Social Entrepreneurship

Self-Less vs. Self-Aware Giving

Published November 04, 2009 @ 11:50AM PT

Is there such a thing as selfless charity? That's the question being debated in the comments on a great post on Tactical Philanthropy. Inspired by the new book "The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan," TP author Sean asked about motivations and why people give? While I don't believe there is such a thing as selfless giving, I do believe that giving can be much more self-aware - and in the process, much more fulfilling, sustainable, and effective.

This notion of selfless acts is fascinating not only from the standpoint of philanthropy but from economics, psychology, and faith as well. Economists might think of this from the standpoint of utility. If a $10 gift to charity gives you more valuable feelings than $10 spend on a CD, you're going to give to charity because we're utility maximizers.

That idea of maximizing utility brings up psychology - or more specifically the idea that reward is emotional and not necessarily monetary. Perhaps even more profound, emotional reward can come even at the expense what is psychically or financially good for us.

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Distribution vs. Promotion and The Rise of the Email List

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Trends

Published November 03, 2009 @ 05:05PM PT

Nonprofits are increasingly a fan of Facebook and a flutter with Twitter. Yet there is a new old medium that is poised to make a comeback as a key vehicle for interpersonal communication: the e-mail list. The launch of the new All Day Buffet project TBD provides an interesting occasion to examine the power and problems of the medium.

For many of us, e-newsletters have always been a part of the online experience, for better or worse. I find myself hunting for the 'unsubscribe' button at least once a week. Nonprofits I've worked with, companies I've accidentally signed up for information from, or worse, who have purchased my information from third party sellers - it all becomes a little much. So why proclaim (and acclaim) the medium?

The difference between a good email list and an annoying newsletter is, often I think, the difference between treating the list as a distribution channel for great content versus as a promotion channel for your brand.

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PEPFAR Gets In On Mobile Health

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published November 03, 2009 @ 10:39AM PT

mHealth is big these days. As the public health debate rages in the USA and the conversation around global health grows in the general consciousness, the idea of using mobile devices to help improve the quality, speed, and convenience of care is becoming increasingly important. In a keynote at last week's mHealth Summit, the US Coordinator for AIDS Relief Ambassador Eric Goosby announced that the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) would be joining the mHealth Alliance.

The alliance was first announced earlier this year at the GSM World Mobile Congress as a partnership between the United Nations Foundation, Vodafone Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Like all "alliances," the mHealth Alliance is an evolving platform that will theoretically do some combination of best practice sharing, support for scaling, and cross-sector partnership building.

From the folks I've talked to, there is a lot of tempered optimism around this. PEPFAR is a major funder that can add significant direction and momentum to the field. The influx of resources could reduce competition and provide new incentives for collaboration that can take what are currently mostly niche applications of very promising tools and help them scale in new ways.

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Kellogg Foundation Pumps $75K More Into America's Giving Challenge

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Competitions and Fellowships

Published November 02, 2009 @ 04:58PM PT

At the end of last week, the Case Foundation announced that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation had just anted up an additional $75,000 to support the second annual America's Giving Challenge. The new money is really awesome, but the real story is China kicking the crap out of everyone else.

The new money will be used to fund five additional awards, including another $25,000 prize and four more $10,000 prizes. Additionally, it will fund additional $1,500 daily prizes between now and the end of the challenge.

The challenge has had a big response so far this year, with almost 70,000 people donating $1.3 million to about 7,500 different nonprofits. This a great example of a leveraged model, where just under $250,000 in ultimate award money has produced almost five times that in user-generated donations.

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What Entrepreneurship Has To Do With Gay Marriage In Maine

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Human Rights

Published November 02, 2009 @ 11:30AM PT

Tomorrow, Mainers go to the polls to affirm or reject a state law allowing gay marriage. If they vote "No on 1," Maine will become the first state in the country where voters have ratified the right to marriage equality. It may not seem like something I would cover on this blog, but I believe that Maine's struggle with this question surfaces the core elements of social entrepreneurship that make it such an appealing approach to change.

Social entrepreneurship - indeed, entrepreneurship in general - are about agency. They are affirmations of the notion that people have the ability to create - to create value, to create wealth, to create meaning. Unlike charity (which I still believe is important), the actor whose agency is realized in social entrepreneurship is the doer, not the giver.

Questions of marriage equality are also about agency - the agency of two people who love each other to recognize that union legally, and receive the attendant legal benefits. Opponents of gay marriage might argue that their opposition is also about agency - the agency of the church to determine who is does and doesn't recognize. That may be fair, but it's also not primarily the concern of government what a religious institution thinks. In fact, it is it's job to preserve equality regardless of religion, or any other demographic difference for that matter.

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Kiva Hits $100 Million in Loans

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: News

Published November 01, 2009 @ 08:47PM PT

Just in time for their big 4th birthday celebration this week in Berkeley, Kiva announced yesterday that they had officially hit $100,000,000 in loans. In a blog post on the site, President Premal Shah said that the group had hit the milestone with donations from 584,189 lenders.

This is a huge accomplishment. The level of engagement that Kiva has engendered and the excitement around the model are a major force for good in the social entrepreneurship space. Despite recent questions about marketing practices, Kiva has helped average people participate in a newer model of international development that, if no panecea, has much to recommend it.

What's more, Kiva has helped make real the power of the internet for social engagement. While many in the nonprofit industry have understood for a while the significance of this technological innovation, Kiva has demonstrated the democratizing power of the internet to help people - not to supplant old actors, who remain important - but to participate in change in extremely compelling ways.

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Silicon Valley, Boston, and the Importance of Social Density

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published October 31, 2009 @ 01:41PM PT

Despite the power of the internet to accelerate communication and connect people across greater distances than ever before, social density - the depth and diversity of connections in a geographically concentrated area - still has incredible power to determine business innovation and success.

Yesterday in my post about the Huffington Post's Philanthropy Game Changers, I noticed that six out of the ten participants were based in the San Francisco Bay Area. There is a selection bias towards technology in the nominees, which explains the concentration to some extent, but that just brings up the question of how the Bay Area became the place where technology innovation is concentrated in the first place.

There's a great historical piece today on TechCrunch about how Silicon Valley became the leading light that it is, and in particular, why Boston - arguably the technology leader for most of the second half of the 20th century - slowly slipped behind northern California as an innovation hub.