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.