Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Shiv­ani Siroya is the Founder and CEO of InVen­ture.

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about InVen­ture, what was the inspi­ra­tion behind it, how it works.

Sure! InVen­ture is a social enter­prise with a mis­sion to pro­vide the cap­i­tal, guid­ance and sup­port needed to empower micro-business own­ers in emerg­ing mar­kets to lift them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties out of poverty. We started InVen­ture because we saw that micro-credit was not doing enough to help exist­ing micro-businesses expand beyond sole pro­pri­etor­ships and cre­ate jobs within their community.

Cur­rently micro-entrepreneurs who launch their ven­tures using micro-loans are held back by micro-lending’s high inter­est rates, rigid pay­back struc­ture and lack of guid­ance.  They find them­selves sud­denly trapped in the “miss­ing mid­dle”: the gap in finan­cial ser­vices between micro-loans and the tra­di­tional bank­ing sec­tor. We wanted to change this – and find a way to get every­day peo­ple involved in the solution.

InVen­ture pro­vides a sim­ple mech­a­nism for socially con­scious indi­vid­u­als to fund expan­sion of micro-businesses in devel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ties. InVen­ture con­nects micro-entrepreneurs with flex­i­ble growth cap­i­tal through our online micro-investment plat­form. Our peer-to-peer plat­form pro­vides a direct and trans­par­ent vari­a­tion of tra­di­tional phil­an­thropy, con­nect­ing InVestors to indi­vid­ual micro-entrepreneurs and their com­mu­ni­ties. We cou­ple these funds with men­tor­ing and hands on strate­gic guid­ance to help our micro-businesses grow holis­ti­cally. And lastly, we require all our micro-entrepreneurs to re-invest a por­tion of their profit back into repro­duc­tive health, girls’ edu­ca­tion and women’s voca­tional train­ing ini­tia­tives in their com­mu­ni­ties.  This re-investment is the cat­a­lyst for a pos­i­tive feed­back loop – grow­ing a com­mu­nity through a busi­ness, while grow­ing a busi­ness through a community.

How does InVen­ture dif­fer from other micro-lending platforms?

Well we’re very sim­i­lar in that we have a peer-to-peer plat­form that con­nects users to micro-businesses – but instead of micro-loans we are essen­tially a micro ven­ture cap­i­tal plat­form. We also pro­vide men­tor­ing and hands on strate­gic guid­ance to help busi­nesses grow holis­ti­cally through our fel­lows pro­gram. Our fel­lows work to cre­ate mar­ket link­ages, pro­vide access to infor­ma­tion, and edu­cate entre­pre­neurs on busi­ness and finan­cial man­age­ment. Entre­pre­neurs are also trained on how to track social per­for­mance met­rics and make oper­a­tional course cor­rec­tions based on the find­ings to ensure that the busi­ness is meet­ing its estab­lished social goals. Lastly, we also require all our micro-entrepreneurs to con­tribute a por­tion of their profit back into their communities.

Can you tell me a story about one of the entre­pre­neurs you are cur­rently sup­port­ing and how life has changed for them.

Yes, its been a very excit­ing year for InVen­ture and our micro-entrepreneurs. In the past year, our online crowd-sourcing plat­form has helped to empower women like Griselda Flo­res. Griselda is run­ning a small com­mu­nity health clinic in Milpa Alta, the most rural dis­trict of Mex­ico City.  The clos­est clinic offer­ing ultra-sounds was 2.5 hrs away and she was forced to turn away dozens of women who had no other options for ser­vice.  InVenture’s online users helped Griselda finance an ultra-sound machine which allows her to now serve 15 preg­nant women a month who oth­er­wise had no access to afford­able care.

You were recently selected as an Unrea­son­able Insti­tute Fel­low and are an Echo­ing Green Fel­low.  What is your best advice to read­ers who are look­ing to apply to fel­low­ships like these.

I think the best thing I’d say is to research and ask ques­tions before apply­ing. Don’t just apply to as many com­pe­ti­tions or fel­low­ships as pos­si­ble, make sure that you’re apply­ing for the ones that are the right fit for you and your orga­ni­za­tion. Find out if their com­mu­ni­ties will help you get to that next level, I really believe that has been the biggest help for us – being a part of the com­mu­nity and learn­ing from oth­ers in this field. It helps to speak with the peo­ple run­ning the orga­ni­za­tions, pre­vi­ous appli­cants and gain advice on the specifics before apply­ing so that you can cus­tomize your appli­ca­tion to what they’re look­ing for.

Any­thing com­ing up that we should be excited about?

Funny you should ask! We have some pretty big things launching!

1. We’re expand­ing our pro­grams and part­ner­ships in India and Mex­ico and launch­ing a new pro­gram in Chile this Fall.

2. We’ve com­pletely re-visioned our online peer-to-peer plat­form to allow users to make stronger con­nec­tions to our entre­pre­neurs, and lever­age their con­tri­bu­tions to have greater impact.

3. On a orga­ni­za­tional front – we’ve final­ized a tran­si­tion from being a tra­di­tional non-profit to a hybrid model as a way of cre­at­ing effi­cien­cies that allow us to scale our reach and ensure more online user funds to reach beneficiaries

How can our read­er­ship help sup­port your mission?

Go online to InVenture.org, find an micro-entrepreneur, and make their first InVest­ment in a busi­ness and its com­mu­nity. Start your InVenture!

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Becky Straw is the Co-Founder and Chief Adven­tur­ist of The Adven­ture Project.

For those who aren’t famil­iar with The Adven­ture Project can you tell us a lit­tle bit about it.

Sure. We’re a new non-profit work­ing to “add ven­ture” to sup­port social enter­prises in devel­op­ing coun­tries. A social enter­prise is an orga­ni­za­tion solv­ing social prob­lems through inno­v­a­tive busi­ness models.

A good exam­ple of a social enter­prise is the well mechan­ics busi­ness we sup­port in India. In rural India, one third of all drink­ing water wells are bro­ken, often because there’s no one who knows how to fix them. Wat­erAid stepped in, hir­ing and train­ing men and women in well repair. Now, when a well breaks down, the vil­lage can call the mechanic and he or she rides a bike over. It’s a sim­ple busi­ness model, bring­ing clean water to hun­dreds of peo­ple each month.

We focus on four high-impact, low-cost solu­tions to end poverty, and raise aware­ness and funds to help these orga­ni­za­tions scale. Each solu­tion saves lives and cre­ates jobs.

So far we’ve focused on charcoal-efficient stoves in Haiti, the hand­pump mechanic busi­ness in India and irri­ga­tion pumps for small farm­ers in Kenya. In August we’ll launch our forth and final ini­tia­tive, which we’re very excited about.

What was the inspi­ra­tion behind The Adven­ture Project and what’s the big vision here?

I believe Jody, my co-founder, and I have been inspired by many expe­ri­ences. But we started The Adven­ture Project because we wanted to cre­ate a shift in giv­ing. We wanted to edu­cate and inspire donors to get involved and learn about inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. Social enter­prise is about invest­ing in dig­nity. We sup­port orga­ni­za­tions that treat peo­ple as peo­ple — not “the poor.” We believe in that.

Our big vision is sim­ple. We want to help one bil­lion peo­ple and cre­ate one mil­lion jobs in the next ten years. Easy, right? Ha…

How do you iden­tify the social enter­prises to high­light and help?

We look at many fac­tors, but there are three main areas we identify:

1. Orga­ni­za­tional Lead­er­ship. The non-profits we work with are lead­ers in their fields and rec­og­nized on an inter­na­tional level. Maybe they’re not a house­hold name, but that’s ok. We look for orga­ni­za­tions that have a strong track record in the field and the right peo­ple behind them.

2. Impact. The orga­ni­za­tion has a prod­uct or ser­vice that cre­ates a deep, long-lasting impact where they work. They focus on sus­tain­abil­ity and are always invest­ing in research and devel­op­ment. They con­stantly test new ways of ser­vice deliv­ery, afford­able tech­nolo­gies and
prod­ucts that peo­ple want.

3. Scale. The orga­ni­za­tion and model can be repli­cated to cre­ate large-scale change in the world. Their goal is to do some­thing really well, and then focus on tak­ing it to scale.

Can you give us an exam­ple of a social enter­prise you are look­ing to help
grow?

A good one is Inter­na­tional Life­line Fund. They are a small orga­ni­za­tion focused on water and charcoal-efficient stoves. Work­ing in Africa, they decided to expand their stove pro­gram to Haiti after the earth­quake. In Port au Prince, 40% of a family’s income is spent on cook­ing fuel — and each charcoal-efficient stove cuts the amount of fuel needed in half. So there’s huge poten­tial for a fam­ily in Haiti to use these stoves. The Adven­ture Project had been rais­ing funds to help with their expan­sion to Haiti, and to estab­lish a pro­duc­tion fac­tory — which will pro­vide local jobs.

You have a new cam­paign run­ning OneTo1000, can you tell us about that, and how our read­er­ship can get involved?

YES! Huge, really. You can sign up at: www.theadventureproject.org/oneto1000. It takes two min­utes, and you can have the oppor­tu­nity to be part of some­thing big. Today’s the last day.

We have been rais­ing aware­ness for Kick­start, a social enter­prise focused on afford­able irri­ga­tion pumps for small farm­ers in Kenya. Three weeks ago some­one for­warded us a blog post by Bill Gates, ask­ing for the most cre­ative ways to raise aware­ness about small farm­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Win­ning entries by May 31st (today!) will receive recog­ni­tion by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion. The chal­lenge was too good to pass up.

We real­ized, we had to do some­thing big to reach Bill Gates … and needed a lot of peo­ple to help. So we thought, “What if we get 1,000 peo­ple to give up ‘them­selves’ to raise aware­ness about small farm­ers?” We have accrued 800 donors since we’ve launched, so we knew this was a stretch for us.

We decided to try and find 1,000 peo­ple in ten days, and find spon­sors to donate if we did it. So far we’ve raised over $15,000, mostly from the gen­eros­ity of The Prem Rawat Foun­da­tion ($10K) and about.me ($2,500). Indi­vid­u­als have also pledged to donate if we suc­ceed. If we don’t enlist 1,000 peo­ple by Tues­day the 31st, then we don’t earn the fund­ing — which could poten­tially help 250+ farm­ers. That’s what makes this a fun (and stress­ful) chal­lenge for us.

How else can our read­er­ship help you push along your mission?

Join our Tribe. Our Tribe is a move­ment of peo­ple who share our mis­sion and want to take action. We’d love for every­one to join and learn more about us.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Rachael Chong is the CEO and Founder of Catchafire

For those who are not famil­iar with Catchafire can you tell us a lit­tle bit about how it works?

Catchafire works a bit like a dat­ing site — we match pro­fes­sion­als who want to give back with social good orga­ni­za­tions that need pro­fes­sional ser­vices but can’t afford them at mar­ket rate. Say you’re a PR man­ager, a graphic designer, a video edi­tor, or a mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive. You fill out a pro­file with Catchafire, giv­ing infor­ma­tion about your skillset and your cause inter­ests. Mean­while, social good orga­ni­za­tions can list projects in areas that require a cer­tain set of skills — for exam­ple, a social media cam­paign for an HIV-AIDS edu­ca­tion non­profit, or a fundrais­ing event for an ani­mal shel­ter. Our spe­cial match­ing algo­rithm sug­gests pos­si­ble matches.

What was the inspi­ra­tion behind Catchafire and where does the name come from?

I worked in finance for a few years at the begin­ning of my career, and I was dis­ap­pointed by the lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties to use my pro­fes­sional skills to give back. I did a fair amount of tra­di­tional vol­un­teer­ing — I worked in soup kitchens, I stuffed envelopes, and while I think those oppor­tu­ni­ties are very impor­tant, I wanted some­thing that would really lever­age the skills I was build­ing at my job. The more skilled pro­fes­sion­als I spoke to about this, the more I found it was a pretty com­mon sen­ti­ment. Then I read that more than 80 per­cent of young pro­fes­sion­als want their career to address social good in some way. I found it astound­ing that it wasn’t eas­ier to find out­lets for all that skill and good inten­tion, because clearly there are many cash-strapped non­prof­its in great need of pro­fes­sional ser­vices. So I founded Catchafire in hopes of mak­ing it eas­ier to find that out­let. And the name is from one of my favorite Bob Mar­ley songs.

Why is it impor­tant for peo­ple to vol­un­teer their skills?

Because every­one wins! For the social good orga­ni­za­tions we serve, it opens up a whole world of access to ser­vices they could never afford ordi­nar­ily or know where to find. Orga­ni­za­tions can spend a lot of time and resources try­ing to fig­ure out how to do some­thing them­selves when they don’t have the staffing or money for. When you bring in a pro bono pro­fes­sional, you’re guar­an­tee­ing that the job will be done effi­ciently, and it frees up the organization’s time and resources to devote to other impor­tant tasks. It’s also great for the pro­fes­sional. We’ve heard many times that peo­ple who give pro bono through Catchafire have really ben­e­fited from the con­tacts they’ve made, and from work­ing in a new set­ting. It’s can be great project-management expe­ri­ence, espe­cially for early-career pro­fes­sion­als or those hop­ing to switch career tracks. Pro bono looks great on a resume. And of course, giv­ing back to a cause you really care about feels great, too!

Can you tell us your favorite suc­cess story since launch­ing the platform?

Some of our most suc­cess­ful matches are the ones that have cre­ated last­ing rela­tion­ships. It’s always great to hear that a pro bono pro­fes­sional is stay­ing in touch with their orga­ni­za­tion, or is able to help in ways that extend beyond the scope of their Catchafire project. One of our favorite mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions is Pros­per­ity Can­dle, a startup social enter­prise that empow­ers women entre­pre­neurs in regions impacted by polit­i­cal con­flict and nat­ural dis­as­ter. Since com­ing to us last fall, they’ve already done four projects with us and are right now wait­ing for matches on three more. They are a tiny orga­ni­za­tion and nor­mally do every­thing them­selves, so they really appre­ci­ate the pro­fes­sional help. Their co-founder, Siiri Mor­ley, got along so well with their pro-bono pro­fes­sional who worked on a Social Media project for them, that she’s agreed to take her on in a long-term pro bono engagement.

What are the biggest chal­lenges you’re fac­ing in grow­ing Catchafire?

One of the biggest chal­lenges we’re faced with now is how to expand Catchafire into other mar­kets (we cur­rently only serve orga­ni­za­tions with a pres­ence in the greater New York City area), with­out los­ing the per­sonal touch and indi­vid­ual pas­sion that has made us suc­cess­ful so far. We’ve raised more than 2 mil­lion dol­lars worth of pro­fes­sional ser­vices in just two years. We’re proud of what we’ve done so far, but we think the model has the poten­tial to make a huge impact on the way social good orga­ni­za­tions oper­ate, and for that to hap­pen, we need to scale up tremen­dously. Part of what makes this so chal­leng­ing is that it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg sce­nario. We need to expand the list of orga­ni­za­tions we serve at the same rate as we expand our ros­ter of skilled pro­fes­sion­als — and that requires get­ting the word out to both net­works in a major way.

How can Care2?s gen­eral read­er­ship help push for­ward your mission?

Fill­ing out a Catchafire pro­file is the first and best way to help. Once you do that, you’ll be well on your way to get­ting matched with a social good orga­ni­za­tion work­ing on a cause you care about. Check out our Project Menu to see what types of projects we cur­rently offer, and let us know if there are oth­ers that you think we should add! And if you have a friend who’s an ace web designer, a pro fundraiser, etc., help us spread the word! You can read some of our suc­cess sto­ries to get inspired, and then sign up for our newslet­ter, friend us on Face­book, and fol­low us on Twit­ter! Con­nect with us, and we’ll keep you posted on what’s next for Catchafire.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Josh Tet­rick  is the CEO of 33Needs.

For those who aren’t famil­iar can you tell us a lit­tle bit about what 33needs does, and how it dif­fers from other for profit small busi­ness crowd­fund­ing sites like Profounder.

Social invest­ing in com­pa­nies solv­ing the world’s biggest needs. We’re turn­ing the focus of crowd­fund­ing entirely on com­pa­nies with a social mis­sion, and allow­ing ordi­nary peo­ple to invest, make a social impact, and earn finan­cial rewards.

We’re the only plat­form in the world that enables ordi­nary peo­ple – you, neigh­bor Joe, Aunt Sally, and even your dog Jake (fine, maybe not Jake) – to invest in do-good com­pa­nies (called social enter­prises) and earn finan­cial rewards. For exam­ple: 20,000 peo­ple could invest, not donate, $50 each in More than Me, Inc., one of the com­pa­nies rais­ing money on 33needs.

We’re dif­fer­ent in two key ways 1. We don’t have a limit to the num­ber of peo­ple that can invest in each social enter­prise. For us, that’s the miss­ing piece of exist­ing mod­els and is the key to unleash­ing some­thing spe­cial; and, 2. All of the star­tups on 33needs are solv­ing a social/environmental need, which is why we’re doing this in the first place.

Where does the name come from?

It’s been my ath­letic num­ber all through my life; just sounds cool; we have a lot of needs; and it ref­er­ences a law that put a bar­rier between “wealthy” investors and every­one else: the 1933 Secu­ri­ties Law.

How is 33needs a prod­uct of your life experiences?

I worked with a ven­ture cap­i­tal pro­gram inside the United Nations called the UN Grow­ing Sus­tain­able Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive. We invested UN cap­i­tal into social enter­prises – i.e, impact invest­ing. I came back to states (that was in Kenya) and was inspired by the Obama cam­paign, how they raised money online – i.e. crowd­fund­ing. I asked myself: Why not com­bine the two? I sat on the idea for too long, and then did it.

Can you high­light a suc­cess story on your platform?

Check this arti­cle as it high­lights the suc­cess­ful raise of More than Me.

Why did you choose to make 33 needs about invest­ing over just giving?

For me (and the team), it’s all about long-term sus­tain­abil­ity and impact. Busi­ness (and self-interest) has the abil­ity to take things to scale both quicker. I think in a lot of ways it can be a more sus­tain­able and a more empow­er­ing approach than tra­di­tional giving.

What are the largest chal­lenges you are cur­rently fac­ing with grow­ing 33needs? Do you face com­pli­ance issues with the SEC?

We’re set it up in such a way to avoid SEC-related issues. Our biggest chal­lenges is con­vinc­ing peo­ple the busi­ness, not just non-profits, can be a pow­er­ful force for chance. There is still a lot of skepticism.

What is the vision for 33needs and are there things com­ing in the near future we should be excited about?

33Needs’ vision is to enable as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to invest in inno­v­a­tive ideas and com­pa­nies that are work­ing to solve the most urgent and press­ing needs around the world.

We’ve got lots of needs: Today, like every other day, global-warming pol­lu­tion is dumped by the 70 mil­lion ton truck­loads into the sewer for­merly known as our atmos­phere. And tomor­row, bil­lions live another day in the grind­ing no med­i­cine, no light and no fam­ily type of poverty. Sev­enty bil­lion ani­mals — about the num­ber of humans who’ve lived in all of his­tory — suf­fer from cruel and inhu­mane treat­ment inside fac­tory farm walls.

We want to con­tinue cre­at­ing a plat­form that chips away at these urgent prob­lems. We’re also lin­ing up some excit­ing part­ner­ships with launch.org (NASA, NIKE, and USAID col­lab­o­ra­tion) and some other great orga­ni­za­tions and universities.

How can our read­ers push for­ward 33needs’ mis­sion and vision out­side of invest­ing in the com­pa­nies on the platform?

Start their own! Start a com­pany that is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence through just being a business.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

For those who aren’t famil­iar with Pro­founder can you tell us how the plat­form works?

Sure! Pro­Founder is an online crowd­fund­ing plat­form that pro­vides tools for entre­pre­neurs to raise invest­ment cap­i­tal from their com­mu­nity. Entre­pre­neurs sim­ply cre­ate a pro­file and fundrais­ing pitch on profounder.com, and then can invite any­one (even “unac­cred­ited, unso­phis­ti­cated” investors) such as fam­ily, friends, cus­tomers, class­mates, col­leagues and oth­ers, to invest in their com­pany. Investors receive either equity own­er­ship (stock) in the com­pany or a per­cent­age of rev­enue over a fixed amount of time, depend­ing on what invest­ments terms the entre­pre­neur has set. Pro­Founder pro­vides tools to entre­pre­neurs to man­age and facil­i­tate com­pli­ance reg­u­la­tions, e-signatures on term sheets, investor man­age­ment, and more.

What was the inspi­ra­tion for Profounder?

Through my role as a cofounder of Kiva a few years ago, I got to meet amaz­ing entre­pre­neurs all around the world — includ­ing right here in the United States. I heard over and over again how many of these US-based entre­pre­neurs needed fund­ing, and even had friends and fam­ily mem­bers who wanted to invest, but they didn’t know how to actu­ally facil­i­tate the invest­ment. Even in Sil­i­con Val­ley at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, my cofounder Dana Mau­riello and I saw a sim­i­lar demand among our class­mates (unac­cred­ited and unso­phis­ti­cated stu­dents, for the most part swim­ming in stu­dent loan debt) who wanted to invest in each oth­ers’ amaz­ing start-ups after grad­u­a­tion — but felt frus­trated by the high costs and legal bar­ri­ers we faced.

So you’ve set up shop in Los Ange­les, why LA over Sil­i­con Val­ley or NY?

I moved to LA after 10+ years in Sil­i­con Val­ley for personal/family rea­sons, and stayed to estab­lish Pro­Founder here because of the incred­i­ble com­mu­nity I dis­cov­ered. LA is actu­ally a very cre­ative and entre­pre­neur­ial place in its own way, and is a huge hub for small busi­ness activ­ity in this coun­try — there are more here than any­where else. It’s a nice change, and I feel thank­ful to get to the Bay Area every other week or so. And we’re able to get to NY a lot too. I’m cur­rently writ­ing my answers to this inter­view on a flight back from JFK to LAX!

Can you share with our read­ers a suc­cess story of a Pro­founder entrepreneur?

There are so many won­der­ful entre­pre­neurs to choose from on our site, but I’ll share with you the story of our very first cus­tomer. Bron­son Chang had recently grad­u­ated from USC, and decided to move back to Hawaii and part­ner with his uncle, Uncle Clay, to help grow their fam­ily busi­ness: Uncle Clay’s House of Pure Aloha. The House of Pure Aloha is a beloved local snack shop that’s been around for 17 years, and has a social mis­sion of con­nect­ing the com­mu­nity through a shared spirit of Pure Aloha. Bron­son and Uncle Clay cre­ated a raise on Pro­Founder, with goals of build­ing a new store and intro­duc­ing new prod­ucts, and suc­cess­fully raised $54,000 from 19 peo­ple, includ­ing some of Bronson’s class­mates and sev­eral loyal House of Pure Aloha cus­tomers. They offered investors 2% of the business’s rev­enue over 4 years; how­ever, this seemed to be less impor­tant to his investors than the oppor­tu­nity itself to sup­port and thank a cor­ner­stone of their com­mu­nity that they wanted to see suc­ceed. You can read more about Bronson’s raise on our blog!

For aspir­ing entre­pre­neurs look­ing to com­mu­nity fund their busi­ness, what would be the num­ber one thing you would rec­om­mend them to start doing now to ensure their suc­cess through com­mu­nity funding?

Talk to your com­mu­nity now! Get out there, talk about your idea, and engage those who want to sup­port you. We find that entre­pre­neurs who have the great­est suc­cess are those who have already actively reached out to poten­tial investors before they have pub­lished their raise, and who have also been cre­ative in con­sid­er­ing the vari­ety of ways their com­mu­nity can sup­port them. Some entre­pre­neurs have dis­cov­ered that they can gain the most from ask­ing not just for finan­cial invest­ments from friends and fam­ily, but by find­ing other mean­ing­ful ways for their com­mu­nity to par­tic­i­pate in their raise, such as writ­ing cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als on their web­site or donat­ing goods and ser­vices to their busi­ness as well.

Out­side of the fund­ing and com­pli­ance plat­form, how else is Pro­founder empow­er­ing peo­ple to pur­sue their dreams through entrepreneurship?

I believe the biggest bar­rier most would-be entre­pre­neurs face isn’t finan­cial, but psy­cho­log­i­cal: most of us are our own biggest crit­ics, and we doubt our abil­i­ties and poten­tial to do great things. The more Pro­Founder can high­light the jour­neys of every­day entre­pre­neurs, the more we can encour­age peo­ple to take those next steps and real­ize their entre­pre­neur­ial dreams — sur­rounded and sup­ported by their friends and fam­ily — the more we will all believe we can cre­ate pos­i­tive change in the world. I hope the entre­pre­neur­ial spirit I see in so many peo­ple using Pro­Founder right now can be more and more a part of our cul­ture, and our every­day lives. At its core, entre­pre­neur­ship isn’t even about start­ing a new com­pany or endeavor, it’s about hope and opti­mism. It’s about decid­ing to make things bet­ter tomor­row than they are today, for our­selves, for our fam­i­lies, for our com­mu­ni­ties. I want more peo­ple to choose this kind of life.

How can our Care2 read­ers who aren’t look­ing to start their own busi­ness help actu­al­ize Profounder’s vision?

Pro­Founder seeks to ensure that all entre­pre­neurs have access to the resources they need to suc­ceed through the engage­ment of robust, sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ties. So, first and fore­most, tell the entre­pre­neurs you know about Pro­Founder, and encour­age them to raise money on the site – and maybe even be their first investor!

Another option is to mobi­lize a broader com­mu­nity to use Pro­Founder. We recently launched a new prod­uct for orga­ni­za­tions, uni­ver­si­ties, com­pa­nies and other groups to offer a com­mu­nity crowd­fund­ing toolkit to its mem­bers through a spe­cially branded site. Pro­Founder can set your orga­ni­za­tion up with a spe­cial land­ing page with your logo and other cus­tomized fea­tures, a dash­board of sta­tis­tics about entre­pre­neurs that have raised money through your site, and case stud­ies of suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs within your own com­mu­nity. These branded sites give orga­ni­za­tions the abil­ity to not only engage their entre­pre­neur­ial com­mu­nity in a unique way, but also allow them to pro­vide other value-added ser­vices to its mem­bers to make the Pro­Founder expe­ri­ence more coherent.

Per­haps you want to cham­pion entre­pre­neur­ship in your local city or uni­ver­sity cam­pus. In addi­tion to set­ting up branded sites, we have a Group Advi­sor pro­gram as well, in which indi­vid­u­als who are pas­sion­ate about entre­pre­neur­ship in their com­mu­ni­ties are empow­ered as experts on com­mu­nity crowd­fund­ing, and can serve as a resource to entre­pre­neurs in their com­mu­nity look­ing to raise money.

And the most basic way: spread the word! Please tweet about us and tell peo­ple you know about what we’re doing. Thank you!

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Michael Karn­janaprakorn is the CEO/Head of Prod­uct of Skill­share.  You can fol­low him on Twit­ter.

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit of how Skill­share works?

Skill­share is a com­mu­nity mar­ket­place to learn any­thing from any­one. All of the classes hap­pen in the real world (that means offline, despite what us nerds may con­sider to be “real”). We believe that learn­ing should hap­pen in com­mu­ni­ties and groups around shared inter­ests and pas­sions. When you bring together a vari­ety of voices and hands-on instruc­tion, some­thing truly spec­tac­u­lar hap­pens. This magic just can’t be repli­cated over a web­cam and chatroom.

You can learn more by watch­ing our prod­uct video:
What was the inspi­ra­tion for Skillshare?

The inspi­ra­tion for Skill­share was to com­bine my pas­sion for doing good + edu­ca­tion + tech­nol­ogy. After watch­ing the Sir Ken Robin­son TEDtalk, I know this was some­thing I had to pur­sue indef­i­nitely. I believe the biggest social prob­lem in our soci­ety is that peo­ple stop learn­ing when they grad­u­ate from school, which I think is really odd. Our goal is turn every com­mu­nity, neigh­bor­hood, and city in the world into a uni­ver­sity by using the power of the web.

What were the trends that you saw that helped make the case for build­ing Skillshare?

A lot of dif­fer­ent trends com­bined into one for me when think­ing about Skill­share. The rise of col­lab­o­ra­tive con­sump­tion which describes the rapid explo­sion in swap­ping, shar­ing, bar­ter­ing, trad­ing and rent­ing in ways and on a scale never pos­si­ble before, col­lege debt exceed­ing credit card debt, and the desire for many peo­ple to learn inter­est­ing new things.

Besides Skill­share, what other learning/educatoin based ini­tia­tives and star­tups excite you the most?

I really like Khan Acad­emy. I think it’s a bril­liant con­cept. It “pro­vides a high qual­ity edu­ca­tion to any­one, any­where.” The mis­sion of Khan is very sim­i­lar to the mis­sion behind Skill­share which is why I love it. More com­pa­nies try­ing to tackle the same social prob­lem with dif­fer­ent solu­tions will ulti­mately make the world a bet­ter place.

Is there the inten­tion to cre­ate courses as opposed to one off classes?

What you see on the site right now is 1% of what we plan on releas­ing for the future. We have enough prod­uct work to keep us busy for the next 5 years so expect a lot of great things to be imple­mented. So, yes, we will have courses in addi­tion to classes soon.

What’s the biggest chal­lenge you fore­see in build­ing Skillshare?

Con­vinc­ing every sin­gle per­son on the planet that they have some­thing valu­able to share and teach others.

How can our read­ers help push along the learn­ing rev­o­lu­tion with Skillshare?

They can teach a class on Skill­share! You can do this by vis­it­ing http://skillshare.com/teach.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Jonathan Green­blatt cur­rently serves as the Direc­tor of The Impact Econ­omy Ini­tia­tive at the Aspen Insti­tute and is the founder and for­mer pres­i­dent of All for Good (Our Good Works [OGW]), the open source, web-based ini­tia­tive to engage more Amer­i­cans in ser­vice. It is the largest data­base of vol­un­teer list­ings ever com­piled and pro­vides con­tent to a wide range of gov­ern­ment, non­profit, and per­sonal web­sites. Jonathan is the for­mer CEO of GOOD World­wide and the co-founder of Ethos Brands, the busi­ness that launched Ethos Water, the pre­mium bot­tled water that helps chil­dren around the world get clean water. Jonathan served as vice pres­i­dent of global con­sumer prod­ucts at Star­bucks Cof­fee Com­pany fol­low­ing its acqui­si­tion of Ethos in 2005 as well as joined the board of direc­tors of the Star­bucks Foundation.  

Jonathan also has worked at the high­est lev­els of pub­lic ser­vice. He devel­oped inter­na­tional eco­nomic pol­icy as an aide in the Clin­ton White House and served on the Tech­nol­ogy and Inno­va­tion work­ing group of the Obama-Biden Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion team. He cur­rently serves on the board of sev­eral lead­ing non­profit orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Jew­ish Com­mu­nity Foun­da­tion of Los Ange­les, KaBOOM! and water.org. He is a Henry Crown Fel­low of the Aspen Insti­tute and was appointed to the fac­ulty at the Ander­son School of Man­age­ment at UCLA in 2006 where he teaches social entre­pre­neur­ship. He grad­u­ated cum laude from Tufts Uni­ver­sity and earned an MBA from the Kel­logg School of Man­age­ment at North­west­ern University.

You are cur­rently the Direc­tor of the Impact Econ­omy Ini­tia­tive at the Aspen Insti­tute, can you tell us a lit­tle more about that?

We are liv­ing through a period of his­tory when forces such as glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­ogy have accel­er­ated the pace of change to a breath­tak­ing rate.  In these tur­bu­lent times, as the coun­try seeks new approaches to job cre­ation and eco­nomic renewal, a num­ber of experts increas­ingly acknowl­edge the rela­tion­ship between national com­pet­i­tive­ness, social impact and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fit.  An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple describe this emerg­ing con­ver­gence as the “Impact Econ­omy,” a phe­nom­e­non that encom­passes a wide range of sec­tors includ­ing com­mu­nity enter­prises and clean tech as well as new fields such as afford­able liv­ing and eth­i­cal brands.

As the Impact Econ­omy takes shape, pub­lic pol­icy can play a piv­otal role to accel­er­ate its evo­lu­tion.  It cre­ates the oper­at­ing con­text in which the field can flour­ish.  By the same token, a lack of clar­ity about poli­cies or an absence of pro­grams can hin­der its devel­op­ment.  Through its phil­an­thropy and social inno­va­tion pro­gram, the Aspen Insti­tute has launched a new project, The Impact Econ­omy Ini­tia­tive (IEI), in order to help pol­icy mak­ers to under­stands the ben­e­fits of this trans­for­ma­tion and how they can help to cre­ate an enabling envi­ron­ment to sup­port this trend.  We are try­ing to cat­alyze a bi-partisan, non-ideological dis­cus­sion about the issues and cul­ti­vate new ideas about how pol­icy can stim­u­late eco­nomic gain and gen­er­ate social ben­e­fit for all seg­ments of our society.

What are the trends you see that indi­cate the emer­gence of an impact economy?

There are a num­ber of indi­ca­tors that her­ald this new moment.  In fact, it feels like we are expe­ri­enc­ing a long-term shift rather than wit­ness­ing a short-term trend.  For exam­ple, we are see­ing Impact Invest­ing shift from a rare phe­nom­e­non to a fre­quent ele­ment of the diver­si­fied port­fo­lios of many con­ven­tional investors.  A Mon­i­tor Insti­tute analy­sis fore­cast that the field could grow from $5 bil­lion to $50 bil­lion by the end of the decade.  Per­haps even more telling, JP Mor­gan report issued last late year that described Impact Invest­ing as a $40 bil­lion world­wide mar­ket — and they only focused on the BOP dimen­sions of the field.  Even more recently, the IPO for Zip­Car was quite a suc­cess, gen­er­ated a 56% return on the issuance price, rais­ing almost $175mm in its first day and achiev­ing a mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion of just north of $1 billion.

Closer to home, its impos­si­ble for me to walk out onto the UCLA cam­pus and not see stu­dents wear­ing TOMS shoes, drink­ing Ethos Water, and clam­or­ing for classes in social entre­pre­neur­ship.  All these sig­nal that con­sumers and investors, Main Street and Wall Street, are tak­ing part in the Impact Econ­omy.  Its an excit­ing time.

What is government’s role in the impact econ­omy?  What are a few pub­lic poli­cies changes that can be enacted that can pos­i­tively effect the growth tra­jec­tory of the impact economy?

The gov­ern­ment should avoid pick­ing win­ners.  How­ever, at all lev­els, pol­icy mak­ers can cre­ate rules of the road that make it eas­ier for entre­pre­neurs and investors to build great busi­nesses, to develop great prod­ucts and to deliver effec­tive ser­vices.  Whether through advanc­ing leg­is­la­tion, iter­at­ing reg­u­la­tions, adapt­ing oper­at­ing prac­tices or sim­ply using its bully pul­pit, gov­ern­ment can clar­ify the mar­ket and cre­ate the con­di­tions in which the Impact Econ­omy can thrive.

Rather than focus on spe­cific pol­icy changes, I would high­light the work that the gov­ern­ment has done to fos­ter exports.  We have almost 60 years of a broad bipar­ti­san com­mit­ment to free trade.  Fol­low­ing suit, we have seen the cre­ation of a robust set of ini­tia­tives and pro­grams to sup­port US exports, help­ing to cul­ti­vate per­haps the most dynamic and fastest grow­ing seg­ment of our con­tem­po­rary econ­omy.  Through offer­ing risk cap­i­tal, open­ing new mar­kets and craft­ing mul­ti­lat­eral frame­works, the gov­ern­ment has devel­oped a trans­par­ent and vibrant mar­ket for US firms that want to bring their goods to global con­sumers.  The resul­tant eco­nomic and polit­i­cal ben­e­fits are well-understood.  We need a sim­i­lar approach here in this field.

What role do incen­tives play in the impact econ­omy can you give us exam­ples of how they are being used today?

I think gov­ern­ment must develop incentive-based mod­els.  This is not about man­dat­ing change top-down.  Instead, we need to see a bottom-up shift led by those entre­pre­neurs and investors who opt to move in this direc­tion because it is sen­si­ble to do so.  In terms of the incen­tives that trig­ger such prac­tices, you can point to pro­grams like the SBA’s highly suc­cess­ful SBIC pro­gramthat has been adapted to accom­mo­date for impact invest­ing.  Another inter­est­ing incen­tive model takes place out­side gov­ern­ment: the trend ini­ti­ated at the Yale School of Man­age­ment to pro­vide some mea­sure of tuition relief for MBA stu­dents who take jobs at cer­ti­fied B cor­po­ra­tions or L3Cs upon grad­u­a­tion.

What orga­ni­za­tions should we keep an eye on that are help­ing grow the impact economy?

There are many actors that are dri­ving this trans­for­ma­tive process.  For exam­ple, you can find Impact Investors, whether mind­ful cap­i­tal­ists like Gen­er­a­tion Invest­ment Man­age­ment, Impact Assets, Cata­mount Ven­tures, Omid­yar Net­work or Satori Cap­i­tal as well as forward-thinking phil­an­thropies such as the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion, Heron Foun­da­tion or RSF Social Finance. You can find trail­blaz­ing Social Enter­prises such as Patag­o­nia, Method, and Liv­ing­Homes or larger scale global cor­po­ra­tions play­ing in this field such as GE, Tri­o­dos, or Whole Foods Mar­kets.  I also think the Change Agents who are facil­i­tat­ing the cap­i­tal mar­kets are a crit­i­cal fac­tor, from incu­ba­tors like The Hub and Unrea­son­able Insti­tute; advi­sory firms such as Social Finance and Imprint Cap­i­tal; mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tions like Investors Cir­cle, GIIN and B Lab; and con­fer­ences such as SOCAP and Take Impact!  All these enti­ties play a role in this emerg­ing ecosystem.

How can Care2 mem­bers help accel­er­ate the impact economy?

I think that the Care2 audi­ence could be cat­alytic to grow this field.  It starts by learn­ing about the issues, shar­ing sto­ries with friends via social media, orga­niz­ing mee­tups with like-minded peo­ple, and basi­cally spread­ing the word.  Once peo­ple under­stand how cer­tain poli­cies and pro­grams can fos­ter eco­nomic pros­per­ity and social impact, I believe that can find ways to advo­cate for such change, whether at a local, regional. national or even global level.  I also think your read­er­ship can lis­ten to the sug­ges­tion of Stony­field Farm’s Gary Hir­sh­berg and “vote with their wal­let” by striv­ing to patron­ize and sup­port those busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions that are con­sis­tent with their values.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

For those who aren’t famil­iar with PACT, can you tell us a lit­tle bit about what you do?

PACT brings you supremely soft, great-fitting under­wear made from pre­mium organic cot­ton. But that’s just the start. Each under­wear col­lec­tion is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between a lead­ing artist and a non­profit designed to pro­mote and sup­port a cause. PACT donates a por­tion of pro­ceeds from the sale of each print to the cause to make a tan­gi­ble pos­i­tive change in our world.   We say: big changes start with lit­tle ones. Like chang­ing your under­wear. We rec­om­mend chang­ing daily.

Why under­wear?  

About 5 years ago, I was work­ing in design and man­u­fac­tur­ing and spend­ing time at Asian fac­to­ries – my expe­ri­ence brought me to believe that we could make things in a bet­ter way.  The man­u­fac­tur­ing process didn’t have to be a dam­ag­ing one.   At the same time, organic and sus­tain­able apparel was in its infancy and there wasn’t much that was cool or styl­ish.  There was cer­tainly noth­ing in the under­wear cat­e­gory.  On top of that, the under­wear cat­e­gory was frankly bor­ing – the same Vic­to­ria Secret images for women and the black & white pho­tos of six pack abs for men.  My busi­ness part­ner, Jason Kibbey and I saw a hole in the mar­ket and a cat­e­gory ripe for inno­va­tion.  Then we met the designer Yves Behar and he had been feel­ing the same way about the under­wear cat­e­gory.  We joined forces and PACT was born.

Can you tell us about how your sup­ply chain imple­ments your com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal and social responsibility?

We searched the world for a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity that was cer­ti­fied to the high­est social and envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards and focused on organic and sus­tain­able tex­tiles.  We wanted a man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner who was com­mit­ted to sus­tain­abil­ity in their own busi­ness.  We also wanted a man­u­fac­turer that was capa­ble of mass pro­duc­tion – our goal is to make PACT a main­stream well-known brand – the big­ger we get, the more impact we can have.  If we can mass pro­duce under­wear and other basics at high vol­umes in a respon­si­ble way then we are really mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.  Our sup­ply chain is GOTS cer­ti­fied (Global Organic Tex­tile Stan­dard), the cot­ton is cer­ti­fied organic by the Tex­tile Exchange, the dyes and inks are OEKO-Tex cer­ti­fied, and the fac­tory we work with only pro­duces organic cloth­ing.  Work­ers have col­lec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion.  All parts of the sup­ply chain exist within a 100-mile radius – from the grow­ing of the organic cot­ton to the final fin­ished prod­uct – this is regional man­u­fac­tur­ing at its purest, which is also very unusual in apparel.  The car­bon foot­print of our sup­ply chain is smaller than it would be if we man­u­fac­tured in the US.  It proves that global man­u­fac­tur­ing can be done respon­si­bly while pur­su­ing com­par­a­tive advantages.

There has been an on going debate around con­sump­tion phil­an­thropy (eg. TOMS Shoes), how do you respond to indi­vid­u­als who ques­tion whether what you are doing is just good mar­ket­ing or effect­ing mean­ing­ful change?  

70% of the Amer­i­can econ­omy is pow­ered by con­sumer con­sump­tion.  Peo­ple are always going to con­sume.  They are always going to buy under­wear, t-shirts, socks and other basics.  If you are going out to buy under­wear any­way, buy­ing PACT is the smarter deci­sion – it’s man­u­fac­tured respon­si­bly and it gives back to a cause that is hav­ing a pos­i­tive effect on our world.  And we aren’t ask­ing con­sumers to pur­chase our spe­cial­ized rub­ber booster rocket under­wear – the world doesn’t need that.  We make every­day cot­ton under­wear – stuff peo­ple are going to buy any­way.  We are cre­at­ing cloth­ing with a phi­los­o­phy that is anti­thet­i­cal to fast fash­ion – each of our gar­ments have a story.  Every time you wear a pair of PACT under­wear you are reminded of the pos­i­tive impact you’ve had on the world.  So many of our cus­tomers tell us that PACT is the first pair they wear after laun­dry day.  Sure, it’s com­fort­able under­wear, but con­sumers have an emo­tional con­nec­tion to the prod­uct.  And we go to great lengths to have tan­gi­ble impact.  Each one of our col­lec­tions is directly con­nected to “a give”.  For Earth Day last year, we raised enough money through the sale of under­wear to plant 10,000 trees in Kenya.  At Christ­mas we gave more than 500 solar pow­ered LED lanterns to women in Haiti who had no elec­tric­ity.  Sell­ing under­wear is a vehi­cle for us to raise money to go out and have pos­i­tive impact in the world.  We can rely on non­prof­its to ask for dona­tions, but com­pa­nies like PACT are just a dif­fer­ent part of the giv­ing ecosys­tem.  Think of the pos­i­tive change that PACT, TOMS, and Warby Parker have made in our world.  It’s an excit­ing busi­ness model that con­tin­ues to evolve.

What would be your best advice for those who are look­ing to get into sus­tain­able and social respon­si­ble apparel?

First, organic is sim­ply not enough.  Hon­estly, a lot of con­sumers just don’t care or don’t know what it means – and they cer­tainly are not will­ing to pay more for it (even though it does cost more).  We absolutely must use sus­tain­able mate­ri­als but you need to cre­ate other rea­sons for the con­sumer to buy – qual­ity, fit, style, brand.   Ask a lot of ques­tions.  Under­stand who your cus­tomer is and their moti­va­tions.  Get your hands dirty – go to the fac­tory.  I’ve vis­ited every part of our sup­ply chain – from the fields to the pack­ing stage – to under­stand how all the pieces fit together and affect each other.  I always say, “there is no glam­our in fashion.”

What’s the vision for PACT Apparel?  Any­thing to look for­ward to?

We see the PACT brand as a plat­form for doing good.  This year we will be expand­ing into more essen­tials – t-shirts and socks – so our cus­tomers can par­tic­i­pate in more of the PACT brand and col­lec­tively we can have a big­ger impact.  PACT wants to be the basics brand of the “change gen­er­a­tion”.  We are not just clothes – we speak to cus­tomers’ val­ues and we have a pos­i­tive impact on the world around us.  Our cus­tomers are part of a move­ment.   As PACT grows, so does our impact.  We want to cel­e­brate peo­ple out in the world that are doing “good” every day.  We want PACT to be the uni­form for this new army of cit­i­zens that believe in a bet­ter future.  Like I said before, our soci­ety is going to con­tinue to con­sume, but we believe that con­sump­tion can actu­ally have a pos­i­tive effect on the world.  And beyond con­sump­tion, PACT wants to become the por­tal where peo­ple can share the pos­i­tive change that they are mak­ing in the world.  We are a shar­ing soci­ety now – peo­ple want to col­lab­o­rate and make a dif­fer­ence.  PACT is the brand that cel­e­brates that.

Out­side of pur­chas­ing the prod­uct how else can our read­ers push for­ward PACT Apparel’s mission?

Spread the word.  Tell your friends about PACT.  Tweet.  Post about us on Face­book.  Give PACT to your friends and fam­ily.  The more peo­ple who know about PACT the more impact we can have.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.