A recent Op Ed piece in the Boston Globe had the intriguing title “Too Many Do-Gooders ?” The gist of the article was that as the number of “well-intentioned, not-for-profit agencies” were growing, the number of corporate donors were declining. All this happening while the need for services has never been greater. An adjacent Op Ed article titled “Big Brothers vs. Big Sister” highlighted the issue by describing the competition for dollars among the two sibling organizations.
The authors, Kevin Phelan from Meredith & Grew and Chad Gifford of Bank of America via FleetBoston, are well known in the community for their philanthropic support and so their observations carry credibility and weight. The authors contend that by spreading limited support around piecemeal, it propagates duplicative services, resulting in inefficiencies and a senseless competition for dollars. They appeal for a new solution, a new paradigm to address this issue.
Fortunately the world of philanthropy has also been evolving. Organizations like New Profit calling themselves a “Venture Philanthropy Fund” focus on providing long term strategic and financial support to evolving social entrepreneurs. By pooling philanthropic resources, grantees are assured that their ‘investments’ result in high-quality, scalable organizations. Others, like Ashoka invest in emerging social entrepreneurs, serving as early stage seed capital in VC-speak, leverage their multi-hundred ‘company portfolio’ to propagate common learnings among its ‘social investments’ and invest in building and spreading common infrastructure across social entrepreneurs. Calling themselves a non-profit venture fund, The Acumen Fund uses a rigorous process for selecting and investing in socially driven enterprises and measures their portfolio companies in financial and social terms.
Will these new approaches to supporting emerging social entrepreneurs help address the issues raised by Messrs Phelan and Gifford? How does one balance the needs of the many with a focus on a few successful social innovators?
At TIECON EAST, we are fortunate to have a distinguished panel that consists of representatives from Ashoka, New Profit, The Acumen Fund and the Hunt Alternatives Fund that will help you cut through the clutter and hear first hand from these innovative, cutting edge philanthropists. Join us for a session on “Innovating for Social Impact” on Friday from 2: 45 to 03:45 PM.
Raj Melville
Showing posts with label social entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Technology and the Quality of Life
I was flipping through the channels today and a shot of two old ladies in wheelchairs swinging away at a monitor caught my eye. So I froze the clicker, shifted brain into listen mode and watched as the ladies were shown the intricacies of the Nintendo Wii. Apparently 24 year-old Nintendo fanatic, Ethan Bechtel, realized the Wii would be a great tool to help seniors relive playing sports, like bowling and golf, while providing some physical stimulation and exercise. He setup a website, collected some money and now works with the seniors, like Elsie Tourville (85 yrs. old) and Alice Dubois (96) at the Green Mountain Nursing Home in Colchester VT. It is a pleasure to see the intensity and determination in these retirees as they duke it out over golf. This is possibly one of the more inexpensive ways to get people physically engaged. The unexpected popularity of the Wii beyond the hard core gaming crowd has caught every one by surprise. But more importantly it is surprising how it is stimulating interaction, dialog and even some physical exertion among a mainstream audience. Adieu, couch potatoes!
On the other side of the globe, Amir Hasson Alexander and his enterprising band of ‘Motomen” are busy bringing the internet to the remotest parts of Asia. Using buses equipped with WiFi, Amir’s company, United Villages (http://www.unitedvillages.com/) , provides web content to computers with no internet connection. A small box, with an antenna, onboard the buses or motorcycles, communicates with the rural computers. Every time a WiFi bus/motorcycle rolls by the village, the web content on the village kiosk computers is updated and email delivered. In remote locations with no wired connections, villagers can communicate – albeit asynchronously – with their cousins in faraway lands, order parts, lodge complaints, or review the status of their claims. With every kiosk Hasson’s company makes the world a little smaller and better place.
We are lucky to have Amir Hasson Alexander as one of the speakers at TIECON, a conference that highlights how breakthrough technology can be used to enable innovative connections and collaboration. We also have Dean Kamen, inventor par excellence, on a panel discussing what’s next in technology.
Dean’s inventions have always been people focused. From his insulin pump, to his IBOT for the physically challenged to the Segway, he has always looked at empowering people with technology.
A few weeks ago, I was at a TIME sponsored conference at Bentley where Dean spoke of two of his other projects. For a while he has been struggling with the fact that over a billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. He put his thinking cap on and now has a couple of devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide power and clean water in rural villages. His water purifier makes 1000 liters of clean water a day and his generator runs off virtually any fuel (including cow patties) to generate a kilowatt of power. He is teaming up with Iqbal Quadir - the same Iqbal Quadir who was on our Social Entrepreneurship Panel last year at TIECON and who fathered Grameen Phone - and is testing these devices in Bangladesh.
Whether it is Clean Energy. The next mobile offering or Innovations in personalized medicine, TIECON has always been an event to attend to find out how technology is being put to use to enhance your personal life.
Raj Melville
On the other side of the globe, Amir Hasson Alexander and his enterprising band of ‘Motomen” are busy bringing the internet to the remotest parts of Asia. Using buses equipped with WiFi, Amir’s company, United Villages (http://www.unitedvillages.com/) , provides web content to computers with no internet connection. A small box, with an antenna, onboard the buses or motorcycles, communicates with the rural computers. Every time a WiFi bus/motorcycle rolls by the village, the web content on the village kiosk computers is updated and email delivered. In remote locations with no wired connections, villagers can communicate – albeit asynchronously – with their cousins in faraway lands, order parts, lodge complaints, or review the status of their claims. With every kiosk Hasson’s company makes the world a little smaller and better place.
We are lucky to have Amir Hasson Alexander as one of the speakers at TIECON, a conference that highlights how breakthrough technology can be used to enable innovative connections and collaboration. We also have Dean Kamen, inventor par excellence, on a panel discussing what’s next in technology.
Dean’s inventions have always been people focused. From his insulin pump, to his IBOT for the physically challenged to the Segway, he has always looked at empowering people with technology.
A few weeks ago, I was at a TIME sponsored conference at Bentley where Dean spoke of two of his other projects. For a while he has been struggling with the fact that over a billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. He put his thinking cap on and now has a couple of devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide power and clean water in rural villages. His water purifier makes 1000 liters of clean water a day and his generator runs off virtually any fuel (including cow patties) to generate a kilowatt of power. He is teaming up with Iqbal Quadir - the same Iqbal Quadir who was on our Social Entrepreneurship Panel last year at TIECON and who fathered Grameen Phone - and is testing these devices in Bangladesh.
Whether it is Clean Energy. The next mobile offering or Innovations in personalized medicine, TIECON has always been an event to attend to find out how technology is being put to use to enhance your personal life.
Raj Melville
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