social entrepreneurship – Page 3

China, dreams, economy, entrepreneurship, future, money, social entrepreneurship

My Year of Hopefulness – A $7 lunch and off-balance sheet assets

June 7, 2009 Christa Avampato

I’m working on some new product ideas especially for the Chinese consumer market and for some perspective I turned to my close friend, Allan, who was born and raised in Beijing. With his drive and intricate understanding of the markets, I am eventually handing all of my money over to him to manage, and if I ever need a board member, my first call is to him. Allan never agrees with me right off the bat about anything – he doesn’t give me an inch of wiggle room. Allan, in his characteristically curious way, questions me incessantly on detail after detail. And I am deeply grateful for that.

Today, our conversation flipped from Chinese vs. American culture (a favorite topic of ours) to the state of our jobs to future plans and then to social enterprise. While everyone on the planet is gushing about the promise and bright future of social enterprise, Allan is skeptical. Today he forced me to take him through the concept of social entrepreneurship, step by step. The financials, the motivation, the benefits, the short-comings, the operational challenges.

Allan took all this information in and to wrap up, he got to 1 more very simple question and 1 very simple conclusion. Allan’s last question: “Christa, are you okay with having a $7 lunch for the rest of your life as opposed to a $70 lunch like those guys on Wall Street?” My answer: “Yes, I’d prefer it that way.” Allan’s reply: “Good. Then you are a perfect candidate to be a social entrepreneur.” Allan’s conclusion: “Seems to me that there must be some off-balance sheet assets that must be accounted for.” How true that is!

For the rest of the afternoon, I thought about the role of off-balance sheet assets that we must consider in every aspect of our lives; how we spend our time and with whom, our happiness, the amount we laugh everyday, and our sense of purpose are all assets that are tough to value in dollars. And yet, they are critically important – I would argue far more important than our salaries (provided our salaries cover our basic needs). These “other” assets, the ones we can’t hold in the palm of our hand, are the stuff that make our lives worthwhile.

Allan and I trekked up to the castle that overlooks the Great Lawn in Central Park. I was grinning from ear to ear and Allan asked me, “What does that view mean to you?” I looked out at the people relaxing, smiling, and enjoying the simultaneously simple and complex act of being alive. A small oasis of hope in a city that is seeing its fair share of challenges. This view is off-balance sheet assets personified. And from that view, their value is very easy to see.

The photo is from Pbase.com/mikebny

career, economy, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship

My Year of Hopefulness – Are you a social entrepreneur?

April 18, 2009 Christa Avampato

The core psychology of a social entrepreneur is someone who cannot come to rest, in a very deep sense, until he or she has changed the pattern in an area of social concern all across society. –Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka

This morning on Daily Good, an on-line publication devoted to spreading good news, the topic is social entrepreneurship. What makes these people tick? The post this morning may help us all identify whether or not this type of entrepreneurship is the right one for us. Simply stated, social entrepreneurs found a business (often for-profit) that addresses a societal concern.

Could you be a social entrepreneur? Could your business or business idea be a social enterprise?

A personality checklist:
1.) Unable to come to rest until a cause you are passionate about is accomplished
2.) Belief that profit and social good are on equal footing
3.) Relationship builder
4.) Ability to connect the dots between experiences that seem disparate on the surface
5.) Persuade and inspire people to think differently

A business-cause checklist:
1.) As your company grows, do the economics and the cause support one another?
2.) Does the core business activity profoundly address the social cause it was founded to solve?
3.) Are both financial and social gains measurable in your business?

The interest in and passion for social entrepreneurship is growing quickly. One upside to this economy, is that people are being encouraged to think more creatively about how they want their lives to look and what they want to accomplish. After seeing the failings and flailings of many large corporations, many people are beginning to consider trading in their lives whiling away in grey cubicles for a chance to be entrepreneurs in charge of their own careers. And they’d like that effort to bring them financial gain and some improvements to the world around them.

Africa, economy, entrepreneurship, investing, Kiva.org, money, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship

My Year of Hopefulness – Kiva.org

March 24, 2009December 7, 2009 Christa Avampato

I’ve given up on opening my 401K statements. The news is just too depressing. Given our current economic state, I’ve been searching of where to put my investment money. Where will it do the most good, for me and for the companies I choose to invest in. When I look at the Dow 30, I don’t have a lot of faith in many of those institutions to reinvent themselves. Some of them have remarkable potential. Most of them have to accept that they have a very tough realization to come to terms with – in the words of Darwin, “Change or die.”

The investments that are intriguing to me these days are in entrepreneurs, particularly those in developing nations such as Rwanda. I just placed my first investment in an entrepreneur in Ghana through Kiva.org. I lent $25 to a woman named Agnes Cobbina for a 7-month term. She owns a hair salon and she wanted to borrow $375 to expand her business. With 14 other lenders, I completed Anges’s loan goal. What was remarkable is that I clicked on several different entrepreneurs and by the time I got to the “lend to” page, their goal was already completed. In the 10 seconds that it took me to read a bit about them, someone else had stepped in to help! One loan is made every 14 seconds through Kiva.org.

Some people might think of this as a charitable donation rather than a loan. Nothing could be further from the truth. 99% of those who receive loans through organizations like Kiva.org pay them back in full. How many U.S. investments can say that these days? And not only am I confident that I will receive my money back; I know that I helped someone help themselves through this loan. I am empowering Agnes, providing her with a dignified way to grow her business and support her family.

I’m thrilled to be able to participate with Kiva.org. But I want to do more. I’d be willing to take part of my investment money and provide it directly to an entrepreneur in a country like Rwanda for a return. What an amazing thing it would be to combine the idea of Sharebuilder with that of a Kiva.org. Could this be a new paradigm for global investment?

books, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship

My Year of Hopefulness – The Blue Sweater

March 22, 2009 Christa Avampato

Inspiration is one of the main reasons I read. To my delight, Jacqueline Novogratz, the CEO of Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital fund dedicated to eradicating poverty through strategic entrepreneurial investments in the developing world, wrote a book from her heart that is uplifting for anyone who ever had a dream and went after it. The Blue Sweater is a story of encouragement, faith, and determination for people who want to live a purposeful, fulfilling life. In other words, this book is for everyone. And you must read it.

Jacqueline takes us on a journey from her life as a young college graduate working for Chase Manhattan into Africa where she worked in microfinance back to the US where she attended Stanford Business School and then through her career post-MBA up through her founding of Acumen Fund. Articulate, powerful, and deeply moving, Jacqueline’s prose are so fluid it’s as if a friend sat me down to tell me her life story. Every page took me further and further down the road of adventure. I couldn’t put it down and read it from beginning to end in one weekend.

With a vivid writing style, Jacqueline introduces each character so clearly that you feel they’re in the room with you and you feel compelled to help them in the way that you’d help a friend or family member. I wanted so much to see each character succeed. As their pride welled, so did mine. As they smiled and grew more confident, so did I. And when things didn’t go well for the characters, I felt their heartbreak, too. I wanted them to keep going and I wanted to go with them.

Perhaps the most incredible feature of the book is Jacqueline’s humility and her ability to try and try again she made some positive progress in everything she ever attempted. Too often we are reading the stories of people and companies who are too afraid to admit mistakes or failure, who don’t want to take risks or step out of their comfort zones. It was refreshing to hear the twists and turns that Jacqueline’s career in social enterprise has taken. She owns every success and every failure with grace and dignity. And the many entrepreneurs she has helped throughout her career are all better off for her tenacity and ambition.

Warning: there is a high probability that this book will motivate you to make a difference today. Be ready.

art, career, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, Spring

My Year of Hopefulness – Spring arrives

March 21, 2009 Christa Avampato

Spring arrived yesterday with a last little flurry of snow. I was just finishing up my Friday morning shift at God’s Love We Deliver when I looked out the window to see flakes swirling in a mad rush to wave one last good-bye to the long, cold winter. And it was Winter’s nod to us to remind us that “I’ll be back”. I laughed as I thought about that dialogue between Spring and Winter. Nature’s changing of the guard.

By all accounts I am a Winter person. I love my sweaters, jeans, and boots. Walking in the park or down 5th Avenue when it’s snowing is one of my favorite activities. Usually Winter reminds me of rest and healing, a time of contemplation, reflection, and preparation. Not this year. I have wanted Winter to end from the day it started. These past few months I’ve been praying for the end of the cold like never before.

This morning as I stepped outside I felt a little lighter (though still cold thanks to the 32 degree temperature). There definitely was a shift in the air from Friday morning. I imagined the ice that’s surrounded us for 4 months cracking and shattering under the gentle gaze of the warm sunlight. The very tiny seeds that we planted last fall are beginning to inch upward, reaching for their stage. It’s almost their time.

Now nearly three months into my writing, researching, and reading daily about hope, I’m ready to do something with all of these ideas I’ve been considering and shaping about my career and my life. It was a far longer process than I thought it would be. My very simple idea to do something in the social entrepreneurship space has been whittled down to something that looks more like a recognizable figure, though not yet fully formed. I consider how every sculptor starts with a mound of clay, slab of marble, or block of ice, knowing that with patience, passion, and hard work a masterpiece will emerge, eventually.

In one of my college art history classes, I remember reading something about Donatello’s agonizing work style. There are accounts of him in his studio hammering away at the marble to create his next statue and screaming at it “speak, damn you, speak!” Though I’m not really at that level, I understand that desire to work away on the block so that the fully formed piece will step into the light and show itself.

I think about that image, that metaphor of a sculptor, as I walk in the park, write, and adjust my idea for starting a social enterprise. In the light of Spring it seems to be taking shape more clearly. With every conversation and experience, every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper article I read and write, I get a tiny bit of information of how to shape my idea. And as I gather up all those tiny bits, I begin to see a vision that’s clearer and more reflective of who I am and who I’d like to be.

The image above can be found at: http://images.theage.com.au/2009/01/10/344641/sculpt-420-420×0.jpg

business, nonprofit, philanthropy, social change, social entrepreneurship

My Year of Hopefulness – Acumen Fund, Social Media, and Recruiting

March 6, 2009December 7, 2009 Christa Avampato

Acumen Fund is looking for a Business Development Manager. Rather than go the usual route of getting the word out about this position, the took an interesting approach both in the advertisement of the position and in the application. Sasha Dichter, the Director of Business Development at Acumen Fund, used his blog, Squidoo, and Seth Godin’s blog to advertise the position. 13,000 viewed the post on his blog alone. In addition to the usual resume and cover letter request, Sasha also requested that applicants create a Squidoo Len (webpage) and answer a series of questions in ~250 words each to get at the heart of what the applicants believe and how they express themselves.

There are so many business applications to this recruitment and application method, and I will discuss those in my Examiner.com column. For the purposes of this post, I wanted to explain why the incredible response to Sasha’s post gives me great hope for our future. Acumen Fund is dedicated to investing in projects that focus on providing critical services in the developing world. It’s a very intriguing hybrid model of nonprofit and venture capital. The position requires people who can put on a nonprofit and for-profit thinking cap; someone who can think both analytically and conceptually, and express themselves in engaging prose.

Not only is this degree of interest in a position at Acumen Fund a win for those who believe they can do well by doing good, it is also a great victory for storytellers and the skill of writing in general. Many people in the world of business think in bullet points on Powerpoint slides. They have forgotten how to create meaningful, compelling prose. The many people who applied for the Acumen Fund show that expressive writing is not dead at all — it is still alive and well, and garnering great interest among business people.

For people like me who are interested in having one foot in the for-profit and nonprofit world, who wants to analyze numbers and then build out the narrative that those numbers create, it is so exciting to know that there are many others out there with this same interest. My sincere thanks to Seth Godin and Acumen Fund for providing this example and instilling us all with hope!

The photo above can be found at http://blog.acumenfund.org/author/ddoshi/