Xerosphere

The financial crisis has not, thus far, cast a clear death blow t0 Milton Friedman's idea that the only responsibility businesses have to society is to maximize profits. That said, the last couple years have seen a steady mainstreaming of "social entrepreneurship," particularly within vertical industry categories such as Fair Trade. I believe both the verticalization and mainstreaming of the field will continue, creating a higher need than ever before to understand just what the broader designation of "social entrepreneurship" has to offer.

Social entrepreneurship tends to refer to the space in which companies and nonprofits use market and business objectives to achieve social aims. While there is some debate about whether the term refers exclusively to one legal business model over another, the core point for most of the people I tend to agree with is that "social ventures" as opposed to regular for-profit entities have an explicit focus on solving some social or environmental problem and maximizing social or environmental good alongside (or sometimes even at the expense of) pure, short-term profit maximization.

In this way, it is different from corporate social responsibility, which at its best is about giving back, improving employee culture and conditions, and reducing environmental impact. The difference is the fact that social entrepreneurship suggests that there is a core social or environmental value created every day by the products or services at the center of the very business. This does not mean that social ventures are "better" than non-social ventures -- there are lots of great companies that simply happen not to focus on solving social problems and which are still wonderful employees, community members, and philanthropists -- but it does mean they are different.

Social entrepreneurship is, however, a slightly weird field, in the sense that it is not an industry, but a term which applies to a number of (sometimes unrelated) industries, and a similar approach to business that places a social or environmental value at the center of the mission. Most people come into contact with the broader field of social entrepreneurship through one of the industries that it touches.

I think there are a few clear examples of  these "vertical" fields that connect with the larger banner of social entrepreneurship that have gotten increasingly mainstream over the last few years. Cleantech is perhaps the most obvious, becoming one of the most invested in areas of venture capital ($1.9 billion was invested in Cleantech companies in the first quarter of 2010 alone). Microfinance is another clear example. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Grameen Bank founder Muhammed Yunus and the explosive popularity of Kiva are two of the more important historical moments for the prominence of social entrepreneurship, and the recent IPO of SKS could be another. Fair Trade, Organic and Local Food movements are all racing to the mainstream, as well.

Being based in Silicon Valley, I'm particularly interested in industry verticals that can attract tech talent to start new companies. I think we're going to see big booms in education startups (see: Udemy, Enzi, Grockit, DonorsChoose, Supercool School) and I hope that many will learn to work within instead of solely outside the current education system. Healthcare seems like an obvious area that mixes social good with the potential for immense profit, but there are still too few web tech companies working on the issue, a problem that programs like Hacking 4 Health are trying to redress. And although they are a little bit different in terms of their potential for financial gain, there also seems to be a mini wave of "government 2.0" startups (see: Code for America, CitySourced, Gov2.0 Summit) that are trying to change the way municipal services are deployed and how governments interact with citizens.

It makes sense that social entrepreneurship would mature into verticals like this: startups need accumulated bodies of knowledge and connections to be successful, and ultimately, what works in Fair Trade may not work in Education. At the same time, I think the common element of trying to maximize a social or environmental good takes as much managerial discipline as deploying a successful revenue model, and for that, the broader field of social entrepreneurship has much to offer.

Photo credit: Chuck “Caveman” Coker

Here's a little idea and its big implication. The idea is that in a world of increasingly robust information about social networks, simply being able to connect people is more of a "commodity" than at any time in history. The implication is that to be seen as a real "connector" --- a designation incredibly valuable in just about any type of business -- you have to think more expansively about what it means to help people.

Connectors are a business archetype that most people are familiar with. They are the people who always seem to know the right people. They're the folks you talk to when you know you have a problem, but you're not sure who is the right person to help -- or even who is the right type of person to help.

Connectors are intensely valuable, particularly in industries that rely on networks. An example is venture capital, in which networks are deployed to find great investment deals as well as to help portfolio companies find the particular resources and relationships they need to succeed. Another example is nonprofits, which rely on social capital in the place of financial capital, and in which networks are called upon every day to help the organization move forward.

Super connectors tend to be really good at three things. The first is that they keep track of lots of details about lots of their friends and professional contacts. This is the area in which the average person is catching up to the super connector. While it still takes diligence, its never been easier to keep track of who you know, the sorts of things they like and dislike, etc.

This is the social glue that is making the ability to generally connect people across your network more of a commodity. Better information about who you know means a better ability to connect people who should know each other. This is a good thing; connecting people shouldn't be the provence of a special class of people, it should just be the way we think to help each other day in and day out.

The second thing that super connectors tend to be really good at is that they keep track of lots of details about what their communities need. Really good connectors are constantly thinking about how they can help, which means figuring out ways to acquire information about the specific resources and information their people are seeking. Although the social communication infrastructure has made this easier, figuring out how to know what people need is still difficult, and great connectors still do it better than the rest.

The final thing that super connectors have is a high personal reputation that makes the people they're connecting take notice. I'm in the process of fundraising for my startup, and it had completely reinforced this fact. As I try to get access to investors, I'm not just searching for people their connected with to introduce us, I'm searching for people who they're connected to in a relevant context, and who have a high enough personal brand that the investor is going to give us a serious look. The implication of this third piece is that to truly kick ass at helping, you have to be the type of person who has a general reputation for excellence.

So, to sum up, information in social networks has made it easier for most people to keep track of, and connect, their friends and colleagues. Information about needs isn't perfect, but it will get better (Assetmap is going to solve this problem).

But the third piece -- having serious personal brand equity -- is something that technology will never really be able to supplant. That's a reputation that comes from diligence and general excellence. In the 21st century, most people will get better at making connections; the super connectors will be those who have cultivated such a high reputation that the connections they facilitate become self-fulfilling prophecies of collaboration.

Photo credit: bengrey

This past weekend, the Kauffman Foundation sponsored an education focused "Startup Weekend." But at the same time, last week, one of my fellow Change.org authors wrote a piece sharing frustration with the focus in the education sector on "entrepreneurship" as a cure-all. In her estimation, that focus can distract education reformers from implementing already proven solutions more effectively. It's a valid point, but instead of suggesting we shouldn't focus on entrepreneurship in education, it simply means we need to get smarter about what education entrepreneurship opportunities actually look like.

1. Access to funding for higher education: One of the biggest crises around the world is the access to funding for advanced degrees. In the US, student debt has actually surpassed consumer debt. Americans owe $830B in student loans vs. $827B in credit card debt. That's insane, and something has to change for the system to sustain itself. This can be even more problematic for international students, where there simply aren't as many scholarship or loan programs. One startup to watch in this area is Enzi, which is tying student loans to future income, and was awarded a 2010 Echoing Green fellowship.

2. Supplemental learning tools: It is generally accepted that boredom in the classroom is a major, major problem. Students don't feel like the work they're doing is related to their real life, and the way material is presented tends to be all about getting through tests. There is a huge opportunity for supplemental learning tools that work in the classroom or out and supplement the work that teachers are already doing. One interesting example is TeacherMate, a handheld computer designed to engage hard to reach learners and sync directly with in-class lessons that is being used by 40,000 students in 35 states.

3. Efficiency tools for teachers and administrators: It's not just students who have a hard time with schools as they're structured today. Teachers and administrators deal with a ton of students, each of whom deserve individual care but who get dumped in with everyone else. Startups like Drop the Chalk are trying to make it easier for teachers to measure student progress and understand how different types of lessons impact students in different ways.

4. Supplanting educational structures: Many of the problems of education have to do with the school systems "monopoly" on learning. Put differently, most people get in the mindset that they're only supposed to learn while in school. The internet is an incredible platform for distributing knowledge. Platforms like Supercool School and eduFire make it easy for people to teach and learn together. Another online learning platform, Udemy, recently released a collection of 600 lectures from top universities. TED Talks have been viewed a few hundred million times. And so on.

5. Tools for parents: I don't know much about activity going on in this domain, but parents are an essential part of the educational experience. There is a definite opportunity for startups focused on supporting parents with pre-school education, and there is probably also an opportunity to make it easier for parents and teachers collaborative to help customize student learning.

Bonus: Vocational training and other alternative curriculum: When students don't feel like there is any coherent relationship between what they're learning and what they'll need for the real world, it significantly reduces their incentives to participate in their own education. I think there is a very compelling argument to be made for introducing more career-job centric training into regular school classrooms -- including things like basic business accounting, computer science, etc. More broadly, I do think that rethinking the entire structure of curriculum and experimenting with new structures is a good thing.

The point of all of this entrepreneurship is not to undermine what we know about how to improve learning outcomes already, or challenging how essential great teachers are to the educational experience. The point is to dramatically shift access and quality of education in a world that frankly, can't afford a glacial pace of reform. That will take innovation from both outside and inside the system, and entrepreneurs do have a roll to play.

Photo credit: bonnie-brown

There is a perception out there that there is a tradeoff between social responsibility and financial responsibility. You can't do both, people say. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Well, very fortunately the data just doesn't support that perception.

Can you actually be more socially responsible and increase shareholder value at the same time?

The Only Social Responsibility of a Company Is To Increase Profits for Shareholders

In 1970, Chicago-school economist Milton Friedman proclaimed in an article for New York Times Magazine that a company's only social responsibility is to increase profits for its shareholders. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, and the Ayn Rand star-pupil Alan Greenspan turned this credo into de facto policy gospel.

There is passionate and meaty debate whether externalizing environmental damage and exploiting a work force is okay if there it no law or regulation against it. There is another debate whether these practices actually maximize long-term profits or the present value of future cash flows.

For a moment, let's take this 1970 proclamation at face value and assume that an executive's responsibility is to increase returns for company shareholders. Let's agree that executives and board members do have a fiduciary responsibility to seek to gain a return on the capital invested in their organization, particularly if they work for a publicly-owned company or a company that is not a wholly-owned private corporation.

So this begs the question, can you do both--increase social return and increase financial return?

Can You Be More Socially Responsible & Financially Responsible?

Raj Sisodia, David Wolfe, and Jag Sheth recently published "Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose." In the book, they share the results of a study in which they looked at companies that were especially socially responsible--they call these firms "Firms of Endearment" or FoEs. They compared the shareholder returns of these socially responsible firms with the S&P 500. What they found was that the firms that were socially responsible outperformed the S&P 500 by 9x.

These Firms of Endearment grew shareholder value 1025% in the last ten years while the S&P 500 returned 122%. Eve when you compare the Firms of Endearment vs. the blue chip success stories profiled in Jim Collins' Good to while the firms profiled in "Good to Great" by Jim Collins returned 316%. Here's the graph from their web site.

Financial Returns of Socially Responsible Firms Vs. S&P 500 and Good to Great

Now, by no means does this data prove conclusively that more socially responsible firms create higher shareholder returns. The data show only correlation, not causation. The reality could simply be that firms that happen to be socially responsible happen to be in more profitable industries and so they can afford to give more to the community and create better work environments. But nonetheless, the point is clear-- investing in being a socially responsible company certainly does not by definition go against shareholder interests and in many cases enhances shareholder returns.

iContact Case Study

Earlier today, I published a case study of social responsibility at iContact. In it, I shared the why and the how behind our social and environmental efforts at iContact over the past year including examples of how iContact has reduced costs and increased employee engagement through our efforts. As I wrote in the case, the benefits to date from our social responsibility efforts included:

1. Vendor cost reductions of $40,000 driving estimated net savings of $19,000 per month.
2. Increased employee engagement and excitement to be working at our company (which we believe will lead to greater passion in people's work, additional discretionary effort from team members, increased productivity, lower regret employee turnover, and an increased ability to attract the best and the brightest).
3. Increased customer acquisition and customer retention from customers who are coming to us and sticking with us because of our social responsibility programs.
4. Additional press coverage from Entrepreneur, INC, and the Raleigh News & Observer that is helping us recruit the best and brightest and gain additional customers and partners.

So in fact, at least so far, we have been able to show both tangible and intangible benefits that connect the investment we are making in social responsibility with direct economic net benefits to our financial results and thus to the increase of shareholder value.

A False Tradeoff

While it would be nice to have even better data and employee surveys comparing before and after our work at iContact, there is substantial anecdotal evidence supporting a conclusion that in the case of iContact, increasing investment in social and environmental responsibility so far has increased profits, and will contribute very positively to increasing shareholder value in the many years to come.

So does increasing social and environmental responsibility always increase shareholder value? No, it does not. But in many cases it can and does and the Firms of Endearment study provides a fascinating basis for a likely connection between the most socially responsible firms and those who produce the highest return for shareholders. Investing in being a socially responsible company certainly does not by definition go against shareholder interests and in many cases enhances shareholder returns.

There does seem to be substantive and significant evidence showing there the tradeoff between social responsibility and financial responsibility is false and in fact social responsibility in many cases aligns with increasing financial profitability.

Comments/Thoughts?

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments on social responsibility, effective CSR programs, whether being more socially responsible helps or hurts a business, and whether your shopping decisions could be influenced by whether a company is responsible or not.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

By way of a social responsibility case study that I've been close to, let me share our experience at iContact over the last year...

Wanting to Experience More Meaning at Work

In October 2009, I went through some challenging experiences that caused me to realize that life can be very short. Out of these experiences, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to align my values with my work at iContact to the extent possible. I wanted to see a direct connection between the work that iContact was doing and making a positive impact in our community and the world.

As Chip Conley writes in "Peak", I wanted to be able to experience and see "meaning" at work and in my work. The humanity within me was dissatisfied with the comm only-held belief that the sole purpose of business is to maximize short-term profits, regardless of the impact on the world as long as one stays within the law.

I saw the purpose of business as creating value for humanity and profits a result of successfully pursuing this purpose but not the purpose itself. This extreme dissatisfaction with the Milton Friedmanesque view of the world could be a Gen-Y or Millennial phenomenon as our generation has grown up learning we cannot build a prosperous, stable, and secure world by externalizing environmental costs and exploiting other parts of the world.

While our generation may be particularly attuned to social and environmental issues, I think seeking meaning at work is a higher-order, but universal need. It is simply reality for the large majority of workers (particularly the smartest and most driven talent) that they want to be able to be part of something meaningful--in their contribution to the company, in what the company achieves with its business, as well as the ways in which their business goes about creating that value for society.

Helping small and mid-sized companies communicate more easily with their customers and reducing paper usage from direct mail had a positive value to society, but could we create meaning in other ways, perhaps in how we went about building our business, the culture we created, and how we gave back?

I could no longer compartmentalize my life between the for-profit financially-focused work I did and the not-for-profit charity-focused work I did.

And so, going into 2010 I made it one of my priorities to substantially expand our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts at iContact.

Case Study: Social Responsibility at iContact

Since 2007, iContact has been giving away 1% of it's payroll to 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations in our communities locally and globally, but just giving away money was the easiest thing to do--and not nearly enough. We also had an annual Habitat for Humanity company house building day each July and and we adopted a handful of foster children each winter to provide gifts for them. But again, this is the basics of what every company does--almost as a check-the-box whitewashing effort to just be able to say "well, we do something."

These initial efforts were a start, but not enough. If we were going to make CSR a key differentiator for our company for attracting and retaining A+ talent and attracting customers who care about the world, we needed to do so much more. If our culture was going to be centered around creating a tangible direct connection between the work our employees did and true-meaning and value creation for the world, we needed an integrated CSR program.

iContact's Corporate Social Responsibility Program

And so, taking a page from the playbook of Marc Benioff, we created the 4-1s CSR Program, modeled in part after the 1/1/1 Integrated CSR Program that Salesforce.com has so successfully implemented after Marc's experiences at Oracle in the late 90s left something to be desired for corporate service.

The 4-1s CSR Program added giving 1% of product, 1% of time, and 1% of equity to our original program of giving 1% of payroll.

On January 8th, 2010 we rolled out the 4-1s program to our employees at our annual kickoff meeting. We explained that each team member would receive 2.5 extra days of Paid Time Off per year to volunteer in the local community which we would track via an AppExchange add-on called VolunteerForce, that we were taking 1% of the shares of the company and pledging them to the iContact Foundation, that we would give iContact away from free to any non-profit in North Carolina, and that we would continue our program of giving 1% of payroll away and matching employee contributions up to $300.

I was thrilled to have a formal CSR program in place. When Entrepreneur Magazine wrote an article about the 4-1s program in April giving us our first major press about the effort, I was careful to share that this was just the beginning for us. We have so much to learn about CSR.

Who knew if this was the right or best structure for integrate corporate philanthropy. What mattered is that we had something formal and significant in place and could learn and improve as we went.

Becoming a B Corporation

In May, we took our next major leap in our effort to turn iContact into a leader in social responsibility for venture-backed companies. After speaking with Drew Tulchin at Social Enterprise Associates, I knew if we really were going to be a Triple Bottom Line company, we had to have some type of external help putting in place a tracking system for our social and environmental impact. The next weekend I serendipitously met Matt Kopac at at Sunday brunch with a group of Durham friends. Matt had just finished up an MBA at Yale and was looking for work in the area with a non-profit or socially responsible enterprise. He had done work with VisionSpring and had been in the Peace Corps in Benin. We brought Matt on, initially as a half-time consultant.

Matt's assignment was simple--put in place a measurement system for social and environmental impact, manage our 4-1s CSR program, and help us put in place the changes necessary to become a B Corp. B Corps are are a new type of corporation that use the power of business to create public benefit.

When we first took the B Corp assessment, we scored 67 points. The assessment graded us within five categories: accountability, consumers, environment, employees, and community.

We then underwent an eight week process that Matt led to conduct an environmental/energy audit and supplier audit and put in place some needed changes to policies and sustainable supplies.

On June 30th, we finally passed the 80 point threshold needed. B Lab officially certified iContact as a B Corp! We had reached the next milestone for our process of becoming a leader in social responsibility and creating company culture that tied the work each employee did every day with meaningful impact, and we received a signed Declaration of Interdependence.

Tracking our Social & Environmental Impact

Once we became a B Corp, we needed a way to be able to track our social and environmental impact. Matt Kopac worked with our internal Salesforce.com administrator to install PULSE into Salesforce AppExchange, which is free for B Corps.

Below is a screen shot of PULSE showing a few of the environmental metrics tracked within PULSE for iContact.

In Salesforce PULSE we track the following social and environmental metrics in beautiful graph format in a location that is accessible to every iContact Employee. You can imagine how much easier this system makes it to track and view our triple bottom line metrics.

Current PULSE Social Impact Metrics Tracked

• Total Energy Consumed
• Energy Consumption Per Employee
• Total Water Use (Liters)
• Total Water Use Per Employee
• Total Irrigation Liters Used
• Sheets of Paper Used
• Recycled Paper Used as % of Total

Current PULSE Environmental Impact Metrics Tracked

• Dollars Contributed to Non-Profits
• Number of Non-Profits Contributed To
• Value of In-Kind Contributions
• % of Sales of Giving
• Number of Jobs Created
• Staff Turnover Rate
• Number of Non-Profits Given Free Product
• % of 4-1s Non-Profits as Customers
• New 4-1s Non-Profits Per Month
• 4-1s Non-Profits Emails Sent
• Number of Non-Profits Trained
• Number of B Corps as Customers
• Monthly Employee volunteer Hours
• Cumulative Volunteer Hours

Building Employee Engagement With Changemakers

To further our connection to employee-driven change we created an employee-led group called Changemakers. We now have a Social Changemakers Committee and an Environmental Changemakers Committee that meet monthly and come together once per quarter to make their recommendations to the company.

While putting in place the structure initially needed coordination and buy-in at the highest levels of the organization, to expand our efforts and integrate the values and ethos of our company permanently into our culture we need the energy, support, and word of mouth of individuals at every level of the organization.

Making the Connection to Meaning at Work

Back in November 2009 I was speaking to an iContact employee who told me, "If you can connect the work I do at iContact to making an impact in the world I would be so much more passionate about coming to work everyday." This was a key moment for me in making the immediate connection between 'meaning' at work and the incremental discretionary effort employees are willing to put into their jobs.

As Chip Conley wrote in Peak, If you can tie in "meaning" into the workplace you will get orders of magnitude more productivity our of your team. Too often companies are meaningful lifeless entities that are focused on short-term profit maximization rather than maximizing sustainable value creation for human beings, what actually maximizes long-term profits.

Meaning has three components to it--

1. Personal Meaning - how the job ties into to the individual's life goals.
2. Work Meaning - the significance of what the individual is enabling the company to achieve and the understood connection between their work and company success.
3. Organizational Meaning - the significance of what the organization succeeding means for human society.

So in the "Employee Hierarchy of Needs" money is at the bottom which creates base motivation, recognition is in the middle which creates loyalty, and meaning is at the top which creates inspiration.

What iContact Employees Think About Social Responsibility

So, has the social responsibility initiatives we've undertaken so far created added meaning for our team members, and can it for yours?

Here are a few examples of the comments we received from our employees so far either via Salesforce Chatter (shown above) or via the Culture Committee Meetings...

• “It makes me more excited about the company I work for.”
• “It's a rare opportunity to be a participant in a company such as iContact.”
• "iContact is a diverse group of individuals from all walks of life that come together as a team to both achieve and help others succeed."
• "iContact is a dynamic team-centric company that effectively balances customers, employees, and the world."
• "We have a holistic approach to business in terms of our impact on all stakeholders"
• "We do business differently, our employees are empowered, we work hard and play hard, and we are actively committed to helping others."

But the impact is not only in increasing employee engagement, but also increasing customers and partners that expressly seek out wanting to work with socially responsible companies.

Here is an unsolicited email we received from one of our partners to illustrate this...

"I was impressed by the iContact’s commitment to reaching beyond themselves to serve their community. to work toward making a positive impact on our community. It made my decision easier knowing I had found a company to work with that was like minded. As I work with my customers I make sure they know that we chose a company as a partner that would extend their reach.”

What We've Accomplished So Far

In the first eight months since we've expanded our efforts:

1. We've launched the 4-1s program (1% product, 1% payroll, 1% time, 1% equity)
2. Our employees have participated in 75 community service events logging 1,100 service hours tracked via VolunteerForce
3. We've installed Salesforce PULSE to track our environmental and social metrics
4. We were approved as a B Corporation
5. We conducted and published an environmental audit
6. We've hosted a non-profit workshop at our office
7. We've launched the Changemakers Group
8. We've launched the iContact Culture Committee

The Beneficial Economic Impact of Social Responsibility

So the hard-to-measure long term impact of improved employee retention and recruitment and customer growth and retention are no doubt positive factors in our long-term financial return models for our social responsibility program--but what about the hard-nosed measurable short-term economic analysis? Certainly this effort has to have cost us more money than it saved us, right?

In fact, this effort toward becoming a socially and environmentally responsible company will actually save us money, not cost us money.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY = COST SAVINGS

One of the ways this has been possible is because B Labs has a network of over 300 B Corps and companies that want to access the economic buying power of B Corporations. Once our current contracts expire and we're able to move to the discounted solutions, we expect to realize about $40,000 per month in savings from being a B Corporation while we are spending a total of $21,000 per month of all of 4-1s Program. Significant credit goes to Salesforce.com for offering a 75% discount off list price to B Corps.

So we've gained a quadruple benefit from social responsibility efforts of:

1. Mid-term existing vendor cost reductions of $40,000 driving estimated net savings of $19,000 per month ($228,000 per year).
2. Increased employee engagement and excitement to be working at our company (which we believe will lead to greater passion in people's work, additional discretionary effort from team members, increased productivity, lower regret employee turnover, and an increased ability to attract the best and the brightest).
3. Increased customer acquisition and customer retention from customers who are coming to us and sticking with us because of our social responsibility programs.
4. Additional press coverage from Entrepreneur, INC, and the Raleigh News & Observer that is helping us recruit the best and brightest and gain additional customers and partners.

Conclusion

We've got a long way to go still in working toward becoming an example for how other venture backed companies can invest in social responsibility. We've still got a lot to learn. It's been a great start and we look forward to much learning to come.

Thoughts/Comments?

I'd love your thoughts and comments. How has your company implement Corporate Social Responsibility? What other programs have you seen that have been responsible? Do you wish your company were more socially responsible? What impact would that have on your desire to put in full effort at work?

love to know your thoughts in the comments on social responsibility, effective CSR programs, whether being more socially responsible helps or hurts a business, and whether your shopping decisions could be influenced by whether a company is responsible or not.

The summer after my sophomore year, I hiked across northern Spain along a 1,200 year old pilgrim route known as the Camino de Santiago. For 30 consecutive days, my friend Christina and I walked about 20 miles a day, first through the Pyrenees, through the Medieval towns of Burgos and Leon, and ultimately into the ancient-feeling Galician town of Santiago de Compostela.

The pilgrimage leads to the cathedral where the remains of St. James supposedly came to rest after he fled the Holy Land. The trail began in the Middle Ages, as pilgrims from across Europe made the trek to atone for their sins and find grace. Its first peak was in the 12th century, when the cult of relics was highest, and literally tens of thousands made the journey.

Over time, the trail became not just a religious undertaking, but a right of passage for Spanish youth. In the 20th century, however, it fell into disrepair, the numbers slowly dwindling to the point that by the 1980s, only a few hundred people a year were walking it. In 1985, however, UNESCO declared Santiago de Compostela a World Heritage Site, and the government began reinvesting in the trail as a tourist attraction. By 2004 when Christina and I walked the trail, hundreds of thousands of people a year were coming.

Hiking the Way of St. James is like no experience I've had. Each morning, you wake up with the sun, walk an hour or so, stop in the first small village you come to for a cappuccino, hike for most of the morning following small yellow arrows that occur every half-mile or so, make a quick stop for lunch, hike a few more hours, and then end the day before it gets too hot. A shower, a nap, some dinner, reading, and conversation with people from around the world, and then bed.

Each night, you stay at Albergues, or Pilgrim's hostels that are only for those with official credentials that they are walking the trail. The Albergues are never more than 7 Euro a night, and most are more like 3 or 4. The economics of the journey are fundamentally disimilar from anything else I've experienced. There are plenty of ways to spend money if you'd like, but the trail is so powerful and overwhelmingly cerebral, emotional and experiential that there is little that purchased items could possibly add.

Today I'm headed to Burning Man, another community of seekers who create a truly alternative, albeit temporary, environment. For a week each August/September, tens of thousands of people come together to form "Black Rock City" in the desert of Nevada. Going means bringing literally everything that you need to survive -- food, water, shelter, lights, etc.

But the point is not survival, it's celebration and letting go. Burning Man began as a ritual among friends to let go of the past, celebrate the present, and look with joy to the future. People go all out preparing for the week, building incredible works of art, setting up massive dance parties, and more. No commerce is allowed during the week, with the exception of buying ice and coffee. The emotional culmination of the week is Saturday Night, when the man burns to symbolize a return to the earth. By Monday, every trace of the 50,000+ people is gone.

We get so use to commerce and transactions at the center of our reality that it is easy to forget that entirely different, deeply meaningful alternatives exist. They may not be permanent -- indeed, they may draw power from their impermanence -- but they are a reminder that ultimately the human experience is more complex and wonderful than the accessories that surround it.

Photo credit: Nathaniel Whittemore

For the last two weeks, the philanthropy blogosphere has been humming with near constant chatter about the Social Innovation Fund and a might-have-been controversy around the selection process for its first intermediary grantmaking partners. I've stayed entirely out of the fray because, frankly, I wasn't sure what to think.

Now that a little time has transpired and more information has come to light, it's easier to track the trajectory of the conversation. I think the story is ultimately a success for the field, in that the right sort of pressure for transparency opened up more and better information. In terms of keeping the tone of the debate where it needed to be, huge credit needs to go to Sean Stannard-Stockton, whose Tactical Philanthropy blog has been the smartest and most informative throughout.

Here's a chronology of the SIF controversy:

July 23 -- Wise Picks? Commentators Weigh In on the Social Innovation Fund Grants: In July, the Social Innovation Fund released its selected intermediary partners -- the funders responsible for matching and then distributing the $50m authorized for the fund by the Serve America Act.

Early August -- Questions of Transparency Cloud the Social Innovation Fund: The Nonprofit Quarterly published this piece, arguing that the Social Innovation Fund's standards of transparency weren't up to what they should be, or perhaps even what was required by the fact that they were a government agency, using taxpayer dollars.

August 9 -- National-Service Agency Explores More Open Grant Process: Responding to those critiques, the SIF announced it would release the applications of winning intermediaries, but not the rest of the applicants.

August 19 -- Stonewalling at the Social Innovation Fund: This piece by NYU professor Paul Light busted open the conversation from a debate about the general merits of transparency versus opaqueness to something with a far more sinister suggestion -- that the SIF didn't want to release the applications and review ratings to the public because it had selected organizations that were reviewed poorly in early stages because of pre-existing connections with those organizations. Another reviewer, Stephen Goldberg, hit back in the comments accusing Light of making sweeping generalizations and stirring up a hornet's nest with little evidence.

August 20 -- Social Innovation Fund to Release Details About Application Process Amid Questions: The SIF again responded quickly, pledging to release (redacted) comments and reviews of the 11 winning candidates for the fund.

August 21 -- Nonprofit Fund Faces Questions About Conflicts and Selection Procedures: The New York Times picked up the story, outing New Profit as the winning intermediary at the center of Paul Light's criticism, and suggested that the SIF's pledge might not go far enough to satisfy critics.

August 21 -- New Profit's SIF Application: The same day the Times published its piece, New Profit posted its full, non-redacted application. Sean Stannard-Stockton also pointed out that, as of that point, the only evidence of any wrongdoing was a general and unspecific implication in Light's piece.

August 23 -- SIF Publishes Finalist Applications with comments: As promised, the SIF opened up more information about the finalist.

August 24 -- Social Innovation Fund Application Repository: Although the SIF has said it will not make non-winning applications available, Sean decided to collaborate with the Chronicle of Philanthropy to create a repository of those applications voluntarily turned over by organizations. Only Social Venture Partners has participated so far.

August 26 -- How the Social Innovation Fund Selected Grantees: This post on Tactical Philanthropy clearly articulates how the decisions within the SIF were made.

So what do I think about this supposed "controversy?" I think a couple things. First, it increased government transparency, even if marginally, which is a good thing. Second, it highlighted this fields incredible obsession with transparency, which I don't believe is a fundamental requirement of private actors. Third, ultimately, the biggest story was the story itself. I think a comment on Paul Light's original post, written by David Bornstein pretty well sums it up:

What's so disappointing to me, reading this column, and the associated commentary it has generated, is how it reinforces the old narrative that government is unavoidably corrupt. There's a veiled accusation of insider trading, which is unfortunate. I didn't take part in the reviewing process of the SIF, so I can only judge the process by its outcome, which appears perfectly acceptable to me. The winners have demonstrated that they know how to identify organizations that are making headway on major social problems. I suspect that most of your readers here have no clue how well this $50 million will be spent. Sadly, many of them will come away with mistaken the notion that this is another example of government waste or hubris. And that is both unhelpful and untrue.

Photo credit: kevindooley

Banks ripe for disruption, better startup pitching, Wall Street Journal makes boring critiques of CSR (big surprise), and the potential for mobile technology to change justice systems around the world. All this and more in this week's weekend entrepreneur links.

In Hard Times, One New Bank (Double-Wide): The US consumer banking industry is waaaaaay up there on my "ripe for disruption" list. This article shows just how little space there has been for new actors to come in and change anything, recently. It profiles the only new bank to get new approval to operate in 2010. While there are interesting opportunities in creating entirely new banks, I actually think the first steps to changing the industry are going to be through companies that simplify and optimize certain parts of the banking experience, for example, Banksimple.net. Their whole value proposition is that they keep as many parts of the consumer banking experience free, only making money from two key revenue streams, which means a better overall experience.

5 Lessons from 150 Startup Pitches: I've watched a lot of pitches this summer, and performed a few myself, and one thing I can say for sure: no entrepreneur has the perfect pitch, and most of us (particularly in the social space) could use some work. This set of posts have been around for a while, but I've recently been re-engaging with these tips from Jason Cohen of Smart Bear Software. The lessons are definitely more directly relevant for web entrepreneurs, but have lots of great insight for social ventures, as well.

"Bah! Humbug!" in the Wall Street Journal: Matthew Bishop and Michael Green use their Philanthrocapitalism blog to combat a set of recents pieces appearing in the WSJ. The first piece they sought to refute argued that the "Giving Pledge" was causing billionaires to focus on the wrong things when there would be more value if they just continued to make money. The second argued (poorly, in their estimation), that CSR was always going to distract companies and they should just give up, try to make profits as deviously as necessary, and have the government regulate. Not surprisingly, Bishop and Green have a few thoughts on both matters.

On the Potential of Mobile Justice: Stories about the potential of mobile technology to change health outcomes and improve economies in the developing world abound. Where there are fewer stories -- and as yet, fewer models -- is in how mobile technology can be used to help change the systems of justice that underpin free societies everywhere. This piece shares a few of the ideas and strategies that a working group convened by the State Department came up with this summer, particularly in the context of providing justice for rape survivors in eastern Congo.

Photo credit: The Consumerist

There has been an explosive conversation in the blogosphere this weekend about the under representation of women in tech entrepreneurship and web entrepreneurship more broadly. Is the situation better in social entrepreneurship?

This iteration of the conversation started off with a piece in the Wall Street Journal that rehashed many of the back-and-forths on this issue from the last few months, including the debate around whether the forthcoming TEDWomen conference was actually a step back for gender equality because of a sort of "seperate-but-(un)equal" thing. It also included a pretty lazy potshot at Techcrunch, the leading web 2.0 media publication.

Michael Arrington, the founder of Techcrunch, didn't like that one much at all and wrote a post titled: "Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Blaming the Men." In it, he effectively argues that venture investors, tech conferences and the media clamor for female entrepreneurs because they're eager to redress the imbalance and highlight more female innovators in order to inspire a younger generation of women to build companies.

The "debate" around this issue isn't about whether or not there is a gender imbalance in entrepreneurship. It's about why that is, and more specifically, which pieces of that why are structurally determined and could be shifted. It is also tinged by the supposed dichotomy between meritocracy and opportunity that colors debates about affirmative action, as well.

There is no shortage of theories about all of this. Right now, these particular set of posts are being debated on TechCrunch, VC Fred Wilson's blog, and Hacker News, among other spaces.

What's interesting to me is that in the world of social entrepreneurship, it seems like the balance is much better. I have no doubt that women in our field still deal with structural barriers, explicit or implicit assumptions about their capacity to lead, and other real hurdles to success. But it does feel to me that there are far more highly visible women social entrepreneurs and thought leaders in this field than in pure technology. Just as a proxy, in the last thee years, 24 or 49 of Echoing Green's prestigious seed fellowships have been awarded to teams led by women.

So here are my questions:

1. Is it true that social entrepreneurship has more women leaders than tech entrepreneurship?

2. If it is, how come?

3.  Are any of the reasons things that other entrepreneurial fields can learn from?

4. What does this field still need to do better?

Photo credit: TheGiantVermin

Last night saw the conclusion of the second annual Singularity University, a ten-week graduate program designed to help some of the globes best and brightest understand the implications and opportunities of exponentially increasing technologies. Their task? To use those new technologies to positively impact a billion lives.

"Singularity" refers specifically to a moment in the future in which artificial intelligence matches human intelligence. More broadly though, the conversation about the Singularity refers to the general implications of exponentially increasing technology. Put more basically, the idea is that technology is not just changing more rapidly, but the pace at which it is advancing is not linear but exponential.

This means that innovations that were recently unthinkable are now just around the corner. Our ability to fabricate nanomaterials, understand genomic code, and other similar advances all suggest a very different future. Some of the most notable implications have to do with the way we fight disease and customize medicine to our highly individual genetic makeups.

The man who initiated the movement around understanding the implications of the Singularity is Ray Kurzweil, author of "The Singularity is Near" and co-founder and Chancellor of the Singularity University. The graduate program came out of a conversation with X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, who became the Chairman of Singularity U and helped assemble the team and sponsors to get it off the ground.

The summer program is structured in three parts. In the first part, students learn about exponentially increasing technologies across all fields, from health to space to agriculture and beyond. In the second part of the program, students hone in on one key area from space, food, energy, upcycling waste or water. Their task is to learn about the specific technologies reshaping those fields, and form teams to address key problems in novel ways. The third part of the program is spent coming up with ideas that specifically leverage those exponential technologies to address key needs for a billion people or more.

At last night's graduation ceremony at the NASA Ames center in Silicon Valley, the students - representing literally dozens of countries - showed off their bold ideas. The remarkable thing about the program is not just that it produces ideas, however, but that it produces people with an entirely shifted worldview who are committed to putting those ideas into practice. Something like half of last year's inaugural class ended up staying in or returning to Silicon Valley to continue to build the companies that came out of the program.

The program and its students are a testament to the power of big thinking. While not all of the ideas that come out of the graduate program will end up seeing the light of day, a number of them will, and you can bet we'll be benefitting from it.

For those interested in learning more or in applying to next year's program, apply at http://www.singularityu.org

Photo credit: jurvetson

Last week, we told you the story of Feelgoodz, an ethical flip flop startup whose major summer order had gotten stuck in BP oil spill-related madness in the Gulf of Mexico. The sales drop caused by the disaster had left them unable to repay a venture loan, the money from which was meant to go directly into another social venture. The story became our most shared ever, and I'm thrilled to report that less than a week later, with the help of the Change.org community and an assist from Groupon, FeelGoodz has sold almost its entire summer line, and will be able to repay the loan.

To quickly recap the story, Kyle Berner founded Feelgoodz a few years ago as a way to bring the joy he had experienced as a teacher and traveler in Thailand to the rest of the world. The company had generated an agreement with Whole Foods that would help them sell on the order of 10,000 pairs.

Participating in First Light Ventures' New Orleans "Village Capital" program, Feelgoodz had been given a $50,000 loan to help cover the cost of shipping the summer order. Unfortunately, as the BP oil rig started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the shipment got stuck in the Bahamas, eventually being delayed for two full prime flip flop-buying months. Whole Foods wasn't able to sell nearly the number of pairs that they had planned on, and Kyle was left unable to repay the loan, jeopardizing not only his company, but Drop the Chalk, the education software nonprofit who was supposed to get the next loan.

The story came to me through one of Feelgoodz investors, and my gut was that it would appeal to this community of social entrepreneurs and supporters. What I didn't anticipate is that the story "BP Oil Spill Claims Another Victim, An Aspiring Entrepreneur" would become our most shared ever, being posted to Facebook almost 700 times. Something about it hit a nerve, and the injustice of a promising young social venture shuttered by exactly the type of environmentally unsound old world company that requires our movement in the first place grabbed people's attention.

The community was not only sharing the story, but actually buying flip flops, as well. On the first day the story was up, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of flip flops were ordered. At the same time, I forwarded the story to the leaders of Groupon, a company that in the past two years has reinvented group buying and built an epic national distribution channel. Their roots are in social activism and I had a suspicion they'd be into the story.

They were, and almost immediately got on the phone with Kyle to craft a deal. On Friday, they started sending out a nationwide deal that was $12 for a pair of flops that normally cost $30. In the first few hours they sold 1,000. After a day it was closer to 3,000. By Sunday, they had reached 6,500 and shut the deal down to ensure that they could get everyone the sizes and colors they wanted.

This all means that Feelgoodz will be able to pay back their loan, and Drop the Chalk will have access to the resources they were promised. It's certainly a testament to the incredible distribution power of Groupon. Moreover, it is an amazing testament to the power of the internet to help people form rapid and spontaneous communities of support. Finally, it's a powerful demonstration that this community cares not just about rallying against companies doing bad, but about supporting companies out there trying to do good.

Photo credit: Kyle Berner

There is a concept that good entrepreneurs know only too well, but nonprofits could stand to explore. A "value proposition" is the unique value a product or service provides a consumer. Without a value proposition a business has no place in the market. For a nonprofit, a social value proposition is just as critical to success, but often ignored. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, due in part to the growth of for-profit social entrepreneurs, nonprofits must analyze, articulate, and deliver on a social value proposition.

In the past, nonprofits could exist without a value proposition. Donors wouldn't argue that a library, homeless shelter, food pantry or school provided a necessary service. But as we move further down the road of social innovation, the assumption that money will automatically follow good works is no longer valid.

The issue is complicated by the fact that nonprofits have two sets of consumers: those who benefit from the product or service (clients) and those who buy the service (funders, investors, philanthropists). There is increasing competition for both sets of consumers.

In order to attract the consumers who buy services (and who, by the way, increasingly want a social return on their purchase) nonprofits must articulate the value that the consumer (donor, investor, philanthropist, sponsor, whatever you want to call them) receives by writing a check.

In the nonprofit sector the closest thing to a value proposition has been a case for support. But when this is created (which isn't often) it tends to focus on the organization and its needs rather than on the potential social return on investment for the funder. A good value proposition articulates how an organization is uniquely positioned to create significant social impact that is much greater than the costs associated. It involves an organization analyzing, understanding and delivering on three very important things:

1. Capability: What is the organization uniquely positioned to provide to the community (the marketplace). Why is this organization better positioned than other organizations (nonprofits, for-profits, government) to deliver it?
2. Social Impact: What change is the organization creating in the community, region, world? Why is this significant? Why should/will consumers (funders) care?
3. Cost: How do the costs of the service being delivered compare to that social impact? Is there a social profit being achieved, i.e. are the costs involved in delivering the service significantly less than the benefits? Will a funder (who is paying these costs) receive a significant social return on their investment in the organization?

A value proposition is less about a well-articulated statement and more about an organization's ability to think through these questions and really understand the marketplace in which they operate. More and more the nonprofit that can effectively execute on a social value proposition will find the financial stability that ultimately leads them to create lasting social change.

Photo Credit: Tim Snell

The big game for many social ventures is changing underlying patterns of consumption to create a more sustainable world. Whether they're a new tea company trying to reshape how people engage with the people who produce their beverages or a clothing company trying to source ethically, their biggest challenge is getting consumers to care. A recent advertisement from Chipotle might offer some surprising insights about where to focus the message.

The advertisement reads: "We wanted to have farmers in our ads, but what sells are delicious burritos, not lessons on sustainable farming." The words "We...have...delicious burritos" are in a dark black font, while the rest is in subtle gray.

The premise of the advertisement is to pretty clear: on the one hand, they want you to know that they care and think about the places that their products come from. On the other hand, they also want you to know that what is ultimately important is that their product is delicious.

This reinforces the lessons from the fair trade movement thus far: fair trade can't impose a "tax" for a less tasty or less quality product on consumers. Basically, whatever the product is has to be "good" as judged simply against the quality of other, comparative, non-fair trade products. The way in which it was produced can be legitimately important to a consumer, but still not overcome other deficiencies.

But that doesn't solve the branding question. How much should these ethical, sustainable companies focus their branding and marketing around the story of where their products came from, and how they were produced, versus the traditional emphasis on how they make the consumer feel?

This came up a bunch at the Unreasonable Institute, particularly with ventures like Liga Masiva that are not even just "fair trade" but are actually positioning themselves to embody a relationship between consumers and produces that is even one step beyond that designation.

I tend not to believe that selling the story of social change alone is enough to shift consumer behavior. I'm getting more and more convinced that the right way to come at it is sort of to reinvent the lifestyle brand in a way that is energetic, young (both in terms of age and spirit), and presumes a sort of global interconnectedness and social good aspiration by default.

I think the whole "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability" (LOHAS) movement sort of goes for this, but I think that it is still a little inaccessible for the average consumer. It's definitely not youth facing in the way that I think many of the companies I know are going for.

Chipotle's ad certainly puts their stamp on the conversation. Letting people know about the sustainable farmers behind their burritos matters, but not nearly as much as the fact that they are delicious.

Photo credit: Nathaniel Whittemore

Pitch events are great...sorta...Except they're often long, and not always that interesting. And it's generally hard to get the right people in the room. At this year's Dangerously Ambitious, I worked with the Sparkseed team to design a different type of rapid pitch event, based on the assumption that everyone in the room had something they could contribute.

There were a set of design constraints that influenced how the night came together.

First, Almost everyone at DA had some awesome social venture they were working on, and almost all of them wanted other people's help to find the particular resources they needed. That meant the first thing we needed to figure out was how to get 30+ pitches in one evening.

Second, we wanted to unlock resources beyond funding. We had a room full of great people, but the fact was that many of them were not in a position to be pumping cash into new ventures. What we knew they had was big ideas and awesome networks.

Third, the entire mood and tone of DA was fun, energetic community. The point was to push each other to new heights and have a blast doing it (see: group skydiving). The event had to embrace that spirt.

Fourth, as a final bonus, our friends at the Singularity University were celebrating the culmination of their summer program which had brought together some of the most ambitious innovators from around the world, and wanted to throw an aligned event on the same evening.

What we ended up producing was a big, fast, interactive rapid fire pitch session. Each presenter had 60 seconds to do two things: convince the audience why they should care, and let them know with as much specificity as possible what they needed. They had at most three slides with which they could do this. When the presenters started to go overtime, they were greeted with the final question music from Jeopardy.

While the entrepreneurs were pitching, the audience's job was to be tweeting like mad to recommend connections, ideas, and other resources that the ventures could be tapping, or simply to promote what they thought were the coolest companies and ideas. In between presenters, a DJ would keep the energy up with bangin beats.

So how'd it go?

First of all, it was a logistical sh*tshow. The audio was too quiet in the room; the overhead projector didn't work; the Quinceañera downstairs was throbbing the floor all night, and people were hungry. But second, it still rocked anyway. The seat-of-the-pants vibe actually probably set the right tone and it felt like a community hanging out with itself rather than a strange power dynamic between those needing to be helped and the helpers.

The takeaways for us were a few things:

1. Fun=Community. If an event is largely focused on building or amplifying community, it has to have some element of fun. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be serious as well, but simply that people have to come out of it feeling a little more awesome than they did before.
2. Chaotic and loud can feel like energy and life as much as they feel like poor planning. People are often afraid to try new things that they don't know how to control, because they feel like they could get confused, jumbled, or chaotic. Turns out, if you set the tone right, those things feel like the natural energy of life as much as "mistakes," and people are quick to forgive little logistical mistakes.
3. Not trying new things is way more risky than trying new things. If you're trying to get people to connect in new ways, and if you want to create something innovative, it is simply way more costly and way more risky to just do the same old thing everyone else is doing.

For those interest, I'll be posting the slide deck of all the presentations is below:

Photo credit: InVenture Fund at DA2010

One of the unspoken themes of the Dangerously Ambitious conference in Silicon Valley this weekend was a recognition that social innovation is coming from multiple fields, and more than ever before, the conversation from tech is bleeding into the conversation in fair trade is bleeding into the conversation in education and so on. Appropriately, this week's links are from just about everywhere.

Entrepreneurs As The New Asset Class: A common refrain from people in the venture business is that they're usually making bets on people more than ideas. The logic is that a great person can eventually iterate their way to a meaningful company. CMEA venture partner Saad Khan puts some meat on the bones of this conversation with a post on Forbes, one of the first in a series he'll be doing. Among other things, he mentions Echoing Green 2010 winner Enzi's model of equity-based education funding.

eBay Founder Steps Up India Philanthropy: More news from Omidyar, which has just been quite active lately. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Omidyar Network would be increasing its commitment to India by plowing $200m into social businesses and nonprofits in the country over the next five years. I'm particularly interested to see whether this money can support innovations in mobile and rural banking and finance.

The Tiziano Project - 360°: The Tiziano Project teaches people in post conflict situations to use the tools of media to more effectively tell their story and reclaim a voice. The 360° project taught a handful of young people in Iraqi Kurdistan to go out and find the everyday stories of everyday people. They've put together the results in a really wonderful site optimized for browsing and discovering stories you might not otherwise hear.

Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief: TechCrunch, one of the two biggest tech blogs in the world, has been giving Samasource's Leila Janah some great airtime lately. This weekend, she and the CEO of Crowdflower -- the crowdsourcing technology that Samasource is built off of -- provided a pretty neat overview of the space. A good primer particularly for those who aren't immersed in the field.

Beyond City Limits: Author Parag Khanna writes a sweeping piece for Foreign Policy magazine about the future of human political organization. Basically, his bet is that nations play less and less of a role in the future while cities play a much more important role. He points out just how central to innovation and economic already are.

Photo credit: lylevincent

I'm at Dangerously Ambitious in Silicon Valley, an event hosted by San Francisco-based venture accelerator Sparkseed. The event is self-consciously trying to provide a different experience from other conferences out there. Here's what that looks like:

1. Small Size: The event registration was capped at about 65 people. The point is to create an intimacy that can extend beyond a small portion of the conference attendees. What tends to happen in bigger events is that people hew pretty closely to those they already know. The Global Engagement Summit we used to run at Northwestern always capped attendance around 80, and it made a huge difference.

2. Primary Emphasis on Social Experiences: There is this ironic thing that happens with most conferences I see, which is that they all recognize that everyone comes for the other people who are there, but then they still spend a huge amount of time and money creating content that ultimately gets in the way of people interacting. DA has taken a different approach, and allocated the majority of the weekend to social experiences that get attendees interacting with each other in formal and informal ways. Last night, for example, the first event of the weekend was a three-hour long live adventure "GoGame" in downtown San Jose.

3. Interactive Content: What "content" there is beyond the social experiences is largely interactive. This morning, for example, the entire group did a three hour workshop at the Stanford d. School that introduced participants to some of the concepts and design processes used by IDEO to help the worlds biggest companies innovate. The experience was all about interacting with other people, rather than passively listening to an expert yammer on.

4. Horizontal Learning: Most "education" is structured vertically, in which at any given moment, there is a difference between teacher and student. This weekend is much more about horizontal learning, in which the community presumes all other members are equals, and people move effortlessly and regularly in and out of the role of teacher and the role of student. The leaders of the few workshops there are at the event are spending the entire weekend with the rest of the attendees.

Photo credit: Nathaniel Whittemore

[Ed. Note. We're thrilled to brass MEDIA founder Bryan Sims share the story of his very own "Giving Pledge."]

When I was a kid I used to read stories about people like Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Steve Jobs. People who were first time entrepreneurs and started off like everyday people just like you and I. One of my particularly favorite things to learn about them was what they did for their first job.

My first job started at 15 while in high school at the local athletic club. I did maintenance and janitorial work, cleaning work-out equipment and scrubbing toilets in the locker room.

I first began investing as a teenager, taking my janitor’s paychecks and putting them in the stock market. Later in school I decided to create a teen investment club as part of a business class project so my friends and I could all invest together.

It was here that I learned two very important lessons:

1. The power of time and compound interest when it comes to money.
2. The power of a having many people involved in a project.

As 16 year olds investing in the stock market, we had one major advantage going for us, and that was time. Upon graduation and the disbanding of the investment club, many of participants took their money out and immediately reinvested into retirement accounts. In all likelihood, if they stick with it, they’ll be millionaires by the time they retire because they began so early.

The second piece I learned was the value of multiple perspectives. Statistically speaking, investment clubs with both men and women perform better than those with just men or just women. By getting a group of people together who shared a similar interest, we were able to benefit the group as a whole.

It’s because of these two philosophies that I’ve become a big believer in the Giving Pledge recently administered by over 40 billionaires and led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It takes these two concepts of people who have built wealth over time, and combines it with a critical mass of people to have a compounded effect for a greater good.

I have always known I would donate the majority of my wealth when I died, I just never thought to tell anyone else about it. My whole philosophy was to build as much value and solve as many problems over my lifetime as I could, and then give it back through a number of outlets. Little did I know there were other entrepreneurs out there like Ryan Allis, thinking the exact same thing I was.

A funny story about Ryan and I. We actually have known each other since we were teenagers. I proofed his book long before iContact had gone mainstream, and Ryan had participated in writing for brass MAGAZINE before we barely existed. Five years later, our companies both made the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in the country. We were 25 at the time.

Two years later this month, I made the decision that I would be participating in my own form of the Giving Pledge. While I’m not a billionaire and am certainly not retired, I decided there was nothing stopping me from making the commitment and putting it out there, while also encouraging others to do the same. I sent an email to Ryan encouraging him to make the pledge also. Turns out, he already had. We both made the same determination independently from one another that when we die, we are going to donate the majority of our wealth to charity.

This was a remarkable concept to me, that two people, on opposite sides of the country could have the exact same thinking. What if this were a concept we could get other entrepreneurs to take hold of? Better yet, why stop at entrepreneurs, why not have anyone make the same pledge? At the end of your life, half of what’s left over gets passed on to the next generation.

I learned from the investment clubs that if you let something compound over time while getting a critical mass of people together, great things can happen. Today, we all have time and so I need your help with spreading the word so people can get involved. It’s at this intersection of time and engaged people where we can fundamentally change people’s philosophy on giving so it is just accepted that you commit to the giving pledge and return half of what’s left.

And thus, the reason for my post. I would encourage you to make the same pledge Ryan and I have made and pass it on to others.

If you decide to make the pledge, please send me a message @bryansims on Twitter or via email at givingpledge@brassmedia.com so I can pass your story along to encourage others.

Photo credit: mikebaird

Arguably the hottest segment of the consumer web market is "flash sales," or email and web services that offer significantly discounted deals on local services, restaurants, getaways, and more. The market leader, Groupon, is estimated to do more than $500 million in revenue this year, which is no small feat for a two-year old company. But while many companies are rushing to the space to cash in on the trend, a new set are springing up to use group buying power for good.

At their core, most of these new companies share a similar model. They get companies to offer deep discounts on their products and services if a certain number of the item in question are sold. The value to the business is not necessarily primarily the profit they make, but their exposure to new customers.

Blissmo, a new San Francisco-based company, has a different idea. In their model of group buying for good, their goal is to make it easier and eventually, cheaper, for consumers to discover and buy from sustainable, ethical, environmentally-friendly businesses. The site is brand new, but early deals have included things like 50% discounts for a wine tasting at a certified green vineyard in Napa Valley.

According to Blissmo founder, Sundeep Ahuja, the goal is less about maximizing any individual transaction to maximize profit, and more about using the deals to connect healthy, sustainable consumers with the companies and brands whose ethos match their own. Ahuja, who was an early advisor to Kiva and Change.org among other social companies, tends to think that there are a lot more people who would be buying sustainably than those who are now, if it was easier and if they had good ways to learn about products that actually lived up to their values. For them, the deals are just a gateway into that longer-term relationship between consumers and producers.

Blissmo is not the only company that thinks there is an opportunity to use the group buying/daily deal model to mainstream sustainable consumption. While their focus is a holistic approach to integrating sustainable consumption, others are trying out different variations.

Portland, Oregon-based CauseOn just launched today with a promise of 20% of deals going to charity. Deals for Deeds collects Washington D.C. based deals - many of them with healthy lifestyle companies - and donates 5% to a one of a few charities. Bloomspot, focused on deals in SF, LA, and NYC, allows nonprofits to create community "circles." When members of a nonprofit's community circle buy one of the deals, Bloomspot donates a portion to the nonprofit. Groupon remains mindful of how to use its distribution network and "tipping point" model for good, recently announcing the launch of "G Team" to help leverage their community for good.

If the larger group buying market is any indication, there may be space for a lot of players. If the goal is -- as Ahuja put it -- to make sustainable consumption the rule rather than the exception, having a bunch of options with different types of deals for different locations might be the best way to regularize the behavior.

Even if none of them are going to make $500 million this year, companies like Blissmo are bound to push new ideas into the sustainable buying space, and that's a great deal at any price.

Photo credit: macinate

Spring and fall are the two big conference seasons for most industries, and our nascent field is no exception. The list below just covers some of the biggies, and is not nearly a comprehensive list. If you know of others, feel free to add them in the comments and we'll build a more extensive running list.

Dangerously Ambitious
What: A first time event hosted by social venture incubator Sparkseed, Dangerously Ambitious is a three day event coming up this weekend in Silicon Valley. It's restricted to about 75 participants and promises a dynamic, immersive environment full of wine hikes and sky diving.
What to watch for: The central idea here is to build something that's a community bonding experience more than a pseudo academic learning experience. I think they've done a great job planning, but the test will be how people respond.
When: August 19-22
Where: Silicon Valley, CA
Registration: Closed

The Feast
What: The second annual Feast conference is sort of like Social Entrepreneurship through the lens of the Lower East Side. A cool day long conference full of big talks, flanked by workshops and presentations the day following.
What to watch for: The Feast is run by an extremely dynamic young group, and I would be surprised if there weren't some interesting format and content twists.
When: October 14-16
Where: New York City
Registration: Open now

Social Capital Markets 2010
What: Continuously moving into place as the Fall's anchor event of the field (particularly for social investors), even in only its third year SoCap is one of the few conferences with the scale to really bring huge cross-sections of the movement together en masse.
What to watch for: Like any event that has over 1,000 people, SoCap faces the challenge of overwhelming people with content. This year, they've put power in the hands of domain experts across six "Tracks" like "Tactical Philanthropy" and "Mobile Technology" which seems like a really promising way to improve the flow.
When: October 4-6
Where: San Francisco, CA
Registration: Open now, 20% discount code: EB20

Opportunity Collaboration
What: The second year of this anti-poverty unconference in Mexico, Opportunity Collaboration rocked onto the scene last year by offering a fundamentally different experience for participants. They booked an entire hotel, let attendees (mostly) control the content, and got everyone disarmed in flip-flops.
What to watch for: Second years are always tough - particularly for unconferences. The event will surely be great again, but finding the balance between structured and unstructured content will be a challenge.
When: October 15-20
Where: Ixtapa, Mexico
Registration: 92% full, open now.

Pop!Tech
What: The annual anchor event of an extremely dynamic multi-sector community, PopTech brings artists, designers, social entrepreneurs, business people and others to Camden, Maine each October for a few days of brilliant talks and performances, as well as to introduce them to opportunities for collaboration throughout the year.
What to watch for: Some of the most amazing stuff about PopTech is what happens throughout the year beyond the event, like their collaboration on mobile health Project M. The holy grail would be finding ways to pipeline attendees into those sort of projects.
When: October 20-23
Where: Camden, Maine
Registration: Request a spot here

Photo credit: Pop!Tech

No common theme in what was cool this week, but these articles give a pretty good picture of the conversations I saw across the web.

Openness or How Do You Design for the Loss of Control? An epic piece about the megatrend of openness that is reshaping individual businesses and whole economies. This is the sort of survey that you usually have to buy a book for, as frog design's Tim Leberecht skips across the fields in which openness is disrupting the traditional business flow, and ponders what it will mean to design for a lack of control.

Betting on Incubators to Create Jobs: No shocker here, but it's still good to see more mainstream coverage of the explosion in startup incubators and accelerators. Here's an interesting fact: accord to the National Business Incubation Association, there are 41,000 who have used 1,200 incubators recently, and have a five-year success rate (in other words, not dying after five years) of 87% versus the national average of 44%. This Businessweek article argues that policy makers need to turn to these groups even more to spur job creation.

The Richest Woman in America: This article is about -- no, not Oprah -- but a self-made billionaire you may not have heard of, Lynn Tilton. Tilton spent 18 years on Wall Street while juggling life as a single mom, but instead of retiring with the $10m she had saved, decided to build her own private equity firm that would buy once iconic companies on the verge of going under and turn them around, not to rip apart the pieces and sell the assets as many PE firms do, but to rebuild the companies to profitability and save jobs. Her firm, Patriarch Partners has $7b in assets under management and has saved some 250,000 jobs.

Lets Hear Those Ideas: A mega-piece by Philanthrocapitalism author and Economist Bureau Chief Matthew Bishop that compares the Obama Administrations courting of social entrepreneurs with programs like the Social Innovation Fund to the British Government's new "Big Society" programs. Important to understand how a new class of "civic entrepreneurs" might reshape the relationship between people, business, and government.

A Threat To Startups: Union Square Ventures puts the Google-Verizon Net Neutrality proposal in stark terms -- they see it as a threat to startups. Particularly, they are worried about the fact that wireless internet is treated like a completely different category than broadband and given none of the same protections.

Photo credit: sustainablerotterdam