Columbia Social Enterprise Conference Blog 2013

Oct 1

Adopting a Client-Centric Strategy to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)

By Seema Gohil ‘13

Microfinance has long been heralded as one of the key tools to economic development and financial inclusion for the underbanked. From its humble beginnings in the 1970’s, it has now grown to a $25Bn industry, and studies estimate that it will require another $250Bn to provide capital to all the poor worldwide. However, as the industry has matured, it has also come under increasing scrutiny over the last few years.

Critics argue that the pursuit of scale, efficiency, and a profit-oriented approach has driven the industry away from its core mission of serving the poor. High interest rates and over indebtedness have many people questioning the real motives of the MFIs, and they are calling on these organizations to re-evaluate their strategies towards a client-centric approach. The recent issues in Andhra Pradesh and the SKS IPO have put a spotlight on these issues, and attracted harsh political and social backlash towards the industry at large. Is all microfinance bad then? What best practices can the industry adopt to ensure a balance between sustainability, scale and client centricity?

Over the last few years, MFIs have come together to adopt client protection policies such as the Smart Campaign, to ensure accountability to the borrowers. Additionally, governments have stepped in to set rules and regulations to govern the local MFIs and ensure transparency and fair and responsible lending practices. While there is still a lot more work to be done, the industry is moving in the right direction to ensure consumer protection.

MFIs are also expanding their products and services to meet the holistic financial needs of their clients. They recognize that a “one size fits all” approach is unrealistic and that similar to large corporations, there is a need to tailor services to different levels of clients. Another fast-growing product area is microsavings, which has strong implications for encouraging positive financial behaviors. Microinsurance, remittances and mobile payment systems are additional products that MFIs have introduced to provide innovative client solutions.

Pricing transparency also remains a key issue that will drive positive changes in the industry. A regulatory framework will be integral to ensuring pricing transparency; however, they must also recognize the increased cost of providing microfinance services due to lack of formal infrastructure and the relationship lending nature of the enterprise. Balancing the interests of the clients, while also providing for sustainable and scalable organizations is a tricky balance and will be vastly different in different places.

Finally, the industry needs to build its capacity around impact measurement and evaluation. While there are several ongoing initiatives, most MFIs agree that there is a lack of focus monitoring and measurement within their organizations. A lack of financial and labor resources are cited as the primary reasons; it becomes a difficult trade-off between deploying resources towards serving more customers and impact evaluation. Additionally, there are no universal measurement standards, and it is extremely difficult to compare across organizations.

As with any growing industry, the microfinance sector has its challenges and is trying to address these issues to create a sustainable path forward. It has come a long way over the last 40 years, and while we continue to build upon it, we must also recognize the impact it has had to-date on millions of people worldwide.

Sep 20

Why is it difficult to Align Strategy for Social Impact?

By Regina Lee ’13

In Michael Porter’s 1996 article “What is Strategy?”, he defined a company’s strategy as differentiating its activities from competitors to create a unique and valuable market position. This article was framed from the perspective of a for-profit company seeking competitive advantage and profit. However, Columbia Business School’s 2012 Social Enterprise Conference is asking how we can re-frame this narrow definition of strategy and build strategies within and across sectors to tackle major social and environmental issues.

There are several challenges to creating coherent strategies across sectors that will align numerous organizations. First, the desired outcome is not obvious. For-profit companies can rally around maximizing shareholder value as the indisputable goal, but it is difficult for organizations fighting poverty to determine which outcomes could be measured to signal success. Second, it is arguable which activities will most effectively lead to a desired outcome to reduce poverty or improve public health. This continues to be true though organizations are using innovative data approaches to measure their outcomes. Finally, even with a game plan, financial incentives generally don’t exist to propel various organizations to execute on a single strategy. In addition, the sources of funds and the priorities of funders can dictate the substance of many strategies.

And yet, there are large-scale success stories, such as the global fight against malaria. The vision is simple but colossal: eradicate malaria. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBMP) was created in 1998 to implement coordinated action against malaria by aligning countries, multilateral organizations, NGOs and the private sector. The partnership has focused on four major activities to fight malaria, including long-lasting insecticidal nets, indoor residual spraying, rapid diagnostic tests, and combination therapies. Though there is still a lot of work to be done and sustaining global funding is major concern, there have been significant gains thus far. Since 2000, 43 countries have decreased malaria cases by more than 50%, according to RBMP. Kate Campana from Malaria No More is joining us at the conference to discuss the challenges and successes her organization has faced as they create media awareness campaigns as part of this broader strategy to eradicate malaria.

At the October 5^th conference, we will challenge attendees to think about their organization’s current strategy to achieve a social or environmental goal, and how this strategy could be aligned with the broader actors in the sector. There are numerous opportunities for strategic collaboration within and across the social, business, and government sectors – our challenge is to figure out the coordination and incentives necessary to make it happen.

Sep 11

School Reform: Using Waivers to Incentivize Positive Change

By Alia Smith ‘13

Schools around the country reopened their doors to students last week, from New York to California. There are several waves of reform currently having an effect on those students, many of which would have been unimaginable even ten years ago.

The most recent wave of reforms has come as a result of the current administration’s decision to grant “waivers” to states who’d like more flexibility from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB), or Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Under No Child Left Behind, schools must reach the goal of proficiency for every student by 2014, or face escalating penalties that could include reduce funding, state takeover, and more. As the deadline approaches, though progress has been made, all 50 states and the District of Columbia are still far from ensuring that every student can be deemed proficient, particularly in the focus subjects of math and English Language Arts.

The Obama administration announced in September 2011 that states could apply for waivers that would excuse them from key parts of the No Child Left Behind act in exchange for adopting certain education reforms. In February 2012, President Obama announced that 10 of the 11 states that applied had been granted these waivers: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee (the Secretary of Education pledged to work closely with the 11^th state, New Mexico, to improve its application). An additional 8 states – Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island – were granted flexibility this year, out of 26 who applied.

These waivers essentially build on the work of Race to the Top to induce states to undertake reforms considered key to the Obama Administration. In exchange for not having to meet 2014 targets set by NCLB, states granted waivers must: set new performance targets for both closing achievement gaps and improving overall student achievement; undertake significant efforts to measure teacher effectiveness and develop teachers; create accountability systems that reward schools that were doing well while comprehensively targeting schools that are failing; implement plans that improve educational outcomes for underperforming subgroups of students; and give schools and districts greater flexibility in how they spend Title I federal dollars, while still holding those schools and districts accountable for transparency around achievement gaps.

What’s most fascinating about these waivers are not the reforms being undertaken by states, but the manner in which the federal government has incented states to voluntarily implement those reforms. Much has been made of the Race to the Top initiative, and how, with a relatively small pot of money, the federal government was able to encourage states to change systems that have been inert for decades. The ESEA waivers are the latest evidence of the current administration’s attempts to incentivize voluntary change using a “carrot” approach that contrasts with the “stick” of No Child Left Behind. This innovative strategy has long-reaching implications for all of the students currently returning to classrooms.

In the Strategy workshop, we will walk participants through how to use out-of-the-box, innovative strategies – whether at a small or a large scale – to maximize an organization’s social impact, even with seemingly limited resources.

Sep 6

New Models of CSR for the New Corporate Environment

By Dana Edelstein ’13 and Dana Rosenberg ‘13

In today’s globalized and highly connected world, having a meaningful and sustainable impact means creating change not only within, but also outside of, a singular organization. And, because some high-profile corporations have received recent criticism for making questionably ethical decisions that have negatively impacted members of the public, the private sector is being held to an even higher social standard. Under this increased scrutiny, companies are navigating how best to engage and support the ecosystems in which they operate while also preserving their bottom line.

Neville Isdell, former chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, has been calling for companies to practice “connected capitalism,” “a new model of how businesses must engage with society across four platforms: communities, institutions, social challenges and values.” Isdell’s idea is largely a response to our recent financial crisis and people’s growing intolerance of corporate mismanagement and greed. Isdell believes that cross-sector collaboration among corporations, civil societies, governments, and NGOs may be able to help revive and underscore the positive side of capitalism.

During our panel session, “CSR’s Shift from a Go-It-Alone to an Ecosystem Approach,” CSR experts will discuss the pros and cons of multi-sector models like connected capitalism, and whether the benefits of this kind of collaboration outweigh those of a unilateral initiative. We are excited that this discussion will include corporate leaders actively engaged in this space, including Chris Librie, Director of Sustainability and Social Innovation at HP; Payal Dalal, Head of Public Affairs for the Americas at Standard Charter Bank; and, Andrea Flynn, Vice President at MAC AIDS Fund. To moderate the panel, we are fortunate to have the corporate responsibility expertise of Columbia Business School Professor Geoffrey Heal.

Aug 17

Adapting Scalable Clean Technologies for Bottom of the Pyramid Markets

By Ted Sullivan ’13

The past decade has seen rich-world countries throw increasing sums of money at the dream of renewable energy, in the hopes of rapidly weaning their economies off dirty fossil fuels. Though the goal has been motivated by a drive towards carbon reduction and resource nationalism, the results have been mixed.

While the pioneer of these efforts, Germany, has been successful to date in attaining 20% penetration for renewable power sources – largely through healthy demand-side subsidies – it is clear that its Energiewende or “energy transformation” is beginning to face political and engineering challenges. The enormous cost, combined with limits to solar, wind and grid technologies have given voice to critics and it is clear a moment of truth is approaching on whether the country will push forward with its gambit.

Other followers in the EU, such as Spain, Italy and France, have also instituted generous demand-side subsidies to incentivize firms to install wind and solar plants. Caught in the maw of austerity, these subsidies seem naïve and are being aggressively cut back.
Similarly in the United States, renewable energy subsidies have been pulled back to cut expenses for burdened governments, and may be cut further depending on the outcome of another messy election. Regardless of the wisdom for demand-side subsidies, the Solyndra debacle and the lesser-known Beacon Power flameout have made politicians wary of picking winners, especially those claiming a novel technology.

Half a world away, Chinese firms in the solar and wind space continue to capture market share, as a mix of low-cost suppliers and supply-side subsidies enables them to dramatically undercut the competition. Indeed, low-cost competition from China has almost put the once-mighty German solar industry in the ground. Yet even the Chinese manufacturers are struggling. For example, Suntech Power, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world, lost $1 billion in 2011. Clearly something is wrong.

The broad problem – in the solar, wind, battery, LED and other renewables industries – is overcapacity born of over-generous subsidies. All of this supply needs somewhere to go; the solution is the developing world, and for once the problem is not lack of technology or supply.

However, the problem still remains cost. Despite the massive increases in capacity and subsequent subsidy cuts driving solar module prices down from $4/Watt to $1/Watt in three years – they are still not cheap enough for developing countries. Yet with innovative business solutions, such as leasing the panels and charging for power in sunny developing countries – as British company Eight19 is doing – these new technologies can become economically viable in “bottom of the pyramid” markets.

Combining several of these technologies enables firms like d.light to sell solar-powered LED lanterns that replace kerosene lanterns, providing healthier, cheaper light. Throughout the developing world, entrepreneurs are taking advantage of technologies developed by Silicon Valley start-ups or in the labs at the Fraunhofer Institute, and melding them with innovative business models that reduce, share or properly allocate costs.

Join our discussion, as several investors, consultants and luminaries in the space examine some of the novel ideas being employed globally to provide essential services – such as power, water and light – to the world’s poorest. Also, enjoy a chuckle at squabbling politicians in the EU and U.S., who will wake up one morning and realize they have inadvertently powered the developing world.

Jul 26

Implementing a Sustainable Supply Chain that Builds Communities

By Wunmi Onile-Ere ’13

The term globalization was coined in the early 2000s and at the time some dismissed it as a transient phenomenon. Today, globalization is a reality – and we now firmly live in an era of the greatest global interconnectedness and global social-consciousness in history.

We are increasingly aware that events in countries thousands of miles away may affect our lives. Along with this realization there is a growing recognition that business activities can be devised to include poor communities in an organized win-win model, geographic boundaries notwithstanding. How is this possible? How do industries shift from exploitive relationships with poor communities to empowering relationships in which both prosper?

A growing number of private, public and social enterprises are successfully tackling this challenge head on. The Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Conference will feature companies that range in size from multi-billion dollar corporations, to small organization. They also range in industry – from retail to food. What they have in common is a tenacious drive to include an under-privileged class of people by creating innovative business models that yield social and economic value.

Yet roads to success are often paved with heavy stones. Other organizations have not been successful in sustaining admirable intention. The panel will highlight the successes of these companies and the practical methods with which they have implemented their sustainable supply chain strategies. We will also delve into the challenges they face, trying to ascertain to what extent have these impediments been a factor of typical operational complexities inherent in supply chains, or are there inherent flaws in this business model?

In the Sodhi and Tang paper, “Social Enterprises as Supply-chain Enablers for the Poor,” the four key channels for implementing a successful sustainable supply chain are identified as providing access to financial means, access to timely market information, access to a wider market, and enhancing productivity. Good intentions notwithstanding, sustainable supply chains are businesses that need to be dynamic, well designed and well funded. Organizations require trained professional expertise to be responsive to capricious changes in market demand. Upfront investments in infrastructure are often required to support supply chain efficiency and growth. How equipped are social enterprise models to develop the economically sustainable, transferable and scalable operations required to enable poor communities with different needs in different emerging markets?

In this discussion we will meet panelists who are paving ways through these key channels. Kyzthia Barrera, of Innovando la Tradicion, has brought together designers, artists and local artisans in Oaxaca, México to collaborate on producing high quality, unique and functional ceramics that are appealing to a global audience. With their products currently on exhibition in New York and Japan at the MoMa Store, they are providing marketing and sales channels for rural Zapotec communities. We will discuss other winning sustainable supply chain strategies and how businesses can equip themselves for success in this pursuit.

Jan 18

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Giveaway! Enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Mighty Be Our Powers, by Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee

We are giving away an autographed copy of Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee’s memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers. Gbowee, who spoke at the 2011 Social Enterprise Conference on the day she was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote about her experience in leading a grassroots women’s movement to end a 14-year civil war in Liberia.

Enter to win this signed copy by Friday, January 27!

How to enter (must complete all steps):

Follow the Social Enterprise Program (@SEProgram) on Twitter.
Like the Social Enterprise Program on Facebook.
Tweet about the giveaway.
(Sample tweet: I entered to win a signed copy of @mightybepowers by Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee! Enter to win with @SEProgram: http://bit.ly/wQjEVj
Leave a comment below with a valid email address (it will remain private), telling us that you’ve completed the above steps.

Good luck!

The winner will be selected at random and announced by Monday, January 30.

About Mighty Be Our Powers

As a young woman, Leymah Gbowee was broken by the Liberian civil war, a brutal conflict that tore apart her life and claimed the lives of countless relatives and friends. Years of fighting destroyed her country — and shattered Gbowee’s girlhood hopes and dreams. As a young mother trapped in a nightmare of domestic abuse, she found the courage to turn her bitterness into action, propelled by her realization that it is women who suffer most during conflicts — and that the power of women working together can create an unstoppable force. In 2003, the passionate and charismatic Gbowee helped organize and then led the Liberian Mass Action for Peace, a coalition of Christian and Muslim women who sat in public protest, confronting Liberia ’s ruthless president and rebel warlords, and even held a sex strike. With an army of women, Gbowee helped lead her nation to peace — in the process emerging as an international leader who changed history. Mighty Be Our Powers is the gripping chronicle of a journey from hopelessness to empowerment that will touch all who dream of a better world.

Oct 21

5 Comments

Social Entrepreneurship Coming Full Circle, at Columbia’s Social Enterprise Conference

By Sadna Samaranayake

A version of this post was originally published on Next Billion.

Image via Next Billion

We’ve all had those moments we call coming “full circle.” Distinctly different from landing “back at square one,” coming full circle implies we’ve arrived back at the beginning of a journey, or back to an old insight, with the benefit of maturity and wisdom. This year’s Columbia Social Enterprise Conference, on the topic of Social Innovation in a Networked World left me almost certain that the social entrepreneurship movement is currently witnessing such a full circle moment on several fronts, most notably, when it comes to our collective understanding of what a “networked world” means. I expected an agenda stacked to illustrate the potential of technological innovations in social entrepreneurship and the promise of social media. What I witnessed instead was a collective ease with revisiting “old-school” concepts of “the network” — the power of human capital and the value of harnessing personal connection and social networks in the most interpersonal sense.

This year, Columbia Business School convened social entrepreneurs, impact investors, students, and one newly minted Nobel Laureate, named that very morning — Leymah Gbowee of Liberia. Her grit and leadership, memorialized in the 2008 documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, is credited as the driving force behind the mass uprising of Christian and Muslim women who sat in public protest of Liberia’s then president Charles Taylor and his ruthless warlords, who were eventually ousted.

We heard from Nancy Barry, formerly the president of Women’s World Banking, and now President of NBA Enterprise Solutions to Poverty, Matt Klein, executive director of Blue Ridge Foundation, and Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, as well as academics, practitioners, and investors that spanned geographies and sectors. With synchronicity that could not have been designed, these speakers returned to themes that underscored that social entrepreneurship is growing up, and getting back to basics.

Social Networks, Back to the Beginning

Leymah Gbowee represents a rare success story in peace building, and peaceful protest. Perhaps the toughest permutation of social entrepreneurship there is, peace building has no dedicated investment funds, no revenue streams, no easy measures of successes, and often happens under the threat of violence. It’s the kind of environment where one hopes technology can add something extra — a boost, a platform, some efficiencies in organizing and communicating, as has been the case in the Arab Spring.

Gbowee spoke about her organizing efforts in 2003, pre-FaceBook and Twitter, distinctly low-tech, yet highly networked, that tapped the energy of human networks, and created a people-to-people infrastructure that seeded revolutionary change.

“In a matter of months our movement had spread to nine of Liberia’s 15 counties — we’re talking hours away… those who had cell phones called. Where there were no cell phones, people went and used word of mouth. The churches were important, the mosques were important, the market areas were important. We would use those areas as a means of spreading our message.”

Given her success with grassroots organizing, we couldn’t help but wonder what Gbowee thought of the Occupy Wall Street movement. She responded:

“A key factor of the work that we did is that we had an agenda. If you are doing a protest, you need to have an agenda… The uprising is a good sign…but those who are protesting need to come together now and say ‘these are the reasons why we are occupying Wall Street.’ …There has to be some plan.”

The Power of Intentionality

The theme of intentionality, and a call to social entrepreneurs to constantly ask of themselves: “What is it that I am trying to accomplish here?” was resoundingly echoed at the conference. According to Klein of the Blue Ridge Foundation, in the evermore crowded space of social innovation, and in a time where digital time cycles are getting shorter and donors expect results and metrics to keep pace, intentionality is increasingly important.

“Without the intentionality of the hypothesis in the beginning, and some internal accountability to know whether your pilots, experiments or intuitions are correct, I think there is less of a tolerance for the view that because the work is motivated by good reasons, that it should continue. There is more of an expectation that yes, it might not work, but you have to know why it’s not working, and how you plan to change.”

Said Barry, “You cannot stop innovating and asking yourself, is this thing having the desired impact?” She added, “I feel extremely strongly that big problems require big solutions. I see many social entrepreneurs hide behind poor management, poor leadership, poor systems, poor business models, poor executing plans, poor financing plans — to say we are still looking at impact. If you don’t have a model that works, get out of the business.”

More than just the compass check that every social entrepreneur should take on from time to time, to course correct for the impact they set out to achieve, the real “power of intentionality” is perhaps that it is the last-best-antidote to several ills of social entrepreneurship; being stuck in a series of small scale experiments (Pilot-itis), lack of clarity on what to measure and how to translate data into action (Paralysis through Analysis), and worst of all, the kind of large-scale departures from social value creation, in favor of financial returns that, left unchecked, can be a blight on entire industries — like the current controversies surrounding microfinance.

Failure

Perhaps the surest sign that conversations around social entrepreneurship are reaching a new stage of maturity was the willingness of participants, students and speakers alike to discuss the taboo “F” word in social entrepreneurship — Failure.

“We need to be more open about, and accepting of, and generous toward failure- because of the lessons that can come from it, but also in recognition of the challenges that Social Entrepreneurs are facing,” Klein advised. “People don’t talk about failure for a lot of reasons. It’s brutally painful. If we could talk about failure and lessons learned with generosity, it might give people more freedom to innovate and acknowledge where they have gone wrong and help those who are motivated and talented to adjust and iterate.”

The Long View of Social Entrepreneurship

Dorsey offered an observation on how she believes history will view social entrepreneurship. “We are evolving how we look at problems and we begin to believe that we can actually solve problems as opposed to just ameliorating the symptoms.” She posits the long view of the social entrepreneurship movement will tell a story of a shift in our collective consciousness towards understanding that the capacity to solve our problems is within our reach.

None of us know how the story of social entrepreneurship will ultimately be written, but if the comments and insights offered at this year’s Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Conference are any indication, we are having a more open dialogue, more nuanced, less taken with trends, technology, and other trappings, and more centered on individuals, intentionality, and impact.

Oct 18

4 Comments

Technology Plus Humanity: An Equation for Social Collaboration

By Elly S. Brown

A version of this post was originally published on Next Billion.

Image via Next Billion

What is technology’s role in the social sector today and how does it advance philanthropy?

The 2011 Columbia Social Enterprise Conference session on “Bold New Ventures: Visionary Philanthropists and Impact Investing at the Cutting Edge” kicked off with thoughts from moderator Melissa Berman, president and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Berman reflected on the i-generation spawned by Steve Jobs and the increasingly central role of technology in our daily lives, including philanthropy.

The session included various representatives from the funder and nonprofit community, including Doug Borchard, managing partner and COO of New Profit, Mike O’Brien, CEO of iMentor, and Bonnie Oliva, director of InVenture Foundation.

The two social entrepreneurs, O’Brien and Oliva both decided at the genesis of their respective organizations to center their services on the deployment of technology to advance social impact. Through its online platform, iMentor created a successful mentoring model without sacrificing the quality of relationships. Under this model, mentors meet with mentees once a week and conduct a majority of their interactions online. The flexibility and the ease of access lowered barriers for potential mentors and significantly increased the participation rates compared to more traditional mentoring programs. iMentor became a national model and now partners with 24 organizations to replicate this model through sharing knowledge online and providing capacity building support.

InVenture Foundation, a hybrid social enterprise, provides capital, guidance, and financial tracking needed to empower microbusiness owners in lifting themselves and their communities out of poverty. The micro-entrepreneurs, selected through a strict due diligence process, create an online profile and seek investments through the technology platform. After the investments bear fruit, the investors of the micro-entrepreneurs are paid back their principle and can choose to reinvest the profits of their investments, Social Enterprise Expansion Dollars (SEED), into other potential investments.

Borchard also described the case of Single Stop USA, a Pathways Fund grantee, to illustrate a powerful application of technology in supporting an organization’s outcomes. Single Stop USA is an organization that helps community college students stay in school and complete their degrees. Recognizing the financial barriers that many students face in completing post-secondary education, Single Stop USA developed a “Turbo Tax-like” online technology that allows students to identify eligible state and local financial benefits.

For all three organizations, technology overcomes access issues and enables the successful matching of resources to their target beneficiaries. It also serves as a convenient tool to track interactions and the performance of their programs.

A theme emphasized throughout the panel was the importance of incorporating the human experience into the technology, a concept that Apples’ Jobs fully embraced. In a March speech introducing the iPad2 (more details from a recent Economist article), Jobs outlined this aspiration: “Technology alone is not enough… It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” Societal impact cannot be created by technology alone. Technology is an enabler; it addresses solutions for accessibility, scalability, and efficiency. O’Brien referenced this idea when speaking to the brilliance of technology’s ability to solve problems but limitations when relying on technology alone. For example, when incorporating a new technology into a school, O’Brien emphasized, “it will not work if you don’t have emphasis on teacher training and implementing that solution into how the school functions.” Deploying technology without analyzing its effects on people and processes will be set up for failure.

Despite several examples of success highlighted in the panel discussion, the social sector has yet to unlock the potential of technology and its ability to increase donor activity in a formalized matter. According to Borchard, some organizations such as Donors Choose, Kiva, Global Giving, and InVenture Foundation, are leading this effort and learning what works. Particularly when engaging with individuals, donors and investors are seeking transparency around how their specific contribution has been invested. This highly granular approach in tying donations to specific investments creates a tangible connection for donors. For example, Donors Choose may identify a $600 contribution as earmarked to set up an ecology program in a particular school. Although best practices are emerging with some examples of successful applications, we are still years behind an effective social media model that transforms the way organizations find funding.

Posing a question to the panel, O’Brien seemed to underscore the panel’s outlook on technology and philanthropy: “Instead of a bricks and mortar replication model, can we use a combination of technology and consulting to partner with other organizations to do something that is more collaborative?” The key challenge facing technology in the social sector is enabling and incentivizing organizations to share best practices, collaborate, and further the field. Jobs’ successful recipe of cutting edge technology coupled with a dose of humanity might just be the winning combination to “make our hearts sing” in the social sector as well.

Adopting a Client-Centric Strategy to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)

School Reform: Using Waivers to Incentivize Positive Change

Adapting Scalable Clean Technologies for Bottom of the Pyramid Markets