Social Entrepreneurship

Around the time I started SVT in 2001, I remember noticing that all the highly accomplished social entrepreneurs I met seemed to have something in common: they did not have a life partner. Either they seemed to be perpetually single as they entered middle age and beyond, or they were divorced. The only renowned social entrepreneurs I knew who had stayed married for decades were the ones who worked with their partners.

Death by Definitions in Social Enterprise Land

• What are creative ways that new innovations can reach poorest of the poor?
• What new inventions do you expect to scale and reach the two billion persons at the base of the pyramid?
• What mechanisms enable adoption by local communities that may be hesitant with new technologies?
• What surprising bottleneck or challenge is not being talked about enough?
• Which partnerships between business and the social sector have been most successful at promoting invention-led development? 

"What I think some wazungu (foreigners) misunderstand about poverty (which is good for them to know) is:
Lacking basic needs does not mean your thinking capacity must be low.  They sometimes think that because Africans are living in poor countries, therefore they cannot think about themselves. They think that since they don’t have money, so they can’t be able to plan, implement, monitor and supervise anything even if given chance or supported.  They should know that, even if a person/community is poor, the best way to help is to listen and give chance to the beneficiaries to know what really is their problem, and what they think is their priority."

These are the words of our Tanzanian partner, Mama Lucy Kamptoni, who used income from selling chickens to build an innovative school in her village.  As she points out, would-be agents of change often have clever ideas for solving the world’s problems – far too many of them imagined entirely without input from the very communities we aim to transform. 
If we don’t listen to the voices of those we serve, no one else will. And voices like Mama Lucy’s need to be heard.  How does the world – and our work – change when we start listening?  And how can we ensure our supporters listen too?

Here’s a few ideas we’ve been experimenting with at Epic Change:

• Conversation:  Our #TwitterKids project aims to encourage people around the world to engage in direct conversation with 5th graders at Mama Lucy’s school on Twitter and Tumblr. Our blog includes posts and comments from Mama Lucy, parents and teachers in Arusha.
• Collaboration:  Students stood in line to vote from an Internet café in Arusha, while global supporters rallied votes elsewhere. Together, we won $10,000 from IdeaBlob  to create a technology lab at Mama Lucy’s school.
• Connection: Epic Change is launching TweetsGiving 2009  – a global celebration that aims to change the world with the power of gratitude.  By focusing on a universal theme – thankfulness – friends across the globe can connect directly and share meaningful content with Mama Lucy’s community in Tanzania.  Join the #TwitterKids at www.TweetsGiving.org to celebrate all we have to be grateful for, especially the too-often thankless work of entrepreneurs who are creating a better future for us all.

At Epic Change, we look for every possible opportunity for Mama Lucy and her community to share their story in their own voices. Just recently, for instance, Mama Lucy participated in the European Summit for Global Transformation. 

• How do you amplify the voices of social innovators like Mama Lucy? 
• How are you creating bridges that connect your donor community and the community impacted by your work? 
• And how the world will be different when we start to live in one another’s virtual backyards?  Mama Lucy and I, who I’m sure were meant to be neighbors, can’t wait to find out.

Join Epic Change founder Stacey Monk, and her Tanzanian partner Mama Lucy Kamptoni, in a conversation about amplifying the voices and impact of remarkable unseen grassroots social innovators across the globe. 

This holiday, give knowledge. 

Social entrepreneurs know all about giving knowledge. Whether they are teaching people how to live with HIV, or sharing strategies that indigenous entrepreneurs can use to grow their business, or grooming their own staff to take on more senior roles in the organization, social entrepreneurs recognize the empowering value of sharing information.

So when you think about what could make a difference this holiday, consider what information you can share, what data can you aggregate,  and how you can collaborate. To give you inspiration, let’s look at just a few of the gifts friends have given us this year.

• Collaboration Resources for Social Entrepreneurs from Christina Jordan at #i4c
• Start-up Guide and Crowd-sourced Top 400 #SocEnt on Twitter from Martin Montero
• Global Social Investment Exchange from Tamzin Ractliffe at GreaterGood
• Social Entrepreneur API from Peter Deitz, Christine Egger, and David Peery
• Open Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurship from Charles Tsai of Global Youth Fund
• Human Centric Design Kit from Tatyana Mamut at IDEO
• Child Protection Policy from Ann Cotton at Camfed
• Creative Commons CC0 (CC zero) from Commons CEO Joi Ito
• Measurement tools and systems PULSE and IRIS from GIIN, Acumen, and others
• Real World Meet-ups - Net Tuesdays from NetSquared and TechSoup

We could go on with gratitude to all those who foster convenings, collaboration, and conversation but then the list would become very long very quickly.  And we are indeed grateful for aggregators and all those who provide data, remove barriers, filter information for the rest of us, and share knowledge to fostering innovation.

Shared data is much more than interesting, though, and much more than timesaving – it is impactful. As the Stanford Social Innovation Review article on “catalytic philanthropy” champions, there is a tremendous value in creating “actionable knowledge." Lucy Bernholz in her technology paper Disrupting Philanthropy declares "data are the new platform for change. They will continue to fundamentally alter how philanthropic capital flows.”

Hans Rosling explains “Data debunks myths” and goes on to point out that “database hugging hampers innovation.” Instead, statistics and data should be “intellectual sidewalks” because, he explains, “Sidewalks are free in most of the world.  They enable communication to take place, culture is helped by it, corporate sector is helped by it, families are helped by it, it is a beautiful idea.”

Just look at how data sharing is making it easier and more efficient for people to make better decisions and contribute to a better world. 

There are organizations that vet and help you search for causes and organizations you care about so that you can more strategically donate your money and time.

“Social Looping” or “meaningfully connecting people to the impact their participation has created for a cause” is a trend showing up in both the donor, lending, and shopping experiences. SOLVEcoop and other marketplaces, are striving to show how conscious commerce can have an impact.

For example, you could buy a dazzling vase from Ayu Komang Agustini in Bali,  or perhaps get a little “Patience” from artisans in Zimbabwe or other “global gifts that matter.”  Oliberté introduces shoes that are made in Africa for people who care about alleviating poverty. The UK’s Kick4Change “home and away” program invests in truly “grass roots sports” both locally and abroad in South Africa. But how can you make sure that your child's soccer ball is not made by children but rather by adults in safe working conditions in Pakistan?

Without organizations like TransFair and B-Corporation creating standards and certifications, it is hard to know who to trust and even harder to create market incentives for everyone to play by the same rules. Data makes conscious shopping easier--the GoodGuide even launched a phone app for “Barcode Scanning for Good.” 
 

So whether you are giving advice or sharing data, this holiday, the best gift you can give is knowledge. It is the cornerstone of innovation and collaboration.  Together we are on verge of revolutionizing the social entrepreneurship sector and beyond.  It won't be instant and it will be challenging, but in the words of Hildy Gottlieb, “Transparent community engagement - trusting others - is the path of quiet bravery.

Please join Jill Finlayson in the conversation:

• What are you doing to be brave?
• Are you mentoring or sharing expertise? Who are you helping and how did you find each other?
• What gifts of data and knowledge have you already received this year?
• How can you help contribute to open data sources?
• What gifts of data and collaboration would you like to receive or create in the new year?

We've had the Tao of Physics and the Tao of Pooh, the Tao of Leadership and even the Tao of Warren Buffett.

Thinking about the Tao of things is a pretty neat way to think about the things themselves. It gets at the essence, but not in a static way. It's about process, and it's about alignment with the beating heart of all that is...

But before I get too lyrical, let me just ask: What's the Tao of Social Entrepreneurship?

First, I suppose, we need to get an idea of what "Tao" is.

The Chinese word "Tao" is one of those words that's very hard to translate --you just have to get a feel for it. It is most often rendered "the way", with or without a capital W, and of the 173 translations of the first verse of Lao-Tsu's Tao Te Ching featured here, many just leave the word untranslated, while some of them use such terms as "existence," "truth," "it" or "nature" -- it has even been used to translate the Greek "logos" in the New Testament -- "In the beginning was the Tao".

My suggested translation for the day: "flow." So our question becomes: What's the flow of social entrepreneurship?

What's its way, what's its nature, how does it naturally unfold, what are its sources, its springs, its aquifers, its currents and eddies, its curves and swerves-- how does it flow?

How does it flow clear and deep?

When does it get blocked up, and what keeps it fresh?

It seems to me that inspiration/enthusiasm and funding are two of the central currents of social entrepreneurship, so the questions we can discuss here will include:

• What is it that generates the flow of enthusiasm, and
• What kinds of things weaken or block that flow?
  
• What is it that generates the flow of funding, and
• What kinds of things weaken or block that flow?
  

Then there's the second part of the opening line of Lao-Tsu to consider: The way that can be put into words isn't the true way...

What is it about social enterprise --about your own social entrepreneurial experience -- that maybe doesn't "fit" into the neat boxes it is supposed to fit into?

• Are "expectations from headquarters" a poor fit with "realities on the ground"?
• Do "funding requirements" fit with "mission goals"?
• Where are your bottlenecks, and how can you release the full potential of your endeavors?

And -- perhaps most important of all -- where does "let go and let it flow" fit in?

Charles (Hipbone) Cameron invites you to join him for a month of flowing conversation, as we dive into The Tao of Social Entrepreneurship...

Is competition a good thing?

This morning I googled the phrase “collaboration is a good thing,” and found 2,650 results. Then I googled “competition is a good thing,” and came up with 80,700 results.

For every web-page that has acknowledged the hard-won value of collaborative projects and processes, there are 30 web-pages that hale the hallmark of North American enterprise, competition. This shouldn’t surprise me. We live in competitive times. For my entire adult life, competition has been credited with everything from maintaining the quality of healthcare and education in America to sending people to the moon to spurring innovation.

This month, competition is being credited with helping more people to serve. That’s right. One of those 80,700 results for “competition is a good thing” is a quote from a fellow social innovator who I deeply respect, Jonathan Greenblatt. His quote appeared in Suzanne Perry’s recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “An Obama-Inspired Volunteer-Recruitment Web Site Will Soon Debut.”

Jonathan was referring to the unfortunate (in my opinion) dynamic that has characterized my organization’s relationship with the recently launched All for Good platform. Social Actions and All for Good are both open source databases that help people find and share opportunities to make a difference.

Social Actions was built from the bottom up, by and for the nonprofit technology sector. All for Good was built from the top down with inspiration coming directly from President Obama’s call for a Craigslist for Service and with support from Google and the Craigslist Foundation. All for Good’s board of directors reads like a Who’s Who of technology, the media, and nonprofit worlds. Social Actions supporters, friends, and mentors are the rockstars of the nonprofit technology sector, ie, geeks who care.

As far as I am concerned, there is no need for Social Actions and All for Good to compete with one another in an effort to help more Americans find ways to serve. Here’s why:

• There’s no such thing as an organization too big to collaborate
• There’s no such thing as an organization too small to collaborate with
• When the grassroots and giants conspire for good, the possibilities are endless (think Obama)

Most importantly, in certain circumstances, collaborative dynamics and processes can be far more effective at producing innovation than competition. For example, Social Actions has been working for the last five months on a project called the Social Entrepreneur API. We have brought together the staff of five leading award programs in social entrepreneurship and are building out the infrastructure for distributing information about social entrepreneurs far and wide. The service, which will launch later this summer, represents a breakthrough example of similar organizations leaving their similarities and differences behind and actively pursuing a collaborative opportunity that advances the entire field of social entrepreneurship.

I worry that if All for Good and Social Actions become outright competitors, the outcome will not be as good for volunteerism and service as it could be. Conversations about open standards will become partisan. Efforts to create innovative applications that distribute ways to do good will be duplicated. And the opportunity to lead the social sector by example in the direction of collaborative innovation will be squandered.

I’ll leave you with this thought: global competition may have sent people into outer space for the first time, but now collaboration between large and small nations keeps them there. I cannot recall if that sentiment is original. If it’s not original, please let me know who I should give credit to. Attribution for a good idea is the first step toward collaborative innovation.

Here are some questions for this discussion:

• Is it possible for large and small organizations to collaborate?  
• In what circumstances does collaborating compromise or contribute to innovation?
• In what circumstances does competing compromise or contribute to innovation?
• If you had to choose competition or collaboration as your default, which would you choose?

Join Peter Deitz in the conversation.

The Charismatic Entrepreneur --a Blessing or a Curse?

In the early stages of any entrepreneurial venture, social or otherwise, it is the energy and drive of the single entrepreneur (or sometimes a duo of co-preneurs, à la Google) that keep the “show on the road”. Her (or his) passion, drive, connections, persuasive powers etc. are what enable the venture to get through the impossibly difficult early days. 

In social entrepreneurship this is even more the case.  As there is often no equity upside, the financial incentive is essentially non-existent.  Moreover, the social nature of the organisation gives the enterprise the element of a “crusade”. In this regard the CEO/Founder’s vision is the lifeblood of the enterprise—the source of strength on which others often draw.

Yet frequently this strength becomes a source of weakness instead, especially as the organisation matures. So impassioned is the leader by the mission, so violently consumed by this personal passion, they stifle innovation, debate, staff development and, inevitably, the enterprise’s future. Such dysfunctionality is often the rule, in the dozens of social enterprises I have observed over the past decade.  For example:

•    The success of one consumer-oriented social enterprise is deeply threatened by a CEO who seems unable to yield control, threatening the company’s development and its access to capital.
•    A technology oriented social business failed partly due to the CEO’s need for control and his/her refusal to listen to staff, advisors and shareholders.
•    An environmental firm loses key staff on a regular basis because the CEO is unwilling to be challenged.
…sadly, I could go on and on.

It is not always thus. I sit on the Board of a company, where the CEO/Founder, an unusually secure individual, regularly raises the issue of succession and team development in order to secure sustainability.

•    How can social enterprises benefit from the drive of the entrepreneur without sacrificing their futures?
•    What role can the Board play in these situations?
•    How can good governance be achieved when there are no external shareholders with power?  This is a serious problem where the CEO retains control in order to “protect the ‘mission’ of the organisation”.  Frequently this power is used to protect his/her position.
•    Can external stakeholders have a role in helping to address and resolve these problematic circumstances?
•    How can credit be shared in a world where success is often personalised by the media?

Join Rod Schwartz, CEO of ClearlySo, in the conversation.

You have the charge, the energy, the get-up-and-go that's so essential to entrepreneurship, and the caring quality that makes you want to make things better -- so maybe you're the kind of social entrepreneur who has more than one iron in the fire, or who starts one social venture and as soon as its up and running is looking for the next change to make -- a serial social entrepreneur.

• Are you part of an international SE franchise?
• Have you started one up?
• Are you thinking about going this route?
• What are the issues that scaling up across national boundaries create?
• Can you distill the essence of a successful program so that it can be reconfigured in more than one culture?

Maybe you've started a series of social ventures, one after another.

• How many ventures have you started?
• How many have you thought about starting?
• Are you better at initial ideas and inspiring others than at long term follow through? Are you a spark plug more than an engine?
• Do your programs approach the same issue in different parts of the world?
• Are you able to network your various ventures?
• Did you make a failed attempt or two, and learn from your mistakes, and move on to your current venture which is successful?

- whether you've been involved in a sequence of different ventures, or running a cluster of them at the same time.

Are the only innovations in social entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?  Well, you might think so. 

At the annual Skoll World Forum, (the “Davos of social entrepreneurship”) the overwhelming majority of speakers, experts and practitioners came from Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly the US and UK.  I recently attended a lecture by a well-regarded professor on social enterprise and finance.  He stated that “without a doubt the UK and the US lead the world in terms of thinking in this area”. 

I found myself wondering, “Is this really true?”  Is this, perhaps, just an example of Anglo-Saxon “imperialism”, which ought to be contrary to the spirit of the world of social enterprise and finance?  Or do many of us think it is true because so much of the literature is written in English –the current “lingua franca” of the social enterprise world and the only language many of my colleagues and I can understand!  Perhaps there is indeed a large Anglo-Saxon contingent to the global “voice” on this subject, but have we got the proportions right at our global gatherings?

This is important to me because I am passionately interested in progress in the sector and believe that its pace is quickened when inputs are diverse.  If, by contrast, so many voices are Anglo-Saxon (like mine, I should confess), does this not hamper growth?  Are we not limiting our access to innovative ideas to only those which might spring forth from an “Anglo-Saxon” mindset?  Also, are there not ways to deploy social networking technologies to harness a broader range of views?   Even if we persist in writing in English can we not at least tap into a broader range of voices by nationality?

There is openness to models from the developing world.  But in many cases these models are deployed by Anglo-Saxons who move to these poorer countries.  Does this represent then a diversity of thinking or not? 

Continental Europe and Japan represent an enormous proportion of global economic activity—yet their voice regarding social entrepreneurship is far more limited.  Is this because there is not much going on or because we just do not know where to look, or have limited access because of linguistic barriers? 

What do you think?  Join Rod Schwartz, CEO of ClearlySo, in the conversation.
 

Money.  "Money, that's what I want", sang the very same Beatles who sang "Money can't buy me love".  "Money, it's a gas", sang the Pink Floyd, "Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. ... Money, its a hit. Don't give me that do goody good bullshit. ... Money, it’s a crime..."  

Obviously money has the power to confuse us, we don't know what to do about it, we're uncertain whether IMF loans are "a good idea" or quite the reverse, -- and it was while he was pondering the issues at that scale, that it dawned on Muhammad Yunus that a few dollars might do more for a village in Bangladesh than several millions in loans.  

Not that big numbers are bad and little ones good -- "Sufia Begum earned the equivalent of 2 US cents a day and it was this knowledge which paralyzed me. In my university courses, I dealt in millions and billions of dollars, but here before my eyes, the problems of life and death were posed in terms of pennies," Yunus writes later -- but this profound insight at the lowest end of the financial scale has translated into millions of dollars in loans, a very high percentage of which are repaid, and a Nobel Prize, a telecom.... and the social movement which can claim Kiva among other innovations as its offspring.  We too, at Social Edge, are Yunus and Grameen Bank’s close intellectual and spiritual kin.

With very slight exertion man can obtain what is necessary for the preservation of the body, so long as he is contented with that which is indispensable, said Maimonides.

What’s indispensable, what are the basic human necessities, both material and spiritual, where and what are the greatest obstacles to obtaining them, what human resources can we bring to bear?

How can we obtain money, teach others to obtain money, channel or funnel it wisely? What are the advantages to large scale deployment of funds, what are the advantages of micro-loans? What does it cost to keep a volunteer or full-time worker from charitable burnout, or funding board-member from enthusiasm fatigue?

Our hope is that you'll join us in this event to post your own question, insights, anecdotes, and suggestions about money and how it "works" in terms of social entrepreneurship for good and ill.

• Money: Is there ever too much?
• How much would you need to begin your next major project?
• How do you balance income and expenditure when need is far greater than supply?
• How have current economic troubles affected those you work among?
• How have the troubles affected your own work?
• Is the need greater now? Is the response correspondingly greater?

The topic is money, and we should discuss it from whatever angle has the most impact in your part of the world.

Join Charles "Hipbone" Cameron in the conversation.
 

Marina Kim, Erin Krampetz and Lennon Flowers, with Ashoka’s University Program, welcome you to a discussion on how universities can actively promote positive social change in the world.  

Based on Ashoka’s work as co-founders of the University Network for Social Entrepreneurship, and more recently in launching the Changemaker Campus Initiative, we firmly believe that fostering social entrepreneurship education and engagement on college campuses presents a powerful way to do just that.

Examples include, but are by no means limited to:

•    Research with a solutions orientation; see: Innovations Journal
•    Practical preparations for students beyond theoretical training; see: Clinton Global Initiative University, Transformative Action Institute, Net Impact
•    Student-launched non-profits working in concert with the communities they are trying to serve; see: Genocide Intervention Network, Center for Global Engagement, Gumball Capital or FORGE
•    And a growing number of partnerships between universities and practitioners, aimed at evaluating the success of particular interventions and bringing today’s most innovative ideas into classrooms
    
While we are encouraged by the progress to date, we are not quite there yet. Despite the considerable growth in the field, we must do more to identify and assess expected learning outcomes, and to measure the impact of programs on students, faculty, and the communities they serve.

• For universities, it can be tempting in the midst of budget cuts to revert to traditional approaches and away from interdisciplinary studies and inter-departmental programs.

• For faculty and researchers, there are few opportunities for publication and tenure, and we only have a handful of credible and widespread ways to embed social entrepreneurship into existing coursework.

• For students, good intentions often result in replicated efforts, with little support from faculty and university structures.

• Finally, many established social entrepreneurs are seeking new and innovative ways to engage with universities, but the systems are not in place to make practitioner-academic exchanges valuable and impactful for both sides of the partnership.

Solutions are needed, and we think you have some of the answers.  We’ll take your comments and suggestions seriously by sharing them with our university partners – and hopefully working with you to help make it happen.  Here are a few key questions:

1.    What is working and not working on university campuses to support aspiring social entrepreneurs?  
2.    What additional support, resources or knowledge would be useful to support a broader range of students, faculty and administrators to employ a socially entrepreneurial mindset in their work or career path?
3.    For graduates, what do you wish you would have learned in college to better support you in making change in the world?
4.    For current non-profit practitioners, philanthropists, business leaders or government officials, how could universities better support you and your present work?
5.    “Connecting theory to practice” is a challenge. How do we systematically link:
•    Researchers to pressing research questions?  
•    Students to role models and innovative organizations?
•    Classroom learning to on-the-ground realities?
•    Students to meaningful careers with a social impact?

Join Marina Kim, Erin Krampetz and Lennon Flowers in the conversation.

This discussion is the executive summary of the 2009 Skoll World Forum on “Shifting Power Dynamics.” It contains lessons learned at the Forum and links back to the broader social media archive of blog posts, tweets, pictures and videos from the three-day event.

My Top Four Lessons Learned at the Skoll World Forum 2009

At times, it’s necessary to overstate your cause
On the opening night of the Skoll World Forum 2009, the Executive Director of Sundance Institute, Kenneth S. Brecher,  ended his riveting story about Russian poet Anna Akhmatova with a quote from Isaiah Berlin, "Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated." I now understand that the overstating of  micro-finance as liberating and triple bottom lines as indispensible, for example, are  necessary to push these concepts and others through an investment community that would have otherwise prefer to continue with business as usual.

Power shifts, even at the Skoll World Forum
The role of Twitter at this year’s Forum had a democratizing effect on participation. Delegates used Twitter within sessions to discuss the ideas being presented. Moreover, their live stream of tweets permitted virtual delegates to follow along from afar, and in some case, to pose questions to the panel.  In Tom Watson’s session on “(Financial) Power to the People,” Tori Tuncan requested via Twitter that I ask Premal Shah of Kiva if any Kiva entrepreneurs went on to make their own loans to other Kiva entrepreneurs. Participation from afar and through backchannels had the effect of making the Forum as a whole more informal and web 2.0-ish, even if that was not the intent or vision of the Forum organizers.

Everyone attending could have been a panelist
At some point during the Forum, someone tweeted, “The audience members at the sessions are just as expert, if not more, than the panelists.” I found this to be the case as well. During the panel on Water and the Millennial Development Goals, I realized that the panel represented a consensus that the MDGs are attainable and that top-down institutional approaches to solving the water crisis would suffice. Meanwhile, the audience included a water activist working in the field with extensive experience dealing with water access issues in India. If only the panel had contained more diverse viewpoints, then the audience member’s perspective (which was well received) would have received more attention than the 45 seconds it took him to ask a poignant question.

We still don’t have a universal definition of social entrepreneurship. We haven’t agreed on how to measure its impact.  And as for spreading the practice, that’s also a mystery. But these are all good things.
During the Forum, I came to realize that the vagueness that surrounds social entrepreneurship is actually a net gain for our sector. The intersection of business motives, business processes, and activist intentions brings together an unlikely group of bedfellows. The less we agree on what social entrepreneurship is, how best to measure it, and how to scale it, the more likely we’ll continue to innovate at the margins and encourage unlikely people to meet one another and collaborate.

At the closing ceremony, the new Executive Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Pamela Hartigan, left us with these words from an Irish blessing, “Until we meet again, let God hold you in the palm of his hand.” I say, “Until we meet again, let’s keep the conversation and collaboration going online.”

Join Peter Deitz, Founder and Executive Director of Social Actions and SWF’09 blogger and Twitterer, in the conversation.
 

Co-preneurs: when one and one makes eleven?

One of our Skoll grantees recently emailed us with a comment that gave us the seed of this week's event:
 

There is a bourgeoning subfield of entrepreneurs, social and otherwise called co-preneurs -- husband and wife teams that built something special together, with all the joys and challenges you might expect from two people working and living so closely.

Marriage isn't the only way two people can make a formidable team where either one alone might have been far less successfully, of course. In their article "Social entrepreneurship: the case for definition", Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg argue that we need to understand entrepreneurship before we tack the term "social" onto it:
 

To explore and illustrate our definition of entrepreneurship, we will take a close look at a few contemporary American entrepreneurs (or pairs thereof): Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer, Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll of eBay, and Ann and Mike Moore of Snugli...

And that's interesting -- Martin and Osberg's explanation of entrepreneurs focuses on pairs. We could add in Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft for good measure, and maybe even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet when it comes to philanthropy...

Which brings us to the next question: what happens when you add "social" into the mix -- when *social* entrepreneurs work in closely-teamed pairs?

The sociologist Max Weber talks about "charismatic" people and "the routinisation of charisma".  My guess is that a charismatic dreamer can often provide the spark for a social movement, but may need to team with a doer -- an executive/managerial type -- to get things done.

It’s my belief that there's often terrific benefit to a two-person team approach, and I have been saddened by the lack of attention to that possibility in most of the literature I've seen. It can be a husband and a wife, a dreamer and a doer, a tunnel-visionary and a detail-catcher, etc. In short, I think social entrepreneurship will often work best where there's a marriage of skill-sets.

Here are ten examples of social co-preneurs and power couples: Matt Flannery and Premal Shah at Kiva, Sam Goldman and Nedjip Tozun at d.light design, Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal at the Amazon Conservation Team, Jeremy Hockenstein and Mai Siriphongphanh at Digital Divide Data, brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger at Free the Children, Susan Burns and Mathis Wackernagel at the Global Footprint Network, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon at KickStart, Dr. Mitch Besser and Gene Falk at mothers2mothers, Andrea and Barry Coleman at Riders for Health, John and Susan Collin Marks at Search for Common Ground.

Questions:

•    what pairs of skill-sets can be particularly effective in social entrepreneurship?

•    what particular trials and tribulations does this kind of team work have to face?

•    is it sometimes harder or easier for a couple or two-person team to get funding, than for an individual?

•    what couples -- married or otherwise teamed together -- have had particular success in this field?

Please join Charles "hipbone" Cameron as we explore the ways that one and one can make eleven...
 

The day-to-day life of a social entrepreneur is filled with competing and shifting priorities, difficult challenges and most of all the unexpected.

An example: in preparing for this topic, I experienced the birth of my first child and was faced with the unexpected challenge of trying to meet his needs while offering the Social Edge community a compelling topic with rich ideas and some practical solutions.

I realized that a couple of key pieces of “infrastructure” gave me the tools to respond to the challenge. The most important were communications tools –access to email and a mobile phone that pulls you back to work when something needs to be a priority.

Here is my list of basic operational challenges:

- Finance
How am I going to get enough funding for my project? How do I know where my money is going?

- Communications
How do I stay in contact with my constituencies? Can I communicate in real time? Do I have the technology to support that?

- Business Process
Do I understand how I create social change? Can it be written down?

- Databases
Do I know what pieces of information are important to my communication strategy? To measuring my social change? To just understanding if I’m headed in the right direction?

- Metrics
What is important for me to measure? Can I measure it?

- Geography
If I have global constituents, can I reach them?

- Constituency
Who are my supporters and participants?

At the recent Tech Museum Awards, I ran into an organization that had chosen a business process whereby only after collecting 1,000 orders, they would produce and distribute their device.

Their approach did not require any operating capital, but severely restricted their volume and social impact since they needed orders in hand before they could have impact.

They tracked orders and manufacturing with spreadsheets and found they couldn’t get the answers they needed to make operational decisions—they didn’t know when they would get enough orders to start the production run on 1,000 devices (e.g. before they have the money in hand)?

The real social innovation is in the business process (e.g. order collection), but often the thing that makes a business process scale and operate efficiently is technology.

• How important is technology to the business processes of social entrepreneurs? Minor concern or pervasive through everything they do?

• The list above outlines some of the basic operational challenge questions but I wonder what is missing? What is unique to social entrepreneurs?

• And with the diversity of social entrepreneurs, what operational challenges are shared by all or at lease most social entrepreneurs?

• Is communication the most common and most important operational challenge? How do you solve the communication challenge?

• How do financial challenges constrain social impact? How much of the time are financial challenges a red herring – i.e. more money wouldn’t really solve the problem?
 

Join David Geilhufe, Philanthropy Program Manager with Netsuite, in the conversation.

Social Entrepreneurs are being asked to be good at a great many things.  So in the spirit of being supportive, this year’s Holiday Gift Guide for Social Entrepreneurs is designed to help social entrepreneurs measure up to the task... and still have some fun.

Transparency
Today people expect authenticity and openness – in other words transparency.  For tips on this new trade, give them useful books like Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens and CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson.

But don’t stop there, help them further demonstrate their honesty with a deck of transparent playing cards (they’re water proof too!) and give them some place to store their books with these awesome invisible book shelves that make it look like your books are floating on air.

Fundraising
With the global economic crisis at a feverish pitch, many social ventures wonder how they will make ends meet without losing their minds.  To help them be one with their budget, give them The Zen of Fundraising: 89 Timeless Ideas to Strengthen and Develop Your Donor Relationships by Ken Burnett and The Porcupine Principle: And Other Fundraising Secrets by Jonathan Farnhill.

And when all else fails, it might be nice to have some prayer flags on hand… they may even take to wearing prayer wheels or mailing prayer flags to donors.

Impact Measurement
How do you know if you have made an impact and how do you show the world?  In addition to reading SVT on Impact, consider Ruerd Ruben who takes a stab at figuring it out in his book The Impact of Fair Trade.

But first you have to figure out what to measure and what units to use. To get you pondering, how about this unique Equal Measure measuring cup that puts things into perspective: “...boil twenty thousand grains of rice in twenty thousand drops of water."  Of course, you still have to enter the data.  Did you know that “75% of all users do not touch type but use a “hunt and peck” approach? Enter the FrogPad with a new approach faster keyboard input.” 

Innovation
Which reminds me, if you are going to be innovative, you can't be afraid to try something new. Consider the Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard where instead of typing on a tiny smart phone, you can go for a virtual full size keyboard. Too weird for you, but still looking for the convenience of a full size yet portable keyboard - how about one that rolls up?  For more inspiration on the magical recipe that enables a social entrepreneur to be successful, take a read of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success.

Sustainability
Give them ROI For Nonprofits: The New Key to Sustainability and help them walk the talk with an Organic : delicious and sustainable t-shirt, a Solar Backpack or a hybrid model solar/battery flashlight.  Feeling like an angel, go ahead, give them an all electric Tesla Roadster - come on, you know they want one.

Leadership
Good leaders need to, well, lead.  Pick up a copy of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin.  Balance that with some Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery along with A Sense of Urgency.  And don't forget about succession planning. Help feed the pipeline of new social entrepreneurs through Ashoka’s Youth Venture or teaching social change in schools through Donors Choose, or providing kits to create more changemakers around the world.  Important reminder, while youth and your social entrepreneur's children can be a good resource, you shouldn't take them for granted which is why you might want to give this "No, I will not fix your computer" youth t-shirt. Ahh, it's all about respect :-)

Social Return on Investment
How about finding gifts that do good?  Then you can feel really good about materialism. Consider these items - you get the goods and so do other people!

Toms Shoes
One Laptop per Child
BoGo Solar LED Light
Design 21 Allumonde Ring

Check out last year's gift guide for more goodies for good people.  But before you click over there and continue your shopping binge, please stop to consider and comment on the following outstanding questions:

• What other things does a social entrepreneur need to be good at?  Please suggest more gift ideas for how they/their venture can be more scalable, emphathetic, resilient, and contented in the new year.
• What marketplaces offer a social return on your investment? Where can you shop for gifts for the ethical leader?
• And most importantly, how can you help create marketing or market incentives to help your favorite social entrepreneur's fundraising efforts be a success this season despite in the global financial climate?

Join Jill Finlayson in the conversation.