Creating Jobs, Harmonizing Nonprofits, and Diagnosing Disease
The agenda for the off-the-radar Social Innovation Summit read like an all-star team of social innovators.
The agenda for the off-the-radar Social Innovation Summit held in Palo Alto this past Wednesday read like an all-star team of social innovators: Room to Read, Donors Choose, charity: water, XPrize, DoSomething, Taproot, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn to name a few, but the finale of the summit was reserved for a panel, moderated by Akhtar Badshah, senior director of Global Community Affairs at Microsoft Corporation, to showcase a new crop of social entrepreneurs.
Venture for America, founded by quick-witted Andrew Yang, is Teach for America for small businesses. It recruits top college graduates to intern at start-ups in disadvantaged and/or low-income communities. As a fellow attendee noted, start-ups don’t have the massive recruiting machines that more established corporations do, so they might not get the best talent. Venture for America helps connect talented graduates with small enterprises so that both sides win. A reoccurring theme of the summit—entrepreneurship leading job creation—is embodied in Venture for America. It is a catalyzer, not just to grow new companies faster with higher-quality talent, but to train the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators who would then create even more jobs.
Left to right: Ahktar Badash of Microsoft, Wilson To of Lifelens, Melissa Kushner of Nonprofit-share, and Andrew Yang of Venture for America. (Photo courtesy of the Social Innovation Summit)
The next social innovator, ebullient Melissa Kushner, presented her idea for connecting complimentary nonprofits to build a network of support for people in need called Nonprofit-share. She gave this example of the problem she is trying to solve, “It is great if you start a job-training program for unemployed adults, but if you don’t also provide them with childcare, how are they suppose to show up for the program?” Nonprofit-share is building an online tool that enables nonprofits to engage, communicate, and collaborate. Many people in the philanthropic world complain that there is not only a lack of communication between related nonprofits, but often times overlap and confusion. It is a challenge to navigate the nuances of multiple-partner collaboration, and it only succeeds if there is a talented convening and organizing party. However, if Melissa is successful, Nonprofit-share could vastly improve how disadvantaged people receive the assistance they need.
Mobile health care was another reoccurring theme of the summit, and the young-but-insightful Wilson To presented his contribution—LifeLens. “With LifeLens, a healthcare worker can take a photo of a blood sample in a rural village and email it to a pathologist for diagnosis,” explains Wilson. Mobile healthcare offers great promise for meeting the needs of people in communities without sufficient healthcare facilities, from providing chronic care services to improving maternal health, and LifeLens would be a welcome addition. Although still in the very early stages, Wilson certainly seems to have the credentials to make LifeLens a reality. He is a doctoral student in Comparative Pathology at the University of California, was a Microsoft Senior Student Partner, has been recognized by President Barack Obama, and is a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Millennium Fellow.
All three of these social innovations have great potential, but many fantastic ideas have hit roadblocks when put into practice—issues with distribution, adoption, training, technology and local culture to name a few. Andrew, Melissa, and Wilson have a challenging adventure ahead of them, but they have some stellar role models. To paraphrase the advice of the immensely successful all-star team who presented earlier at the summit, “Take on tough challenges, set audacious goals, design to scale rapidly, and power your decision-making with accurate data.” This combination of awe-inspiring goals supported by smart business practices is irresistible to funders.
Stephanie Wolcott is social responsibility director for the Alcoa Foundation in New York City and serves as content contributor to KIN Global at the Kellogg School of Management.
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COMMENTS
BY AbdrewW
ON December 5, 2011 04:07 AM
Having gatherings like this are helpful.
It seems we are placing our biggest problems in the hands of “social entrepreneurs” and limiting the rewards they might receive. It’s been many decades since we solved any major problems in society. Perhaps this is part of the reason. We keep servicing problems, not solving them.
I think it’s foolish and even dangerous to expect “social entrepreneurs” to solve our problems. Education, poverty, homelessness and healthcare need to be solved, not simply serviced.
BY Stephanie Wolcott
ON December 5, 2011 07:55 AM
Thank you for your comments. In this case, it is not an either/or situation, it is a both/and. I’m not in favor of relegating the solving of the world’s problems solely to social entrepreneurs. Actually, a forum like this raises awareness and support from both public and private sectors to help scale good ideas and address social issues.
BY Delilah Rothenberg
ON December 5, 2011 03:50 PM
Thanks for sharing, Stephanie! Sounds like it was a thought provoking and inspiring event. It also sounds like attendees walked away with a better understanding of how to look at global “problems” as market opportunities to be solved sustainably - I understand the crowd was a mix of mainstream / MNC businesses, social entrepreneurs, nonprofits among others, all exchanging ideas and approaches. These are the kinds of forums that have successfully drawn so many businesses to the BoP, for instance. Now the poor are beginning to be included in the global economy and are no longer isolated to nonprofit donations and government support. So, while I understand AbdrewW’s point of view, I don’t think this was the kind of gathering promoting band-aid solutions or future dependencies.