Blogs

Advancing Social Impact

Leading practitioners share actionable, insightful tips intended for immediate use by organizations seeking to expand impact and meet mission. This blog, a companion resource to the handbook, Nonprofit Management 101, highlights easy to implement solutions and related resources on critical issues, including fundraising, earned income, social media, marketing, PR, events, board and volunteer engagement, lobbying and advocacy.

Africa's Moment

Born and raised in Soweto, Magogodi Makhene helps create Africa's missing middle-class through business innovation. She recently co-founded Zenzele Circle, an angel investment network linking sub-Sahara African start-ups with seed and growth capital and strategic relationships. She received the Reynolds Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship at NYU and is now co-Chair of the Africa Social Enterprise Forum. Africa's Moment chronicles her adventures exploring the landscape of African social innovation.

Alvin’s Guide to Good Business

Follow financial expert Alvin Hall as he visits eight leading social entrepreneurs, looking at business models, impact, and the challenges of scaling. This series on social entrepreneurs around the globe is produced by the BBC World News.

Alyson in Africa

Princeton in Africa Fellow Alyson Zureick blogs on her year in Sierra Leone and the numerous grassroots initiatives for social change.

Be Bold with Echoing Green

Lara Galinsky is the Vice President of Strategy and Communications at Echoing Green, a global social venture fund that has been identifying and investing in social entrepreneurs for twenty years. Lara co-authored Be Bold, a handbook for emerging nonprofit leaders, with Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green. Here, she shares the four elements of boldness in a series of lessons culled from the book.

The Berkeley Bottom Line

Ellen Martin, Edwin Ou and Rob Kaplan, second-year MBA students at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, blog from the 2007 Skoll World Forum.

Berkeley Bottom Line 2008

 

Beyond Good Intentions

After years of working with aid projects around the world, Tori Hogan came to the unfortunate realization that the vast majority weren’t drastically improving lives. She seeks answers in Beyond Good Intentions.

Capital Ideas

Capital Ideas is a six month series providing a "Finance 101 for Social Entrepreneurs" through a combined offering of basic finance knowledge, practical advice and case studies. Capital Ideas is covering topics such as financing alternatives (debt, equity and grants), determining your financing strategy, identifying potential sources of capital, the elements of a successful pitch for finance, and more. The authors, Kylie Charlton and Eric Savage, are founding members of Unitus Capital (www.unituscapital.com) and between them have more than 30 years investment banking experience.

The Blue Sweater

"They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face." Thus writes Jacqueline Novogratz in her new book, "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor." The founder and CEO of Acumen Fund went to Africa in her twenties to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. As she writes in this excerpt, she later realized that "the world needed a new kind of institution, one built on the best lessons and precepts of philanthropy but also utilizing business approaches and concepts." That's how Acumen Fund was launched.

Carter Center

Dave Johnson is blogging live from the Carter Center Conference on Faith and Freedom: Protecting Human Rights as Common Cause.

CASE on Business Models

Greg Dees and Cathy Clark of CASE, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, bring you results from their global project exploring the latest trends, approaches, examples of how to build sustainable, robust and scalable business models that effectively drive social impact.

Case Studies on Asia

Avantage Ventures, a Hong Kong-based advisory firm focused on growing the social enterprise industry in Asia, presents eight case studies of sustainable social enterprises in the Asia Pacific region. These case studies provide evidence of innovative and progressive social enterprises in Asia and present valuable opportunities for evaluating the state of social entrepreneurship in the East.

Civic Entrepreneurship

From mayor to Harvard professor and chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Stephen Goldsmith has seen government try to do good from almost every angle. In his new book, "The Power of Social Innovation: How Civic Entrepreneurs Ignite Community Networks for Good," Goldsmith explores the intersection between government officials and social entrepreneurs --a new frontier with great potential for both. In this blog, excerpted from his book, he offers common sense principles and tangible strategies to help move beyond entrepreneurial individuals and organizations to entrepreneurial networks and fertile communities.

Creating Confusion

Serial social entrepreneur Anand Shah is CEO of Sarvajal, a social enterprise increasing access to pure drinking water through entrepreneurship. He graduated from Harvard College before launching Indicorps in Ahmedabad. He is also CEO of the Piramal Foundation, where he helps India's youth actively participate in national progress. And he is helping setup Vedanta University in Orissa. Anand Shah is a member of the Aspen Institute’s inaugural India Leadership Initiative.

A Clearly Social Economy

Back in the 1980s and '90s, Rodney Schwartz had “proper jobs” with investment banks PaineWebber, Lehman and Paribas. Seeing the error of his ways, he has for the last ten years advised, studied, written about and built several leading UK social businesses and enterprises. With the help of his ClearlySo colleagues, he praises heroes, bursts bubbles, and advocates ideas to accelerate the arrival of a more social economy, increase social investment and assist social entrepreneurs.

Clinton Global Initiative

Dave Johnson, founder and principal author of Seeing The Forest, blogs from the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

Corporate Service Fellows

Madhu Anand left her comfortable job as a Business Operations Manager in Cisco Systems’ California headquarters and began a six-month, full- time corporate service fellowship supporting microfinance in Kyrgyzstan. She tells her story to Jennifer Anastasoff, CEO of BuildingBlocks International. Read also Oren Penn's story below --he left PricewaterhouseCoopers in Washington to start a corporate service fellowship in rural Orissa, India.

Disrupting Philanthropy

Lucy Bernholz (Blueprint Research & Design), and Edward Skloot and Barry Varela (both with the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University) explore the immediate and longer-term implications of networked digital technologies for philanthropy. Their claim: as enormous databases and powerful new visualization tools can be accessed instantly by anyone, at any time, information networks are transforming philanthropy. In this excerpt of "Disrupting Philanthropy: Technology and the Future of the Social Sector," they offer a glimpse of what is to come.

Dr. O on New Money

Patrick O'Heffernan, Ph.D. (also known as Dr. O) helps you find the right tools to fund your social venture.

The Dragonfly Effect

Andy Smith and Jennifer Aaker wrote The Dragonfly Effect to show through case examples how social media can drive social change. To compliment these examples, they pulled together research in social psychology, social media insight and a simple, repeatable framework to offer social ventures a playbook to reach their social good goals.

The Edge

The Social Edge team describes what it takes to live on The Edge, shares news from the Social Edge community, and highlights important ideas and opportunities from the field of social entrepreneurship.

Forging Ahead

Kjerstin Erickson was 20 when she launched FORGE in 2003. She didn't have a business plan. She didn't have a revenue model. She didn't have connections. And she didn't have a penny. But she now works in three refugee camps in Zambia, helping 60,000 refugees build better lives. This is her story.

Generating blueEnergy

Mathias Craig developed a passion for wind power while studying at Berkeley. After feeding his interest at MIT, Mathias Craig co-founded blueEnergy in 2004 to bring renewable wind and solar energy to marginalized communities on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. Electricity helped, but these communities also lacked access to clean water, communications, education, health care and more. Creating fundamental change, he reasoned, would require a broader approach; but business principles dictated the need to focus. Generating blueEnergy follows Mathias on his quest to balance the need for holistic solutions with the need to focus, all while keeping the train on the tracks.

Fine On Funding

Allison Fine, in Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, outlined strategies for "connected activism." Here she wrote about The Future of Funding: Rethinking Philanthropy and Fundraising Using Social Media.

Fair Street

Following the financial crisis, George Henry de Frahan, Maxime Dieudonné and Thomas Blake, three Belgian finance graduates, embarked on a tour of South America --from Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile with stopovers in Bariloche, Jujuy, Cochabamba, La Paz and Lima. As they investigate the relationship between finance and social entrepreneurship, discover here the video portraits of social entrepreneurs, profiles of social venture funds and the conflicting thoughts of the authors.

Engage In Uganda

Seventeen students from Northwestern University are spending the summer in Uganda to implement projects in microfinance and youth leadership. Liz, Nikolai and Ann share their adventures.

From the Ghetto to Harvard

Bill Strickland, a three-time Harvard Business School case study and a MacArthur Genius Award winner, has changed the lives of thousands of disadvantaged urban teens and welfare mothers with his world-class arts centers and career training centers. He tells his story in “Make The Impossible Possible,” from which this blog is excerpted.

From Tribeca To Tanzania

Keely Stevenson wrote about her work with Acumen Fund in Tanzania, working on distribution of mosquito nets. She has closed this chapter of her blog as she now helps to launch a global social enterprise investment fund from Geneva.

Frumkin On Philanthropy

Peter Frumkin, professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Strategic Giving (The Art and Science of Philanthropy), writes about "The Five Meanings of Scale."

Global Engagement Summit

Northwestern students blog live from the 2008 Global Engagement Summit

Global X

Watch leading social entrepreneurs as they tell moving stories that had a significant impact on their personal and professional lives. They also give aspiring social entrepreneurs advice they can use immediately to scale their ventures. These interviews are quite short --approximately four minutes.

Government Engagement

Andrew Wolk, founder and CEO of Root Cause and senior lecturer in social entrepreneurship at MIT, writes on social entrepreneurship and government. This blog features highlights from the Small Business Administration’s 2007 Report to the President and the follow-up paper co-published with the Aspen Institute “Advancing Social Entrepreneurship: Recommendations for Policy Makers and Government Agencies.” Learn more at www.publicinnovators.com.

let there d.light!

This is Sam Goldman's story. He grew up in Mauritania, Pakistan, Peru, India and Rwanda, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin and studied biology and environmental studies in Canada before receiving his MBA from Stanford. “My neighbor’s son in Benin was badly burned by a kerosene lamp. I decided to provide a source of light that is safe and cheap.” This is the story of a social entrepreneur in the making and the building of a global social enterprise: d.light design.

The Learning Curve

Social entrepreneur Dhaval Chadha is based in Rio, where he is a Founder and Partner at Cria. He previously worked on strategy and innovation in new models and new markets for CDI, the social enterprise that transforms lives and communities using technology. While at Harvard College, he catalyzed large-scale reform of career services. The Learning Curve provides an insider's look on being young in the social entrepreneurship sector. It is also a space to investigate where and how other aspiring social entrepreneurs can have the maximum impact.

iOnPoverty

Jonathan C. Lewis is the host of iOnPoverty -- an online video series for young professionals and students seeking careers in economic opportunity and justice work. He is the founder of the Opportunity Collaboration and MicroCredit Enterprises. Jonathan also lectures at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley. He is a frequent public speaker on economic development issues, social entrepreneurship and social change, and is a recipient of the Social Venture Network Innovation Award.

Let There Be Light!

Paul Light, Professor at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, spent the past two years testing the assumptions he has used in his past work. In his new book, "The Search for Social Entrepreneurship," he addresses key questions: Do entrepreneurs always work alone? Do they really think differently from other high achievers? Are their ideas always radical? Can social entrepreneurs create opportunities for change where none exist? And do their organizations have to be new?

Kiva Chronicles

In 2005, Matt Flannery co-founded Kiva, the world’s first online lending platform, to support entrepreneurs in Uganda. Kiva has raised over $100 million in support to entrepreneurs all over the globe and Matt has taken to the road (check him on Twitter: @mattflannery) to promote the mission of connecting people through lending to alleviate poverty. In his absence, he has invited the Kiva Fellows who come from all walks of life to continue sharing Kiva stories from the field. Follow the real-life stories of individuals who are changing the world, one loan at a time.

Mercy States

Mercy Corps' Karen Doyle Grossman hosts a dialogue about what social innovation looks like in fragile states, what are the risks and opportunities, when are the risks too great and how we navigate the tension between the need to bring new and scalable approaches to these places and the inherent security, financial, political challenges of these countries.

New Entrepreneurs

Listen to today's visionaries as they are boldly launching groundbreaking organizations to solve social problems around the world. The series is presented by Executive Producer Patrick O'Heffernan. The social entrepreneurs highlighted in this series of interviews are selected by Echoing Green.

Mal Warwick on Fundraising

Mal Warwick has been raising money professionally since 1979. He has taught fundraising throughout the world and has written or edited 19 books. His most recent, "Fundraising When Money is Tight," is a practical guide to help social ventures tackle the challenges of raising funds in difficult economic times. These excerpts come from Chapter 13, Step Up your Efforts Online.

Networked Nonprofit

In the Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, Beth Kanter and Allison Fine help nonprofits adapt to a new way of operating in our increasingly connected world. Discover the role of social media and the organizational culture changes needed to effectively tap networks and drive change for the betterment of our society and planet.

New Roots in Afghanistan

Roots for Peace

News From The Amazon

Patrick O' Heffernan tells the untold story of a small village on the Amazon River. Readers wishing to get in touch with Tanya or help support the project should email Patrick through the website or at palm44@covad.net.

The New Pioneers

New times create new needs – and new needs require new solutions. “Hardcore business people are realizing that they can increase their profits by incorporating social responsibility into their business, and heartcore idealists are realizing that the use of market methods helps them meet their social goals successfully”, argues Danish-British prize-winning author and social business specialist Tania Ellis in her international book, The New Pioneers – Sustainable business success through social innovation and social entrepreneurship (www.thenewpioneers.biz).

Open Source Giving

Tom Watson is the managing director of CauseWired Communications , publisher of onPhilanthropy.com and a contributing writer to the Huffington Post. In this blog, Tom builds on the themes of his book "CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World," and helps social entrepreneurs understand the impact of online social network tools (blogs, wikis, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, ...) in raising money and in raising consciousness for causes.

Off the Couch

Julie Engel Manga is a leadership and team development coach. She supports individual leaders, managers and teams organized around a strong social mission to more effectively generate impact and sustain themselves for the long haul in their work. She also helps her clients see the relationship between the two. She is currently facilitating a year-long action learning group of social entrepreneurs who are recent Babson College Alumni designed to support them as they embark on their ventures. In this blog, she invites discussion on topics that emerge as she works with her clients.

Open Voices

Live from the 2009 Skoll World Forum! See also the Skoll Scholars blog for coverage of Skoll World Forum sessions.

One Wild Life

Armed with a camera and laptop, Clare Mulvany travelled around the world for a year to share the inspiring stories of social entrepreneurs using their business skills and humanitarian passion to bring hope to millions. From the slums of India to the remotest islands of Tonga, Clare met those who face incredible obstacles and still push through to make a positive change. ‘One Wild Life’, a compilation of interviews, images and journal extracts, from which this blog is excerpted, is the inspiring account of her journey.

Opportunity Collaboration in Action

Jonathan C. Lewis is founder/CEO of the Opportunity Collaboration, a diverse community of 250 social investors and entrepreneurs who annually attend a strategic offsite on World Poverty Day (every year: October 17) to leverage resources, combine forces, share innovations and operate more effectively. He is also the founder of MicroCredit Enterprises which leverages private capital for microloans. Jonathan is a recipient of the Social Venture Network Innovation Award.

Peace Corps Entrepreneurs

Listen to returned Peace Corps volunteers as they describe their new lives as social entrepreneurs. This series of weekly interviews, produced by Patrick O'Heffernan for Social Edge with the help of the National Peace Corps Association, is available here and on iTunes.

Patrick O' On The Edge

Patrick O'Heffernan on funding, networking, and other important issues. For the next two days I will report speeches and events from the Investors' Circle organization of socially responsible investors annual gathering in San Francisco where they hear pitches by social entrepreneurs for capital. I will devote one paragraph to each of the presentations by entrepreneurs in this roomful of investors. Each entrepreneur has 6 minutes to tell her or his story and then 6 minutes of questions. I will describe each company or organization, its product or service and the purpose for which they are seeking capital. I cannot give sales figures, income or prorietary information about their patents, projects, etc. All the presenters represent going concerns, i.e., they are not "first round" investment to start up, but second or third round to expand. Readers who wish to learn more can locate the company on the internet or go to the Investors' Circle website.

Running to Outpace Poverty

Lara Vogel is the co-founder and CEO of Hope Runs, an organization working with orphanages in Kenya to help these children leave the institution as proactive and engaged citizens of their community. Aware that good intentions aren't quite enough, she headed to Oxford's Said Business School as a Skoll scholar and reports from behind alien lines on how to harness the power of the MBA for good.

Pulling for the Underdog

Dennis Whittle is Chairman and CEO of Global Giving.

Reid On Marketing

Marketing expert Diana Reid gives social entrepreneurs practical advice on marketing and communications.

The Rise of the Social Capital Market

Could GE help reduce global warming faster than the Kyoto protocol? Could Wal-Mart offer a better solution to healthcare than Medicaid? In Social Innovation, Inc., Jason Saul declares a new era where leading corporations like GE, Wellpoint, Travelers and Wal-Mart are transforming social responsibility into social innovation and revolutionizing the way we think about the role of business in society. In this series of excerpts, Jason Saul highlights The Rise of the Social Capital Market.

Sagar Gubbi

I used to be a techie but I have recently worked in the Social Enterprise and Clean Energy sectors in India. I am an entrepreneur by spirit, a writer by interest, a traveler by ambition, but a fun-loving guy at heart. I am from Bangalore, India but now I am an MBA candidate at the University of Oxford's Said Business School in UK. This blog is about sustainable enterprise initiatives that have the power to bring economic development to the base of the pyramid.

Samasourcing

Samasource connects people living in poverty to work via the Internet. Leila Janah runs it. Occasionally, she takes time off to rant, rave, and receive free group therapy on her Social Edge blog.

Seth Godin's Tribes

Famous author Seth Godin wrote nine books, all bestsellers that changed the way we think about marketing, change and work. He is responsible for many words in the marketer's vocabulary, including permission marketing, ideaviruses, purple cows, the dip and sneezers. The following blog is excerpted from his new book “TRIBES: We Need You to Lead Us,” in which he explains how the Internet has eliminated barriers and enabled new tribes to be born. Take a peek inside Seth Godin's new book in this six-part series and explore your opportunity (or your obligation?) to take on a leadership role for your tribe.

Scaling Capacities

Steven LaFrance shares the seven critical scaling capacities for effectively growing impact.

Skoll Scholars 2006

Our insiders cover all the highlights of the sessions of the Skoll World Forum.

Skoll Scholars 2007

 

Skoll Scholars 2008

 

Skoll Scholars 2009

Live from the 2009 Skoll World Forum!

Skoll Scholars 2010

Live from the 2010 Skoll World Forum!

Skoll Centre Students 2011

 

Skoll World Forum 2011

Visit this blog for frequent observations, updates and profiles of both themes and people from the Forum.  This blog will be a vibrant source of insight for delegates beginning to think about the event and for those who want to connect or follow the debates from outside.

Social Entrepreneurship

In Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, David Bornstein and Susan Davis address some of the most common challenges that social innovators face. Discover how the fields of social enterprise and impact investing have evolved. Learn how to launch and finance organizations and how to evaluate and maximize the impact of your social venture.

SVT on Impact

Sara Olsen, Founder of Social Venture Technology Group, brings you the latest trends, approaches, examples and general musings on how to manage resources to generate the greatest positive impact possible.

Talking Trash

In Talking Trash, founder Parag Gupta and his team at Waste Ventures candidly muses on the Base of the Pyramid and explores how one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Waste Ventures is building a commercially-viable Base of Pyramid solid waste management market - and is learning an incredible amount in the process. Parag has been addicted to the social entrepreneurship field for the past eight years - from putting on BoP workshops for global leaders at the World Economic Forum to running operations in Nicaragua to designing strategy at the Bridgespan Group.

Tapping the Crowd

Samantha Beinhacker and Josh Tetrick look at how crowdfunding is flipping the traditional funding model on its head and powering the next wave of social enterprises

The Tactics of Hope

Wilford Welch and David Hopkins, authors of the groundbreaking book, "The Tactics of Hope: How Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing Our World," provide strategies and tactics to help transform personal concerns into meaningful actions that address critical social and environmental challenges. The book can be accessed and purchased at www.TacticsofHope.org

Unreasonable People

John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan, in "The Power of Unreasonable People," introduce a new generation of social and environmental entrepreneurs. They investigate the relevance of their thinking about value creation, their business models, and their leadership styles for mainstream decision makers.

Untangled

Jason Clark untangles technology for the social sector, one wire at a time.

Unitus Microfinance Case Studies

Unitus presents a series of case studies explaining how leading microfinance experts have tackled some of the most difficult social and economic problems in the developing world.

Where Jim Is @

Jim Fruchterman around the world

WITNESS

Gillian Caldwell, Executive Director of WITNESS, blogs from Davos.