Tag: Jonathan Greenblatt

NextGen:Charity mini-roundup

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Here’s my completely non-exhaustive and non-definitive mini-roundup of  the 2010 NextGen:Charity conference where I had the chance to speak last Thursday (with a heavy bias towards the talks I was able to attend).

Some things I’ll keep thinking about long after the conference:

  • Scott Harrison (charity:water) has a knack for storytelling, creativity, and creating a compelling message (including video) from which all nonprofits can learn a LOT.  You shouldn’t try to copy charity:water’s brand and story, but looking at what they’ve done makes it hard to accept the current (sad) state of nonprofit branding and storytelling.
  • Nancy Lublin’s (DoSomething.org) Donald Trump/MilkDuds story reminded me about gumption – that we can always go further than we think we can.
  • Scott Case (Malaria No More) is right that all nonprofits should aim to go out of business (because they’ll solve the problem they set out to solve).  This mindset will open up a world of possibilities, forcing  focus on solving the problem you set out to solve…instead of caring most about the organization you are building.   They’ve said they want to end malarial deaths by 2015.  How’s that for clear and being willing to fail? (plus this viral video wins the prize for gutsiest thing I’ve seen a nonprofit do in a while).
  • Joanne Heyman taught us how the “scarcity fallacy” (scarce resources, scarce creativity, scarce investment) limits our thinking and actions in the sector.  How can resources be scarce, she asked, if we’re a $3 billion sector with more than 1 million nonprofits employing 7% of the nonfarm employed population?
  • Jonathan Greenblatt shared insights on the big trends in our sector – mega (gifts), micro (gifts and connection, like Kiva), mobile (nearly as many mobile phones as people) and markets (growth of impact investing, B corporations).
  • Seth Godin never fails to make me smile when he pulls out his deluxe rubber chicken.  I loved his notion that all the problems that are left are the perfect ones, because all the imperfect ones have been solved.  He also posited that if you’ve never been thrown out of a fundraising meeting, then you’re not pushing hard enough.
  • Aaron Hurst demanded that companies bring as much smarts to their philanthropy as they do to their core business.  I wish I’d been surprised to learn that there’s actually a nonprofit that has a room that they’ve designated as the “painting room” – the one that corporate volunteers come to paint over and over again as their volunteer project.  Maybe if I’m extra-nice to Aaron he’ll invite me to see the room.
  • Ami Dar made a beautiful presentation about a new platform Idealist will be launching – beta in NY – to enable citizen action.  If you’re a connector in NY and this sounds interesting, you should contact Ami.  (he also made me wonder where he got that cool inverted paintbrush font.)
  • And in the closing talk, Ari Teman, one of the conference’s organizers, made me think in a new way about gratitude, made me want to read his book, Effective Gratitude for Organizations and Individuals, and made me want to think harder about the relationship between gratitude and generosity.

I heard great things about lots of the other talks, many of which I was unable to hear.  I’m told there will be videos of all the talks (including mine) available soon…I’ll keep you posted.

The other 690

~ Sasha ~ 10 Comments

Last week when speaking on the “Creating Private Capital Markets” Panel at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, I noted that one of the big opportunities for Acumen Fund and other organizations in our sector is to capitalize on a huge influx of talent.  Demand to work in our sector is at an all-time high, the result of the rising profile of social enterprise; the blowup in the financial sector (a lot of people with financial skills are rethinking their path); and, hopefully, because society as a whole (or at least the younger generation) is taking a momentary pause to reconsider our definitions of success.

Acumen Fund and other organizations in our sector are currently experiencing overwhelming levels of interest.  One data point that I mentioned on the panel: for the 10 summer internship positions Acumen Fund has open globally, we received 700 applications from an amazing group of candidates.  We’re going to do our best to find the 10 people who are the best fit for our needs this summer, but the bigger, harder question is, “What about the other 690?”

This question was salient enough that Jonathan Greenblatt, co-founder of Ethos Water, saw fit to repeat it in the lunchtime plenary panel where he spoke together with Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka; Clara Miller, CEO of the NonProfit Finance Fund; and lecturer and political analyst David Gergen.  This helped me realize that “the other 690” isn’t just a question for Acumen Fund, it’s a question for our sector.  With all of the creative destruction underway in the global economy, there’s a fundamental shift in how talent will be deployed.  For burgeoning sectors like ours, this creates a demand/supply imbalance for talent, and a collective opportunity if we want to take it.

A couple of ideas to chew on:

What if some of the economic stimulus money were used to create a new Global Peace Corps, one that takes some of the best and brightest people of all ages from around the world and gives them opportunities to work on projects (private and public) that are creating positive social change?

What if all of the 690 people who applied to Acumen Fund’s summer internship – plus their colleagues who are interested in working at Endeavor and Root Capital and the World Resources Institute and the International Aids Vaccine Initiative and the Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation and a hundred other fascinating places to work – created vibrant, online communities on Ning or Facebook or Twitter or through NetImpact to share their own entrepreneurial business ideas, and what if the best of these ideas were made available to early-stage investors and grantmakers and social venture competitions run by business schools around the world?

What else should we be doing?

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