Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Arthur Ashe Teresa Goines is a great example of this Arthur Ashe quote. She started with what she had. Her story starts with her heartbreak as she watched children being discarded into a justice system that was not designed to make them successful adults. When she started working on the Old Skool Café, the only assets she had was her tiny apartment a group of at-risk youth and her community. It took her 8 years move from that apartment into the Old Skool Café’s current San Francisco location. And she still works hard every day to make the supper club a success. Old Skool Café is a youth-run supper club that creates jobs for youth coming out of incarceration, foster care, abusive situations, or other youth who are at-risk. Teresa and her staff create a safe space where these young people can learn and thrive, while making money. The youth not only Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Teresa Goines: “The root cause that I saw is a breakdown of the fa

Think Different. You probably remember that as an Apple motto. But Andrew Stern of Global Development Incubator (GDI) applies the think differently model to the social impact space. It takes a different kind of thinking to apply the incubator model to nonprofits, but that’s what GDI does. You have to think differently if you want to help social enterprises go from startups to scale, but that’s what GDI does. You have to think differently about multi-stakeholder initiatives in which philanthropists, government agencies and private organizations team up take on Sustainable Development Goals. Again, that’s what GDI does. One of the initiatives GDI launched in 2016 is Convergence. Convergence is a platform that connects and supports private, public, and philanthropic investors for blended finance deals in emerging and frontier markets. Blended finance uses public and philanthropic funds to attract private capital, in order to achieve positive development outcomes. In other words, blended finance is: Government mo

Ashoka Social Financial Services Group identifies and supports social entrepreneurs using market forces for social good. If you heard Episode 60 of Social Entrepreneur with Bill Drayton, you heard him talking about the power of a network of leading social entrepreneurs. The Social Financial Services group focuses on social entrepreneurs who are pursuing innovative approaches to access new sources of capital and use market dynamics to create social impact. Stuart Yasgur is just the right guy to run this group. He spent a decade working with startup and growth-stage businesses as a consultant in New York City. He obtained degrees from Cornell, Columbia and the London School of Economics. More than that, when you hear him talk, you realize, he has a heart for this work. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Stuart Yasgur: “The market determines a lot of the character and quality of your life.” “The market has the potential to be transformative. When it works really well it, it can enable us to work together to

Social impact does not necessarily require you to be the founder of a social enterprise. Amanda LaGrange is living proof of that idea. Amanda spent more than seven years at General Mills, including time as a Senior Financial Analyst. Today, Amanda is the CEO of TechDump. TechDump refurbishes and recycles electronics, and in the process they create jobs for adults facing barriers to employment, especially those who have spent time in the justice system. TechDump accepts anything with a cable, cord or battery that is not a home appliance.   Amanda brings her background in corporate finance to bare on the challenges of scaling a social enterprise. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Amanda LaGrange: “It takes a certain skill set for a founder to pass on the baton. “ “It wasn’t necessarily that I birthed the idea, but I’ve definitely been a huge part around growing and scaling it.” “Scaling a social enterprise is one of the most difficult things, because you have to create infrastructure at the same time you’

Gretchen Steidle and Global Grassroots looks for change agents in the most marginalized communities in post-conflict East Africa. Their mission is to catalyze women and girls as leaders of conscious social change. They provide mind-body trauma healing, a conscious social change curriculum, mentors and seed capital. In Conscious Social Change, Global Grassroots emphasizes five key areas: Cultivating presence. Becoming whole Ensuring balance Staying attuned Leading from within Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Gretchen Steidle: “I was intrigued by what it takes to scale and replicate the best ideas.” “I recognized that this is where change was happening. It was happening from the grassroots level up.” “I wanted to find a way to finance more social innovation in the world.” “I found change agents among illiterate farmers who had escaped genocide.” “Here was the niche I felt I could serve best, where rebuilding efforts had already begun, but where grassroots needs were still not being met.” “Everything we

The global south, that is countries south of the equator, are beginning to organize themselves in order to take on their own challenges. Today’s guest, Aruna Raman and I talked extensively about knowledge and talent sharing collaborations across the global south. Who is Aruna? You may remember Fred Rose of Acara from episode 20 of Social Entrepreneur. Every summer, the Acara program at the University of Minnesota sponsors a study abroad program. When the students arrive in Bangalore, Aruna Raman is there to greet them. She introduces them to social entrepreneurs, nonprofits and government officials. She wants the students to see the truth of what it’s like to do business in a complex society like India. Aruna also coordinates a program in the fall where students take their businesses forward to develop a viable business plan. She places these students in social enterprises to work on projects. Aruna and I talked about the importance of local context in social innovation. Aruna also describes how being entrepr

Raj Sisodia is one of the thought leaders of the Conscious Capitalism movement. His books Firms of Endearment and Conscious Capitalism were major influences on my thinking about social entrepreneurship. They are part of the reason that I produce Social Entrepreneur today. In this interview, Raj describes the research he conducted and how he began to understand that there was a better way of doing business – a more conscious form of capitalism. He also talks about his new book Shakti Leadership: Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Raj Sisodia: “Joseph Campbell talked about, you need to find your bliss, and you can also follow your heartbreak.” “It felt like we were spending more and getting less [from marketing].” “If you look at the overall impact of about a trillion dollars of spending on marketing, on the lives of customers, and the performance of companies as well as generally on society, I found that there was not a strong positive impact. In fact th

From the time he was in elementary schools, Bill Drayton was a changemaker. His parents and the principal of the school conspired to allow Bill bloom in his early entrepreneurial efforts. Bill went on the attend Harvard, Oxford and Yale. He worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and for the Environmental Protection Agency. Eventually Bill and a few friends took a tour of India by Volkswagen Microbus. This trip changed Bill’s life. In 1980 Bill founded Ashoka and the following year elected the first Ashoka Fellows in India. Bill told me, “There was no word for social entrepreneur. We had to make it up.” Since that time, Ashoka has selected over 3,500 changemakers to be Fellows. Ashoka uses five criteria: An idea that changes the pattern Creativity Entrepreneurial quality Ethical fiber Social impact. Over time, Ashoka has evolved from focusing on individual fellows to a network of fellows to the idea of “Everyone a changemaker.” In this interview, Bill argues that, because the world is in a consta

Servane Mouazan grew up in Britany, France. From an early age she was motivated by social and environmental justice. “It was very diffuse back in the day” she told me. “I just wanted to help.” And help she does. She has been described as a force of nature and as a social entrepreneur with a generous spirit. Today Servane runs Ogunte. Ogunte is a Community Interest Company (CIC) and a Benefit Corporation (B Corp). Ogunte supports women social entrepreneurs by enabling them to learn, lead and connect. Ogunte creates an ecosystem of coaches, mentors, peer support and technical assistance. They have supported over 5200 women social entrepreneurs through business coaching, impact investment, training, leadership development, awards and challenge prizes. They hope to impact over 1 million women by the year 2020. Ogunte works to give women social entrepreneurs a voice, to make them visible and to help them to be effective. They run an incubator called Make a Wave, both in-person and online. Servane is also the Progr

  Jen Ford Reedy grew up in Lawrence, KS, a college town. She knew from a young age that she wanted to do something meaningful with her life. As an adult, she spent 9 years as a consultant with McKinsey & Company where she honed her strategic business skills. In 2008 she moved into philanthropic work first as VP of Strategy with Minnesota Philanthropy Partners. In 2012 she moved into the role of President of the Bush Foundation. It’s a role that seems to suit her blend of keen strategic insights and a heart for good. The Bush Foundation is an independent, private philanthropic foundation. It was created in 1953 by Archibald Bush, one of the people who built 3M to the success it is today. They have a broad mandate, but of course, Jen understands that every choice made has an opportunity cost. Together with her staff and her board they make careful choices about how to best use their resources. They have a very active and productive fellowship program. They also have a number of grant programs available: T

Health technology social enterprise Koe Koe Tech is leapfrogging Myanmar’s broken healthcare system into the 21st Century. Myanmar is a product of its complex history. The country has over 100 ethnic groups and long-running internal tensions. Myanmar was a British colony from the 19th century through 1948. After independence, religious and ethnic tensions flared and by 1962, Myanmar fell into military rule. Ongoing political uncertainty and isolation left Myanmar with, among other problems, a broken healthcare system. The World Health Organization ranks Myanmar as second to last in Global Health Indicators, 190 out of 191 countries. Mike Lwin is a Myanmar-American. In 2009 he was living in Washington, D.C. and working as an antitrust lawyer working on antitrust M&A and litigation. That year he visited Myanmar when he met his cousin Yar Zar Minn Htoo. Mike was struck by how, because of the lottery of geography, the two of them were experiencing very different health outcomes. On average, Myanmar citizens h

The desire to make a sustainable difference, an impact, is a megatrend that social researcher Wendy Lipton-Dibner has been tracking for years. Wendy is a best-selling author. Her latest book is Focus On Impact, The 10-Step Map to Reach Millions, Make Millions and Love Your Life Along the Way. Keep in mind, when Wendy says “impact” she uses a broader definition than one might use when talking about impact investing. Still, for more than 35 years, Wendy has been researching the question of why focusing on impact leads to greater business outcomes. Wendy points to “the social shift” that occurred when social media became widely used. Suddenly, one-way corporate pronouncements were not sufficient. Conscious consumers wanted to engage with businesses in a two-way dialog. As baby boomers begin their exit strategy and millennials take a stand in the workplace, the desire to make an impact is becoming central to business. Wendy shared her story generously, enough so that, for the first time, we are offering an extend

Scott Anderson sees social entrepreneurship through the eyes of a journalist. He has been the Managing Editor of NextBillion since 2010. In 2004, C. K. Prahalad published his groundbreaking book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits. At the time, Scott Anderson was a business journalist in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He had a chance to read the book and to interview C. K. Prahalad. It left an impression. A few years later, the World Resources Institute published The Next Four Billion, a study of the market size and business strategies to reach the base of the pyramid. As a follow-up to this report, the World Resources Institute launched the NextBillion.net web site. By 2010, the site was managed by the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. They hired Scott to be their managing editor. Scott is in a unique position to observe the field of social entrepreneurship. In this wide-ranging interview we discuss areas as diverse as impact assessments, healthcare and fin

The founders of Noora Health utilized design thinking to iterate their way to dramatically improved patient outcomes. It started at Stanford University’s dSchool. When Katy Ashe was an engineering student at Stanford University, she was anxious to find ways to apply her skills. She signed up the d.School’s “Design for Extreme Affordability” class. There she met Edith Elliott. Edith had a background in international policy. They were paired with medical students Shahed Alam and Jessie Liu. Together they were assigned a group of cardiac hospitals in Bangalore. When the team visited the hospitals, they were confronted by a system stretched to the limits by demand. The hospital staff was stretched, and requested that the team focus on improving the flow of patients through the system. However, by “living a day in the life” of the stakeholders – from the CEO to the janitors, to the patients and their families, they noticed an unusual pattern. Yes, the hospital staff was overwhelmed, however, there standing in the

Kago Kagichiri is obviously exceptionally bright. He built his first mobile app in 2001 when he was 12 years old. But he was a restless student. He told me, “I had a lot of problems with the school system. I didn’t see any relevance in what we were learning.” These two worlds, technology and education, would eventually meet in an unexpected way and plunge him deeply into the world of education technology or EdTech. In 2011, Kago met Toni Maraviglia. Toni was an educator who was frustrated with the fact that 68% of Kenyan children never make it to high school. And no wonder. Many schools have a ratio of 60 students per teacher and, perhaps even worse, four students per text book. Toni had developed a flashcard methodology that was helping her students a great deal, but without a technology solution, she was not able to scale her idea. While she was looking at this problem, she also noticed that 95% of adult Kenyans have a cell phone. That is when she met Kago at the iHub. Together, they formed Eneza Education.

Social entrepreneurship came early to Tom Osborn. When Tom was 17 years old, his mother became ill with a severe lung infection. This is not an uncommon experience for those who cook indoor with firewood and charcoal. 18,000 people in Kenya die annually due to the effects of cook stove smoke. According to the World Health Organization: Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal. Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels. More than 50% of premature deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 are caused by the particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution. This makes in-home air pollution from cooking and heating to be the third highest cause of death behind alcoholism and tuberculosis. Cooking and heating with biomass is also destroying the forests of the world. Every year Kenya loses 50,000 hectares of for

We all want to have a social impact, whether we want to start a neighborhood garden or provide clean water in sub-Saharan Africa. And yet, for many of us, we hesitate. We might be afraid or feel ill equipped. Or we might feel like we do not have the time. Sometimes it takes a significant emotional event to shake us up and to send us on a journey to social impact. Duncan Ward has just such a story. After the death of his brother, Duncan picked up his backpack and set off into the world to find meaning and purpose. While traveling in Cambodia, Duncan met Racky. Racky is a former child slave in the Pol Pot regime. Because Racky understand the importance of education, he uses his money to provide education for local children. With a little investigation, Duncan found out just how big of a problem the lack of access to education is. 121 million children of primary and secondary education age do not have access to schools. 250 million children globally cannot read or write. Duncan also found that UNICEF has a stand

If there were ever an industry that is ripe for disruption, it’s what we might call the social change industry – charitable organizations, NGOs, government organizations and other change makers. That’s primarily because of inefficiencies of information across the industry. If only someone would come along to collapse the barriers to collaboration, think how much more social impact we could have. There is a number attached to that inefficiency in the social impact marketplace, and that number is $100 billion. Sphaera is a social enterprise dedicated to accelerating the pace of change. They offer a cloud-based solution-sharing platform. They collect and curate solutions (best practices, case studies, interventions, etc.) and make them accessible to other solution-seekers around the world. Today on Social Entrepreneur, we speak with Astrid Scholz. Astrid began Sphaera out of a personal pain. As part of a 20th year celebration with an NGO where she worked, they brought together 50 bioregional organizations. They