Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn't mean mattered. -Seth Godin
In the business world, it’s par for the course to move on when a project has proven financially unviable. Those of us who identify as social entrepreneurs can be more stubborn, at our own expense. We don’t necessarily move on when our projects have proven financially unviable.
We keep going, at first turning to philanthropic capital (where available, and it seldom is) and then, too often, to our credit cards. Some of us move on only when the money’s gone, our passion muted, and our monthly minimum payment so high that we have no choice but to abandon the work we love.
I fear that cash-strapped social entrepreneurs are becoming too dependent on the only reliable source of funding for social innovation, Mastercard and Visa. We have few alternatives. Large-scale funds created to advance the sector are bureaucratic and risk-averse by design. One-off funding sources for socially innovative organizations are too few in number and rarely come with deep enough pockets to stabilize a social venture.
A perfect storm has formed around the failure of philanthropic capital to address the needs of social entrepreneurs, the ease with which personal debt can be accessed, and the stubborn enthusiasm that social innovators often bring to their projects. Read the rest of this entry »
The recent book Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World argues that smaller, community-generated interventions — or “gentle actions” — should be considered before dramatic, top-down programs. The author, F. David Peat, is a physicist and a prolific writer on science and the human condition. He is the founder of the Pari Center for New Learning, housed under the sloping rooftops of Pari, a medieval town in Italy.
Peat’s examples of gentle action range from Kiva.org-style online campaigns, which connect donors directly with beneficiaries, to spontaneous offline community efforts to raise trust and generate goodwill among neighbors. He argues that the aggregate of many of these gentle actions working in concert can have a greater impact than a handful of grandiose world-changing projects backed by influential stakeholders. In fact, the author implies that many small actions can help to undo the harmful consequences of massive and poorly-conceived community development projects.
Peat encourages us all to be more reflective, arguing that people and institutions should think deeply about the inherent limitations and uncertain consequences of any effort to improve a community. He makes the case for individuals and institutions to hold back quick judgment on what it takes to effect positive social change, contending that philanthropists and international organizations should harness the creativity and assets inherent in the communities they wish to serve.
Read the rest of this entry »
This week, I am hosting a discussion on SocialEdge.org called, Competition or Collaboration?. I look forward to your contributions to the discussion. Please don’t be shy. This is an important conversation to have out in the open, and a timely moment to have it. 
This morning I googled the phrase “collaboration is a good thing,” and found 2,650 results. Then I googled “competition is a good thing,” and came up with 80,700 results.
For every web-page that has acknowledged the hard-won value of collaborative projects and processes, there are 30 web-pages that hale the hallmark of North American enterprise, competition. This shouldn’t surprise me. We live in competitive times. For my entire adult life, competition has been credited with everything from maintaining the quality of healthcare and education in America to sending people to the moon to spurring innovation. Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine you’re someone who wants to make a difference in the world without devoting all of your time to the effort.
You want to lend your creativity, connections, and capital to effect change but you don’t have tons of time. You go to a website like Social Actions. You enter the keywords that describe the cause you want to serve. And immediately, you’re presented with opportunities to donate, sign petitions, join mailing lists, and attend nonprofit events. These opportunities, as impactful as they are, leave you feeling somewhat unfulfilled.
You start to think, there must be meaningful ways online to support social entrepreneurs. But you can’t find them. The reason you can’t find them is that the technological infrastructure is devastatingly nonexistent. Why? Because the creators of websites that facilitate collective action have, for the most part, created online tools that serve the needs of traditional nonprofits, the kinds of nonprofits that seek donations, create petitions, setup mailing lists, and run awareness-raising events.
Read the rest of this entry »
Melissa Garcia Lamarca is a fulltime worker member of Sustainability Solutions Group (SSG), a Canadian-based cooperative that consults with institutions on a range of environmental, economic, and social sustainability projects. Last month, we met up for lunch at what I thought was an eco-friendly café in Montreal.
“Salmon is not a great option. Fish farming has huge impacts and wild stocks are being quickly depleted,” Melissa said. “I had a portion earlier this week, so that’s out of the question. I’ll probably have the veggie panini.” With an ecological footprint of 4.8 hectares in 2007 (more than twice what the Earth can support per person), she wasn’t about to increase her footprint on account of a lunch with me.
With an expert in sustainability as company, I quickly adjusted my calculations for what I would be having. We placed our orders and then launched into a 45 minute conversation on how SSG had grown from a consultancy firm billing CA$50,000 in 2005 to nearly CA$300,000 in 2007. Read the rest of this entry »
