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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.

Mar 12, 2010

A quick shout out

Skoll at Said Business School bringing in the right people...

So I just got back from Mozambique. A quick school trip to do some research...you know, the usual endeavor the week before finals. I fell a little bit in love with the country, and a lot with Maputo in particular...but that is a story for another blog.

I just wanted to take a quick moment as I work through my trip notes to give a shout out to some of my fellow business students here. I keep saying that Said Business School (SBS) does a great job of bringing in social entrepreneurship-interested students from a wide variety of backgrounds. I wanted to substantiate this claim a bit...

Check out my classmates--the recently crowned Skoll Associates--who are the first class of a new program to recognize the social entrepreneurship interest in my class beyond the 5 Skoll Skollars. Definitely some of the smartest and most engaged people I've met in the sector and certainly quite the roll call of past careers--lawyers, engineers, the requisite non-profit workers, and quite a few recovering consultants in here...

Feb 14, 2010

Ah, the bell curve...

There has been a bit of a theme running through a few of my classes lately that’s captured my attention. It’s come up too many times in a week to go unnoticed, and I also just kind of like the associated catch phrase so it stands out from all the business jargon. However, by the third repetition, I did find myself a bit disoriented trying to figure out which class I was in.

My professors seem hooked currently on this idea that there is “innovation at the periphery.” So hooked, in fact, that this exact phrase has come up in two social enterprise classes, a class on technology and innovation, and in my management class. In one week.

However, having spent a bit of time with bell curves this fall (statistics…boring subject, AMAZING professor-heart you Prof Taylor) I began wondering about what counts as “periphery.”

In the management class, they drew it at one point up on the white board—a normal curve with its two little tail ends squeakily blackened in as where “innovation” happens. Good to know.

In my social enterprise class, the phrase came up when talking about metrics. In this context, we were referring to the idea of using a social enterprise’s “customers/beneficiaries” as the source and designers of an international organization’s impact metrics system. We were hearing from a former consultant who had helped with future strategic planning for the organization Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI). She began discussing how their most innovative ideas came from the “periphery” of their field participants and community workers rather than any headquarters or senior manager.

This was a completely valid and valuable point. However, I began thinking about the idea that the beneficiaries/field element of CDI—in this case largely underserved and under-represented communities in Brazil—were “periphery.” In terms of demographics of the world’s population, these beneficiaries are anything but periphery. They are the majority of our world’s population when looking at most factors: education status, socio-economic strength, health outcomes etc. Take a curve showing the world population with respect to income brackets, and they are probably underneath the highest peak, while I (even in my current poor student state) count as peripheral.

World distribution of income and population 2006:

world population distribution by income 2006

It seems that the only world population graph these communities aren’t the peak of is a pyramid—and that’s because they’re the bottom of it.

I’m not disagreeing with our speaker. If you graphed access to organizational input and control, such beneficiaries are certainly peripheral. But this simply got me thinking about the divide between those running organizations and those benefitting from them. If the field of social enterprise wants innovative and new organizations (and all my grant applications say that we do) then let’s start identifying the areas in which a population operates at the periphery and those in which they don’t. Perhaps this is where to find innovation—

To do this, I have to make lots of assumptions. Let’s assume that I’m talking about an organization run by someone “outside” (either through education, opportunity, nationality, economic status etc) the population that they benefit. Let’s also assume that I’m talking about an organization that works to help underserved or under-represented populations in some manner.

Using these assumptions, we can see that most leadership in an organization would be stranded in the periphery with respect to their experience and abilities in:

1) local marketing

2) practical and applicable problem solving

3) access/utilization of local resources

4) grassroots organization movements

5) political maneuvering

Meanwhile, beneficiaries/constituencies are usually shoved to the periphery when decisions are made in:

1) organizational structure

2) impact measurement

3) management style and approaches

4) top-down mandates of vision/mission

5) organization-wide restructuring/rebranding

6) funding structures

My conclusion? If we want innovation, we should shake up the leadership and start utilizing people’s peripheral abilities (liabilities?) a bit more.

This is not that innovative a point, to be fair. I’m basically saying that we should shove people outside their comfort zones and I’m asking that we simply realize the limited voices that we apply to given elements of decision-making. I also think there are major flaws with my point. Not the least of which is the limitations of training and of background in any given area. I’m extremely “peripheral” when it comes to knowing how to market something to CDI’s population in Brazil because I simply don’t know anything about it. This is not a vote of confidence for my ability to bring quality innovation to this space.

I just think the concept of redesigning our organizations such that our beneficiaries are at the center of the curve, with the management at the periphery could lead to some intriguing twists in the ways things are done. In playing around with the idea, it also seems like if we let participants start designing more of the “top-down” elements of the work, we could potentially free ourselves from some of the limitations of the usual, externally-designed, business-like organizational structures in the SE space. Who knows…we could even possibly keep management away from its constant pull toward bureaucracy. But that might just be crazy talk.

Image courtesy of: Pinkovskiy, Maxim, Xavier Sala-i-Martin. “Parametric estimations of the world distribution of income.” Vox organization. January 22, 2010. http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4508

Jan 21, 2010

I appreciate American education and all, but..

An online discussion, hosted by Rod Schwartz, on whether “Anglo Saxons” (the term was hotly disputed) are the only ones “innovating” in social entrepreneurship got me thinking over my break about the background of regionalism within this sector. This thought was vivid when my organization Hope Runs underwent a staff restructuring at our Kenyan sites, as times of flux tend to remind me of exactly how great a cultural divide my work inherently includes. When this happened, I quickly realized how relatively removed from that sense of cultural negotiation I have been in my studies—despite my class’ considerable international composition and extensive required group work.

Similar ideas of regionalism and determinant discourse came up again today in my Social Enterprise class—one of my electives for the term. Coincidence? Perhaps—or maybe I just only listen for what I’m interested in.

The discussion Rod Schwartz’s Anglo-Saxon query prompted ended up bringing to light a lot of the issues that had been personally bothering me about the SE space and community this year. Being back in school includes a lot of changes, not the least of which is that I have now taken to having nice theoretical discussions with people about things I used to try to just try to do. Those theoretical conversations have brought up some questions I (really) don’t have good answers to, such as:

Who is involved in “defining” this supposedly international discipline? Why them? Why do we need to define it?

Where are these discussions taking place and between whom?

In what I’ve seen, the SE academic conversation’s audience is limited (and yes—very anglo-saxon and/or Northern and/or “West-centered”—pick your term) and quite self-selected. Why is that? Who does it exclude and to whom are we pandering?

For me, the second question brings up issues of the limitations/liabilities of digital media and written communication. Meanwhile, the last has brought out issues like: how do we market SE to the general public? Is SE another vehicle of international bullying via best practices, high levels of international bureaucracy etc.? And of course all the issues surrounding the legitimization of organizations and this discipline in general, which are bound to arise when you’re working with numerous tax structures, political entities and corporate cultures.

But to take the first question for a minute about who is defining the SE space. I got to bring it to my professor today, and he confirmed for me that while the conversation is certainly expanding, it’s currently primarily European and US-based—and in many ways even those two countries aren’t collaborating as much as they could.

In a sphere that is supposedly trying to encourage cross-cultural work, and that is extensively international in nature (either through funding or partnerships), why is it only being defined by a very specific subset of thinkers? I’d like to think my brain can explore every angle of a problem, but that’s been shown time and time again not to be true. Very smart people (scientists and stuff) have proven that cultural and educational systems inevitably affect the way we view the world, creating infrastructures of assumptions in our thinking that we are unable to track within ourselves. So, we have to wonder: What limitations are we creating for this space via the people settings its boundaries? A few things instantly came to mind. To be clear, these aren’t value judgments about the work being created, merely ideas surrounding what is going into that work:

The individualistic nature of North American and European education and community systems will affect the way we see community and the way we delineate work in a social sector. It seems odd that these highly individual and competitive societies have taken over the definition of work in social benefit.
A long history of strong infrastructure in these respective locations takes a lot to unlearn. Is it really such a surprise that so much of international efforts go toward building Western systems of accounting, best practices, management styles into settings in which they are not organic?
What conscious or subconscious motivations are driving these definitions? Academics have agendas and specific hoops they have to jump through that defines their outputs. Outside academia, those in the UK and the US who work in SE and engage in this conversation are also bound to share certain perspectives—the requirements of tax structures, major grantors, academic backgrounds—that will affect the way we think about this sphere.
I can really only speak for American academia when I say that there are any number of academic disciplines that have failed to make effective crossovers into the practical sphere. For better or worse, we have a history of loving to learn solely for learning’s sake—how is this institutionalized and bureaucratized academic system going to limit the innovations SE can create to make practical impact? Despite the deserved glorification of the networks of learning and innovation that occur in academic settings, we have to acknowledge that there is also an inertia to many academic settings that may run counter to the nature of this field.

Etc.

I am forced to wonder what we will think of these SE definitions in 50 years once the conversation has hopefully opened up more and different systems are better represented.

But how do we get there? No seriously—ideas please.

Dec 21, 2009

Why business school? You hate math!

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Well, finals are over and out of the way. Exams are never all that awesome for me, but exams at Oxford are hysterical.

We have to wear these graduation-esque robes while we sit our exams, under which the women must wear formal white and black and the men are in bow ties and suits. It’s quite the spectacle to see the Starbucks around the corner get taken over by twitchy penguin men holding brightly colored flashcards about an hour before exams. After we turn the exam in, we also get updates from the proctors on how many people in the exam room are wearing footwear inappropriate for Oxford’s examination dress code. Yours truly was included-black uggs with my requisite black skirt and tights were my nod to the US tradition of showing up to exams in sweatpants looking as tired as you feel. This bit of Americana was under-appreciated. I shaped up and was in heels the next day.

But as I stumbled through finance papers and designed strategies for companies I will never hear about again, I inevitably got thinking about the big questions—well, big enough for business school—like why I am getting this degree and what is the point anyway?

Which anyone who knew me before business school is wondering. It must be put on the record that I have a fairly sizeable chip on my shoulder about the whole business school thing. Intending to head off eventually to “real” graduate school –aka medical school or law school- I used to consider business school a bit strange. It’s not quite a trade school (isn’t management style and technique somewhat industry and experience dependent?), there are no real rules you HAVE to learn (I run a business pre-MBA; I do not run a hospital pre-MD), and everyone keeps telling me you go for the networks.

Which may be true-and the networking is impressive. Impressive, and constant. Meet and greet here, drinks with amazing person X there…the business cards rain down. But as I reflect on exams, I have to wonder—what am I really learning? AND-most importantly for SocialEdge readers-why does it matter for my non-profit loving self?

Turns out a lot, and for many reasons. A quick hitlist so this blog has a platform:

1) Non-Profits are businesses: I know this is obvious to many, but more often than not, I hear about non-profit managers as occupying a space one step above mothers running craft tables in a church basement. And to an extent it’s true: wasted funds and areas of work that are naturally coincident with a lack of accountability make non-profit organizations difficult to characterize by many business standards. Obviously, given the past couple of years, real businesses are not necessarily much better, but let’s stay on target.

2) Sector Growth: There are amazingly exciting new ways that traditional business is growing to include social impact. And I don’t just mean traditional CSR-type efforts (though that’s expanding too). Social finance, changes to private equity work, to venture capital definitions, methods of banking that are socially beneficial…entire areas are springing up of socially relevant work that is well beyond anything I could understand before. And thank goodness I learned about them in an MBA program or I would have known they were out there without knowing how organizations like mine can get creative to tap into them.

3) Critical Mass: It’s a critical time in the definition of the business world’s future direction. Things are in flux after all the ridiculousness of the past couple years. Businesses have realized that consumers are concerned about things like corporate reputation and corporate outreach. To me, this is nothing if not opportunity knocking. The consumers want some kind of social impact/proof of ethics in addition to profits, the businesses want consumers, and I want to show businesses how to help my kids. Get more social entrepreneurs in the MBA, get them to make a LOT of noise, and a couple more traditional businesses in the future are going to realize it’s worth their time to make a difference. And that’s not even mentioning the volume of noise we can achieve once we make it out of the MBA with the degree on our resume…

4) Defense: non-profits and social enterprises ARE businesses (see #1). But, they’re not only traditional businesses. And while the non-profit organization reputation may be a bit sullied, and while I fully support the move of NPOs toward more rigorous business practices (avoiding the aforementioned craft table issue), that does NOT mean that all things business are applicable to this sector. A lack of a certified accountant to do the books does not make social investment in rural Kenya a bad idea. A push to quantify results into accounting terms beyond the stereotypical anecdote of “sad-turned-happy child” CAN create more fluff on the books than substance. I want to learn exactly where traditional business helps and where it hurts my own business.

5) Accounting: Sigh. Hate to say it, but I needed to know how it worked. And I do now. And it helped. I know a bit more about creativity in accounting, and a bit more about what to ask and where to look and how to clean it up. Thanks to my professor Tomo!

6) Ideas: I admit—I was trapped in a non-profit world of people like me doing work like me. I tried to educate myself—I read things, I talked to people, I met in places with other people—but they were all linked with my world in some way. But business school is a huge influx of ideas that relate to my work in a way that expands beyond the sectors I would dream of looking at. I am hardly claiming I couldn’t have been better at expanding my own mind—but I simply would never have known to read corporate finance 1 to find out about new funding structures. And even if the idea occurred to me, I wouldn’t have had the time.

7) Definition: The ability to engage actively and with focus on the conversation surrounding social enterprise is a huge one for me. Tired as I am of hearing definitions thrown around during conferences about SE, it’s true that this area bridging traditional business and social benefit is growing and morphing as we speak. The ability to engage in this sector from a business-oriented standpoint and to help push the boundaries of social enterprise through daily interactions that hit the problem both theoretically and practically is exciting. And it takes some strong, theoretical foundation (and yes—the legitimacy of an MBA doesn’t hurt) to learn about how best to push and create this space.

8) Vocabulary: I can say things like “return on equity” and “cost of capital” and really know what they mean now. I know it sounds unbelievably basic—and I even took things like Economics in college—not to mention embarrassingly stupid, but I can read the paper and know way more about what’s going on in the world around me now. And that is no laughing matter when my non-profit organization’s funding turns out to be phenomenally in synch with the highs and lows of the market.

9) The people: I promised not to go into networking, but my classmates are incredible and incredibly challenging. Most of the time in class we’re disagreeing rather than agreeing—but it’s taught me way more than class about how people work, how people think, and who I can ask to learn what I need to know.

10) FUN: Seriously. Business school is a high of learning and networking that is unlike anything I had in the field. Can’t do it forever, and I’m glad my program’s only one year. But it’s a decided change in pace after years of working to be back in class.

So that’s the top-10. More on many of them later…but next week a bit less platform and a bit more substance on actual content. Though for any of you thinking about going back to school, this is what I would ponder when deciding to take the plunge into what I expected to be the evil world of profiteers and consultants--not that there's anything wrong with that...

Happy holidays all around…

Dec 08, 2009

Adding My Voice

First post, first term, first week of finals…

It’s a less than ideal combination.

But I’m thrilled to be adding to the socialedge blogs, and so here we go. A bit by way of introduction:

I spent my first few years in the Middle East before grade school hit and I was shifted to the US—outside Boston specifically. Luckily enough, my parents are pretty internationally professioned, so there was a lot of travel when I was younger that got me interested in all things global. This led to a major at Stanford University in International Public Health and a graduation that ran concurrent with no interest in getting stuck behind a desk.

So…I went places. Asia, Russia, Africa, India etc. working freelance as a writer to pay my way. That worked for a while until I got to Kenya and I got stuck.

I landed in an orphanage called the Tumaini Children’s Home, where a community of elders built up a home that housed 176 children from the surrounding area who were either: orphaned by AIDS, unsafe in their homes, or uncared for in their homes due to extreme poverty. The need was much greater than capacity—isn’t it always—and the home had been working for 6 years to bridge that gap.

They were underfunded, understaffed, but hardworking, and most importantly, the children seemed happy and the home had a plan and funding structure (rickety as they were). Having worked in non-profit organizations in the past, I was impressed with the promise of what I saw, and I decided to throw in my lot with them for a while.

This began a few months living on the ground floor of the home and adding myself to the staff. My business partner, Claire Williams, and I started running programs, business training efforts, and scholarship programs. As we grew, we gained our 501c 3 status as the organization Hope Runs. We’ve been going nearly three years now, and we’ve gained press and grants from places like Ashoka, Nike, Runner’s World, and The Huffington Post.

We’re still small, and we’re still growing. But we believe that our model of home-based approaches to care can make—and already has made—a difference in the lives of those in children’s homes.

There’s plenty to debate surrounding my work—are children’s homes the answers? What can be done to halt the HIV/AIDS epidemic? Can you teach entrepreneurship?—but my life has taken an interesting twist recently that has brought all of these questions up a notch.

I recently began an MBA program at Oxford University’s Said Business School. The place is amazing, and I blog now as a social entrepreneur behind the trenches with all the business-y people usually either receiving my powerpoint presentation or asking me skeptical questions about salaries at cocktail parties.

To be fair, Oxford’s program is hardly the cold machine of economy I might have expected. With the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship based here, our class is full of unbelievable social entrepreneurs from literally every corner of the globe. We’re a thriving group here, and the support is incredible.

But it’s not all fun and affirming. Studying the ideas of social entrepreneurship and learning about the extensive problems I never knew existed—that fall outside both my own network of experiences and the trend of social enterprise publications—I am learning more than I can keep up with.

Which includes things like finance, which is the exam I’m currently studying for. This is where the MBA program lives fully up to its reputation—accounting, finance, economics, and marketing classes as far as the eye can see. But I’m trying to take another MBAs advice to “find joy” in finance and accounting. I’m trying hard, but success remains elusive.

So back to work for me, as I have a lot more to learn in these classes than my classmates. But this blog is now a place where I can explore all I’m learning about social enterprise as a business venture and the questions I’m discovering about social enterprise as an idealized venture. I also get to compare it to my own work on the ground, and to the work of my classmates.

Having read socialedge for a while, it’s a bit strange to be adding my voice. Especially as I tend to consider these voices an authority in some way, and I am hardly feeling authoritative (hopefully that will change before exams).

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