This Week in Social Entrepreneurship
In our “This Week in Social Entrepreneurship” series, each Friday we will feature the top stories in Social Entrepreneurship for the week that we find to be noteworthy, novel, and thought-provoking. What are your favorite stories this week in Social Entrepreneurship? Let’s start a discussion!
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Based on the success of the sold out conference in San Francisco just this past June, Social Media for Nonprofits is heading back to SF on November 4th. This time they’re featuring Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Beth Kanter, and experts from LinkedIn, Facebook Causes, Kiva.org, and VolunteerMatch, all providing practical tips and tools for fundraising, marketing, and advocacy. The full day conference in Union Square is $95-175 and includes meals plus entry to the 5:30-8:30pm book release party for “Nonprofit Management 101”. You can save $20 on registration using the code “SSG” at SocialMedia4Nonprofits.org/sf. Click to access presentations, photos, and the program from their last conference and follow them on Twitter or Facebook to stay tuned for additions to the November lineup.
- Howard Weinstein, founder and CEO of Solar Ear, was awarded social entrepreneur of the year at this year’s World Technology Summit & Awards. Solar Ear designs and makes affordable hearing aids that are solar-powered and battery rechargeable. Since the majority of individuals suffering from hearing loss live in developing countries, Weinstein saw a need for affordable hearing aids to improve their quality of life. You can read more about Solar Ear, Weinstein, and his award here.
- The GOOD Company Project has a mission: find 40 businesses with between 100 and 1,000 employees that are contributing to making the world a better place. This year, three GOOD Companies are at the Net Impact Conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference started yesterday and finishes up tomorrow. This GOOD article features its three GOOD Companies at the Net Impact Conference: Keen Footwear, Honest Tea, and gDiapers. Keen Footwear concentrates on social responsibility within its supply chain while Honest Tea and gDiapers have an environmental focus. If you are at the conference, all three companies will be speaking on panels today, so keep an eye out for them.
- The bank of the European Union, The European Investment Bank, announced it is setting up a €50m social investment fund next year and it is seeking backers to increase the fund to €100m. The fund will invest in intermediaries that will, in turn, invest in social enterprises. The fund won’t seek to maximize profits, but it does expect a financial return. Read more about this investment fund—ThirdSector: EU Bank to Launch €50m Social Investment Fund Next Year.
- Social Entrepreneurship got some recognition on Mashable this week. Mashable features an article about social entrepreneurship and highlights 5 foundations that are supporting social good. The organizations featured were—The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, The Skoll Foundation, Ashoka, The Omidyar Network, and Echoing Green. All five of these organizations set up online programs to support up and coming social entrepreneurs and social ventures.
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Social entrepreneurs, has all this great SocEnt news inspired you to start your own good? Do you have a social enterprise, a non-profit, or an amazing idea that needs some momentum to take off? Visit our site to find out how to start your own campaign today. Still have questions? We have answers—check out our FAQ section.
This Week in Social Entrepreneurship
In our “This Week in Social Entrepreneurship” series, each Friday we will feature the top stories in Social Entrepreneurship for the week that we find to be noteworthy, novel, and thought-provoking. What are your favorite stories this week in Social Entrepreneurship? Let’s start a discussion!
- The founders of three social ventures from the School for Social Entrepreneurs Australia shared prize money from the Macquarie Kick-Starter Grant pool. These grants are funded by the Macquarie Group Foundation as part of the Australian Social Innovation award that the School for Social Entrepreneurs won last year. The winners were picked from a pool of 30 applicants and include Sebastian Robertson for Batyr, Don Palmer for his Child Doctor initiative that is part of The Malpa Project, and, one of our past successful campaigns, David Dixon and Chantelle Baxter for LaunchPad. LaunchPad provides affordable biodegradable sanitary pads to the women and girls in Sierra Leone, West Africa. This initiative also provides an opportunity for entrepreneurial women to generate income by selling the pads in their communities. Read more about all the winners here.
- RSF Social Finance, a non-profit financial services organization that serves social enterprises, selected twelve graduate students into its Regional Fellowship Program for the 2011-2012 academic year. A Senior Lending Manager at RSF, Ted Levinson, called the program, “the most hands-on opportunity for graduate students who want to make a difference in the field of social finance”. You can read more about the program on AshokaU’s press release.
- Jeff Skoll, the first employee and president at eBay, noted philanthropist, and founder and chair of the Skoll Foundation, was honored at the Tech Awards gala last night as the recipient of the Global Humanitarian Award. The Skoll Foundation celebrates and connects social entrepreneurs all over the world. It also invests in the most promising social entrepreneurs that are on their way to solving many of the world’s most critical issues. Read more about Skoll’s award—The Skoll Foundation’s press release and an article written about the award earlier this year.
- The Social Media for Nonprofits Conference will be in San Francisco on November 4. Social Media is an essential skill that every nonprofit must learn. Topics include Fundraising With Social Media, Tweets that Travel, Social Email Campaigns, and Maximizing Your Facebook Presence—check out the rest here. The conference will also be coming to other cities in 2012, including New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago. Register now to secure your spot to this often sold out event.
- The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School hosted The New Jersey Social Entrepreneurship Summit this week. Notable speakers at the event included Cheryl Dorsey of Echoing Green, Craig Cuccia of Café Reconcile, and Alfa Demmellash of Rising Tide Capital. The summit gathered leaders in the field for the purpose of generating interest in social entrepreneurship in New Jersey. The event was a huge success and one of the big announcements that came from the summit was the launch of the Social Innovation Institute in New Jersey—a partnership between Rutgers University and PSEG to train social entrepreneurs. Applicants to the program are encouraged to apply between now and November 7.
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Social entrepreneurs, has all this great SocEnt news inspired you to start your own good? Do you have a social enterprise, a non-profit, or an amazing idea that needs some momentum to take off? Visit our site to find out how to start your own campaign today. Still have questions? We have answers—check out our FAQ section.
