Archive for October, 2009

The Unreasonable Institute gives ideas wings.

Beyond Profit is an official Pipeline Partner of the Unreasonable Institute and we are happy to reach out to our readers in an effort to attract the world’s most brilliant high-impact social entrepreneurs to apply to the Unreasonable Institute.

The Unreasonable Institute has officially begun its search for the world’s 25 most driven, most brilliant, high-impact social entrepreneurs. The Institute is looking for social entrepreneurs, between ages 20-30, who will develop social ventures that history may one day recall defined progress in the 21st century — ventures with the ability to measurably improve the lives of millions of people around the globe. The Unreasonable Institute exists for no other purpose than to find these young social entrepreneurs and give them everything they need to create this kind of impact. The 25 selected entrepreneurs will gather in Boulder, Colorado in May 2010 for a 10-week Summer Institute where they will receive rigorous entrepreneurial training, daily mentorship from seasoned changemakers, and connections to the seed capital they require to launch their ideas and scale their ventures. All interested applicants can sign up to apply immediately and see all of the details of applying by clicking this link. Official applications will open on November 15th.  Join us, and the Unreasonable Institute, in our quest to put the world’s greatest challenges in a museum (to paraphrase Muhammad Yunus) by finding the people who would have made George Bernard Shaw proud when he said “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [and woman].”

Venkat Subramanian is the Founder and Managing Director of Matchbox Solutions, a company which uses technology to solve critical issues in India.  Efarm, one such solution, uses technology to provide supply chain efficiency for procuring and delivering fruits and vegetables grown on rural farms.

How can we really help Indian farmers?

With monsoon failure and farmer suicides back to hogging the media headlines in India, it is once again time for doles to farmers. It is now that every arm chair socialist suddenly develops a bleeding heart for the “poor farmer in distress,” and every rural marketing project which has been shelved, suddenly resurfaces with the tagline, “to benefit the poor Indian kisan (farmer).”

Most people know very little of rural India, or are too scared to speak on such a touchy topic lest they be seen as anti-social. As social entrepreneurs, the least we can do is rip the mask off such pseudo measures and myths. This post is dedicated to the thousands of people who have benefited “in the name of the farmer.”  I hope that by the end of this post, even if one of them develops a real conscience, we will have made a small step in the right direction. » Continue reading “In the Name of the Farmer”

Jerryanne Heath is the CEO and Founder of ConceptLink Consulting , a firm which helps US and international social-mission organizations connect with their stakeholders through various event management and communications strategies.  She is also co-chair of the Africa Social Enterprise Forum.

A few nights ago I attended the Starting Bloc party at the legendary Studio 54 in New York.  I had a blast and it was extremely inspiring to look around the room at my peers – young professionals and social entrepreneurs all eager to make a positive contribution to the world.  The energy in the room was palpable.  I overheard snippets of conversations:  “…moving to India to start an education consultancy…”, “…working on a solar venture in Latin America…”, “just started working at a nonprofit…”

I’m 26.  Several of my peers are guiding their career decisions by their desire to have a meaningful impact.  And many are diving headfirst into risky ventures abroad.  The conversations I overheard at the Bloc Party brought me back to some lessons I’ve learned as a young entrepreneur with sights set abroad.

At age 24, I quit my Wall Street job with the intention of starting a business in South Africa.  After a few trips there as a volunteer and a tourist, I was smitten by the cultural richness I found there and moreover by the economic opportunities.  South Africa was boasting 6-7% GDP growth at the time and getting ready to host the 2010 World Cup in a few years.  Vanity Fair had just released its Africa issue with several luminaries on the cover – Barack Obama, Bono, Brad Pitt, Bill Clinton, Oprah – it seemed the African continent was getting more positive attention than ever.

So after quitting my job and 6 months of what I believed was thorough due diligence, I set up a consulting firm with a local business partner to connect South African businesses and artists to the US market.  We registered the partnership in South Africa, with the ultimate goal of building a global brand and servicing clients on both sides of the Atlantic.  Despite my aspirations, the business in South Africa quickly disintegrated, largely due to my poor selection of a local business partner.

I learned several lessons from this experience, which I believe apply to any entrepreneur, and I’d to offer some advice, particularly for young entrepreneurs looking to make an international impact:

1. Do your homework:  I cannot emphasize this enough.  I unfortunately did not perform sufficient due diligence on my local business partner, which created a rocky relationship and stifled the company.  Take the time to do your homework, not only on the market in which you plan to work, but particularly on your team members.
2. Take care of the legal stuff first:  Get everything in writing and take the time upfront to establish controls.  Basic questions include: Who will have access to the bank account? How many signatures are required for checks?  Blinded by enthusiasm, I did not take the time to establish these controls and was shocked to find a $0 balance on the company’s bank statement after only six months!
3. Follow your heart, but don’t lose your shirt:  When passion drives us, it’s tempting to throw caution to the wind.  However, it’s best to take measured risk, particularly if you are investing your own capital in the venture – don’t go all in right away.  Test out the market, your ideas and your team gradually.  Though it was painful to learn that funds had been misused in the South African company, I was happy to walk away from the venture after having invested only a small amount of startup capital.
4. You’re not in Kansas anymore:  Manage your expectations and acknowledge that local business practices may be completely different from what you are accustomed to at home.  Play by the local rules to the extent permissible by law and your conscience!
5. Be prepared to fail: Look for the silver lining if things don’t turn out as you had hoped.  As keynote speaker Andrew Zolli put it a few weeks ago at the Africa Social Enterprise Forum, be prepared to fail, often.  Learn from it and “change your religion” accordingly.  I now wear my experience in South Africa as a badge of honor.

Nearly all literary material known to man is inaccessible to the visually impaired. Millions of words – in notes, articles, books, scripts, blogs – are created every hour and become part of the “inaccessible universe.” In the summer of 2008 the team at Inclusive Planet set out to take on the biggest challenge in the world of the visually impaired: making the world’s inaccessible content accessible.  To understand the gargantuan proportions of this problem, it is important to understand that Braille is an infinitesimally tiny fraction of this universe. The internet has been a fresh new force of accessible content but most of the accessible content on the internet is locked up in highly inaccessible websites.

So how does one solve this pervasive and widespread problem? There are large-scale global initiatives to convert books into accessible formats, but these are just a drop in the ocean. They can only cater to some needs of some people in some parts of world. They cannot address the culture, language, and subject-specific needs of tens of millions of visually impaired people across the world. The only people who can address these needs and provide meaningful solutions are members of the community itself. If Kevin from Holland shares his accessible biology notes with Rajat from India, and if Jose from Brazil shares his law school research with Lee Kyun from Korea, then we have a solution like no other. A vibrant universe where people reach out, connect, and fulfill each others’ needs.  A universe created by aggregating the pools of accessible content that the visually impaired community has created for itself.

BookBole.com, Inclusive Planet’s first creation, is the outcome of this thought process. Designed exclusively for the visually and print impaired, it enables them to connect with each other and share accessible content, including books, notes, articles, blogs, and audio recordings, and build conversations around this content. Going forward, BookBole will serve as a social network, content platform, marketplace, and policy platform rolled into one. The makings of a true social venture.

On Monday, October 26, 2009, BookBole began reaching out to print and visually-impaired people the world over. It’s available in both English and Spanish.

As for our involvement and as part of our commitment to support social enterprise, both Beyond Profit and Microfinance Insights will be two of the first interactive channels on BookBole. A few times a week, we will feed live content onto the site – from our blog, from Twitter, and from our print publication, making our content available to members of BookBole.

Watch this space for more details and the formal announcement of the launch!

Follow the journey on:

http://BookBole.wordpress.com

www.twitter.com/BookBole

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BookBole/167677086120

To get in touch write to:

founders@inclusiveplanet.com

On the way to the Opportunity Collaboration in Ixtapa last week, I had a connecting flight at the Mexico City airport.  As I wound my way through immigration and on to my next gate, I was struck by the number of people in wheelchairs.  They were employees of the airport, helping to give out immigration forms, direct people to the baggage area, check itineraries to make sure travelers were going in the right direction.

On my way back through Mexico City after the conference, I saw other differently-abled airport employees collecting trash and polishing the floors.  I asked a few airline representatives about it–whether there was a program in place to employ the differently-abled and how long it had been this way.  They didn’t know much about it in terms of details, but were proud of the fact that the airport had taken steps to hire from this community.  The Economist was a better resource, reporting that since 2007, the airport has filled at least 60 positions by those in wheelchairs.

How remarkable!  Why don’t more airports make an effort to do this?  Think of India, with at least 4 major airports, and so many differently-abled who are in need of jobs!  What an amazing example it sets for arriving visitors that this city/state/country is inclusive and innovative.  All it takes is a mandate for change from the top–or maybe those at the bottom making a little more noise.

Last week at the Opportunity Collaboration in Mexico, I attended a session by Willy Foote, Founder and CEO of Root Capital.  The discussion focused on collaborative opportunities to establish efficient  distribution channels that link isolated rural communities to services via small and growing businesses (SGBs).  The conversation, of course, veered to the opportunity presented by microfinance institutions (MFIs).  Usually, because of microfinance’s high touch model that sends loan officers into the field to collect payments from borrowers once a week, MFIs develop close relationships built on trust and frequency.

Since the publication of C.K. Prahalad’s Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, development practitioners have wistfully remarked on the amazing supply chain provided by MFIs for distribution of other products–from solar lamps to sanitary napkins and cellphones.  However, truth be told, no one has been able to execute at scale.

While the discussion at this Opportunity Collaboration session focused on SGBs, I couldn’t help but think of the model being pioneered by Frontier Markets, a company run by former microfinance professionals that is using a new tactic to enable cost-effective base-of-the-pyramid market entry.  What Frontier is doing that others have not done is hire local village staff to liaison firsthand with microfinance clients.  In the past, the burden of cross-selling products has fallen on loan officers.  Instead, this model uses trained local staff to do market analysis and sales.   Because Frontier has already-established relationships with MFIs, they have permission to target these clients, and instant access.

We are looking forward to hearing about the outcome of Frontier’s first pilot with Ujjivan clients in Karnataka India to find out if this could be a scalable strategy to provide new products to the poor using the microfinance channel.  Stay updated by reading the FrontierMarkets blog.

Read the latest issue of Beyond Profit to hear from the Founder of Frontier Markets, Ajaita Shah.

In the previous post, I posited the idea that Affordable Private Schools, both as a concept and as a sector, have arrived. Today, with great enthusiasm, I would like to echo that sentiment. If today’s sessions at the Affordable Private Schools Symposium, organized by Gray Matters Capital, were any indication, the time is now. And that can mean one thing: it’s time to assess. It’s time to standardize. And it’s time to scale.

Much of the excitement revolved around the unveiling of a ratings tool to assess the adequacy of Affordable Private Schools. As with any ecosystem development, and that is exactly what this symposium sought to do – develop the Affordable Private Schools ecosystem, in order to move forward, it is necessary to be able to asses the product and make comparisons across products.

Just look at the social enterprise sector in the past year – another sector that has just recently arrived. The emphasis lately has been on creating metrics to measure social impact, to create standards. Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) has created a set of financial, operational, and impact measures for enabling transparency of social and environmentally-oriented investments through a user-configurable, open source toolset. Global Impact Investing Ratings System (GIIRS) is a rating system designed to provide impact investors with an independent, objective way to assess the social and environmental impact of companies and investment portfolios.

But I digress. Back to Affordable Private Schools. There are many challenges in the sector, among them a lack of information, a lack of industry infrastructure, and the absence of both business as well as operational standards. What can be done to overcome these challenges? Build a ratings system, a ratings system that is “light” and balanced, useful and applicable. The applicability is key. Make sure the ratings system can be used for government and regular private schools as well as Affordable Private Schools. Make sure the ratings system delivers meaningful results. Make sure its findings accurately represent a school’s offering.

And this is exactly what Gray Matters Capital, M-CRIL, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and Pratham have done. What’s the long-term vision of the ratings tool? To establish it as a performance standard for the sector and enable a significant flow of services and funds to the sector.

Their ratings system covers five domains – governance and strategy, the financial system and performance, student achievement, the learning environment, and parent engagement. The aim: to facilitate lending to Affordable Private Schools; to act as a third party assessment of school quality; to become a widely accepted school manager tool that drives business performance; and to enable informed decision making by parents.

All in all, this seems like a great offering. It uses indicators such as number of students, number of teachers, student to teacher ratio, students exempted from fee payment, students with overdue fees, operating expenses, recovery rate of tuition fees, revenue per student, among others. But the challenge will be to get people to use this product. It is very clear that it is a fee-based tool. A school owner must pay in order to have his school assessed. In a resource strapped setting, where a school owner (or edupreneur) is struggling to make ends meet because of the low fees paid by students, does he have the inclination to make an investment like this? The offering price starts at US$ 1500. This is yet to be seen. The marketing strategy and roll-out will be key. The first step might be to offer subsidized ratings to particular schools to establish necessity in the market. By being rated, a school might gain a step up the ladder when trying to access funds. We learned today that the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation insists on third party assessments of all organizations that they fund. So the ratings tool is right up their alley.

Let’s hope it is also up the alleys of others.

We’re in Hyderabad this week, reporting from the inaugural Affordable Private School Symposium, organized by Gray Matters Capital.  After a long day being steeped in conversations about this new space, the overwhelming thought is the time is now! There is a sense of being in the right place at the right time. A sensation of being part of a sector that is moving forward.

Let me back up. Affordable Private Schools are social enterprises, providing a reliable source of education for children living in low-income urban areas. Families are considered clients, with the right to demand a quality education. School owners put an emphasis on quality and efficiency, justifying the modest tuition charged that allows them to cover their expenses.

Essentially, they are a parallel education system.

As with any parallel system, though, there are questions to be asked. We must evaluate why they exist. As with any market solution, supply and demand drives consumer behavior. And with private schools, we have obvious consumers – children and their families. These consumers are aspirational. These parents hope for a better life for their children. They can see the future, and they will reach it through educating their children.

The problem: government education in the low-income communities where Affordable Private Schools have sprung up is inadequate. For a multitude of reasons, the government does not meet the needs of their populace through their existing education channels. And so the market steps in, sensing an opportunity.

And with that said, according to James Tooley – thought leader in the Affordable Private Schools space: “Through Affordable Private Schools, we can reclaim the moral high ground.” Extensive research has been conducted by Tooley on the market for Affordable Private Schools. The two main research questions: How many schools are there? and How good are they? Well it turns out, there are a lot, and they are very good.

It all started in the slums of Hyderabad’s old city. Wandering through predominantly Muslim neighbors, Tooley stumbled upon a huge private sector serving poor families, proving that the private sector has a valuable role to play in meeting the educational needs of the poor. Official figures from his Hyderabad study revealed 61% of pupils present in the private unaided sector, in a thousand such schools. The project schools had average fees of about US$4 per month, an average student-teacher ratio of 29:1, and a majority of teachers who were college graduates. Families were found to be active in the school choice process, with over two-thirds having investigated at least two schools in addition to the one finally selected. Running schools, even for low-income families, was seen to be a potentially a profitable undertaking.

From here, the research took off – expanding to Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and China, among others.  In all of these places, Affordable Private Schools were found to be clearly outperforming the government schools, and doing so at a fraction of the cost!

Consequently, the topic has gained traction and interest. And this is why Gray Matters Capital has convened the Affordable Private Schools Symposium – to find out what’s next for this nascent sector. How will the sector engage the government? At the global macro level, what role should the government play in education? What is their level of responsibility?

As of now, there are a lot of questions, many ideas, but few answers. We’ll explore a few of these ideas in our series of blog posts, live from the symposium.

And don’t miss Beyond Profit’s coverage of the Affordable Private Schools sector in Issue 2 — subscribe now!

A short while ago, Beyond Profit published a piece entitled Can You Be A Social Entrepreneur If You’re Not the Head Honcho? This prompted further reflection and research from Sarah Jefferson of Ashoka Peace. She concludes that there is one crucial element that distinguishes the head honcho from the rest of their team, and blogs about it here.

Monday, October 12, 2009 – Friday, October 16, 2009

Each week, the Twitter “Social Enterprise of the Day” talks about a new facet of the social development sector. For the week of October 12- 16, 2009, we were inspired by an article in the Green Money Journal (which we follow on Twitter) and have highlighted five funds that are investing in socially and environmentally responsible organizations. Combining the goals of social responsibility and financial prosperity, these funds offer investors new avenues to participate in the conservation of global resources.

According to a Wall Street Journal article by Anna Prior entitled ”The Price of Green”, “green investing is a subset of socially responsible investing, where fund managers and other investors typically use a set of screens to weed out the stocks of companies that don’t meet certain criteria, usually relating to environmental, social and corporate-governance issues.” However, due to the nature of these funds, you are buying by investing. You are not injecting cash into socially responsible enterprises, but rather indirectly impacting them by buying a small stake from another investor. While there are a fair number of funds that have jumped onto the green bandwagon, their sustainability in the long run has been questioned by the experts. They seem to have impressive runs while they last, but once they’re on the decline, they lose their edge very quickly. Regardless of the downside, there’s no questioning the value attached to investing in organizations that are socially and environmentally responsible and are innovating to battle the problems of depleting resources in this day and age.

On Monday, October 12, 2009 we spoke about the Appleseed Fund that is managed by value investors who seek to generate long-term market-beating returns by investing in quality, undervalued companies screened for social and environmental responsibility. The Integrity Growth and Income Fund was featured on Tuesday, October 13, for investing in companies working on ways to resolve fossil fuel scarcity and to develop the middle class in emerging economies, while remaining loyal to issues such as social justice, the environment, and animal rights. The Wells Fargo Advantage Social Sustainability Fund was our “Social Enterprise of the Day” for Wednesday, October 14. The fund employs a two-pronged approach to its investment strategy: the fund’s managers use an inclusive screening process to invest in companies that have positive traits related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, in addition to avoiding stocks in sectors such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or weapons manufacturing based on traditional sustainable and responsible investing (SRI) screens. Responding to the global demand for new sources of fresh water, the which we featured on Thursday, October 15, seeks to invest in fresh water solutions that include conservation, recovery, and advancing technology. Calvert Global Water Fund, We wrapped up the week by featuring Pax World Global Green Fund, which invests in companies that work on developing technologies in alternative energy and energy efficiency, pollution control and prevention, and waste technology and resource management.