Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

This is what happens when podcasters interview podcasters. As two podcasters, Adam Force and I have a great time going back and forth in this engaging interview. Adam tells the story of how he started Change Creator and what it is that he is hoping to do. Adam was sitting on a beach in Costa Rica when the direction of his life shifted. At the time he and his wife were living in New York. They had taken a trip to Costa Rica in order to recharge. While sitting quietly and connecting to nature, Adam suddenly realized that his life should mean more – needed to mean more. With more than 15 years of creative work, he tried several avenues. He started a blog. He launched a water bottle made out of hemp. He became a rainforest advocate. None of these ideas seemed just right. It was during this time that he came across the book Making Good. This book outlines how to find opportunities to effect change and make money. Adam took an inventory of his skills and decided to utilize his expertise in brand building to laun

Latitude is a for-profit creative agency, powered by purpose. In November, 2009, Krista and her husband were in their 30s and, as she told me, “chasing the American dream really hard.” They were being financially successful, but lacked a level of meaning and purpose. It was during a trip to Haiti that they witnessed extreme poverty for the first time. In response to this life-changing experience, they decided to form a social enterprise. In order to avoid debt, Krista, her husband and two small children moved into her parents’ basement. Their company, Latitude is a for-profit, full service creative agency. They do amazingly great work in brand design and experience design. What makes Latitude unique is that they donate 50% of their profits to help women and children in the developing world. They work primarily with three nonprofit partners in 18 countries. They have been able to direct $2.7 million to trusted nonprofits. Through International Justice Mission, they have rescued over 2,600 people from sex tra

Can a bank be beneficial to all and harmful to none? Does your bank do only good and no harm? Do you know? Beneficial State Bank aims to bank in a way that is beneficial to all and harmful to none. It’s more than a platitude. They proactively measure themselves against goals such as how many affordable housing units they have financed, how many kilowatt hours of clean energy their loans have produced and how many millions of dollars they have loaned non-profits. Kat Taylor and her husband set out to create a business that would do social good with a sustainable business model. So far, they seem to be doing quite well. Beneficial Quotes from Kat Taylor “The way we think about social justice…is that we run our economy and our society in a way that distributes power, creates broad prosperity and gives individuals a hefty dose of self-determination. “ “I think that the banking sector is rife with opportunity for change by individuals.” “We’ve been trained over decades as depositors to believe all we deserve

Smallholder farmers grow more than half of the coffee consumed worldwide. Imagine if you will, that you are working at a non-profit in Minnesota, focusing on public policy. The phone rings, and the person on the other end says “Hello. This is the Port of Los Angeles. We have 38,000 pounds of green coffee with your name on it. How would you like to pick this up?” You know nothing about coffee or roasting or retail. What would you do? That is exactly what happened twenty years ago at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. In today’s Social Entrepreneur, Lee Wallace, the Queen Bean of Peace Coffee tells us the rest of the story. Peace Coffee is a for-profit social enterprise, owned by a nonprofit, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Peace Coffee has a wholesale business that they have been running for about two decades. They also have four retail coffee shops within the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Last year Peace Coffee purchased 735,000 lbs. of coffee from 12 countries and 20 smallholder farm

In today’s episode of Social Entrepreneur, we continue our #TechForGood series. Today we meet Taylor Downs of OpenFn (pronounced open function). OpenFn is the easy way for NGOs to connect all of their technologies in a few clicks. Here’s why that is important. We know the promise of technology. When we automate routine data jobs: We increase the speed of our impact, brining data to near real time. We increase data accuracy, reducing data entry errors. We reduce costs of people-intensive routine jobs. And we can more easily utilize our technology, reducing the need for technical specialists on the job. We can quickly scale and amplify our impact, especially when our technologies integrate with one another. Technologies work better when they work together. But of course, systems do not always want to work and play well together. That’s where OpenFn comes in. They support mission-driven organizations to integrate and automate their routine jobs. Resources from our Conversation about Automating #TechForGood:

New Story is disrupting community development. They are doing that through a story-driven crowdfunding process for building homes. But, they’re not just building houses, they’re creating communities. And, in the process, they are changing the donor experience. To explain all of this, we’re joined today by Alexandria Lafci, a cofounder and the head of operations for New Story. There’s so much to love about Alexandria and New Story. First, they are targeting communities one at a time. For example, they started in Leveque, Haiti where they moved 152 families from living under blue tarps, to living in lovely homes. And, by building that many homes, they were able to create a community. I also love that Alexandria is the head of operations. If you think about it, after a social enterprise defines a problem, comes up with a solution, and funds the idea, the most important priority is execution. Alexandria plays a unique role in seeing to it that New Story disrupts community development. Alexandria is familiar with

RSF Social Finance has an innovative approach to financing social enterprises. They bring social entrepreneurs and funders together in regional meetings where loan rates are negotiated. Entrepreneurs help funders understand the impact of higher rates, while funders help entrepreneurs understand the impact of lower returns. In the end, they set the rates. How did Mike Gabriel come to join RSF? From 1997 to 2002, Mike Gabriel was an investment banker in San Francisco. “There was the dot-com boom and bust,” Mike told me. “There was a lot of froth – a lot of greed. That took a toll on me. Like many young people do, I questioned, what is it I’m doing with my life?” He decided to travel the world for a while. First stop? The Philippines. While in the Philippines, Mike joined a micro-finance institution. “That got me on this track,” he said. This led to a 5-year stay with the Grameen Foundation. Today, Mike is with RSF Social Finance, as a manager with in the Social Enterprise lending program, specifically focused o