On the benefits of the mentored online GSBI application process on Social Edge:

“The online application forces organizations to step back and assess the current market and competitive landscape and reconcile their original hypothesis, vocalize their value proposition and business model in the current market climate that they operate it. It also allows them to consider possible expansion and reuse of their ideas to other local and regional geographies.”  
GSBI mentor Hardika Shah

On the transformative power of attending the GSBI:

“The experience of attending GSBI typically results in some major "ah-ha" moments. The collaborative work environment, the care and feeding from the faculty, guest speakers and mentors opens up numerous possibilities that most enterprises did not consider before. In some cases, it resets the path that an enterprise was on to a new and often more successful direction.”
GSBI mentor Hardika Shah

On the ongoing value of mentorship:

“One of the most valuable aspects of attending the GSBI is the mentorship from Silicon Valley veterans. All the mentors are voluntary and truly get involved in understanding, challenging, and pushing the SBE forward. In most cases, the relationships begin much before the SBE arrives to the US and last for a long time.  The mentors help open doors for funding opportunities, for pro-bono consulting work when the SBEs return, and continue to be available as a sounding board. In one specific case, months after the GSBI, the mentor assisted in revising a term sheet that the SBE got from a global social venture fund to ensure that it benefited the enterprise. The impact of the mentoring is significant and one of the pillars of success of the GSBI program.” 
GSBI mentor Hardika Shah

On the necessity of enabling social entrepreneurs a moment to step back:

“[Social Entrepreneurs] experience the kind of isolation that many entrepreneurs face when the weight of your organization's success rests on your shoulders, you're working long hours, and you are so busy with your daily challenges that you don't often get the chance to step back, look strategically at your organization, and get mentoring and support from others.  This is a real benefit of the GSBI program.” 
GSBI mentor Vicky Mattson

On the importance of having a sounding board if you are a social entrepreneur:

“Sometimes just being a sounding board is one of the best roles a mentor can play.  We can never hope to know as much about the entrepreneurs' businesses as they do, but we can use our business background and experience to ask pointed questions, challenge their thinking and critique their ideas.”
GSBI mentor Vicky Mattson

On the impact of the GSBI program on the mentors from working with social entrepreneurs:

“[We], along with our mentoring counterparts, are always quick to say that we gain so much more than we give through the mentoring process.  Chris, like all of the GSBI entrepreneurs we have worked with, is passionate about making social change through his business.  It is truly inspirational to see this passion and dedication, and to be exposed to such creative ideas for making the world a better place not through charity, but through empowering others to make their own lives better.  Our interactions with the GSBI program and especially with the social entrepreneurs leave us feeling hopeful about a future that is more just, peaceful and equitable.”
GSBI mentor Vicky Mattson

Apply to the Global Social Benefit Incubator now?

FORGE founder Kjerstin Erickson took the risk to be transparent in her blog on Social Edge as she openly described how market fluctuations and misguided strategic decisions were negatively impacting her social venture (read We're in trouble). She now has great news to share:

In the past month, donors have stepped forward to allow us to effectively close the funding gap for 2008.  In a surprise turn of events, a foundation has generously offered to provide us with a $20,000 matching grant followed by a $30,000 administrative support grant in 2009.  In response to the challenge, many of our past supporters rallied with second and even third large donations for the year.  We had until February to raise the $20,000 matching, but we were actually able to cross the threshold today [December 29].  The foundation has been very progressive and generous with its terms, and in the spirit of transparency even published its reasoning for offering the grant.

Read the rest of her post, A hopeful ending to 2008, and Sean Stannard-Stockton's post, Foundation Transparency: FORGE Update.

I am writing this from Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by most inhabitants), where I am spending a few days before flying to Hong Kong.

2008 was a very exciting year for the Social Edge team. Our traffic reached new heights, as we reached 670,000 visits, double our 2007 results of 330,000 visits. We also attracted 520,000 absolute unique visitors, a 120% increase over last year (235,000). Our contributors and community are simply fabulous, as are my colleagues Jill Finlayson and Jason "Untangled" Clark!

On a personal basis, as I am writing this from Patisserie Givral in Saigon (great Wi-Fi!), I am realizing how much I traveled during 2008: Shanghai in January, Zurich in February, London in March, Paris in April (yes, April in Paris!), Dakar in May, New York in June, Vancouver in July, several trips within the US during the summer, Paris in October and again in November, and now Saigon and Hong Kong in December...

I also found the time to scale Mount Whitney in one day (at 2,550 m, it is the highest peak in the lower US), an adventure I have been training for for the past two years. Quite a year it has been!

My colleagues Jill and Jason, who have also been very busy during 2008, join me in wishing you all the best for 2009!

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC), organized by the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in partnership with Columbia Business School, London Business School, Indian School of Business and Thammasat University (Thailand), is seeking promising social entrepreneurs to enter its 2009 and 10th Anniversary Competition! If you are an entrepreneur (or budding entrepreneur!) with a financially sustainable venture that addresses a social or environmental problem, you should apply now.

Winning plans in the past have ranged from global health to microfinance, from cleantech to education, from fair trade to community development, from business concepts to operating companies, and have included for-profit and non-profit models.

The GSVC has provided nearly $500,000 in seed-money to thirty social ventures over the past ten years, as well as over 16,000 hours of mentoring from seasoned professional in various industries!

Executive Summaries are due January 21, 2009.

According to the Invenio Group, Social Edge is among the Top 20 blogs for Entrepreneurs, along with TechCrunch, Guy Kawasaki's blog, GigaOm and ValleyWag, and ahead of BusinessWeek and other leading publications. You may want to check the Top 150 list!

FORGE's Kjerstin Erickson took the risk to be transparent in her blog on Social Edge as she very openly wrote about how market fluctuations and misguided strategic decisions were impacting the social venture she launched to help refugees in Africa.

Today, Sean Stannard-Stockton announced that he was making an investment of $1,000 into FORGE. He explains his reasons on his blog. One of them caught my eyes:

While I cannot predict FORGE’s future, the organization’s embrace of radical transparency makes me believe that I am aware of all knowable, material information regarding the organization.

He concludes:

Finally, I am making this investment as a way to encourage other nonprofits to embrace transparency. [...] It is incredibly important that we build more trust within philanthropy. It is incredibly important that we move away from soliciting donations via a “sales pitch” and shift it towards a process of making a well reasoned argument centered on impact potential. FORGE hasn’t sugared coated things for us. They haven’t pushed pictures of the refugees they help at us. They’ve explained their situation, made a well reasoned argument for why they think they deserve funding and they’ve openly accepted any and all criticism with grace and humility.
FORGE gets my money.

This may be a good lesson for fellow social entrepreneurs.

I recently gave a lecture at Berkeley on "Web 2.0 tools and how to use them to change the world." Apparently, a student was quite inspired and wrote a paper, titled "Internet Media and Social Change."

Here is what he wrote about Social Edge:

"When Victor d'Allant from Social Edge presented his use of the Internet, it was so multi-faceted and multidimensional that it amazed me, from building online school communities to reporting on the economics in the social world.

The basic idea was simple: to network, share, and learn from each other. This reminded me of Martin and Osberg's explanation of a social entrepreneur [...]. Through stories, I see that Social Edge has been making a monumental step in telling people a story and finding the right tools to tell it.

What was most compelling is the individual stories that each person had. The one about sex trading in the New York area was very personal and captivating as they used videos to tell the story. The various tools used to tell the story was also very interesting from YouTube to podcast to Flickr.

I guess that made me reevaluate my use of these resources to see how I can make an impact instead of using these things for personal entertainment and ineffectiveness.

The one story I remembered from this lecture was the transformation of the woman, Laila Iskandar, who helps women who are garbage pickers because she once was a garbage picker who used to eat in the back of a restaurant."

This student received an A+, which we think is fully merited!

Working in a variety of fields including education, microenterprise, social justice and arts and culture, Synergos will facilitate peer learning among members of the group and provide professional development, mentorships, financial resources and strategic connections to help the Arab World Social Innovators strengthen their projects to reach more people and make greater social impacts.
  
The new class of 22 Arab World Social Innovators are:  

•   Ali Abu Awwad (Palestine) is promoting non-violent practices among those who wish to create social change.
•   Aref Husseini (Palestine) is introducing new tools and approaches in education to cultivate young scientific minds and critical thinkers.
•   Ezzat Guindy (Egypt) is helping provide economic opportunities for garbage collectors in Cairo.
•   Gamal Kamal el-Din (Egypt) is introducing new technology to increase production for sugar cane farmers.
•   Islam al-Dawi (Egypt) is reviving traditional Berber handicrafts to create income opportunities and preserve local culture.
•   Jihad Shojaeha (Palestine) is helping promote access to education by raising funds to help students with financial needs attend university.
•   Kamal Mouzawak (Lebanon) is supporting small farmers and preserving organic agricultural traditions through local farmers markets.
•   Mohammed Zaid al Kilany (Palestine) is allowing greater access to employment opportunities through mobile phone technology.
•   Noureddine Amre (Palestine) is working to promote integrated education for the visually handicapped.
•   Paul Abi Rached (Lebanon) is producing music and carrying out educational programs for youth that helps teach environmental conservation.
•   Rabee Zureikat (Jordan) is using ”voluntourism” and microenterprise to build awareness and improve conditions in marginalized communities.
•   Raghda el-Ebrashi (Egypt) is empowering communities to find their own locally rooted solutions to overcome poverty.
•   Rami al-Hajj (Palestine) is creating an Internet-based social networking platform to promote open dialogue around social issues.
•   Ramzi Odah (Palestine) is creating “youth parliaments” to help groom a future generation of Palestinian leaders.
•   Rana Dajani (Jordan) is creating a library in local neighborhoods to foster a love of reading among Jordanian children.
•   Saadia Zrira (Morocco) is finding sustainable solutions to poverty and environmental degradation in rural Morocco through the cultivation of indigenous plants.
•   Sameh el-Halawany (Egypt) is using art to transform and preserve culturally unique neighborhoods in Egypt.
•   Tamer Anis (Egypt) is helping change perceptions and secure rights for the deaf and mute.
•   Wafa al-Zerrouki (Morocco) is helping women break the cycle of poverty through traditional handicraft.
•   Younes Naoumi (Morocco) is motivating the growing population of youth to become active participants for social change in their communities.
•   Yousef al-Deek (Palestine) is building a culture of cinema in Palestine to reaffirm national identity, and build social cohesion.
•   Zeinab al-Moumani (Jordan) is promoting rural development for women through agricultural cooperatives.

For more information on any of the above Social Innovators please visit Synergos.   

Great news from the University of Oxford! Social Edge friend Pamela Hartigan, who was until recently Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, has just been named Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

She said to Social Enterprise Magazine: "This new generation coming in is absolutely going to change things. That's why the Skoll centre is so exciting… It's not just the MBA but the opportunities across Oxford - the students who are saying, 'I want to be an engineer but how can I affect society?'"

You may want to watch her X-Interview, where she shared with Global X that "soon, all entrepreneurs will be social entrepreneurs!"

You may also want to see a picture of Pamela Hartigan with Muhammad Yunus at the 2007 Skoll World Forum. Or read excerpts of the book she wrote with John Elkington, "The Power of Unreasonable People," in which they introduce a new generation of social and environmental entrepreneurs and investigate their business models and leadership styles.

FAST COMPANY just named organizations to their Social Enterprises of the Year honor roll. Each is singled out for “bold and timely ideas that wow us” with “the kind of innovative thinking that can transform lives and change our world.”

We noticed a few Social Edge friends among their selection, for example:

- Acumen Fund: Jacqueline Novogratz was interviewed by Global X last year in Oxford (watch her X-Interview), as were Acumen Fund Fellows Jocelyn Wyatt, Ayeleen Ajanee, Eric Berkowitz, Nadaa Taiyab and Keely Stevenson, who also kept a wonderful blog on Social Edge, From Tribeca to Tanzania.

- Civic Ventures: Marc Freedman, CEO, was on a Skoll World Forum panel on Addressing the Talent Gap.

- HopeLab: Pat Christen, a Peace Corps volunteer who served in Kenya in the early eighties, is now President of HopeLab. Listen to her audio interview here.

- Institute for OneWorld Health: founder Victoria Hale received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

- Mercy Corps: Global X interviewed David Lehr several times, and he is currently hosting a great discussion on Social Edge about Mobile Phones and Development at the BoP.

Elizabeth Hausler, who launched BuildChange to build earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries, won last night the 2008 Equality Award at the Tech Museum.

She recently told Global X that she was finishing her Ph.D. in engineering at Berkeley when an earthquake hit India and killed 20,000 people. That's when she realized that "it's not the earthquake that kills people, it's the building collapsing."

Thanks to her, many homeowners in seismically active developing countries can sleep at night.

Marie Deatherage, Director of Communication & Learning at the Meyer Memorial Trust, wrote on her blog a nice post about the FORGE saga developing right now on Social Edge:

Way better than reality TV

"In case you haven't been following it, there's something really exciting happening on the Internet that I believe deserves the rapt attention all nonprofit organizations, foundations and donors these days.

It's important on a number of levels. It's an amazingly fascinating story. It provides insight into financial challenges facing nonprofits right now. It illustrates the power of collaboration. It reveals how donors think and behave. And it provides a model for radical transparency in communication.

[...]

I must say, this is way better than any reality tv..."

Read the whole post here.
 

For the past six months, Wilford Welch (a former U.S. Diplomat, professor of international business, and publisher) and David Hopkins (a recent college graduate and aspiring social entrepreneur) have been keeping a blog on Social Edge, The Tactics of Hope, a wonderful series of case studies based on a book they wrote about social entrepreneurs and the people who want to join the movement and become part of the solution.

They just released a new video outlining the core concepts of their book. Available on YouTube, it explains what social entrepreneurship is, why it has the power to change the world in profound ways, and how people can join the movement. The video highlights several inspirational initiatives, including Kiva (see The Kiva Chronicles).

Our good friend Martin Burt is one of the 12 finalists in the BBC World Challenge.

In a recent X-Interview, he told Global X that "with dignity, with appropriate finances and the appropriate curriculum, you can turn a poor, 15-year old rural adolescent girl into a rural entrepreneur by the time she is 18, a person who can get a good job in the private sector or make her own job."

Check the BBC video presentation and vote for him!
 

Our friends at NYU Reynolds are starting a new blog on social entrepreneurship to provide a forum for fellows, scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of academic and foundation based social entrepreneurial programs to share updates on their work and their thinking on trends and developments across sectors that impact the world of changemakers.  NYU Reynolds Expert Advisors and Social Entrepreneurial Coaches are also invited to participate. 
   
This new blog should provide an interesting perspective by harnessing the thinking of those that are out there right now, trying to change the world in pattern breaking, sustainable and scalable ways --a virtual place where active changemakers and thinkers can come together and share their thinking with the global community.
 

We at Social Edge are big fans of Sam Goldman. We first met him over a drink in California and agreed immediately to interview him for our Peace Corps Entrepreneurs podcast series. Sam grew up in Mauritania, Pakistan, Peru, India and Rwanda and studied biology and environmental studies in Canada, then launched an NGO in Benin while in the Peace Corps.

He went on to Stanford to get his MBA while launching d.light design to replace toxic kerosene lighting in rural areas with solar-powered light emitting diodes (LEDs). “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,” remembers Sam.

That's when he ran into Global X, who interviewed him for our X-Interview series. And that's when we also offered him a chance to share his story on Social Edge. The result: a fascinating blog, let there d.light!

And today, we found out that Sam Goldman had just raised US$6 million in venture funding in a round led by Nexus India Capital. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Garage Technology Ventures, Mahindra & Mahindra, Acumen Fund and Gray Matters Capital are also participating.

Social Edge, along with its community of emerging social entrepreneurs, is very proud of Sam Goldman. And we should all remember that his advice to social entrepreneurs was: Don’t be afraid of change!

Before arriving in Benin, he was not too fond of the capitalist system, but he quickly changed his mind when he saw that businesses were having a faster positive impact than traditional development organizations. We are glad venture capitalists are joining him in his efforts to fight against toxic kerosene lights.

You may remember that Kjerstin Erickson (watch her X-Interview here) took the risk to be transparent in her blog on Social Edge. As I described in my two previous posts, FORGE's founder very openly blogged about how market fluctuations and misguided strategic decisions were impacting the social venture she launched to help refugees in Africa.
 
There is a new twist in Kjerstin’s story and at least one lesson fellow social entrepreneurs should learn from her experience: transparency may actually pay off. Sean Stannard-Stockton, who wrote on Tactical Philanthropy that hers is "The Most Important Nonprofit Blog,” is now helping Kjerstin get access to a strategy consultant and a PR advisor. For free.
 
Curtis Chang, the strategy consultant who will work pro bono for FORGE, is now posting on Social Edge to help us all understand what Kjerstin and her team should (and shouldn’t) do to make sure FORGE survives:

"Our main role will be to outline a long term plan that builds FORGE’s capacity to market, fundraise, and manage itself in a sustainable fashion. If FORGE makes it out of this current foxhole, they – and their donors – will know what they need to do."

He adds:

 "When the folks at Social Edge heard about this arrangement, they thought it would be a further interesting experiment in transparency to share publicly about our process. They asked Kjerstin and me if we would jointly blog during the project.
 
We agreed but I stipulated that the normal client expectations of confidentiality would then not apply. For instance, if I discovered that FORGE really didn’t have a prayer, well, then I would blog about that. If you’re going to survive by the sword of transparency, you’ve got to be ready to die by it. Kjerstin agreed without hesitation."

Sean Stannard-Stockton has the last word (for now):

“Whether FORGE is saved or not, Kjerstin has displayed amazing bravery. FORGE exists to help refugees rebuild their lives. Kjerstin is willing to do whatever it takes to help them. She cares about the cause over the organization and so should all of us.”