• Poverty, disease, environmental degradation – is transforming the education system really the first step? 
• When it comes to empowering leaders, is an investment in youth the most effective? 
• Should this type of education be applied to everyone, whereas in the past it has been reserved for the select few?

• How far can a social business or enterprise go in becoming commercial before it ceases to be social? 
• Which corporate traits are best avoided? 
• When we at ClearlySo host our annual Social Business Conference, and focus on just the financial and performance issues, are we undermining the social ethos? Should we not be including sessions on furthering the social mission?
• Is the nonchalance I mentioned above just an essential characteristic of the visionary social entrepreneur which we need to accept and celebrate? 

• One advisor suggested that we look at our network and see who is most influential: “It is unlikely that someone far removed from your organization will say yes, so focus on who you know.”
• However, another told us it would be a mistake to limit ourselves to people in our network, and suggested instead that we come up with a “dream team.”  This person recommended that we create a list of functional areas where we would like to leverage expertise (e.g. law, finance, international development) and brainstorm lists of important people who fit each category: “If you have some connection to them, all the better, but do not limit yourselves to people you already know.”
• Yet another professional nonprofit adviser told us that the days of having specific seats, (e.g. lawyer, accountant, PR expert, etc) are over, and we should instead identify the two or three burning issues facing our organization over the next year and recruit Board members who can help us address these.
• Finally, another advisor told us to find people we want to think with: “You should not overemphasize their background, experience, or functional area but assume that if you find the right match, they will help answer the right strategic questions.”

• Is it better to have “big names,” or people with the time and willingness to roll up their sleeves and work for the organization? Or some combination thereof? Are the two mutually exclusive, or is it possible to find both qualities in the same person?
• If you have a few “honorary” Board members – big names who join the Board with the understanding that they will not have time to be active participants – can this create tension with other members who devote a lot of time and energy?
• How do you approach Board members? If you go too far out of your way to court them, does it set a precedent? Board Members should feel it is in an honor and privilege to serve, but to which extent?
• How can you motivate Board members to become more engaged?
• How do you promote a culture of engagement while still setting boundaries so the Board does not micromanage staff?

My own trip recently to Canada, where we undertook our first physical expansion outside of the UK brought the varying strategies further into relief. In British Columbia, with Vancouver as its economic centre, the approach seems very much a private sector approach. Leading players Vancity and Renewal Partners, of whom I have written in the past, have developed innovative and seemingly scalable approaches to social business and enterprise creation and development. Right across the continent-sized country, in French speaking Quebec, you have a developed social economy where labour unions, government, civic society, academia and the private sector have cooperated in an awkward and “top-down”, but generally effective effort. In Ontario, which contains the nation’s capital (Ottawa) and its financial centre (Toronto), the private sector and the public sector, and the national and provincial government (also based in Ontario) all strive with and against each other to make progress. 

This ideological “battle” reminds me of what we see on the international scale. The US model, despite the Obama administration’s recent endeavours to the contrary, remains private sector oriented. This is particularly to be contrasted with the French model which, as I see it, seems very much top down and “directed”, but is advancing. The recent French tax breaks for retirement fund investment into “entreprise solidaire” is a major step, envied by many of my UK-based colleagues. In Britain, the state and private sector vie with and against each other to make progress—in a fashion which is reminiscent of the situation in Ontario. As a partner with and a competitor against Government funded entities in the UK, I certainly have some issues with this model.  

• Which model works best?
• How do we best measure “success”?
• Is it fair to cite these really as three separate models?
• Is the “Quebec approach” really so similar to that in France, or am I conflating the two because of the common language? Are my other Anglophone UK/US/Canadian comparisons fair and accurate or misleading?
• How can these models learn from each other?
• What other ways of doing things exist elsewhere in the world?

• Is your organization or project perfectly self-sufficient?
• What forms of collaboration or merger might strengthen your efforts?
• Or, perhaps, rescue one part of your program when another aspect is failing?
• Would a merger actually cut the costs you think it would?
• When does a merger run into trouble?
• What's the importance of trust when two orgs work together?
• Is a temporary collaboration, designed to achieve one time-limited purpose, the way to go?
• What other participants -- from other sectors -- could you benefit from a formal collaboration with?
• Where are your strengths, your weaknesses, your natural allies?
• What form of connection -- informal collaborative, formal merger, partial association -- would be right in your case?
• Is there a new business model, which would boost your efforts?

• Be open
• Identify your goals
• Identify potential collaborators
• Expand your networking
• Check your “fit”
• Work out your strategy

• Assign tasks and responsibilities and be clear about ownership
• Retain your independence

Questions:

• Have you fully explored companies that might be a good match for needing your expertise and talents?
• Do you approach your business meetings in a way that is professional and business-like yet open and honest, sharing your goals and aspirations?
• Have you established adequate benchmarks and metrics to keep your work focused and objective?
• If a previous relationship with a business organization didn't work out, do you assume that none can work and therefore have given up trying?  Is it time to revisit your strategy and start to reach out again?
   

Join sustainability and market research experts Amy Fetzer and Shari Aaron in the conversation.

Generation Y’s thirst is to create something lasting that works – sustainable projects that will continue to affect the lives of those in rural communities for years to come. My generation is creating a daycare center in South Africa that will attract students by providing lunch that it grows in its own garden. 

My generation wants to create something from conception to completion – from design to implementation.  My generation is creating a demonstration farm complete with a solar drip irrigation system that connects rural Kenyan farmers with modern farming technologies to replicate on their own land.

My generation wants to incorporate what it learns from its experience abroad about leveraging community resources to create sustainable development into its careers – as policymakers, as entrepreneurs, as eventual philanthropists.

The Associated Press this month reported:  “Parents in some of Africa's poorest countries are cutting back on school, clothes and basic medical care just to give their children a meal once a day.”

To address these issues, funds abound, but social change does not. Young people provide an untapped resource to redirect this ineffectual course. Their idealism and open-mindedness to new solutions create opportunities to empower communities to develop and own solutions to poverty. Generation Y is the generation of social innovation.

When I started ThinkImpact, an organization that has connected American college students and recent graduates from dozens of campuses nationwide with rural villages abroad to help reduce poverty through designing and implementing innovative projects, everyone had doubts that we’d be able to attract the best and the brightest to leave home for a year, to live in what are sometimes literal mud huts and to succeed in creating something sustainable. But there’s no shortage of young people – members of Generation Y – who want to alleviate poverty – as a career.

• How can the next generation of funders better meet the demand for funding long-term projects, instead of short-term experiences?
• How can we provide real opportunities for career development for these recent graduates when they are living in some of the most remote locations to help them go from their experience abroad to a career in development and social innovation?
• How can we improve the “paint a wall programs” that currently exist and integrate them into new programs that allow more ingenuity and a longer term commitment, and thereby better suit Generation Y?

Join Saul Garlick, Founder and Executive Director of ThinkImpact, in the conversation.

Our topic this week is how social entrepreneurs can most effectively leverage pro bono and volunteer support. Our goal is to gather positive but realistic advice about volunteers -- about ways we can harness their enthusiasm and energy to gain impact and bring projects to completion.
 
It's Mozilla Service Week this week, and that's their focus, too. "Be the Difference," their headline proclaims in big bold type. And the pitch continues:

We believe the Internet should make life better. Join us the week of September 14-21, 2009, as we take action to make a difference in our communities, our world, our Web.

You can see two buttons prominently displayed:

I want to help >> find out how
I need help >> get help now

 
The accompanying text explains the idea:

During the week of September 14-21, 2009, we're asking individuals to step up and make a difference by using the Web to better their community. We're looking for people who want to share, give, engage, create, and collaborate by offering their time and talent to local organizations and people who need their help.
 
Mozilla believes everyone should know how to use the Internet, have easy access to it, and have a good experience when they're online. By utilizing our community's talents for writing, designing, programming, developing, and all-around technical know-how, we believe we can make the Web a better place for everyone.

Those two buttons, "I want to help" and "I need help", are like the human condition in miniature. We could each wear one or both of them, I think, and it's perhaps not so surprising that here on the Net they become two very simple options, hard to miss.
 
If I'm not mistaken, the folks at DoGoodr are taking a similar approach, with their two main tabs reading "Need Help Posts" and "Offer Help Posts".
 
So what's up?
 
We need one another. And we can help one another. And there needs to be a way to match up those two things.
 
Here on The Edge this week, and this month, I'd like to point you to those two buttons at Mozilla Service Week, and those two tabs at DoGoodr -- but also invite you to talk here about what has worked for you, and what problems you've seen, in working with volunteers.
 

• What are your tips from the trenches?
• What are the realistic costs of managing volunteer work? How much staff times does it take in terms of training, management, etc?
  
• And what are the very real benefits of volunteer work?
  
• How have volunteers contributed to your project specific efforts?
  
• From the volunteer perspective, what have you been able to offer, what have you accomplished?
  
• And what problems, if any, arose? Lack of clarity as to goal or means? Sheer burnout?
  

 
Mozilla Service Week 's Featured Partners are Idealist.org, betterplace.org and OneWebDay. Here at Social Edge, we're among the Friends of Mozilla Service Week, along with such varied folks as All for Good, ChristianVolunteering.org, DemocracyInAction, DonorsChoose.org, The Extraordinaries, GiveIndia, Google, Grassroots.org, Pledgebank, PopTech, TechSoup Global and Zazengo.

Those two buttons aren't just buttons on a Web page -- they're doors opening on a social movement that has the potential to radically transform a vast diversity of human situations.

Which button do you need to press? Let's talk this through!

I’ve always thought the executive directors of such organizations should have much larger business cards. They should carry around large cardboard placards with room for the additional titles placed upon them:
 
·   Chief Financial Officer
·   Chief Information Officer
·   Chief Development Officer
·   Director of Marketing
·   Director of Human Resources
·   Director of Strategic Planning
·   … and many more.
 
Insane job descriptions are especially prevalent among growing nonprofits. The external impact of a dynamic organization’s almost always outstrips its internal capacity – often by a long shot. As a result, the executive leader is busy trying to master new internal organizational areas while directing the expanding mission.

It’s a bit like trying to add new parts to your car while you’re driving it.  At a high speed.

Why is this the case? Who is responsible?

·   Funders who don’t appreciate the value of investing in capacity?
·   Board members who don’t chip in more with their labor (while reviewing the ED according to an insane job description)?
·   Executive directors themselves for not setting better boundaries?

And even more importantly, what is the most effective solution? 

Let me propose one thought for the executive directors out there: wishing we could just get more money for new staff can’t be the main solution.

First, wishing isn’t a great recipe for solutions.

Second, this assumes that there is high quality talent willing to work on your staff, especially at your most coveted positions.  For instance, there are over 14,108 nonprofits in my local region, the San Francisco Bay Area. Are there really 14,108 excellent Directors of Development out there?

Third, let’s say I snap my fingers and give you enough money to hire another FTE.  Where would that go? And what critical areas of expertise does that decision still leave uncovered?

What do you think? Is there more fundamental rethinking needed about how expertise gets deployed in our sector? For instance, are there ways to share expertise more efficiently?

Are there practical suggestions you have coming from your experience with an insane job description?

Join Curtis Chang, CEO of Consulting Within Reach in the discussion. And tell us about your own job description.

Practically speaking, governments in the developing world have a lot to gain from engaging in multi-sector partnerships for sustainable development (extending/improving services, delegating responsibility and accessing more capital among others). Evidence from all over the world suggests that governments in the developing world have much to achieve from partnering and that such initiatives are being used to carry out many important functions including expanding or improving some of the traditionally government specific duties.

However, in order to best avail of this opportunity that brings together the best of every sector for a common goal, each actor will have to evaluate what it brings to the table and how to make it work in a collaborative way.  One of the biggest obstacles to cross-sector partnerships has been observed to be problems relating to the government role in them. This is due to the dual nature of its role in that when endowed with the capacity to partner well, the government as an actor in a multi-sector partnership brings some very important capabilities/legitimacy to the mix; however, when hampered by institutional problems and bureaucracy it can be the one actor that other sectors are the least disposed to partner with.

Conversely, some skills that have been observed to be useful for the public sector in effective partnering with other sectors include:
•    the ability to access the grass roots awareness of the civil society and NGO’s to recognize critical social needs,
•    the faculty and channels to prioritize these societal problems to the private sector, and,
•    the capacity to negotiate and collaborate effectively with other sectors.

However, there are several other skills that the public sector will have to build to be able to capitalize on the partnership model for sustainable development that need to be identified and work done to build capacity on them. 
 
Clearly cross-sector partnerships are one of the most viable ways forward for developing countries, however it is critical to evaluate how ready the sectors are for partnering and what can be done to improve their competence for collaboration in order for cross-sector partnering to fulfill its potential promise.  Hence the questions raised about the government role at this point are:

•    What are the skills that can be counted as Good Partnering Skills for the public sector?
•    Are there any particular desirable skills for Partnering with the private sector?
•    Are there any specific required skills for partnering with the NGO sector/civil society?
•    What can be done to build the capacity of the public sector for effective partnering?

Hanniah Tariq is a doctoral candidate in Economic and Social Innovation at the University of Buckingham Business School, and Integral Enterprise Research Associate for TRANS4M (Four World Center for Social Innovation) in Geneva. Join her in the conversation.

• How can we run our nonprofit social enterprises efficiently so we can manage donors, investors, clients and clienors/donorents?
• Where do we find these hybrid fund developers?  
• What do we call them and pay them?
• How do we stay competitive with the marketplace?