:00

Fast Company has created a special section that builds on its original social entrepreneurship coverage found in its January issue. This new section includes adviser profiles, and position statements contributed by the winner and other finalist organisations. Check http://www.fastcompany.com/social/

Hi Tech Social Entrepreneurship

2005-10-02T22:37:00.000+01:00

In Jim Fruchterman's excellent Ubiquity article, "Technology Benefiting Humanity," he urges technologists to embrace and engage in social entrepreneurship. Jim writes:

Looking at the social sector as valued customers for technology tools changes the dynamic from charity to engagement: helping disadvantaged communities help themselves.
Please join this exciting movement in its early days. The world will be a much better place if you do.

The full article can be found at: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v5i5_fruchterman.html

It is definitely worth taking a few minutes of your time to read what Jim has to say.

A Better Way

2005-10-01T14:45:00.000+01:00

I have been skimming through Wallace Wattle's The Science of Getting Rich. Wattle's work, first published in 1910, has some interesting business advice that 21st century entrepreneurs, and especially 21st century social entrepreneurs, would do well to heed.

Wattle counsels:

WHEN I say that you do not have to drive sharp bargains, I do not mean that you do not have to drive any bargains at all, or that you are above the necessity for having any dealings with your fellow men. I mean that you will not need to deal with them unfairly; you do not have to get something for nothing, but can give to every man more than you take from him.

You cannot give every man more in cash market value than you take from him, but you can give him more in use value than the cash value of the thing you take from him. The paper, ink, and other material in this book may not be worth the money you pay for it; but if the ideas suggested by it bring you thousands of dollars, you have not been wronged by those who sold it to you; they have given you a great use value for a small cash value.

Let us suppose that I own a picture by one of the great artists, which, in any civilized community, is worth thousands of dollars. I take it to Baffin Bay, and by "salesmanship" induce an Eskimo to give a bundle of furs worth $ 500 for it. I have really wronged him, for he has no use for the picture; it has no use value to him; it will not add to his life.

But suppose I give him a gun worth $50 for his furs; then he has made a good bargain. He has use for the gun; it will get him many more furs and much food; it will add to his life in every way; it will make him rich.

When you rise from the competitive to the creative plane, you can scan your business transactions very strictly, and if you are selling any man anything which does not add more to his life than the thing he gives you in exchange, you can afford to stop it. You do not have to beat anybody in business. And if you are in a business which does beat people, get out of it at once. Give every man more in use value than you take from him in cash value; then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction.

Wattle's book is easily found and freely available at a number of different sites. Rebecca Fine's www.scienceofgettingrich.net offers an especially attractive free download edition. She, also, offers a free ezine, The Certain Way, that explores contemporary applications of Wattle's thought.

Tanya Bannister

2005-09-30T11:24:00.000+01:00

Sandy Frew reports:

On Sunday 18th September Peter and Kaoru Bannister opened up their home to host an NTC event. The idea was to raise awareness of, and funds for, NTC. Over 40 people attended what was a memorable day.

Peter gave the introductions, followed by a virtuoso piano recital by Tanya Bannister (http://www.tanyabannister.com). Tanya also took time to speak to the audience about how her generation felt about the world today and the need to take action.

Tom immediately got everyone on his side by showing a photograph of his lovely baby daughter Florence and then delivered an entertaining and informative talk on NTC in his usual authoritative style. Two NTC videos were then shown and Peter summed up with a call to action.

Everybody then retired to sample Vitameal and to network.

Many thanks to all who took part and assisted in this very successful event. Hopefully this will inspire others to follow suit.

Objections to Social Entrepreneurship

2005-09-29T08:48:00.000+01:00

If you have been telling people about social entrepreneurship for any length of time, you have no doubt discovered that there are folks who object to the concept. These objections to social entrepreneurship are frequently expressed in moral and ethical tones. Although I am persuaded that many of these objections are invoked merely to allow the objector to pretend to some moral high ground rather than expressions of real and fervent concerns, dismissing the objector does not disarm the objection.

Three common variations of the ethical objection (in my experience) are:

"I don't believe it's moral to make money off other peoples' problems."
"No one who engages in humanitarian work for a profit can have a good motive."
"Social entrepreneurship is unethical."

I have heard all three of the above more than once.

With regard to the first objection, I agree, I don't believe it's right to seek to profit from other peoples' misery: that's why I am not in the tobacco business. Indeed, I don't think that I've ever met a social entrepreneur who has sought to profit from the pain of others. Just as good doctors and nurses attempt to cure disease, and to alleviate human pain and suffering, social entrepreneurs attempt to solve social and humanitarian problems, and alleviate the pain these unsolved social and humanitarian problems create.

It is only by creating social goods that social entrepreneurs reap a profit (aka as an income to live on). Social entrepreneurs are creative risk takers in service to humanity. Those of us attracted to social entrepreneurship typically want to earn our keep by making the world a better place. We, unlike more traditional entrepreneurs, measure our success in terms of a double bottom line: mission results (the production of social and humanitarian good) and profit earned.

If social entrepreneurs earn their living off of the suffering of others, then how much more so do doctors and nurses.

The second objection listed above (no good motive) strikes me as unnecessarily dogmatic. I will concede that there may well be perversely motivated social entrepreneurs, but I know that such a categorical claim is without question false. Although I do think motives are important, I am not psychic. Personally, Kant's deontological moral and ethical stance appeals to me, but I have given up trying to scrutinize the inscrutable.

I am fairly certain that most of us have good and bad points, and that we unavoidably hold mixed motives when undertaking almost any task. I am less certain that severely malnourished children should do without food until my motives (or anyone else's) are more saintly. In my case, my wife and I have a 7 week old daughter (our first) at home. I don't believe that my efforts to feed starving children abroad should involve my starving my own child at home.

My motives are hopelessly mixed. I find the starvation of children anywhere in the world an outrage. Although we have the resource to bring this outrage to an end, after 50 years of sincere, but mostly ineffectual efforts by governments and aid organisations, 15,000 children under the age of five still perish/starve each and every day. I want to see this problem solved, but not enough to deny my own family food, shelter, clothing or any other normal amenity that people in the UK expect. I admit I am selfish, but would the starving children be better off if I were to fold my enterprise? (Over the past 3 years Nourish the Children has provided over 32 million meals to feed severely malnourished children around the world Nourish the Children.) Would the children we feed really be better off if I stop working to feed them until I become an ascended master?

How about you?

Does anyone really believe that employees of more traditional humanitarian organisations work without even the slightest thought of gaining a personal benefit? Are they really all saints, ascended masters or bodisattvas? Why did the Red Cross pay its former president Elizabeth Dole 200k per year? Why did she accept it?

We might start by asking those who object to social entrepreneurship on moral and ethical grounds to be a little more specific. Are their objections deontological? consequentialist? Virtue based? Teleological? Does the objector hold, as does J. R. Searle, that "ought" can be derived from "is"? Or, does the objector follow Hume, and argue that "ought" cannot be derived from "is"? When evaluating a moral issue which is primary, the act, the motive or the consequence? Perhaps the objector agrees with the German theologian DietrichBonhoeffer's http://www.dbonhoeffer.org position in his Ethics, and believes that the attempt to gain a knowledge of "good" and "evil" is the root cause of all inhumanity, and that we should seek out the will of God rather than seeking to try to distinguish between right and wrong. Or maybe the objector follows Nietzsche http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ and a few other existentialist philosophers and holds that humanitarian acts are in themselves immoral. How we might best respond depends on what the objector considers immoral and unethical.

In most cases I think the claim that social entrepreneurship is inherently unethical is rooted in the belief that the profit the social entrepreneur earns, is earned at the expense of the intended recipient (e.g. starving orphans in Africa). If that were to prove to be the case, then there might be some merit to this objection. It might point to an inherently teleopathic system, but it doesn't. That is not to say that all social entrepreneurs are supremely efficient, but rather that the marketplace does not favour inefficient, high cost, low quality providers. In time inefficient providers are driven from the field. The administrative inefficiencies of these entrepreneurial providers, however, pale in comparison to the inefficiencies of many governmental and non-profit providers of social and humanitarian goods. I suspect there is often a latent assumption that non-profit means no or low cost. But, does it really mean that?

Consider the case of the UK's Child Support Agency (CSA). It has recently come to light that it costs 54 pence to deliver £1 (100 pence) of benefit. ( http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialexclusion/story/0,11499,1565197,00.html) It is hard to imagine any social entrepreneur operating at that level of administrative inefficiency, and remaining in business for long. Business and entrepreneurial incentives, when properly applied, help to eliminate inefficiencies, and to bring more and better products and services to those who require them. The entrance of entrepreneurs into the UK communication marketplace illustrates my point.

In the not too distant past, the UK telecommunication network was run by the government. I well remember how I feared the arrival of my unitemised phone bill. As an American expat living in Britain, I make a fair number of calls back to the States. Under the old non-profit state system my bills frequently exceeded £400. My new carrier gives me free calls to the States, Canada and Australia. As a result my bill now rarely tops £30. The old system impoverished me (literally). On more than a few occasions I sold books from my library to raise the money I needed to pay my telephone bill. The new system leaves money on my table, and books on the shelves of my library. The efforts of profit seeking telecom entrepreneurs have benefited rich and poor alike.

What do you think?

2005-09-26T20:07:00.000+01:00

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know; the only ones of you who will be truly happy will be those of you who have sought and found how to serve.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer

In Praise of Social Entrepreneurship

2005-09-25T19:52:00.000+01:00

Every six seconds a child under the age of 5 dies from the effects of malnutrition (UNICEF). That means that by this time tomorrow 15,000 children under the age of 5 will have perished. It is important to note that the consequences of this tragedy reach beyond the regions of the earth where it is the unfortunate norm. Many of the most pressing problems we in the West face (e.g. war and terrorism) are at root the consequence of unsolved humanitarian problems. See http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/Research/S&Ps/2002-Su/S&P-Su2002/financial_roots.html

This humanitarian catastrophe has been with us despite the best efforts of many passionately committed aid workers for more than 50 years. Although we once may have once lacked the resource needed to feed the starving, that has not been the case for a great many years.

Marianne Williamson observes and asks:

Thirty-five thousand people a day die of hunger on earth, and there's no dearth of food. The question is not, 'what kind of God would let children starve?' but rather, 'What kind of people let children starve?'

The answer to Ms. Williamson's question is: Good people who misunderstand the nature of the problem and are misinformed about how best to solve it are the kind of people who let children starve.

Einstein remarked that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and yet ever expecting a different result. By Einstein's measure our approach to bringing an end to starvation has a touch of insanity about it.

The humanitarian aid industry has until recently tended to exclude from its ranks those who have the skills and experience needed to solve social and humanitarian problems: namely, business entrepreneurs. This exclusion, I believe, has retarded progress towards resolving many social problems.

Traditionally, only the independently wealthy; saints; and small numbers of people employed by charities have been able to put their time and talent along with their treasure into humanitarian work. In other words, only people like Prince Charles, Mother Theresa or Elizabeth Dole have been able to contribute of their time and talent unreservedly. The rest of us have been limited to making contributions from our treasure, and perhaps an occasional contribution of our time. Our talent, however, is too often unwelcome. We are asked to fund, but not otherwise participate in the humanitarian tasks at hand. As business entrepreneurs, and/or members of the public, our motives for wanting to be involved, other than as a donor, are too frequently considered suspect by aid workers.

If you visit any of the world's great business schools, such as those at Harvard, Stanford or Oxford, you will encounter only a very few students who are contemplating careers in the humanitarian sector.

Why is this the case?

These well trained problem solvers are at the beginning of their careers, and most often burdened with substantial debts accumulated over their many years of study. They need to earn a substantial return on their investment of time and money just to break even, not to mention securing their own and their dependents' future.

Investment banking, marketing, consulting, venture capital and entrepreneurial ventures offer them the best opportunity to achieve this end. Humanitarian careers, unless one finds a position resembling Elizabeth Dole's $2,000,000 per annum at the Red Cross, don't offer much financial security. Young graduates, and many others, often feel forced to choose between "success" and "significance."

Perhaps some of you have felt a similar pull. We want to lead lives of significance, but first we need to secure our finances. Maybe when we retire we will be able to afford to spend some time and money on things that matter, but until then there are bills to pay. Have you been there? I have.

Several months ago I interviewed a woman in London who was investigating the NTC humanitarian entrepreneurship career path. She had previously worked with orphans in Africa for four years. She told me that helping to care for orphans in Africa is her life's great passion. I asked her why if that is her passion she left Africa for London. Her answer: "I got tired of being poor."

Isn't it odd that we can seek to earn a small fortune marketing lung cancer, stroke and heart attack for a tobacco company, or perhaps just a good living by selling cigarettes at a corner market, and few will think ill of us? We can work at leaving the world a little less well off than we found it, and people will accept that we must earn our keep. And, as long as the work is legal, whatever it is-- with one exception--it is ok to earn a good living.

That exception: It is not ok, in the minds of many, to try to earn a good living solving serious humanitarian problems. As a consequence we can supply anyone on earth, even the most destitute, with cigarettes, but we can't manage to get meals that cost the equivalent of 3 cigarettes a day, to the 15,000 children whose lives will end in agony tonight! Think about that for a minute.

It's basic psychology: You will always get more of the behavior you reward and less of what you do not. Behavior rewarded is repeated, and behavior unrewarded is eventually extinguished. That's how the world works. Somehow this basic truth seems to have escaped a great many members of the general public.

The solution to feeding malnourished children in other lands does not and should not require us to deny our own children food.

When it comes to solving humanitarian problems people have somehow come to believe that the ordinary rewards of business are a bad thing. There were those in the old Soviet Union who believed that if the profit was taken out of food production people would have more to eat, but history tells us that what they got was food shortages and corruption.

In contrast, consider how effectively entrepreneurs have brought down the cost of communication. I remember when I feared the arrival of my telephone bill. Now I spend pennies for what I once spent pounds. Incentives to provide and improve the delivery of products and services really work to produce good results when properly applied.

This same entrepreneurial energy is now being effectively focused on many different social and humanitarian problems. In the case of the Nourish the Children Alliance 32,000,000 plus meals to feed children at risk of death from starvation have been donated over the past three years as a direct consequence of this focus. http://nourishthechildren.com/ntc_corp/index.shtml

The Oxford NTC Alliance Ambassador is dedicated to promoting the cause of humanitarian entrepreneurship. Although my own humanitarian enterprise is aligned with Nourish the Children and its Alliance partners (e.g. Feed the Children, World Vision, and other carefully vetted NGOs), I hope the content posted here will prove of value to all of you who seek to earn your keep by acting as an entrepreneurial force for good.

Oxford NTC Alliance Ambassador

Bouncing Ideas Around

The Sole of Africa

User Led Innovation

Breaking Down Resistance to Innovation

Samuelson on Social Entrepreneurship

Resistance to Innovation

Business and the Global Poor

Enabling Social Innovation

Skoll 2007

Build a Village

Lost Mind Share?

Delivering Commercial Solutions to Social Problems

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Social Entrepreneur

SE @ UPenn: The Wharton School

SE @ Carnegie Mellon University

The Eye Fund

Certified Social Entrepreneurship

The Free Marketplace of Ideas

The SE Option

Slightly Off Topic

Celebrity Role Models

Insights Wanted

The Build A Village Project - Malawi

Smith, Ford & Social Entrepreneurship

The Skoll Forum (2006), part 2

THE 2006 SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL entrepreneurship, part 1.5

THE 2006 SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL entrepreneurship, part 1

Money

Squidoo

Honest Critiques are Always Welcome

Google Talk

Congratulations Chris

The Inner Ring

Producing Results

SE Theory

Developing Networks

Dealing With Brownshirts

Go Big-Have Vision-Take Action

Practice, Practice, Practice | D*I*Y Planner

10 over 100

Announcing Ambreso

Don't Hold Back

Passion is the Killer App

Celebrity Endorsement - The New Evangelism

Face-to-Face

Web2.0: Melding Online & Offline Activity

Yahoo's Packaged Solution

A New Model

Are You Thinking Like A Social Entrepreneur?

The Virtuous Circle of Social Capital / creation / web 2.0

The Virtuous Circle / Theory & Practise / Social Capital

The Malawi Project

The Virtuous Circle of Social Capital / The Endowment of Social Capital

Objections to Social Entrepreneurship - Repeat

The Nonprofit Mentality in Politics

The Virtuous Circle of Social Capital / intro

Generous or Charitable?

What About Results?

Entrepreneurs: A Force for Good

The Nonprofit Mentality

The Raw Materials of Social Entrepreneurship

Seth Godin's Social Entrepreneurship Experiment

A Good Kind of Business

Thomas J. C. Raymond

Maintain Your Standards

No More "Quiet Desperation"

Fast Company 2005 Social Capitalist Awards

Hi Tech Social Entrepreneurship

A Better Way

Tanya Bannister

Objections to Social Entrepreneurship

What do you think?

In Praise of Social Entrepreneurship

Practice, Practice, Practice | DIY Planner