Change.org's Social Entrepreneurship Blog

Three Important Ideas from Real Time CrunchUp

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-20T10:37:00-08:00

I'm at the TechCrunch sponsored Real Time CrunchUp. The event is all about the real time stream of information and sharing that is increasingly what the internet is about. There are a few key conversations.

1. Determining What's Important. Facebook product bro Chris Cox was just sharing some background on how FB is thinking about the difference between Live Feed and News Feed. Basically, they want to be able to use better information about context to help figure out which parts of the stream of information and friend updates you might actually care about. Angel Investor supreme-o Ron Conway suggested that 2010 will be all about filtering.

2. Social Context (or Not). The speakers today have spent a lot of time discussing the social context of information, or to put it less wonkily, being able to see what your friends care about as you're interacting with news, music, or social causes. The former CEO of FriendFeed (who is now at Facebook) and Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur suggested that the "private" context - being able to see what specifically your "offline relationships" think about different things is going to be supremely important. Others pointed out that only being able to see what your friends like and care about can be a constraint - particularly if you care about something niche - like hardcore metal like me - that not that many of your "offline" friends know about. I think this is important, because who you've been around physically is only one sort of context. One of the great powers I've seen in social media is the ability to discover peers who I wouldn't have met otherwise.

3. Location Based Services. One of the areas of real time information that is poised for growth is location-based services like FourSquare and Google Latitude, which will increasingly be pushing notifications about where our friends and contacts are. They haven't talked about this much yet, but it looks like it will appear this afternoon.

So why might this matter for social entrepreneurs?

First, people care deeply about their causes. As services get smarter about adding filters and social context to the stream, it's going to be easier for your people to discover how much you care about the issues you care about. All social innovators and nonprofits need to build networks of support, so this matters.

Second, being able to discover new people who you don't know yet is immensely powerful for social entrepreneurs. Rather than just having to convince people that your issue is the best, you can start by finding the people who already agree, discover what they offer, and build strength from there.

Third, the geographic location creates new ability to connect people who care with interesting opportunities.

(Photo: webtreats)

Harnessing The Social Data Stream For Good

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-20T07:55:00-08:00

The web tech world is alive with conversation about the "stream." The stream is the fire hose of social information that Twitter, Facebook, music sharing tools, video tools, and just about everything else these days is pumping into the collective ether. I'm attending the TechCrunch Real Time CrunchUp today in San Francisco, and all day I'll be thinking and blogging about how we harness the social data stream for good.

We've already begun to see examples of people using services like Twitter and Facebook to more effectively leverage their communities - particularly for donations. Epic Change's Tweetsgiving is an example of a creative campaign that builds support around important social work in Tanzania. The America's Giving Challenge that is hosted by Causes, Parade and the Case Foundation each year is an example of institutional philanthropy getting creative to help a broader array of organizations.

Perhaps even more than that though, we've seen the stream power dynamic support and personal brand building that can create a dense safety net for social entrepreneurs. Last year, when FORGE hit financial trouble, founder Kjerstin Erickson took a path of 'radical transparency,' blogging about what she thought she had done wrong. Tactical Philanthropy's Sean Stannard-Stockton picked up the story and the community rallied around her transparency and helped the organization get on a healthy foot.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The social media stream creates or enables a few forces which impact social good organizations:

Authenticity: people don't want carefully crafted brand messages, they want a feeling of realness. It's better to goof and to apologize than to pretend you're infallible on the social media sphere, and that has impact for nonprofits.

Transparency: closely related to authenticity is transparency. The stream encourages openness up front, because there's a pretty good chance that things are going to be open whether you want them to or not.

Dispersed Asset Discovery: the stream gives people the ability to reach farther out to find the talent and resources they need to make their endeavors work, and I think this will change the way that nonprofits particularly think about tapping their stakeholder bases.

Opportunity Discovery: from the flip side, I think that it's becoming easier and easier for people to find opportunities to support organizations that are particularly relevant to them, and this could translate to more action and engagement.

These are just some of the things that are happening. At the Real Time CrunchUp, I'll be looking out for more trends about where this real time stream is headed. In particular, I'll be thinking about how mobile and location based services could have a huge impact in the way nonprofits act and harness their resources. Stay Tuned.

Photo: Rudhach

What a Startup Ecosystem Looks Like

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-19T19:11:00-08:00

I'm a recent transplant to San Francisco. Before that, I was working just outside of Chicago, and before that, I was growing up in Maine. After even just a few months here, the difference in the nature of the startup ecosystem is unbelievable.

So what does that mean?

The first element of an ecosystem - perhaps the most important - is a critical mass of people who are in the same position. San Francisco and the larger Bay Area is sort of ground zero for startups - social and technology based particularly. In about a month, Assetmap will be hosting a mixer for startup-type people just based in our one neighborhood of the city and we've been able to find about 125 names to invite. This sort of surrounding means that the people around can commiserate, share, and collaborate.

To put a point on this...Last night I wrote about Supercool School, a very interesting new startup. Turns out their office is a block and half from mine and one of their founders lives one street away. This happens all the time.

The second is a diversity of actors. One of the things I love about being at the intersection of social and tech entrepreneurship out here is the ability to connect the two conversations. In addition to entrepreneurs, the Bay is obviously rich with funding - from foundations and all types of institutional and venture investors. Importantly, these assets often came from previous success. Which leads to...

Talent. Talent means both talented mentors with boatloads of experience doing the things you're trying to do as well as talented staff who can make your vision come to reality. Chicago is great, but it was pretty lacking in both of these areas when it came to technology, which was a big reason I moved on.

There are lots of additional pieces, but the last one I wanted to point out is events. I don't just mean conferences, but mixers, dinner parties, Foursquare coffee shop meetups, startup crawls. All of these things make the flow of community work. Rather than getting stuck in one spot and with one group, there are constantly new excuses to meet people.

(Photo: the logo of the first annual "Startup Crawl" - a chance for anyone interest to visit startups across San Francisco tomorrow night.)

Failing With Humility

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-19T10:04:00-08:00

One of the things that is inherent in risky endeavors like venture capital is a tolerance for (or at least familiarity with) failure. Sometimes it's not graceful, but it's a part of the game, and learning to succeed often means learning to fail fast, and fail well.

Yesterday, VC Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures wrote a post on Silicon Alley Insider called "Why I Sent You A One-Sentence VC Rejection." The point of the post was basically to say that most deals get sourced because of trusted connections who introduce investors to new projects. Cold emailing a business plan doesn't create the sort of context that's going to help a potential investor move beyond their gut instincts.

While it seems harsh in some ways, the post is also about a sort of inner serenity with gut checking and the knowledge that you're going to miss sometimes. Destin suggests that everyone in the equation - investors and startups - need to be okay with the inherent volatility of the process, and not let failure or rejection get to their hearts.

The great example he uses is the Bessemer Venture Partners "Anti-Portfolio." Bessemer is one of the oldest venture firms in the country, started in 1911. As they say in their public anti-portfolio: "this long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up."

The Anti-Portfolio is the list of all of the dumb decisions and great deals they passed up on. Some of my favorites include:

E-Bay: ""Stamps? Coins? Comic books? You've GOT to be kidding," thought Cowan. "No-brainer pass.""

PayPal: "David Cowan passed on the Series A round. Rookie team, regulatory nightmare, and, 4 years later, a $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay."

and finally, Google: "Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”"

The point of course is that it's okay to screw up, and that success is not about individual instances of triumph or rejection but a trajectory that points steadily upwards. It's a great lesson to persevere, particularly in this tough economy. If you know your idea is great and is going to be transformational, keep plugging.

And maybe apply to the Unreasonable Institute?

(Photo: hans.gerwitz)

The Most Interesting Startups in the World

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-18T13:11:00-08:00

Of all of the fun lists that BusinessWeek puts together, their recent "World's Most Intriguing Startups" is my favorite. The idea of being intriguing is less about whether a startup is a hit yet, and more about what it understands intuitively about changing economies. While their list is pretty good, there are a few more I might include.

Their list is, perhaps unsurprisingly, filled with green companies. BioFuel Box reuses waste products to create fuel, BrightSource Energy is trying to do solar on a massive scale. ChargePoint is a network of electric car rechargers rolled out in a couple cities now and trying for more. If I were to add some of the most interesting startups in the environmental space, I would look to the Pop!Tech Fellows class of 2009. Lebônê generates electricity from microbes in soil to power basic LEDs and other basic electric needs in the developing world. re:char converts agricultural waste into renewable energy. Ecovative Design is working on a styrofoam replacement built using mushrooms.

The BusinessWeek issue also points out CitySourced - a crowdsourcing tool for civic participation in urban areas. I think it's a great tool, but if we're going to look at creative crowdsourcing, I would also include Samasource - which gives refugees the tools to participate in the American digital economy, and The Extraordinaries, which is giving nonprofits a platform to harness the efforts of microvolunteers for tasks like translation, copy editing, and more. From the sustainable design field, Driptech made it on to the list. Driptech sells an affordable drip irrigation system for small plot farmers that can significantly increase yields. I would add the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, an Echoing Green fellow group that builds energy and agricultural technology to help the developing world. And I'd definitely include Catapult Design, which is trying to harness the sort of design talent and energy that gets directed to products and services at innovative companies like IDEO and frog design, and channel it towards improving offerings to the bottom of the pyramid market. The list is chock full with other great groups as well in areas like medical services, web technology, and music sharing. I think it's worth a read, and it's also worth a thought about what makes a startup intriguing. For me it's the big bet on a better world that I want to know about. (Photo: Driptech's diagram of their product)

Supercool School Is, Well, Supercool

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-17T21:00:00-08:00

Education is one of the areas I think is most ripe for tech-minded social entrepreneurs to democratize learning and unleash talent. With the launch of the new platform Supercool School, anyone can set up a school, recruit teachers and students, and organize live classes.

The idea is pretty basic. Sign up for an account, plan classes, visit the education marketplace to see what is already available and what people are looking for, and go to it. Starting a school is a monthly cost, but the classes themselves are free for users. Everything is connected via video and text based chat.

The guys behind the project have a serious passion for education, and are clearly focused on enabling more people to learn. I wonder what type of people are going to want to pay for the ability to give classes without the ability to recoup the cost. I could possibly see companies like consulting firms using it as a tool for brand building, but it will be interested to see who else joins. It seems like part of the plan is to offset the costs of the general consumer facing tool with an enterprise service for internal corporate use.

This is a maturing space, and Supercool School joins peers like eduFire, School for Everything, and others. While it's not clear yet who has exactly the right formula, it's exciting to see so much activity in this important area.

The Need For Multigenerational Partnerships

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-17T12:52:00-08:00

Regular readers know that I'm pretty big on the potential for the Millennial generation to make a serious difference. For those interested, two conversations in the blogosphere provide a great place for people to share whether they agree, disagree (and why) about Gen-Y's capacity to change the world.

Kari Dunn Saratovsky, who works with the Case Foundation as well as blogging at Social Citizen, writes a post reflecting on a recent study that suggests a number of trends that will reshape the nonprofit world, including demographic shifts, use of technology and more. More important than the trends the report identifies (which are pretty self-evident to those of us living it) is Kari's concluding question of whether there is space for better intergenerational partnerships?

Over on Social Edge, the founder of ThinkImpact, Saul Garlick, is hosting a conversation called "Gen-Y: The Social Innovation Generation." His basic thesis is that we want to do - and we want to do now - and we want to do real - things. We're actors who want to get our hands dirty solving problems.

One of the most important questions he asks at the end is about career development. How do we as a society help people who want to have lives in which their careers integrate their values find the right type of companies? How do we help companies be more responsive to those desires?

Spending three years building programs for world changers at Northwestern, I saw just how pressing this need is. Every year, there were students who had committed passionately to their causes for all four years of school who couldn't find a nonprofit job that didn't put them through unbearable sacrifice or alternately, a company that would give them at least some chance to experience their passion for justice.

Part of the answer has to be multigenerational partnerships. People in positions of leadership at firms or nonprofits have the ability to lead change in ways that better helps harness millennial talent. Similarly, Millennials can help their companies make better use of the passion of their peers (and the tools they use to share that passion).

Where are good examples of these sorts of mult-generational partnerships?

(Photo: Andy Mihail)

Applications Open for Unreasonable Institute (w/ Founder Interview)

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-16T11:59:00-08:00

One of the more buzzed about new organizations in the social entrepreneurship space is the Unreasonable Institute, a ten week, Boulder, CO-based summer program for global entrepreneurs that includes mentorship, training, and a chance at part of a $150,000 seed fund, sponsored by First Light Ventures.

The program has a few distinct components that make it attractive for aspiring entrepreneurs:

A curriculum based off of the raved about Transformative Action Institute program

Mentorship with experienced entrepreneurs (or good fakers, like me)

An experimental and super interesting approach to funding that gets entrepreneurs making decisions together about who gets what

The Institute is open for both non-profits and for-profits, although they are looking for organizations that can quickly pay for their own operating costs through sustainable revenue. They are targeting 20-30 somethings, although that's not a hard rule. Finally, they want big thinkers.

I asked Teju Ravilochan, one of the founders, three questions about the institute. Here were his answers

NW: #1 What is the single most exciting thing about UI (no equivocating - just one thing!)
TR: The single most exciting thing about the Unreasonable Institute is our sole focus: creating Unreasonable Impact. It's the opportunity to bring the most driven young social entrepreneurs from every corner of the globe and provide them every tool, every mentor, and every ounce of support they require to create social ventures that can not only sustain themselves financially, and not only scale to multiple countries, but measurably improve the lives of millions of people across the planet. For us, it's all about Unreasonable Impact.

NW: #2 Who is the person you most want to apply?
TR: There is no one person who we are looking for. Rather we are looking for 25 of them. We are looking for the world's most unreasonable, bold, brilliant, and relentlessly determined young entrepreneurs - those who are dedicated to meeting the actual needs of millions of people through entrepreneurship - those who will ultimately create the kind of impact that history will recall as having defined progress in our time.

NW: #3 If you had one sentence to try to convince someone to come, what would you say?
TR: "If you want to change the world, what would you rather do than spend 10 weeks living with 24 of the world's hungriest, young social entrepreneurs, learning from some of the best, most proven practitioners and investors in the world, and getting seed capital, legal advice, website development, prototype consulting, and brand recognition for free?"

The Top Three Reasons That Global Entrepreneurship Week Matters

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-16T08:48:00-08:00

This week marks the second annual Global Entrepreneurship Week, a worldwide extravaganza to help celebrate and encourage entrepreneurship among young people. Sponsored by Make Your Mark and the Kauffman Foundation, the week is an agglomeration of events from around the globe, with lead programs focused on mentorship, speed networking, and fundraising. I'm a huge supporter, for three big reasons.

1. The Opportunity Gap. When you travel to other parts of the world, its clear that talent is distributed pretty evenly. People are smart, ambitious, and creative in cities, villages, and everything in between. At the same time, the opportunities to use those talents just don't exist for many. I think this is one of the most important injustices for us to recognize and redress to build a healthier, more equitable 21st century. GEW's focus on global entrepreneurship is a great way to highlight that brilliant ideas and great organizations can come from anywhere.

2. Sense of Common Purpose. I think that entrepreneurs often feel a tension between the desire for creative freedom and the desire to be a part of something larger than themselves and their companies. Worldwide events like GEW have the potential to speak to that second desire, and in the process pull people out of themselves, even if just for a minute to discover new partners and new inspiration.

3. Aspirational Model. Who young people look at and celebrate can make a significant difference in how they behave and what they aspire to become. Highlighting not just entrepreneurs, but peer entrepreneurs, has an immense validating power.

At the end of the day, this week is a celebration - of efforts past and efforts to come. At the same time, however, it is a platform that is meant to help nudge more and more talent towards action and commitment. Visit their website to learn more about the global events, and if you're on Twitter, add a ribbon to your avatar to show your support.

Weekend Entrepreneur Links: India, Sustainability, Net Impact

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-15T19:57:00-08:00

Some good reads have popped up over the last few days, including some new opportunities for entrepreneurs looking for material and intellectual support for their projects:

Unreasonable Institute Applications are OPEN: The much anticipated Unreasonable Institute application is finally live and online for the next month.

The Funded Founder Institute: While Early Decision applications close tonight, the Funded Founder Institute is an interesting spin on the incubator model that involves a bit of mutual investment.

GWU's exercise in ground-floor entrepreneurship: An entrepreneurship contest and program at George Washington University gets some love from the Washington Post.

How to Profit off the Poor...and Keep your Soul: Another post about emerging market entrepreneurship from TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy.

How Many Jobs Do Small Employers Create?: Another thought provoking analysis about small employers from

Adam Werbach's Strategies for Sustainability: A nice recap post from TriplePundit, who attended the just concluded NetImpact conference.

(Photo: Max Klingensmith)

BHS: Buy (Better World) Books, Give the Gift of Reading

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-14T10:54:00-08:00

[ed. note: This post is a part of the Big Holiday Switch, a series of posts about how you can use your consumer dollars to support a change this holiday season. Check out the kick-off post here.]

(Pledge to switch to Better World Books for Holiday book purchases now!)

Giving books is at once simple and thoughtful. While books surround us, the time that we allot to reading them has been pressured by other forms of media consumption. Deciding to give someone a book is a simple act of sharing and a simple act of teaching. What if this holiday season, all of the books you gave could also be contributing towards a more literate, educated world?

That's the promise that Better World Books offers. Originally concocted in a dorm room, Better World Books started when a group of Notre Dame students couldn't sell back their textbooks. They thought it was crazy that all of that knowledge (and all of those pages of dead trees) were going to go to waste, so they used internet sites like half.com to resell them to people who weren't beholden to textbook manufacturer updates.

From there, Better World Books has grown into a force for good, saving over 30 million books from landfills and donating over $7 million to literacy programs. A for-profit social enterprise, BWB takes donated books from libraries and schools that would otherwise be thrown away, and re-sells them using its online interface. It also sells new books.

BWB partners with nonprofits like Room to Read who coordinate the book donations. Its partners have a small equity stake in the company to even more deeply align incentives. In addition to that, BWB channels a portion of their profits back into their partner's programs.

For the consumer, the experience is every bit as fulfilling as Amazon, if often a little bit cheaper. All BWB orders shipped in the USA have free shipping, and for the rest of the world it's only $3.97. Their selection is great, they have specials and Oprah's Book List.

What this all means that at no inconvenience or additional cost (in fact, potentially with a lower cost) you can have a book buying experience that actually contributes to global literacy. For social enterprise to succeed, it's essential that the companies that carry the banner are every bit as good on all fronts - not just the social front - as their competitors. BWB is a model to be emulated.

Take Action:

We're asking Change.org readers to take this pledge to contribute to global literacy by switching to Better World Books for this Holiday Season. Click here to learn more about the company and the pledge, and join us!

(Photo: sleepyneko)

Inspiration and Tools for Nonprofit Social Media

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-13T14:04:00-08:00

Web2.0 online magazine Mashable is currently currating its third annual Open Web Awards, a series of honors for the brands, companies and nonprofits that are making the most effective use of social media and the companies that are creating the best tools and platforms to help them. Hidden within the 50 categories and 500 nominees are some gems for nonprofits.

The top ten nominees for nonprofit use of social media are great examples of how to get creative and use social media like Facebook and Twitter to augment and accelerate a nonprofit brand, engage donors, or something else entirely:

- Spirit Jump
- Alex’s Lemonade
- A Billion for A Billion
- Frougal Dougal
- Lupus Foundation of America
- PETA
- Voices of Survivors
- Sports Grants Foundation
- Space Tweep Society
- Thank A Soldier

The social media "gadgets" profiled here have a variety of potential uses for enterprising groups, ranging from more effective link sharing to personal broadcasting tools for bloggers.

- Digsby ()
- AddThis
- ShareThis
- AddToAny
- Property-Bee
- Wetoku
- Tigerbow
- SocialGo
- Yoono ()
- WiseStamp (

For groups that are looking how to engage users in a more deep, rich, rewarding experience, there is a lot to learn from these examples of companies that have made great use of Facebook Connect, the platform that allows individuals to give third party applications access to their information.

- Girls Guide To
- Startlike
- OCBC Cycle Singapore
- JibJab
- OrgSync
- Digsby
- Test Tube Telly
- Gaia Online
- Pet Society
- The Gamers Force

See the full list here.

Foursquare Experiments With Charity-Based Game Mechanics

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-13T10:18:00-08:00

Foursquare is an iPhone application that allows people to "check in" and let their friends know where they are physically. At its heart, it's a tool for deepening relationships by allowing people to bump into one another with more frequency. Yesterday, TechCrunch wrote about how the company is exploring using charitable partnerships to deepen the user experience.

Unlike tools like Google's Latitude, Foursquare does not tap into GPS to automatically locate a person. Instead, it uses game mechanics to incentivize people to manually check in wherever they happen to be. You get points for checking in and adding new locations to their map, and you get badges like "Gym Rat" for checking in multiple times in specific locations or types of locations.

I've found myself strangely addicted to it, despite the fact that I only have four or five other friends who use it, which is validation - either of the smarts of their game mechanics or my generally pathetic addiction to new web tools.

People who check in the most are placed on a leaderboard, which is an ongoing tally of user activity that updates every week.

According to TechCrunch, Foursquare is now trying to find brands and companies to sponsor the leaderboard - paying a certain amount (>$0.03 per point) in exchange for having the leader board entirely customized to look as they want it to. All of that money would then be donated to charity. If this existed right now, last week New York City Foursquare users would have made $4,500 for charity.

The organization that the money will be donated to at first is Campinteractive - a nonprofit that does both outdoor and tech projects with inner-city youth. Foursquare is planning on partnering with Techies Give Back to process the donations.

I think it's a really cool experiment. The betting is that it could compel users to engage even more deeply and regularly with the site, as they know that every time they check in there is a tangible benefit for a great cause.

In a lot of ways, it's driven by the same idea animating the Virgance company Lend Me Some Sugar, which is trying to get big companies to sponsor social entrepreneurship contests instead of spending money on expensive advertising campaigns. The idea is about allowing individual people to spread the message, and to build the brand of the company that does good.

I already think Foursquare is a great example of the web 3.0 convergence of online and offline community, and I think this just demonstrates their instincts for the larger cultural zeitgeist that is ever more committed to social change.

(Photo: A rabid fan dresses up as the "Bender" badge on Foursquare for Halloween - from Whatleydude)

My Last Word on the Kiva Controversy

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-12T12:59:00-08:00

The controversy around Kiva's marketing reached a new level earlier this week when an article appeared in the New York Times titled "Confusion Over Where Money Lent on Kiva Goes." For those who had been following the story, there was nothing particularly new. But because it was in the New York Times, it's gotten a whole lot more traction. Personally, I think it's time we moved on. To that end, here's my last word on it.

1. (Most Important) Do the people on Kiva actually get the money? The answer is yes, and this is why despite all the ruckus and important questions about transparency, I think Kiva should come out of this with our support. The difference between perception and reality is about the flow of capital. The way it actually works is that Microfinance Institutions make loans to people before their pictures go up on the site. The money donated goes to those MFIs to support the loans they make. Kiva borrowers DO get the money they're promised; where you, as a loaner, come into the equation, is just a little bit different than some thought. For my part, I think that their actual process is the correct one for maximizing efficiency, for the reasons CEO Matt Flannery articulates here.

2. Do I think that Kiva messed up? I sure do. This one has been a bit difficult for me to blog about because while Kiva is one of my favorite nonprofits in the world, I think this was a tremendous goof. There is no more important capital in today's world than trust. And there is nothing more important for a site like Kiva than to create a compelling giving experience. By fudging the perception, or at least not working too hard to change people's misperceptions that ended up being advantageous (depending on how you look at it), Kiva has lost the trust of some of its lenders, perhaps irrevocably.

3. Do I think our whole sector bears some responsibility? Absolutely. The myth that Kiva allowed to flourish played into the deepest, most gut level challenge for the nonprofit sector.

We all want to feel that our particular efforts have done something tangible and knowable for the world. As human beings we carry around our imperfections, our hopes, dreams, and desires in a confused bundle. When we're offered the opportunity to do things that are unequivocally good, we tend to jump at the chance. When we're affirmed and told how our specific efforts have created a specific change, we can often reset our expectations to only want that sort of experience.

The reality of the world is that the contributions we make as people are a messy, confusing combination of daily actions and life time pursuits. The jobs we create, the people we make smile, the charity we give, the family we protect - these are all part of our contributions.

There are some instances where we can know our impact in real time. Helping friends and family is the most obvious, but with the onset of the internet, there are newer opportunities to extend that real time knowing further than ever. Ironically, despite the fact that a farmer in Uganda is not standing at the Microfinance Institution's door waiting until your check clears, the giving experience that Kiva provides is still dramatically more engaged and tangible than most of what people have experienced since the advent of charity that extended beyond people like ourselves some two hundred years ago. Indeed, one of the ironies of this whole thing is that even David Roodman, the researcher who wrote the original post that kicked this whole conversation off thought that the problem was communication, not impact, because the actual practice that Kiva was engaged in made the most sense for the people they were trying to help.

I worry that the donor community has become addicted to an illusion, or, if not an illusion, at least an irregularity.

Most of the good we do in the world will not be knowable, direct or tangible. The sooner we embrace it and use our whole selves and our whole lives to contribute rather than vainly seeking the fleeting moment of compassionate triumph, the more we will help good organizations and good efforts succeed without contriving to mislead (or at least not inform) donors.

4. Do I still think we should support Kiva? Unequivocally yes. Kiva is a young organization, and one of the first to really harness the internet to extend the experience of giving in dramatically new ways. In my mind, they may have goofed on the trust that they have with their lenders, but they have not undermined the trust that we must have in any nonprofit to be committed to delivering the services it promises in the way that most effectively helps the people it's trying to serve. They've changed their communication, they're proactively seeking to rebuild trust with lenders, and at the end of the day, the amount of good that has been done through Kiva remains immense.

This has been an incredibly important chance for us to learn about the importance of trust between nonprofits and donors, and to ask hard questions not just of our institutions but of ourselves.

But we have a lot of good left to do, and at least for me, I think it's time to move on.

(Photo: A farmer in Mbale, Uganda explains how he has made use of microloans and local training programs to add additional crops, from nlw)

Announcing the Charter for Compassion

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-12T09:47:00-08:00

Some version of the Golden Rule is at the core of almost all belief systems. The idea is simple - that one should do to others as they would have done to them, that one should strive to understand the experience of another as their own. The Golden Rule is an affirmation of empathy.

The Charter for Compassion is a new collaboration from faith and belief leaders from across disciplines to affirm the centrality of empathy and compassion for others at the core of the human experience. The charter was initiated as part of a 2008 "TED Wish" by Karen Armstrong. TED Wishes are $100,000 grants given to a few exceptional people each year.

Since then, TED, in collaboration with a wide array of partner groups, has put together the Charter and more than 70 launch events to put it in the public spotlight. Entrepreneurial faith groups like the Interfaith Youth Core are part of the network helping disseminate the project.

To learn more about the Charter and the partner organizations, visit Charterforcompassion.org

Google's Gift to Holiday Travelers

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-11T20:44:00-08:00

In a move that is sure to generate huge positive will, Google is giving holiday travelers at 47 airports around the country the gift of free WI-FI. This is on top of free in-fright wireless for the month of December on Virgan America flights. While this is clearly a marketing play, it's still worth breaking down a bit to see what we can learn.

Given that, here are four reasons this is incredibly smart business:

1. It's awesome. Unlike many campaigns that ostensibly give consumers something back, the thing that Google is providing is genuinely useful and will, assuredly, make many travelers chaotic flight cancelations just a bit less painful. People don't want stuff just because it's free, but they definitely want good stuff because it's free.

2. It's connected to the core business. Rather than giving away free coffee (although Starbucks, if you want to match Google's airport support, that would be great), or fruitcakes, or something neat but not related to Google, they are providing something that reinforces their brand as the heart of the internet.

3. It reinforces the positive emotional feeling. Internet humorist once defined brand as the emotional aftertaste of an experience. Google's Free Wi-Fi is not solving world poverty, but that isn't the job of this particular happening. This is all about getting people to feel a little warm when they think of Le Goog.

All that said, I'd still love to see them actually announce a winner for Project 10 to the 100...

(Photo: Joiseyshowaa)

Using Twitter to Scale Caring

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-11T11:18:00-08:00

What is the real power of social media for today's enterprises? According to self-made wine guru, internet icon, and entrepreneur extraordinaire Gary Vaynerchuk, it is all about the ability to scale the way you care.

I've been a fan of Gary V. for a while. He first came to prominence by doing a once a day internet TV show where he talked about wine (and life), affectionately known as the Thundershow. But while trying to figure out what goes with fish might have brought people in the door, what really built Gary's brand was his passion, enthusiasm, and willingness to go the extra mile to engage with his viewers.

Indeed, unlike many, Gary has always refused to see engaging with his audience - whether the tool was Twitter Search or Blog search - as somehow separate and distinct from his "real work." As he tells it, every person who has given him advice has told him it's simply not scalable to engage with all the people who talk about him and his work on line, yet for him, it's a gift to live in a time where he actually can interact and engage with the people who care enough to pay attention to him.

Check out this talk from the 140 Character Conference, an industry event about Twitter.

There is a reason that Gary V has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and a seven-figure, ten-book deal with HarperStudio. While he may be brash to some and over the top to others, it's pretty hard not to watch the guy and recognize the authenticity and earnestness that drips out of him. In a world where so many people are trying to sell us things, that feeling of honesty is precious.

But it's more than that.

His whole mantra is about doing what you love, yet recognizing that there is no substitute for hard work to make it work. In another keynote, this time at the Web2.0 Expo, he pleaded with the audience to "stop doing s--t you hate," and instead, find a way to focus on your passion.

This mindset - about finding what you love, working hard because you care, giving a crap about what people have to say and what they think - is the exact opposite of the mindset that drives the asshole leadership that I wrote about yesterday. Whereas that leadership is routed in a fundamental distrust, disinterest, and devaluation of others, Gary's brand of inspiration and action is all about affirming that what people have in them is good, and they should work even harder to bring it out and share it with the rest of us.

(Photo: affiliatesummit)

From Founder to Funder: New Seed Stage VC Launches

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-10T13:01:00-08:00

The pressure on venture capital firms for big exits is tremendous. Union Squares Venture principle Fred Wilson wrote about "The Venture Capital Math Problem," in the end hoping for a return to a scenario that involves smaller funds and more focus. This week, the Founder Collective is launching, putting this entrpereneur-centric perspective into practice.

Founded by active entrepreneurs, the Founder Collective is a $40 million fund based out of NYC and Cambridge, MA that will invest in seed stage ventures. To use their words, "a person or two and an idea is our favorite stage."

From their website, it seems like they want to create a fund that focuses heavily on mentorship and advising and that works to align the incentives of funders with founders. Indeed, most of the people contributing money to the fund are active founders themselves, like Hunch CEO Chris Dixon.

On his blog, Dixon writes that the group things of themselves as "peer-to-peer" venture capital, and sees its ethos in groups like Y Combinator. Among the five characteristics they list about themselves, they include "trying to be respectful," which is pretty unusual, and gives me a good vibe for the group.

Interestingly, they are going to focus on ideas coming out of the East Coast, which they see as poised for a startup renaissance. As a founder who anticipates one day being a funder, I'll definitely be watching this group to see how they shake this game up.

Photo: Founder Collective co-founder Chris Dixon.

The Days of Asshole Leadership Are Numbered

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-10T06:00:00-08:00

Business Insider recently published a list of the 25 most hated CEOs. Ouch. What's remarkable is how consistent the reasons for them being hated hold across the example. Turns out, if you want to be hated by your employees, all you have to do is: not tolerate dissent, minimize feedback channels, discourage the use of personal agency and decision making and finally, make sure to be a jerk. Who would have guessed?!

In all seriousness though, the days of asshole leadership are numbered.

We've all experienced asshole leadership. Asshole leadership is leadership that doesn't encourage conversation across the company. It's leadership that fails to create a broader mission that people can actually care about. It's leadership that systemically fails to affirm and respect the contributions of the people who come together to make products and services happen. It's leadership that gets lost in the sound of it's own voice. It's leadership that can't and won't tolerate dissent, because it is leadership that is terrified and threatened by change.

Asshole leadership is all about the leader, and not about the enterprise. Asshole leadership is no leadership at all.

Luckily, I believe it's days are numbered. And to be clear, this is not about style. There are many different viable leadership styles that vary in terms of openness, transparency, hierarchy, and every other characteristics. Steve Jobs is different than Mark Zuckerberg is different than Meg Whitman is different than Evan Williams is different tha.. and that's all just within the web and computer tech industry.

But what holds across style is sentiment. Great leaders always recognize and respect what others bring to the table. Period. Respect for talent, dissent, and diversity of perspective is what great businesses are built on. Great leadership unleashes, rather than stifles, passion.

More and more, even the coldest, most traditional depths of corporate America are recognizing that the tide is turning, and the forces of openness over opaqueness and internal collaboration over competition are beginning to crumble the cubicle machine. People - particularly young people - want and expect to be affirmed. Not because they are greedy or emotionally fragile, but because why not? If they're going to pour themselves into something, why shouldn't they feel valued?

This is going to come at some cost - both to individuals and to companies. I expect that young people will increasingly find themselves less than content with the options available, and anticipate an explosion of self-employment. At the same time, however, this recession will last forever and entire industries that are structured in such a way that breaks peoples spirits and bodies (law, I'm looking at you) are going to need to shift dramatically.

Of course, every challenge is an opportunity and smart firms are going to figure out how to get out ahead of the curve and create environments that truly respect and harness what their people have to offer.

....Except universities. Their leadership is probably doomed forever.

(Photo: shearforce)

Top November Books: Changing Business Edition

Nathaniel Whittemore — 2009-11-09T13:05:00-08:00

Every month, I'll be sharing five book recommendations for readers of this blog. Not all of them will be focused on social entrepreneurship, per se. Sometimes the list will have a theme - as it does this month - other times it won't. Not all of the books will be new. All that's guaranteed is that they will be good reads.

This month, I'd like to share a number of books that have the potential to shift our notions about business, and help us think about enterprise from a variety of new lenses.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price. By Chris Anderson. Following up his hugely influential 'The Long Tail,' Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson writes about the history and future of the price of free. Demonstrating how the cost of production - particularly, but not only, on the internet - is driving prices ever lower, Anderson puts forth some important provocations. This book matters for social entrepreneurs because it challenges some of the mantras of capitalism, including notably the idea that people value things they pay for more highly. In the internet era, that may no longer be true.

Wired To Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy. By Dev Patnaik with Pete Mortenson. A book that has significant implications for the internal composition and style of doing business, the authors of Wired to Care argue that the ability to create internal empathy makes teams able to see and harness opportunities earlier and more effectively than their competitors.

Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. By Tim Brown. Written by the CEO of design and innovation firm IDEO, Change By Design provides a practical blueprint for businesses to employ 'design thinking' to take inspiration from the world around to create more robust and innovative learning organizations.

A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business. By Hartmut Esslinger. Founder of frog design Hartmut Esslinger is behind some of the most iconic designs of the twentieth century, including, among others, the original Apple II, Microsoft Windows logo, and more. In this book, he writes about the power of alliances between designers and traditional business people to shift the way products and services are developed.

Getting Real. By the staff at 37 Signals. Think that the key to business success is extensive planning, testing, and research? Get real, says the staff at 37 Signals, the company behind productivity and collaboration tools including Basecamp. While this hard-driving, opinionated tract is aimed specifically at web companies, the style of work it suggests - which basically boils down to "focus on what matters and learn from your customers where to go from there" - is valuable for anyone dealing with consumers or stakeholders in an era of rapid feedback.

To buy any of these books, visit our friends at Better World Books. While you're at it, sign the pledge to switch to BWB and contribute to funding global literacy programs.

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