Archive for Beyond Profit Issue 2

You practically have to be born with a halo and wings in order to meet the currently accepted characterization of a “social entrepreneur.” By setting the bar so high, are we actually preventing the entry of a diverse set of changemakers? Gabriel Brodbar, Director of the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Program in Social Entrepreneurship at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, offers a new framework for thinking about the roles of social changemakers.

Social entrepreneurship is allergic to definitions. Like Associate Justice Potter Stewart’s1 take on obscenity, many of us can’t describe social entrepreneurship, but we know it when we see it. While the popularity of social entrepreneurship as a movement continues to grow with an ever increasing number of blogs, books, magazines, university-based programs, and conferences claiming the title, the “field” seems no closer to understanding who social entrepreneurs really are and how social entrepreneurship happens than when the term first came into use in the 1960’s.2 A more rigorous understanding is needed if it is to fulfill its promise of being the infinitely more effective paradigm for solving some of the world’s most intractable social, economic, and environmental problems.

So what do we know? We all know that social entrepreneurs want to change the world for the better and ideally in sustainable and scalable ways. They seek to “cure” the root causes of social problems instead of masking the symptoms. They spur the disruptive innovations that ultimately lead to new and better equilibriums. But beyond that, there is little agreement.

The current debate on who is a social entrepreneur seems broadly divided into inclusive and exclusive camps. In the former, there are people like Ashoka Founder Bill Drayton, who argues there is one social entrepreneur for every ten million people (which would leave a place like Milwaukee, Wisconsin with slightly less than half of a social entrepreneur). Organizations like Echoing Green and the Draper Richards Foundation, like Ashoka, do a wonderful job seeking out these visionary individuals and supporting them as they pursue their pattern-breaking ideas. Roger Martin and Sally Osberg make a great case for this camp in their 2007 piece “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition”3 as has David Bornstein in How To Change the World4 and John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan in The Power of Unreasonable People.5 » Continue reading “Not Everyone’s a Social Entrepreneur”

Questioning the effectiveness and impact of charitable organizations has long been a topic for discussion. 2,800,000+ mosquito nets dispersed. 1500+ phones donated. 1350+ wells dug. The average donor may wonder about the numbers, but likely doesn’t take the time to look behind them, to verify them, to understand them. We take them at face value and assume that they represent the work of these charitable organizations and of our dollar – after all, how could an organization working for the common good misrepresent itself, or even worse, lie? We trust these organizations and the numbers they market. But, should we? Staff writer Adrienne Villani investigates.

In the philanthropic community, there have been loud calls for greater organizational transparency, for organizations to be held accountable for how they spend their money and deliver their services. While this movement in philanthropy has been building steam for quite some time now, many parallels can be drawn between what is happening in the philanthropic world and what is happening in the business world. In the wake of the financial crisis, people are calling for a new economic system, a new brand of capitalism, a new breed of business.

And with this, enters a new breed of charitable organization that WANTS to share its numbers, that WANTS its donors to understand, that WANTS you to trust it. We are at the precipice of a paradigm shift, with transparency assuming prominence.

“The Life You Can Save”

To raise money, charitable organizations pull at our heartstrings. They barrage us with photos of “the life we can save.” They then tell us how many of these “lives we can save” with just a small donation, or in some cases, even without a monetary donation, but with action. Take any cause, be it number of textbooks bought, number of teachers trained, number of school lunches distributed—how can we ever be sure?

These organizations balance the compulsion of saving one life with that of saving thousands of lives. Peter Singer, in his most recent book, “The Life You Can Save,” explores why we are willing to try to assist a stranger in front of us, while we are unwilling to donate to save strangers half a world away.

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, writes ,“There’s growing evidence that jumping up and down about millions of lives at stake can even be counterproductive. A number of studies have found that we are much more willing to donate to one needy person than to several…For example, in one study, people donate generously to Rokia, a 7-year-old malnourished African girl. But when Rokia’s plight was explained as part of a larger context of hunger in Africa, people were much less willing to help.”

Marketing expert Seth Godin echoes this sentiment, writing, “The problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn’t work. Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down…If you’ve got a small, fixable problem, people will rush to help, because people like to be on the winning side, take credit and do something that worked. If you’ve got a generational problem, something that is going to take Herculean effort and even then probably won’t pan out, we’re going to move on in search of something smaller.”

Essentially, organizations are advised to downplay the enormous problems they are addressing. They are told it is best not to communicate how big the problem actually is.

This may be because people give to feel good, often giving out of selfish motivations. It is easiest to feel good when you can write a check and the problem is solved. But, when the problems are enormous, they become seemingly unsolvable – eliminating global hunger, eradicating malaria, delivering safe and clean drinking water. The feel-good rewards disappear.

This new type of organization, though, is challenging these oft-held beliefs. While humanitarians have been infamous for being ineffective at selling their causes, these organizations are both thinking and talking big. They are standing up to the old saying “one death is a tragedy, a million – a statistic.” We are no longer numb to statistics; instead they galvanize us. We believe in something bigger than us, bigger than the individual, bigger than one.

They do this by telling a true story, through being transparent, and by selling honesty.

Truth in Advertising: Honesty Sells » Continue reading “Charities: Following the Money Trail”