The Pilates of Social Enterprise?

I was amused to stumble across Yale professor Jeff Trexler's blog http://www.trexfiles.com/ that discusses Sustayne, our comprehensive business planning methodology for social ventures. I love the comparison to Pilates. Yes, we are definitely trying to get a proven, quality methodology out there and get as many instructors/consultants as possible trained to deliver this to social entrepreneurs in all sectors in all parts of the world. Why? Because I deeply believe that a powerful tool for changing the world is entrepreneurs - specifically social entrepreneurs. AND, I believe that these entrepreneurs need as much assistance as possible in the early stages of developing their ventures to determine how best to develop their business model and set it up from success from the get go. Sustayne is based on the life work of Gifford Pinchot III, author, entrepreneur and founder of Bainbridge Graduate Institute www.bgiedu.org . He has been using this method with Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies, such as the US Forest Service for over 20 years. I've been working for the past several years to organize it and modify it to fit social venture development. Voila! Sustayne is born.

Mr. Trexler also spends a couple of lines lamenting the name Sustayne. So, for anyone who's interested, here's where it came from:
the word sustayne was used widely in 16th and 17th century poetry and was generally used to reference sustaining oneself spiritually, emotionally and physically
- it harkens back to a time when society, the earth and business were inextricably linked – the impacts of one on the others was widely known
- this work comes from my deep belief that bringing this link deliberately back into the way we develop solutions to social and environmental issues as well as the way we sustain ourselves financially IS an important key to making a real change in the world
- we use a water wheel as the logo – again, a symbol of the time this word was used as well as fitting into Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of Motion (originated in 1687; from Wikopedia.com) :

o Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at
rest, unless an outside force acts upon them.
o The net force on an object
is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration.
o To every action
(force applied) there is an equal and opposite reaction (equal force applied in
the opposite direction).

Sustayne is the force that generates the motion to cause a reaction.

So, we’re pleased even the name causes a reaction! For more info., go to www.socialenterprisegroup.com or call 206.903.8578.

The Genius of Youth and the Dreams of Entrepreneurs

Last night, I attended an amazing event here on Vashon Island. It was a youth-adult discussion forum, moderated by the very talented storyteller, Michael Meade, a Vashonite. The theme was "a crisis of culture and the genius of youth". In my discussions with a couple of high schoolers, I was particularly struck by what they felt the genius of youth meant. We discussed how important the wide-eyed dreamer aspect of youth is, but also how important it is to balance that with the pragmatism and experience of elders. It struck me that that balance is exactly what make social enterprise tick. It's vitally important to balance the enthusiasm, passion and wide-eyed dreaming so necessary in allowing social ventures ideas to hatch with the structure, information and experience of those that have been there before.

I guess that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate and wide-eyed about scaling Sustayne. I deeply believe that it blends both of these aspects - it creates a space for dreaming, but provides structure and pragmatic information to help dreamers get their dreams into a tangible and sustainable format. It's the passion for that dream that keeps me going, but I've also had to be careful about tempering that dream with reality and pragmatism. I guess that's the balance for us all - a constant work in progress.

Global social enterprise - the same old conversations?

Last week, I was one of 3 panelists at the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise in Vancouver, BC. The topic of the panel was Lessons From Abroad and focused on what we can learn from social enterprise initiatives in other parts of the world as well as what's the same and different about working in North America versus other parts of the world. The main things I learned from this conversation are:

1) The barriers to social enterprise are virtually the same the world over: lack of appropriate & sustainable types of financing, public policy that doesn't support or understand social enterprise and lack of effective and accessible management support/technical assistance - which happens to be my big passion and the push behind getting Sustayne, our sustainable business planning methodology scaled as broadly as possible.

2) Many large global philanthropies are the major funders in developing countries and there is a dependency on these dollars. However, most of these organizations are bureaucratic and not very entrepreneurial themselves, so they often don't understand how to support social enterprise and the innovative solutions stemming from social entrepreneurs.

3) Meeting communities where they are at continues to be an issue. Developing countries are often facing very core issues such as hunger, basic education, water sanitation and rampant theft. So, some solutions we might seek in North America are often not appropriate for where a specific community is at in terms of the very real constraints they have to work in. One example that was given is a funder who gave computers to a nonprofit in South Africa. The community had a major theft problem and computers were often stolen quickly. Additionally, having a computer put a person into a different social "status" than those without computers. So, there were many issues behind the receipt of computer equipment than just being a solution to a specific problem.

A question that was raised that really made me think was "these sound like the same conversations I had in graduate school 20 years ago in terms of community development and micro enterprise - has anything changed?" Hmmm. I had to admit, these are many of the central issues I learned as a Peace Corps Small Enterprise Development volunteer in Mali, West Africa many years ago. He's right. The conversation does sound the same. I guess for me what's changed is my understanding of what these issues mean and how an entrepreneurial approach to solving tough social and environmental issues can actually be applied for effectiveness. And, the world has changed. We are living in a very different place with much more communication than 20 years ago. Thanks to technology, women in small villages can sell their art around the world. We can see, hear and practically feel what's going on in the farthest reaches of the world. So, yes, much of the conversation around global social issues is the same....I just hope we are all getting to a deeper level of understanding what these issues mean and how to approach them.