Monday, February 1, 2010 – Friday, February 2, 2010

Finding the right job is not easy. Finding the right job at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) is even tougher. Last week for Twitter “Social Enterprise of the Day,” we highlighted five organizations that are helping connect employers to employees at the BOP in India. These organizations are using online platforms to connect clients with prospective employees, whether they are carpenters, drivers, cooks, maids, or even BPO workers!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – DesiCrew

The DesiCrew story is of a rural BPO pioneering a new vision for stimulating inclusive growth in India. With a decentralized business model providing competitive outsourcing solutions to clients and meaningful employment opportunities, they have established a technology driven, profit making social enterprise. DesiCrew provides significant scope for maximizing business value through cost management, operational efficiency, and innovation by leveraging people, process, and technology to deliver global service standards across sectors such as insurance, market research, mobile communication, and the social sector.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – Babajob

Babajob is a start-up that uses the web and mobile technology to connect employers and bottom of the pyramid (BOP) informal sector workers (i.e. maids, cooks, drivers, etc.) with the goal of creating a scalable, replicable, and profitable solution to combat poverty. Babajob aims to do this by creating greater market efficiency in the informal sector through voice and web features such as SMS, automated voice systems, and operator manned call centers, enabling employers and job seekers to find each other.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – Rural Naukri

Rural Naukri is an online job search portal that addresses the need of providing a meeting platform exclusively for the employers and employees of agribusiness, rural marketing, retail, and development. Apart from placement services, Rural Naukri also offers counseling on how to draft an impressive resume and mock interview services that help candidates market themselves better.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – GreenMango

With the tagline “Find the services you need to make ypur home and office work perfectly”, GreenMango aggregates information of service providers (available for Hyd only) and enables customers to directly reach out to (and rate/review) these providers. It is an easy way to find and review local businesses that provide daily services, providing the best carpenters, tailors, plumbers, mechanics, repairmen, and other service providers as per a user’s neighborhood. Past reviews and recommendations by users are also displayed on the site, thereby authenticating a service provider. Currently providing services in Hyderabad and Bangalore, GreenMango services will  soon be available in other Indian cities as well.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – eJeevika

eJeevika HR Pvt. Ltd is an enterprise incubated under the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras’s Rural Technology Business Incubator. With a mission to generate employment opportunities for rural youth and to tap the hidden potential of rural youth by empowering them with relevant skills, eJeevika is a platform that helps to source and train candidates, thus increasing their skills and leading to meaningful placements.

Jerryanne Heath is the CEO and Founder of ConceptLink Consulting, a firm which helps US and international social-mission organizations connect with their stakeholders through various event management and communications strategies.  She is also co-chair of the Africa Social Enterprise Forum.

Nearly 200,000 people are feared dead in Haiti as a result of the earthquake that struck the island nation on January 12, 2010.  Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have been displaced and are now homeless.  The earthquake caused terrible damage to the capital city, Port-Au-Prince and surrounding areas, toppling the already strained infrastructure and economy.

Media coverage of, and the international response to, this disaster are unprecedented.  The images of orphaned children, screams of amputees, and miraculous stories from survivors resonate with me.  We are all human. This tragedy could have happened anywhere.  Many of us feel compelled to do something.

As of January 29, more than $560 million had been donated to US nonprofits leading relief efforts in Haiti.  According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the pace of giving for Haiti is running ahead of the amount donated in the same period after the September 11th attacks in 2001 and the Asian tsunamis in 2004.  Many of these donations are going directly to NGOs working on the ground, saving lives, and providing food and water.  I have donated to 5 organizations – I want to do my part to ease the pain.

What concerns me is that beyond the immediate task of rescue, the overwhelming kindness of do-gooders may be contributing to the longer term detriment of Haiti.  Are we, in our efforts to help, ignoring the true desires/responsibilities of the Haitian people?  For example, 10 American missionaries have been arrested for child-trafficking after trying to ferry 33 children out of Haiti and into the Dominican Republic.  The missionaries claimed the children were orphans; but many of their parents were alive and many of the children simply did not want to go.

I am also concerned about the international donor community rushing in and pledging billions of aid dollars to Haiti over the next several years.  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with fellow do-gooders in Montreal last week to discuss helping Haiti “build back better.”  They agreed on a 10-year reconstruction effort which is expected to cost $3 billion.  According to Haitian officials, the money would be used to house 200,000 people left homeless in 200 model communities complete with schools and health care centers, as well as to rebuild government ministries and national infrastructure.  The end goal sounds great; however, it is unlikely that any aid scheme will reduce poverty and corruption if the approach remains the same as it has been for the past two centuries. Continue reading

Saying that we love the Unreasonable Institute may be an understatement. We’ve known them from the beginning. Lindsay, Managing Editor of Beyond Profit, is one of their mentors. So is Pawan, one of the Co-Founders of Intellecap, our parent company. We are a pipeline partner to help them attract some of the world’s most high-impact young social entrepeneurs. They were an early advertiser in Issue 2 of Beyond Profit. And finally, Teju Ravilochan, Co-Founder & Connections Extraordinaire of the Unreasonable Institute, contributed a fabulous article entitled “It Takes a Village: Testing the Village Capital Hypothesis” to Issue 3 of Beyond Profit. As you can see, saying that we love them is indeed an understatement.

And so, we’d like to take this opportunity to let you know that thirty-five young entrepreneurs will vie for twenty-five spots in the ten-week Unreasonable Institute, a Boulder-based incubator. These young entrepreneurs hail from 16 countries, and they target issues ranging from the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Liberia to the use of agricultural waste to produce energy in Bangladesh. The mentor-intensive Institute has developed an unusual way to involve the world in selecting its twenty-five entrepreneurs while admitting them free of charge, testing their entrepreneurial ability, and covering its costs of operations. It’s an online platform called the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace, where the 35 finalists in the Unreasonable Institute’s selection process can showcase their ventures. People from around the world then vote with their dollars on the most viable ventures for creating social and environmental impact. The first twenty-five ventures to raise $6,500 on this marketplace are the ones selected to attend the Unreasonable Institute.

Why this $6,500? Well, the program costs the Unreasonable Institute $6,500 per entrepreneur. Because $6,500 is not affordable to young entrepreneurs from all geographies, to ensure the programs affordability while recovering costs, the Unreasonable Institute team turned to the idea of “crowd-sourcing” as modeled by Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an online platform for enterprising artists to raise funds for their early-stage projects by soliciting small contributions from hundreds of sponsors – limiting how much a sponsor can give each week. Adopting this model enables the Unreasonable Institute to have its cake and eat it too. “We charge our entrepreneurs $6,500 without allowing them to pay it,” says Epstein. “We instead ask them to demonstrate their entrepreneurial ability by galvanizing the financial support of hundreds of people through the Marketplace.”

We think this is an unbelievable model, truly pathbreaking. In a sector that is constantly searching for the next best thing, this may be it. It equalizes the playing field. It allows young entrepreneurs to demonstrate their entrepreneurial prowess and dedication to their cause. It leverages social media. It is an excercise in both mobilizing the power of your idea and storytelling abilities as well as in galvanizing both your current supporters and those who you haven’t yet reached. In a society that is practically obsessed with micro-philanthropy, the potential is limitless. With the low price tag to participate, a low barrier to entry, if you may, it has the potential to attract many people to social enterprise. Get both your grandma and your gardener to give. And after that, they too will have heard of social enterprise. Talk about building the ecosystem.

Here’s a 1-minute YouTube video that gives you the low-down on the marketplace.

Chid Liberty: Co-Founder, Sustainable Global Sourcing, Liberian Women’s Sewing Project

Chid Liberty is a juggler.  In addition to being a finance guru and an entrepreneur, he presides over a four-pronged hybrid social enterprise that does works on two continents—providing fair trade certified garments to retailers in the US and giving women good jobs in Liberia. Recently, Sustainable Global Sourcing, the for-profit company based in the US, received its first private label order from a major retailer.  Beyond Profit asked Liberty about the challenges of keeping everything moving.

Beyond Profit (BP): Your operation has four different arms.  What purpose does each serve and what are the advantages of setting up your enterprise this way?

Chid Liberty (Liberty): Our for-profit in San Francisco, SGS, is the key organization, a for-profit sourcing company.  We interact with major retailers here, and my partner Adam runs sales from East Coast.  We give the Gaps and Levis and Pranas of the world an easy way to buy sustainably sourced African cotton.

Our non-profit Made in Liberia, based in the US, supports our nonprofit in Liberia.  There we have a Community Development Fund, a non-profit that has three programs: capacity building (workforce development training, buying new equipment for the factory and for small cotton producers; business incubation (women-owned SMEs); and community reinvestment (women go through a three-day workshop; a group therapy session, ethnic sharing exercises; etc.).  Also in Liberia is a for profit factory, the Liberian Women’s Sewing Project.  The women own shares in this Liberian corporation.  It’s not a cooperative.  Women workers own 49% of the company, and I own 51%, but can’t take any economic gains from it. Continue reading

Monday, January 25, 2010 – Friday, January 29, 2010

In the developing world, education, or the lack of it, is a root cause of many other problems. Over population, disease, lack of sanitation, and crime are only some of a society’s vices that can be eliminated with the spread of literacy. Last week, as Twitter Social Enterprise of the Day, we picked organizations that are helping to spread education through innovative technological aids.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – IL&FS English Seekho

Developed by IL&FS Education and Technology Services Ltd, English Seekho is a new revolutionary service to learn spoken English. It uses mobile telephony as a platform to reach the masses. English Seekho is a phone based tutor that allows one to pick up basic spoken English skills through quick and effective 5 minute lessons. This mobile course integrates the instructional technologies offered by a mobile phone into a learning experience for a user.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – Educomp

Pioneering initiatives in the e-education space, Educomp Solutions Ltd. is one of India’s largest education companies, reaching over 26,000 schools and 15 million learners and educators across the world. Educomp works closely with schools, implementing innovative models and creating and delivering content to enhance student learning. Educomp has maintained a long, undiluted focus in the K-12 curriculum design and teacher education space. Its innovative applications and products have revolutionized the way information technology and the Internet are used to deliver new age learning to people.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – Butterfly Fields

Butterfly Fields is an initiative to make learning enriching and enjoyable. The Butterfly Fields’ Team strongly feels that the career choice of an individual should be driven by passions and interests that are intrinsic to her rather than by any external influence. Essentially, Butterfly Fields believes in learning by doing. The entire program is comprised of various activities and experiences that are specifically designed to make a child understand underlying concepts and principles, and at the same time, to enjoy it. At Butterfly Fields, the child is placed in an atmosphere where she is made to work in a team, challenged to make decisions, asked to gather information, posed with questions, and encouraged to think laterally.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – One Laptop per Child

“The mission of One Laptop per Child  (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege.” The One Laptop per Child project provides a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world through the powerful XO laptop. The XO is a potent learning tool designed and built especially for children in developing countries, living in some of the most remote environments. It’s about the size of a small textbook. It has built-in wireless and a unique screen that is readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outdoors. It’s extremely durable, brilliantly functional, energy-efficient, and fun.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Social Enterprise of the Day – Food For Education

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a leading organization that addresses two of the most immediate challenges facing India – hunger and education – through its school lunch program. Akshaya Patra feeds one million underprivileged children daily in government run schools in India. A public-private partnership, Akshaya Patra combines good management, innovative technology and smart engineering to deliver school lunch at a fraction of the cost of similar programs in other parts of the world. For many of the children, this is their only complete meal for the day. This gives them an incentive to come to school and stay in school and provides them with the necessary nutrients they need to develop their cognitive abilities to focus on learning. By leveraging technology in cooking and delivery, Akshaya Patra has helped to build a global standard of supply chain efficiency. It has also put in place forward and backward linkages to ensure that procurement is done directly from the local farmers and delivered to the beneficiaries in the most cost-efficient manner.

In a previous post, I touched on the importance of perspective. It matters. In life. In work. In relationships.

And your perspective depends on where you are sitting at a certain point of time. What your past has held. And what you want to create for your future. Essentially, it matters where you are. Who you are surrounded by. What you have done. And where you want to go.

As I wrote, observing social enterprise from Mumbai probably makes the sector look a lot different than if I were observing it from San Francisco, Cartagena, London, or Lagos. My perspective is colored by my life on the ground in Mumbai. By my knowledge of development, of social enterprise, and of India. By the stories I hear and the words I read daily. And by those who inspire me.

But in all, this is a very narrow subset of reality. What we do – working in the social enterprise sector, that is – is not yet mainstream. When people ask me about my job, I don’t know what to say. The conversation generally goes something like this. “So, tell me, what do you do?” “I work for a magazine.” “Oh, which one?” “Well you’ve probably never heard of it, but it’s called Beyond Profit and we cover the social enterprise sector (insert definition of social enterprise here)” “Oh, so you work for an NGO?” “No, we aren’t an NGO. We are a for-profit company.” And the conversation progresses down this path of confusion.

With this lack of familiarity comes both challenges and opportunities. How do we go mainstream? How do we get people to say, “Oh social enterprise, yeah I’ve heard of that”? It is starting on college campuses because social enterprise clubs are rapidly becoming the “cool” clubs to join. It has started in the financial sector as we have realized, in light of the economic downturn of the past few years that old economic models are no longer working. People are calling for a new economic system. A new brand of capitalism. A new breed of business. And it is starting in homes, as women ages 18-35 are getting online and giving back to society through new technological platforms that are changing the way charities raise money and build audiences. (See the cover story in Issue 2 of Beyond Profit – Embedded Giving: Increasing Social Awareness through Online Platforms)

But perhaps the question that needs to be tackled is how do we create a common language for social enterprise – across continents, across cultures, and across languages? How do we make sure we are all on the same page? And this comes back to the perspective piece. What you think of social enterprise depends on where you are sitting.

We, sectoral insiders, need to be clear on what we are before we can conquer the world. And this is where I go back to relationships. We can only come to this consensus through dialogue and by building relationships, both professionally and personally. Luckily, social enterprise is still a small sector, a nascent sector. It is easy to get to know your fellow social enterprise practitioners. Everyone is friendly. Everyone wants to talk. And everyone wants to learn. What works in sub-Saharan Africa may not ultimately work in India. And what works in India may not work in China. We must take the best practices from the cumulative experience and create a lexicon, a bible of social enterprise.

An opportunity awaits to write this bible, who will be the first to take advantage of it?

Marketing Fellow — 1 Month Action Research Project

Beyond Profit seeks a student or young professional to assist in a marketing research assignment for a new social enterprise magazine.

Beyond Profit, a magazine focused on social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, is trying to reach new audiences and increase its subscriber base. We have partnered with a retail store in Mumbai to increase our visibility and market our product to potential new customers. We seek a Marketing Fellow to serve as the magazine’s in-store representative, to speak to customers about the magazine, and to capture customer information. The Fellowship will last for 4-5 weeks and is a great opportunity to get on the ground experience in retail marketing with a professional consulting firm.

Role:

The ideal candidate will be an outgoing, well-spoken college student or young professional with a background in business, marketing, and/or social enterprise. The project will entail spending several hours a day and several weekend days in the retail store in central Mumbai speaking to shoppers/customers. During the project, the Fellow will report back to our team on a regular basis to share insights from the day’s interactions. At the end of the Fellowship, a report on the project will be presented to the Intellecap Publications team.

The project will last 4-5 weeks. Only candidates based in Mumbai will be considered.  Candidates should be available to be in-store from 5-8 PM three days each week (Weds-Fri), and from 12 PM-6 PM on Saturday and Sunday. Project will take place in Feb, March or April, depending on availability.

Responsibilities:

• Engage in conversation with customers about Beyond Profit magazine (a script will be provided)
• Gather email addresses of potential new readers and subscribers; candidate must meet a certain quota of email addresses captured each day (materials and forms provided)
• Enter email addresses captured into excel sheet for easy follow up at the end of each day (preferred)
• Create final report on the research assignment and present it to the publications team; should include personal experiences of how the magazine is received, how well the approach worked, conversion rates

Remuneration:

Marketing Fellow will receive INR 5,000 upon successful completion of assignment.

To apply, please send your resume and a brief introduction to contribute@beyondprofit.com

Beyond Profit is currently looking for cool companies that work with artisans in developing countries and sell their crafts, jewelry, and products online. If you know of any that you can recommend, please send information to ideas@beyondprofit.com. Thanks!

In the January-March Issue of Beyond Profit, Sarah Gelfand, Director of IRIS at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), explains why the social investing sphere needs standardized reporting metrics and performance benchmarks in order to truly understand the social and environmental impact of investments.

In the fall issue of Beyond Profit, Adrienne Villani wrote about an increase in charities using quantitative social and environmental metrics to describe their work. Transparency is good practice for all organizations, and it’s especially necessary for those that rely on grants and donation funding. But a new class of social entrepreneurs is discovering additional reasons for reporting social performance as they increasingly pursue blended financing models, combining grants with traditional business loans or equity.

The economic downturn caused many investors to question the full impact of their investments, leading more investors to consider social and environmental components of investing in addition to financial expectations. These “impact” investors are diverse, and have a wide range of financial expectations—from a simple return of capital to sub-market and even market-rate returns.

Last fall, we launched the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) to help impact investors propel their work, and to attract more investors and more money to the field. Previous research from the Monitor Institute1 concluded that scaling the activities of impact investors and realizing the potential of this underleveraged sector requires industry building and cohesion. Specifically, the industry needs enabling infrastructure, similar to that which supports mainstream investing—such as standardized reporting metrics, performance benchmarking, ratings agencies, and auditors—around the social and environmental impact of investments. Continue reading

Your perspective depends on your vantage point. Observing social enterprise from Mumbai probably makes the sector look a lot different than if we were observing it from San Francisco, Cartagena, London, or Lagos. And actually working in the sector adds another layer of nuance, detail, and differentiation.

With this, comes both challenges and opportunities. How do we create a common language for social enterprise – across continents, across cultures, and across languages? How do we make sure we are all on the same page?

The first step, I think, is to get to know your fellow social enterprise practitioners. It is still a small sector, a nascent sector. There aren’t many of us, yet (although this number is increasing by the day!). And luckily, it seems that everyone wants to talk. Everyone wants to bounce ideas off of each other. Everyone wants to collaborate. This is an incredible opportunity.

And there is no better way to take advantage of this opportunity than to attend one of the many sector building events that are being organized around the globe. One with which we are especially excited to partner? The upcoming Social Enterprise Alliance Summit 2010 + World Forum. Taking place in San Francisco, April 28-30, 2010, the Summit 2010 + World Forum hopes to draw over 600 social entrepreneurs (100 from developing countries!) to learn, to grow, to be inspired, to make new connections from around the globe, and to become part of the expanding social enterprise movement. Beyond Profit will be on hand as a media partner.

While we are engrossed in social enterprise on a daily basis, it is often easy to lose track of the fact that it is not yet mainstream. The Summit 2010 + World Forum is an opportunity to change this – to help advocate for wider use of social enterprise approaches, to discover new models, and to make connections to grow impact, both of the sector as a whole and of individual enterprises.

The Summit 2010 + World Forum will kick off with a Social Enterprise Showcase and Reception, and consist of in-depth workshops, an “Angel’s Forum,” speed dating a la Social Enterprise, and special visits to social enterprises in the Bay Area. It will be an opportunity to ask the following three questions: What is happening globally? What are the opportunities nationally? And how do I do this locally?