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NET IMPACT. Saturday Lunch Panel
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Lunch panel: If You Are Not at the Table, You Are on the Menu - Social Entrepreneurship and Public Policy.
I move a classroom in the Wilson building, across from the lunch tent, envying the students eating lunch and lounging in the bright sunshine. The session is in a packed room with people (including me) sitting on the floor. In front of the room a young woman in a black pantsuit and two men in slacks and ties are powering up a PowerPoint (which I had been told by another presenter had been outlawed at the conference)
Kelly Ward, the blond in the pantsuit takes the floor and introduces herself as Director of the America Forward project at New Profit, Inc. She radiates energy, talking very fast, walking us persuasively through every detail of her topic and inspiring as well as informing. Young – early 20’s - and a graduate of the Kennedy School, Kelly Ward is a woman to watch.
AF is a coalition of social entrepreneur and advocacy organizations that have come together to leverage government to support SE. She says government can create an environment that can help SE organizations go to scale. She outlines three policy areas to push on:
Human Capital: Americorps is a way the government can scale – incentivising the 500K people in Americorps to get involved with SE organizations, providing a vast pool of free labor and experience.
Financial capital: government can change grant and tax policy to provide an infrastructure to help; small SE’s grow. More important she says, we need a parallel Small Business Administration for small businesses in SE. An SE SBA could provide the financial infrastructure for SE startups like it does for small business.
Political capital: a high profile candidate or elected official can raise the profile of SE. The President can redirect funds, as can governors. They did it with faith-based grants – the same could happen for SE.
Barriers: She says that government also presents many barriers, from bureaucracy to long timelines to regulations that impede SE.
Where do we go from here? (check out http://www.goodpolicy.blogspot.com)
Kelly points out that SE’s have been focused on the individual, what individuals can do to change the world. We can now move to policy and culture changes – on to how an SE economy will work. As this sector moves forward and grows, the next generation of leaders must band together and solve problems. We can embed into the culture the habit of thinking about the impacts of what we do; we starting this in business.
She has met with all the pres candidates and gotten a positive response from all of them, noting that Hillary Clinton went right to he policy needed.
The audience is rapt and full of very sophisticated questions. Among them is the definition of social entrepreneurism. Kay acknowledges that there are a number of definitions, but that hers is broad and encompassing.
The session ends with a virtual political rally. Kay hands out a list of things people can do to join and help America Forward, ranging from posting you tube videos to joining their Facebook page. At the end of the session, Kay is surrounded by students wanting to know more and get involved. Check this out at http://www.goodpolicy.blogspot.org
I move a classroom in the Wilson building, across from the lunch tent, envying the students eating lunch and lounging in the bright sunshine. The session is in a packed room with people (including me) sitting on the floor. In front of the room a young woman in a black pantsuit and two men in slacks and ties are powering up a PowerPoint (which I had been told by another presenter had been outlawed at the conference)
Kelly Ward, the blond in the pantsuit takes the floor and introduces herself as Director of the America Forward project at New Profit, Inc. She radiates energy, talking very fast, walking us persuasively through every detail of her topic and inspiring as well as informing. Young – early 20’s - and a graduate of the Kennedy School, Kelly Ward is a woman to watch.
AF is a coalition of social entrepreneur and advocacy organizations that have come together to leverage government to support SE. She says government can create an environment that can help SE organizations go to scale. She outlines three policy areas to push on:
Human Capital: Americorps is a way the government can scale – incentivising the 500K people in Americorps to get involved with SE organizations, providing a vast pool of free labor and experience.
Financial capital: government can change grant and tax policy to provide an infrastructure to help; small SE’s grow. More important she says, we need a parallel Small Business Administration for small businesses in SE. An SE SBA could provide the financial infrastructure for SE startups like it does for small business.
Political capital: a high profile candidate or elected official can raise the profile of SE. The President can redirect funds, as can governors. They did it with faith-based grants – the same could happen for SE.
Barriers: She says that government also presents many barriers, from bureaucracy to long timelines to regulations that impede SE.
Where do we go from here? (check out http://www.goodpolicy.blogspot.com)
Kelly points out that SE’s have been focused on the individual, what individuals can do to change the world. We can now move to policy and culture changes – on to how an SE economy will work. As this sector moves forward and grows, the next generation of leaders must band together and solve problems. We can embed into the culture the habit of thinking about the impacts of what we do; we starting this in business.
She has met with all the pres candidates and gotten a positive response from all of them, noting that Hillary Clinton went right to he policy needed.
The audience is rapt and full of very sophisticated questions. Among them is the definition of social entrepreneurism. Kay acknowledges that there are a number of definitions, but that hers is broad and encompassing.
The session ends with a virtual political rally. Kay hands out a list of things people can do to join and help America Forward, ranging from posting you tube videos to joining their Facebook page. At the end of the session, Kay is surrounded by students wanting to know more and get involved. Check this out at http://www.goodpolicy.blogspot.org
America Forward @ the Net Impact Conf.
While we certainly appreciate the reference to GoodPolicy.blogspot.com and will be using it to help continue this effort, we wanted to make sure that readers also check out America Forward's web site directly at http://www.americaforward.org. And be sure to sign up for updates at http://americaforward.org/content/directory/subscribe.