Founding and funding a social enterprise: how do you start and what do you do? Every Friday in April we’re going to talk about practical tips to help you become a startup founder and how to fund your dreams. Today, we’re going to kick it off by discussing the series with practical advice. The series will touch on 10 different themes:  

To help us kick off the series, I brought in a co-host, Jackie Biederman of the Changemaker Podcast. In this episode of Social Entrepreneur, we talk about:

Throughout the month of April, we’re giving away ten one-on-one mentoring calls to help you launch or grow your social enterprise. We’ll be drawing each week. To enter, go to http://tonyloyd.com/coaching

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." Arthur Ashe

Teresa Goines is a great example of this Arthur Ashe quote. She started with what she had. Her story starts with her heartbreak as she watched children being discarded into a justice system that was not designed to make them successful adults. When she started working on the Old Skool Café, the only assets she had was her tiny apartment a group of at-risk youth and her community. It took her 8 years move from that apartment into the Old Skool Café’s current San Francisco location. And she still works hard every day to make the supper club a success.

Old Skool Café is a youth-run supper club that creates jobs for youth coming out of incarceration, foster care, abusive situations, or other youth who are at-risk. Teresa and her staff create a safe space where these young people can learn and thrive, while making money. The youth not only

“The root cause that I saw is a breakdown of the family and the community around young people.”

“I can’t have my opened to this and not do something about it.”

“I have a mother’s heart.”

“As human beings, we all want to survive, we all want to belong, we want to feel like our life has meaning and purpose, and we want to be loved.”

“I wanted them to learn how to get those needs met in healthy ways.”

“We need to make our own money so that we don’t have to be reliant on programs and funding that the state can cut.”

“The culture is one of encouragement, respect and honor.”

“We don’t do it all. I’m a big believer in collaboration.”

“Just start taking steps.”

“I got over feeling dumb. I asked a lot of questions.”

“Ask for feedback.”

“Every time I ran into an obstacle, I asked people for help.”

“Don’t wait for perfect circumstances to do something to make a difference.”

“All of us are here to make a difference.”

“Life’s too short to not be living in our passion.”

Throughout the month of April, we’re giving away ten one-on-one mentoring calls to help you launch or grow your social enterprise. We’ll be drawing each week. To enter, go to http://tonyloyd.com/coaching

Think Different. You probably remember that as an Apple motto. But Andrew Stern of Global Development Incubator (GDI) applies the think differently model to the social impact space.

It takes a different kind of thinking to apply the incubator model to nonprofits, but that’s what GDI does. You have to think differently if you want to help social enterprises go from startups to scale, but that’s what GDI does. You have to think differently about multi-stakeholder initiatives in which philanthropists, government agencies and private organizations team up take on Sustainable Development Goals. Again, that’s what GDI does.

One of the initiatives GDI launched in 2016 is Convergence. Convergence is a platform that connects and supports private, public, and philanthropic investors for blended finance deals in emerging and frontier markets.

Blended finance uses public and philanthropic funds to attract private capital, in order to achieve positive development outcomes. In other words, blended finance is:

Government money + charity funds + private money = social impact.

Convergence has an investor and deal network where investors and deals come together in a more efficient way. In this episode of Social Entrepreneur, Andrew Stern explains all of this different thinking.

“We’re trying to identify social agitators.”

“What is the ultimate pathway to scale of impact that will really make a difference in the world?”

“Convergence is the first platform exclusively for blended finance.”

“The middle market or mezzanine level still has some gaps, and those gaps go beyond the financing.”

“Get in the field and work on the ground.”

“Very few of these good ideas are getting to the scale of impact that we want to see.”

Throughout the month of April, we’re giving away 10, one-on-one mentoring calls to help you launch or grow your social enterprise. We’ll be drawing each week. To enter, go to http://tonyloyd.com/coaching

Ashoka Social Financial Services Group identifies and supports social entrepreneurs using market forces for social good. If you heard Episode 60 of Social Entrepreneur with Bill Drayton, you heard him talking about the power of a network of leading social entrepreneurs. The Social Financial Services group focuses on social entrepreneurs who are pursuing innovative approaches to access new sources of capital and use market dynamics to create social impact.

Stuart Yasgur is just the right guy to run this group. He spent a decade working with startup and growth-stage businesses as a consultant in New York City. He obtained degrees from Cornell, Columbia and the London School of Economics. More than that, when you hear him talk, you realize, he has a heart for this work.

Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Stuart Yasgur:

“The market determines a lot of the character and quality of your life.”

“The market has the potential to be transformative. When it works really well it, it can enable us to work together to address seemingly intractable problems.”

“The issue is that the market is not working as well as it could.”

“We’re seeing the early part of a global change for how people are using and changing finance to enable people to improve their own lives.”

“We’re on the ground in over 80 countries around the world looking for leading social entrepreneurs.”

“We’re genuinely looking for that one person out of ten million.”

“For an entrepreneur, one of the scarcest resources is their own time and energy.”

“What’s critical, you see across all of these innovations, they represent the fact that we’re not simply going to grow our way out of the challenges we face today.”

“Find changemakers. Seek them out. Find people who have given themselves permission to solve a problem and have acted on it.”

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Starting this week and going through the month of April, we’re giving away 10, 20-minute, one-on-one coaching calls to help you launch or grow your social enterprise. We’ll be drawing throughout the month. To enter to win the giveaway, go to http://tonyloyd.com/coaching

Social Entrepreneurship Resources:

• Ashoka Social Financial Services: http://sfs.ashoka.org
• On Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshokaSFS
• Stuart Yasgur on Twitter: https://twitter.com/StuartYasgur
• NEW! Enter to win a 20-minute, one-on-one coaching call! http://tonyloyd.com/coaching
• Try Audible and Receive Two Free Audiobooks: http://tonyloyd.com/books

Social impact does not necessarily require you to be the founder of a social enterprise. Amanda LaGrange is living proof of that idea. Amanda spent more than seven years at General Mills, including time as a Senior Financial Analyst.

Today, Amanda is the CEO of TechDump. TechDump refurbishes and recycles electronics, and in the process they create jobs for adults facing barriers to employment, especially those who have spent time in the justice system. TechDump accepts anything with a cable, cord or battery that is not a home appliance.  

Amanda brings her background in corporate finance to bare on the challenges of scaling a social enterprise.

“It takes a certain skill set for a founder to pass on the baton. “

“It wasn’t necessarily that I birthed the idea, but I’ve definitely been a huge part around growing and scaling it.”

“Scaling a social enterprise is one of the most difficult things, because you have to create infrastructure at the same time you’re growing your top line.”

“The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, and yet we incarcerate 25% of the world’s incarcerated people.”

“We use 25% of the world’s resources and the [Environmental Protection Agency] reports that we’re only recycling 25% of electronic devices used by consumers.”

“There’s no person that’s wasted. There’s no material that’s wasted.”

“There’s value and transformation is definitely possible.”

“In the state of Minnesota last year, 50 million pounds of electronic waste was collected for recycling, so you can just imagine how much is sitting in people’s basements.”

“At TechDump last year, we recycled 5 million pounds.”

“From our founding in 2010, we’ve been 98% self-funded.”

“50% of our current income comes from the sale of refurbished electronics.”

“The more electronics we take in, the more people we can employ.”

“About half of our customer base is from the commercial side.”

“There’s no clear direct path to be a social entrepreneur.”

“Join a [nonprofit] board. You get to practice skills you can’t practice in your day job.”

Gretchen Steidle and Global Grassroots looks for change agents in the most marginalized communities in post-conflict East Africa. Their mission is to catalyze women and girls as leaders of conscious social change. They provide mind-body trauma healing, a conscious social change curriculum, mentors and seed capital.

In Conscious Social Change, Global Grassroots emphasizes five key areas:

“I was intrigued by what it takes to scale and replicate the best ideas.”

“I recognized that this is where change was happening. It was happening from the grassroots level up.”

“I wanted to find a way to finance more social innovation in the world.”

“I found change agents among illiterate farmers who had escaped genocide.”

“Here was the niche I felt I could serve best, where rebuilding efforts had already begun, but where grassroots needs were still not being met.”

“Everything we do is extremely experiential.”

“We incorporate trauma healing work with our change agents.”

“Conscious social change is the intersection of mindfulness with social entrepreneurship.”

“We teach mindfulness as a leadership principle.”

“For example, a water venture might sell water to those who can afford to pay for it, but that underwrites orphan school fees and women’s heath fees and their programming on domestic violence.”

“Do not assume you know what is needed.”

“Go there, listen, ask questions, engage and support local solutions.”

“The more you can recognize that every stakeholder has wisdom that is valuable to the whole, the more quickly you can clearly and accurately define the issue and design a solution that is going to result in long-term transformation.”

“Constantly evaluate if what you are doing is really alleviating the underlying social issue.”

“The most important thing that we can do is work on our own self-awareness.”

“Start with your own breath – by taking three breaths.”

The global south, that is countries south of the equator, are beginning to organize themselves in order to take on their own challenges. Today’s guest, Aruna Raman and I talked extensively about knowledge and talent sharing collaborations across the global south.

Who is Aruna? You may remember Fred Rose of Acara from episode 20 of Social Entrepreneur. Every summer, the Acara program at the University of Minnesota sponsors a study abroad program. When the students arrive in Bangalore, Aruna Raman is there to greet them. She introduces them to social entrepreneurs, nonprofits and government officials. She wants the students to see the truth of what it’s like to do business in a complex society like India.

Aruna also coordinates a program in the fall where students take their businesses forward to develop a viable business plan. She places these students in social enterprises to work on projects.

Aruna and I talked about the importance of local context in social innovation. Aruna also describes how being entrepreneurial is more important than being an entrepreneur.

“Be entrepreneurial rather than being an entrepreneur.”

“I kept thinking, what is the one thing that would lead organizations to collaborate?”

“I feel that there is so much energy directed towards being an entrepreneur that the other roles are forgotten.”

“It takes a village to groom an entrepreneur.”

“Why don’t we have theories and tools that come from the developing world?”

“Bangalore is now overrun with white kids with yoga mats.”

“I thought, perhaps we can strengthen the south-south narrative.”

“I kept thinking, since India has been at the forefront, how do things work in Kenya or Latin America, and can we share our learnings?”

“We can use the collective energy of the global south to codify and document a lot of learnings and present ourselves as a formidable force as well.”

“The global south is a force to be reckoned with.”

“Never underestimate the power of good research.”

“Rapid prototyping only works when you have a firm grasp on what the problem is.”

“The more time you spend listening to people, the humbler you will become.”

“If I go to a country and I stay for a long period of time, what can the country gain from me?”

Raj Sisodia is one of the thought leaders of the Conscious Capitalism movement. His books Firms of Endearment and Conscious Capitalism were major influences on my thinking about social entrepreneurship. They are part of the reason that I produce Social Entrepreneur today.

In this interview, Raj describes the research he conducted and how he began to understand that there was a better way of doing business – a more conscious form of capitalism. He also talks about his new book Shakti Leadership: Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business.

“Joseph Campbell talked about, you need to find your bliss, and you can also follow your heartbreak.”

“It felt like we were spending more and getting less [from marketing].”

“If you look at the overall impact of about a trillion dollars of spending on marketing, on the lives of customers, and the performance of companies as well as generally on society, I found that there was not a strong positive impact. In fact there were in many ways negative impacts.”

“The paradox of profit is, if you pursue profit resolutely with a single-minded focus, you will do things that will harm your ability to generate surplus in the long term.”

“Profits cannot be pursued. Profits ensue. They are the outcome.”

“This views business as an interconnected, interdependent living system.”

“A conscious business calls for a different kind of leader with different motivations.”

“The way we lead impact the way people live.”

“These companies tend to reflect a lot more of the so-called feminine energy.”

“There’s a lot more talk about caring and compassion and nurturing and relationships.”

“Many of these companies talk openly about building a business on love.”

“After the 19th Century we ended slavery, in the 20th we ended totalitarianism. I think in this century we end the oppression and suppression of women and the feminine.”

“Articulate what you stand for and make it explicit.”

“Keep in mind that we are also citizens.”

From the time he was in elementary schools, Bill Drayton was a changemaker. His parents and the principal of the school conspired to allow Bill bloom in his early entrepreneurial efforts. Bill went on the attend Harvard, Oxford and Yale. He worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and for the Environmental Protection Agency. Eventually Bill and a few friends took a tour of India by Volkswagen Microbus. This trip changed Bill’s life.

In 1980 Bill founded Ashoka and the following year elected the first Ashoka Fellows in India. Bill told me, “There was no word for social entrepreneur. We had to make it up.” Since that time, Ashoka has selected over 3,500 changemakers to be Fellows. Ashoka uses five criteria:

Over time, Ashoka has evolved from focusing on individual fellows to a network of fellows to the idea of “Everyone a changemaker.” In this interview, Bill argues that, because the world is in a constant state of change, the key skills of empathy, teamwork, leadership and changemaking are required for every person on the planet.

“We need entrepreneurs for human rights and health and education as much as for steel and electronics.”

“Over half of the Ashoka fellows have changed national policy within five years of launch. And three-quarters have changed the pattern within five years.”

“The world is at a tipping point, from a world defined by repetition, think assembly line or law firm, to one defined by the opposite of repetition, change.”

“Once we’re convinced we see the new pattern, then we do something we call collaborative entrepreneurship jujitsu.”

“The most powerful force in the world is a big idea if it’s in the hands of a great entrepreneur.”

“The first five years, we were learning how to do this.”

“Give yourself permission. The world tells you, you can’t. What that usually means is, those who tell you, you can’t, they didn’t. And if you do, they’re going to ask themselves, well did I really live my life well?”

“There’s no way the problems outrun the solutions when everyone’s a changemaker, we’re in it for the good of all, and we love working together and we know how to do it.”

Servane Mouazan grew up in Britany, France. From an early age she was motivated by social and environmental justice. “It was very diffuse back in the day” she told me. “I just wanted to help.” And help she does. She has been described as a force of nature and as a social entrepreneur with a generous spirit.

Today Servane runs Ogunte. Ogunte is a Community Interest Company (CIC) and a Benefit Corporation (B Corp). Ogunte supports women social entrepreneurs by enabling them to learn, lead and connect. Ogunte creates an ecosystem of coaches, mentors, peer support and technical assistance. They have supported over 5200 women social entrepreneurs through business coaching, impact investment, training, leadership development, awards and challenge prizes. They hope to impact over 1 million women by the year 2020.

Ogunte works to give women social entrepreneurs a voice, to make them visible and to help them to be effective. They run an incubator called Make a Wave, both in-person and online.

Servane is also the Programme Manager for the Womanity Awards by The Womanity Foundation.

“I wanted to have a conversation around social and environmental impact. That’s the only thing I was interested in.”

“Give yourself permission to be vocal.”

“Don’t allow anyone to push you down for raising important issues.”

“Think about a system, not just a product.”

“Sometimes it’s not about starting something from scratch. It’s about joining forces.”

“Know your boundaries.”

“You’re not going to change the world tomorrow by 4 PM.”