Tag: social entrepreneur

Powered by Ad Dollars, Nonprofits Get a Boost

Posted on by robbie

The work of charities relies on government grants, foundations and a limited pool of individual dollars. At EcoMedia, his in-house organization at CBS, NationSwell Council member Paul Polizzotto tapped into an alternate stream: corporate advertising budgets. With EcoMedia, CBS redirects some $80 million in profits to nonprofit programs, helping 30 million Americans affected by the most urgent social issues of our time: the environment, health and education, and better lives for veterans. NationSwell met with Polizzotto at CBS’s headquarters in New York City to talk about a better way for business and charities to work together for social change.

What first attracted you to social entrepreneurship?
I wonder if there was some sociological survey conducted, if it would show the growth in social entrepreneurship comes from people raised by hippies. My parents were products of the ’60s, raising kids in the ’70s. I grew up in Manhattan Beach, Calif. My parents were entrepreneurs themselves, with a swim school open half the year. My parents were incredibly compassionate and generous people. Over time, we took in people who had run away: Eventually, we had 22 people living in our apartment. And we didn’t have any means. Essentially, I kind of turned my parents’ way of life into a business model.

How did that happen?
I grew up surfing every day in the very polluted Santa Monica Bay, and we were sick all the time; the bay’s gotten a lot better, but back then, it was pretty bad. I noticed that the contract cleaning industry was washing pollutants and detergents right into the storm-drain system, which goes into the bay. I said, “Whoa, I am surfing in that!” And besides, it’s illegal. It’s a violation of the federal Clean Water Act. At 25, I set out to come up with a way to work on the issue and protect the environment. My zero-discharge business grew, and, essentially, we legalized and legitimized an industry and set a new standard: Either get legal or get out.

After that, how did EcoMedia get its start?
Around the same time, I started to learn about a lot of nonprofits doing remarkable work on environmental regulations. I knew there were a lot of great projects that needed a little bit of gap financing to get off the shelf. I created EcoMedia originally as a nonprofit, in the late 1990s, to fill those gaps by winning grants. But what I found was that we were winning money, and other deserving nonprofits weren’t. It was a zero-sum game. I was competing against nonprofits I thought were doing very important work. I looked for ways to keep doing what I was doing and accidentally stumbled on the advertising world. I thought, “Hey, maybe there’s a way to create an ad model to fund nonprofits, a way to create this entirely new revenue stream coming from ad spends.” I got involved with CBS in a joint venture, and in 2010, we were acquired. We’ve since become the fastest-growing division at CBS.

Where do you see yourself in the media landscape?
I have a very different view, because I’m not from media, advertising or technology. But all of what I’m doing now is squarely in that space. I remember having a conversation with CBS, and they said they thought their ability to improve communities came from content. I said, “I don’t think so: I think it’s your distribution.” I think content’s largely overrated. Look at health: Never before in history has more information been available to more people about what’s good and bad for you. Yet we’re not as healthy as we were 30 years ago, as it relates to health conditions like obesity and diabetes. You think you’re doing your job as a media company by getting the word out, but we’re not seeing the desired impact.

What’s an example of a campaign you thought was particularly effective?
A dear friend of mine, who has since passed, created a surf school to help kids with disabilities and military-service men and women suffering from PTSD, called the Jimmy Miller Foundation. To see how the sport of surfing, which gave so much to me, is being used as therapy is pretty remarkable. We do quite a lot to fund their work. Others that matter to me are putting solar panels on Miami City Hall, the first big city hall in the United States to be powered by them, and in my own hometown of Los Angeles, in the port, there’s a marine terminal controlling all the ships coming in and out of the port that we made energy-neutral. And we send kids with subsidized breakfasts and lunches home on a Friday afternoon with backpacks full of meals for the weekend. There are so many projects, it’s innumerable.

3 Smart, Forward-Thinking Strategies to House the Homeless

Posted on by robbie

 
Solutions to SF’s Homeless Problem Starts with Supportive Housing, San Francisco Chronicle
Ten years ago, the City by the Bay set out to end chronic homelessness by placing people in units where they have access to therapists, job assistance and rehab services. The strategy has proven successful, but to put roofs over the heads of the most deep-rooted street people, can San Francisco take the next step and expand the program?
Could This Silicon Valley Algorithm Pick Which Homeless People Get Housing? Mother Jones
In the tech capital of the world, those without homes live on the same streets that house companies worth billions of dollars. Inspired by nearby geniuses and their computing, Santa Clara County created the Silicon Valley Triage Tool, an algorithm that uses data to identify which of the area’s homeless should be housed the fastest.
Why Businesses Don’t Need to Be Helpless About Homelessness, Inc.
Can business owners create a customer-friendly shopping environment and be sensitive to area residents without homes? Brian Kolb, a principal at Paramount Contractors & Developers, says yes, believing that these six moves by private enterprises can help the homeless get the assistance they so desperately need.
MORE: Ever Wondered What to Say to a Homeless Person? Here Are 5 Things to Say and 5 Things Not to Say

These Two Millennials Are Taking on Big Urban Problems — and Winning

Posted on by robbie

As Scott Benner sneakily took a few sheets of blank paper from the public library’s copy machine, he kept an eye out for employees who could bust him for stealing. Walking between the public library’s bookshelves, he recognized several men from the local homeless shelter in Quincy, Mass., where he was living, waiting in line for the bathroom or surfing the web. Slumping in a chair, Benner used a ballpoint pen to doodle, distracting himself from the travails of his life. In the five years prior, Benner had lost everything: his 20-year foreman job at a steel plant, his two-bedroom house. Even his wife left. Kept awake at night in the shelter by men moaning from withdrawal and hacking with sickness, Benner doubted he would ever experience the life he once imagined for himself.
For weeks, Benner kept sketching, giving away his artwork until a shelter worker suggested he sell it. Some brief online research using the library’s wifi led Benner to ArtLifting, an online marketplace like Etsy for homeless and disabled artists. A couple of months later, in May 2014, he sold his first piece. Investing his earnings in a pad of high-quality paper and a set of pens led to even more sales. “It’s selling in ways that I’ve never imagined,” he says. But beyond the cash, “it was just that sense of hope that I was going to get out of the mess that I was in. There was a light at the end of the tunnel now because ArtLifting was there.” Recently, Benner moved into permanent housing.
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Behind Benner’s success is a little-known group working to maximize ArtLifting’s reach. Tumml, a nonprofit San Francisco incubator, assists for-profit entrepreneurs scale their companies to solve urban problems. For ArtLifting and the 32 other young urban ventures it’s assisting, Tumml attempts to bridge the funding and mentorship gap business founders face by connecting them to investors, city officials, journalists and advisors from Silicon Valley giants like Airbnb and Yelp. On average, participating businesses raise $1.1 million and hire 10 new employees. Collectively, 2.2 million people have used the products and services offered by companies in Tumml’s portfolio.
Tumml co-founders Julie Lein, a one-time political consultant, and Clara Brenner, formerly in real estate development, caught the highly infectious “startup bug” while at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. (“When you are surrounded by talented technologists and entrepreneurs, it makes you want to push yourself to do more and to solve big, hairy challenges,” Brenner explains.) There, they collaborated on a white paper about the challenges entrepreneurs confront. Combining their findings with their love of cities led the business-savvy duo to launch Tumml. “We saw a lot of people talking about these issues, and we want to see more people actually going out there and tackling these challenges,” says Lein.
APPLY: Tumml is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program here.
During its four-month-long program, Tumml provides entrepreneurs with free office space, trainings and lectures and any other support they need to obtain seed funding. “Usually, we are the first outside person for these enterprises,” says Lein. “They are at a critical juncture, and they need help getting their business off the ground.” For ArtLifting specifically, the two women helped the nonprofit network with government personnel, investors and journalists.
 
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Applicants undergo a rigorous vetting process (Tumml’s acceptance rate rivals Harvard), and at first glance, there’s little commonality among participants. A handful create software platforms that make government work more efficiently: Sprokit helps corrections departments transition former inmates back into society by allowing agencies to share real-time data on a single platform, and Valor Water Analytics assists utilities conserve through meter technology. Several are social enterprises that benefit vulnerable populations: HandUp replaces panhandling by allowing those in need to crowdfund donations on a mobile app; WorkHands is a LinkedIn for tradesmen looking for work. And many simply ease the stress of urban life for city-dwellers: Farmery sells high-quality fresh food grown indoors, and Hitch (recently acquired by Lyft) allows passengers to carpool on ride-sharing apps. What unites the enterprises, however, is the belief that the markets can offer a solution when government or charitable services aren’t enough.
“Maybe two generations ago, if you wanted to solve a problem, you ran for office; maybe a generation ago, you ran a nonprofit or set up a group to lobby on behalf of the issues you care about,” says Brenner, Tumml’s CEO. Today, “the success of the entrepreneur presents a path forward to see a difference in their communities,” she continues. Her colleague Lein explains, “People see the power in taking the bull by the horns in a startup that directly addresses challenges. It’s a really powerful motivator to make the change that you want to see.”
After losing his job in 2009, Scott Benner personally experienced how the business, government and nonprofit sectors weren’t enough. Short-term gigs and unemployment checks couldn’t keep him afloat, and he was forced to enter the shelter system — shocked and enraged — with just a backpack of clothing.
But ArtLifting’s social enterprise seemed to provide a new, self-sustaining way to offer services to the homeless. Thanks to assistance from Tumml, ArtLifting has networked with government personnel and investors and has received media coverage. Benner’s drawings — explosive black-and-white symbols that repeat across the page — now hang in homes across the country. With his bank account replenished, he says his whole world-view has been changed by his interaction with ArtLifting. He wants to see more social enterprises like the ones Tumml fosters: “I would never think of running a business and not giving back anything now. I wasn’t callous and uncaring before, but I just didn’t entertain the idea. Today, it’s why not?” he says.
Currently, four out of five Americans live in urban areas, a figure that only continues to grow. Tumml’s co-founders recognize their importance to improving 21st century living, but Brenner stresses that no one can solve urban problems (homelessness, crime, overstressed infrastructure) on their own. “We need startups dedicated to solving the challenges that come with this massive population shift,” she says. Across the country, ambitious, young entrepreneurs are leading the charge for urban innovation, and Tumml is fueling the groundswell behind them.
Tumml is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated where Benner’s artwork hangs, how Tumml provided assistance to ArtLifting and ArtLifting’s revenue and expenditures. NationSwell apologizes for the errors.

The Newest Way to Solve the Country’s Biggest Problems

Posted on by robbie

What if there was a way to invest in a nonprofit and earn a financial return based on impact? What if donors made performance-based donations that catalyzed investment capital and unlocked impact data? These are just some of the questions that San Francisco resident Lindsay Beck asks herself as she sets up NPX, a company that’s transforming the way impact is financed in the nonprofit sector, along with her cofounder Catarina Schwab. Similar to social impact bonds in that participating ventures would be able to expand much faster than usual, the infusion of private dollars would come from citizens making investments on the exchange. Beck, a Wharton business school grad who founded her own nonprofit for cancer patients, spoke with NationSwell about combining the private and nonprofit sectors.

What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
What I see in others that I aspire to be most like is presence in a moment. We’ve all been in meetings where someone runs in: they’re late, they’re scattered, they spend 15 minutes telling you how busy they are and then finish by telling you all the things they have to do next. By contrast, I have had meetings and personal experiences where people come in and don’t bring any of that with them. We sit down, conquer whatever the agenda is, and I feel like the center of their universe. To me, that is the most powerful and very hard. It requires behind-the-scenes systems, a mindset and help to get there.

What’s on your nightstand?
I am trying to read three books a month right now, so I currently have “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption,” by Bryan Stevenson, which I’ve been told is amazing and is teaching me more about recidivism in the U.S. justice system. I also have “The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future,” by Steve Case, which is brand-new and everyone’s raving about. And then I have “How to Raise an Adult,” by Julie Lythcott-Haims.  She’s the former Stanford dean who wrote the book about how we’re all ruining our kids and how to fix it.

What’s your favorite movie of all-time?
The movie that had the biggest impact on my life was “You’ve Got Mail.” This might sound funny, but when I saw it, I was recovering from surgery. I was a cancer patient [Beck is a two-time cancer survivor], and I had just been told that chemotherapy would render me sterile. I didn’t know what to do about that. In the movie, one of the characters goes off to freeze her eggs. Literally because of that movie, I started calling every [in vitro fertilization] clinic in the country and found a way to freeze my eggs before I started chemotherapy. It was not necessarily my favorite, but it changed the trajectory of my life and many people’s lives after that.

What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I am excited about all of the blended finance — some people call it social finance, and it can be grouped with impact investing — that are linking capital with impact. We’re finding new, creative ways to fund and finance solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems. Up until recently, the nonprofit sector (or more largely, the impact sector) had been very opaque and inefficient. There’s been a lot of money flowing without knowing what works, what doesn’t and where something’s better. We haven’t applied some of the traditional free-market principles to that sector: there’s not robust information flow or sufficient capital flow tied to impact. That’s changing. With increased transparency and efficiency, I think we can better identify and fund what works and more quickly stop what doesn’t.

What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
I feel like everyone told me it, I just didn’t hear it: it is going to take a long time. Relax, be patient, slow down. Don’t rush it. Being an entrepreneur there’s a sense of urgency, but it’s exhausting, and everything takes twice as long as you think it will. It’s okay to slow down and wait for the world to be ready.

What inspires you?
On a micro level, I want to see this change in the world. I’m really driven not to sit back and hope other people do it, but to play an active role in creating the change I want to see in the world. On the macro level, I am motivated by having a purpose larger than myself and my own little world. In my past job and past career at Fertile Hope, a nonprofit telling cancer patients of the risk to their eggs and providing them options, I had the perfect nexus of passion-driven career that left a positive legacy and I was able to get paid for it. In the Jim Collins Venn diagram, at the center, that is utopia. I had that, and I created that in the nonprofit. Now I’m in the place where I’m trying to re-create that.

What’s your biggest need right now?
Our biggest need at NPX is an innovative philanthropist who’s willing to try something new. Everyone says they are both innovative and willing to try something new, but the reticence to act is surprising sometimes. We need someone who is ready to try and experiment, in terms of how they give. Whether it’s a person or foundation, they need to feel, “I’m tired of the existing playbook, and I’m ready to jump in the ring to try something new. I’m ready to act.”

What’s your proudest accomplishment?
It’s a little bit of a mix between personal and professional: becoming a mother, having my first child, because everyone told me I couldn’t have everything and all I had to overcome to do it. I created the organization in that spirit — to live it and believe it and preach it — but it was another thing to actually realize that dream. It’s an extraordinary day-to-day impact on my life, being a mom, especially after being told that’s not going to happen for you.

What something most people don’t know about you?
Once upon a time, I was a taxi driver. (You’d never know by reading my LinkedIn profile.) On Martha’s Vineyard, I was there for a summer in college, and that was supposedly the most lucrative job on the island. A bunch of my guy friends decided they were going to be cab drivers, and I said, “If you can do it, I can do it.”

To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.

MORE: The New Way to Govern: Paying for Progress

Thanks to This Man’s Vision, 22,000 People Are No Longer Living in Poverty

Posted on by robbie

A native San Franciscan, Daniel Lurie has witnessed his hometown change as two tech bubbles inflated, introducing “tremendous wealth” and sometimes crowding out those living, by contrast, in “tremendous poverty.” The son of Brian Lurie, a rabbi and head of the Jewish Community Foundation for 17 years, and stepson of Peter Haas, one-time head of Levi’s and renowned gift-giver, Lurie has philanthropy in his blood. In 2005, not yet 30 years old, he co-founded the Tipping Point Community to harness the money swelling the coffers of tech companies and other businesses, distributing more than $100 million directly to the Bay Area’s most effective nonprofits and social enterprises.
Rather than “building institutions” — libraries, universities and hospitals — this new generation of donors wants to see their charity have a measurable impact. As a result, their methods and tools have improved. NationSwell spoke with the man who’s educating members of the Bay Area about how to best share their riches.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I live by the motto that you hire the best people. You surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, that hire people that are incredibly competent and you let them run. No one can do this work alone.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
“Between the World and Me” [by Ta-Nehisi Coates]. We’ve talking a lot about race and class and power here at Tipping Point, and I think there’s probably no more important book out there than that one.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
In our T Lab program, we’re providing funding to high-performing, established organizations for research and development, which is definitely something new for our sector.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started the Tipping Point Community?
That my job would never be over. I mean, I knew it, but what’s great is that it’s also what’s needed to be inspired each and every day. We live at this nexus of great wealth and privilege here in the Bay Area as well as great poverty. It can be daunting, the chasm, but when you get to meet people who are wealthy and are really committed to these issues, that gets you fired up. And when you get to meet executive directors or clients on the ground doing the hard work every day, that also gets you fired up, despite the fact that the numbers are still overwhelming for those who live in poverty. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but it’s also easy to get inspired.
Who is the most inspirational person you’ve encountered?
The first one that comes to mind is Martha Ryan, who runs the Homeless Prenatal Program. She’s been doing this work for 27 years, and she’s always evolving and innovating. She’s tireless. She always humbles me. Homelessness is an extraordinary tough issue. It’s obviously top of mind for everybody, and here’s a woman who’s been tackling it for almost three decades. She’s still going strong and more committed than ever.
How do you try to communicate that inspiration to others?
I don’t think it’s that hard at our organization. We hire great people that are committed to our mission. I think they understand the daunting task that our partner organizations — 45 groups — are working on each and every day. Knowing that we are supporting such excellent work and such difficult work, I think, motivates our staff. And when they do get daunted, overwhelmed and a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, I can always point them to a Martha Ryan or Sam Cobbs at First Place for Youth who always gives us hope and always can tell us a story of success.
Last year, our groups at Tipping Point, we moved 22,000 people out of poverty concretely. That’s an amazing number, and one that, if we have a rough day, we can point to. It’s pretty easy to look around our portfolio of organizations and find inspiration.
What’s your biggest need right now?
We need people not to turn away from the problems of our time. In the Bay Area right now, I’d say it’s homelessness. I’m into three decades of seeing this problem in San Francisco, and I’m seeing more mentally ill living on the streets and encampments and tent cities popping up. We’re seeing our brothers and sisters and children not only living on the streets, but dying on the streets. We just had a police shooting of a homeless man here in the Mission District, and we had a homeless guy stab a California Highway Patrol officer the week of Super Bowl under an overpass. It’s not safe any longer — not only for people walking down the street, but it’s also not safe for those that are homeless. It’s not okay for us to treat our brothers and sisters this way. It’s not humane. And this isn’t just San Francisco: it’s New York, Seattle, L.A., Dallas.
It feels intractable, and I would just say it’s not. I’m not saying we can solve it overnight, but if we have the political will and we use our various resources at our disposal, then change can happen. I would ask people to get engaged. It’s pretty easy to give up and throw your hands in the air and say, “This problem is too big. It’s unsolvable.” The more people that believe that we can change this, the more likely it is that we do.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I don’t like to sit around strategizing and planning for very long. I’d rather try something and fail than plan something for a long time. I’m probably oriented towards action, rather than planning.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE: This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline

The Room Full of Recliners That’s Saving the Lives of Drug Addicts, An Investment in the Poor That Pays Off and More

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Overwhelmed by Overdoses, Clinic Offers a Room for Highs, Boston Globe
The number one cause of death among Boston’s homeless? Opioid use. Overdoses are such a common occurrence that they disrupt workers’ daily tasks at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. In response, the organization is making a drastic, controversial move: opening a room where addicts can come down from their highs while under medical supervision. Some claim that it’s a plan that will simply enable users; others, including the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine, believe it’s an effective way to get the drug pandemic under control and reduce the number of fatalities.
Free Money Lifts People out of Poverty, and That’s an Investment That Pays for Itself, Tech Insider
Despite America’s vast wealth, more than one in five children grow up in poverty in this country. While many believe that giving the less-fortunate money increases laziness, North Carolina discovered that Cherokee tribe members receiving up to $6,000 a year from casino revenue gave parents the ability to save money and pay bills on time — all the while continuing to work the same amount as they previously did. Not only that, their children experienced a reduction in mental health problems, fewer behavioral problems and improved performance in school.
Crowdsourcing the Future of a Social Movement, Stanford Social Innovation Review
You’ve probably heard the popular saying, There’s no “I” in team. While running a major crowdsourcing campaign, funders and nonprofit leaders in the LGBTQ community learned just how powerful collaboration is at maintaining social progress. More than 14,000 ideas were collected from residents of all 50 states, creating a vast data set about LGBTQ issues — something that’s cost prohibitive for one organization to source, but that will help guide the entire movement for years to come.

The Ingenious System to Grow More Food With Less Water

Posted on by robbie

If there’s one high school competition I’d love to see, it would be schools competing for which one can do the best job of teaching students how to live more sustainably. Third generation farmer Kaben Smallwood has my vote for creating an aquaponics greenhouse at a rural public school in Kiowa, Oklahoma. Kids are harvesting crops for their school lunches while learning about water-thrifty systems that combine fish and plant farming. His company now has $40,000 and mentoring support to keep growing, with an award from the 2013 Hitachi Foundation Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneurs Program.