Shari, this is a great thread. I'd suggest letting it roll on for some time prior to starting a whole new group. Frankly threads in the Front Porch are going to get read more than anything else from quite some time.

Greystone is a great example. Another great org is Equal Exchange, though they are a coop and work with family owned coffee farms. So it's not a fp/npo combination...but more along those lines.

Are you familiar with Ashoka?

Shari,

I love the thought and second Marks advice about the group timing. My own thoughts on this issue would take the organizing to the locality level (as opposed to the issue level where I hear you). From the locality point of view we talk in terms of connections across interest and expertise as a part of Local Organizing and the Planetary Mind.

I would be interested in comparing notes.

Hi Shari & all -

I joined o/net in March and am very happy to continue making connections on ned (bravo Mark - it's exciting to see the network up and running!).

I am definitely interested in this topic and truly my company (for profit) is one of those with deep connections to social justice, education, youth philanthropy and the arts. I make craft charity/tzedaka boxes for kids to design & decorate and learn about the important values of giving, making a difference, social justice. My kits are available in retail shops and also available in bulk for schools, synagogues, organizations to use for educational and youth programming. I also am pursuing the custom donation box market as well as some other innovative concepts.

Shari - I really look forward to speaking with you soon. I have many, many ideas and already some proposals out for joint partnerships/social enterprise ventures. As I'm in NJ, perhaps we can even get together for coffee sometime!

Feel free to take a look at my site: http://www.givingarts.com. Until its fully developed, you'll end up linking to my other site: http://www.judaicakitcompany.com

I'm on vacation this week and will be back and online more after Labor Day.

Likewise, Shari, this is something I'm very interested in, and have tried in different ways to make happen. Having learned some good lessons over the past couple of years, I'm very ready for heading out and doing a bit of, as you say, "negotiation and facilitation".

I'd also say that many of the ventures we have going here at Ned are interested in making this happen. There are all kinds of synergies (hate that word, but it's the right one) that can still get fired up, given the right opportunities. So I hope that you stick around, poke around, and work with us to develop your ideas -- and figure out who they mesh with.

I think this may be an area where we need to catalogue an index of practices- many look similar but have very different consequences. It really depends who's in control of the "partnership" and what the scope is. (For nearly 20 years http://worldclassbrands.tv now one of my specialities has been examining how to get global awareness for a life critical new message which commercial companies pay billions of dollars for when there new message is say another favor of soda - so I am very interested in types of cases particularly local to global scaling practices)

For example of best (I'll make this value judgement from humanity's side) practice:

Look at partnerships Yunus http://grameen.tv has made. Grameen-Danone is a wholly new business; idea being that Danone had no priority to be in Bangladesh with yogurts; so was prepared to give Grameen the product technolgy when Yunus said he wanted to do a milk-based fast nutritional food service; Grameen owns the whole busines opportunities and risk but Danone gets the goodwill advantage, and somewhere in between Danone's football star celebrities have added their efforts to the launch. This kind of venture can only be led when you have one of the nation's most famous and trusted brands which Grameen does in Bangladesh. Grameen's global awareness and goodwill is the humanitarian world's equivalent of Richard Branson's virgin so to speak.

An even more startling partnership was Grameen phone. Basically one of the Nordica mobile phone compnies -urged on by the brilliant Iqbal Quadir - formed a joint venture empowering Grameen to run a mobile business. Grameen came up with the idea of vilagers sharing a moble - which also gave its most loyal borrowers an ugrade from typical business of Grameen loans that had been buying a cow. Meanwhile by getting the timing right, the ordinary city business of gramen mobile is now one of the nation's most profitable busiess; and so Grameen mobile has secured cashflow for the whole of Grameen.

We might think that only Grameen could do big parthership plays like the two above. However it is my understanding that when Yunus talks of forming a social business entreprise stockmarket he is really asking us all to play the game of what could be the most sustainable business in each global market scetor, and if none of the traditional players wants to do it how do we get it started

If we click back 10 years ago, this is light years away from co-branding and average corporate social responsibility moves. Typically these involved a corporate with a rather shabby image paying to co-brand a promotion with a charity with a great image. Perosnally I believe that charity brands usually were long-term losers from this game.

There are of course smaller moves. One of globalgiving or is givingglobal claims to have catalogued grassroots projects and then goes round asking international conpanies with presence in that country whether tehy have a competence match where they could donate some of their deepest skils at the margins. This sounds great but I am unclear which countries GG is established in well enough to make this matchmaking fully workable

G'day Shari

Definitely interested in helping you with your research, where possible. Our company has some background in this area, and I've been personally very interested in the topic for a couple of years.

Cheers, Greg

Great initiative, Shari. Count me in for network weaving support. Your project is directly in line with the interests of our Network Weavers Network.

Not sure if this is a fit (or too self serving)....I never could figure out how to fit over at O-net! World Computer Exchange has 422 local NGO, university, and government vetted Partners in 61 developing countries seeking sponsors to help financially or with hands-on local help to import used computers to help connect interested schools to the Internet. We get individuals to help financially Sponsor last 1/3 of sorucing and shipping costs - but have not yet found the way to get companies to trust to help with this.

We also are beginning to prospect among green companies to support a consortium of groups we lead seeking to expand recycling of dead computers in developing countries. We build this consortium as we are a small 700-volunteer non-profit.

Best wishes, timothy

Good to see you here.

Have wondered, for some time, about WCE partnering wiht TechSoup - given TS relationship with the tech industry and their global initiatives.

We can discuss that elsewhere ...

However, given my interest in advancing <ned>, do you see the possibility of recommending ned.com as a resource/workspace for WCE NGO partners?

There may be mutual benefit.

Timothy said:

Not sure if this is a fit (or too self serving)....I never could figure out how to fit over at O-net! World Computer Exchange has 422 local NGO, university, and government vetted Partners in 61 developing countries seeking sponsors to help financially or with hands-on local help to import used computers to help connect interested schools to the Internet. We get individuals to help financially Sponsor last 1/3 of sorucing and shipping costs - but have not yet found the way to get companies to trust to help with this.

We also are beginning to prospect among green companies to support a consortium of groups we lead seeking to expand recycling of dead computers in developing countries. We build this consortium as we are a small 700-volunteer non-profit.

Best wishes, timothy

Dear Colleagues

There are very good reasons to get For Profit and the NPF communities to cooperate ... but this is easier said than done.

Tangible (as in money) wealth is created in the For Profit mode. The For Profit sector is the driver of the global economy ... and it is the money from these activities that get spent ultimately by the NPF sector.

I do not find the present state of the performance metrics either in corporate accounting and GAAP reporting or in government accounting or in NPF organizations to be very satisfactory. The sort of accounting and performance metrics that I would like to see just do not seem to exist and instead there is reporting based on law and regulation on the one hand and reporting based on "spin" on the other.

For example the information published by BP ... Beyond Petroleum (Give me a break!). A rather modest short Financial Report talks about the $9 billion earned for stockholders in the past quarter (3 months!) and a huge (100 or more pages) of BP's sustainability report talks about the various activities of the company in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and support for community needs ... and the $150 million over five years the company is committing to this! (These numbers are from memory and might not be exactly right, but the idea is right.)

The techniques for better accounting are available, and it is certainly in the public interest that they are used, while it is certainly not in the interest of most of the established major organizations in either the For Profit or the NFP sectors nor many of the individuals in high leadership positions, or indeed perhaps in mid-level positions where keeping the job and keeping the pension is more important than anything else.

Worse ... the amount of wealth at stake is huge and there is a high probability that accounting to the public that is based on all the facts will prove dangerous. Already some of the people around the world trying to make transparency and true accountability work are either dead or in hiding ... and this will only get worse before it gets better.

I am an optimist ... there is amazing technology available and when it is used for good, all sorts of great results are possible. Sadly, most technology can also be used in a negative way.

As a starting point it would be great to see a lot more information organized so that there is easily accessible information about good activities, organizations, people, projects, etc ... as well as information about bad things. These data should be organized to be easily accessible and easily understood, and for this, I have concluded that the community is the best focal point for data collection and analysis ... and action. A community, a place has (for all practical purposes) perpetual existence while all the other entities come and go very rapidly ... try talking to someone in the UN or World Bank about a project implemented 10 years ago! By contrast the town I lived in as a child was written up in the Doomsday Book around 1070 and has not changed too much since then!

What I believe will emerge from data about community is that the potential for progress is diminished by the actions of certain elements of the For Profit sector ... the wealth is created but it is exclusively "owned" by a For Profit entity rather than being reasonably shared between the risk takers (entrepreneurs and investors) and society at large. Data about wealth sharing would be very interesting ... but don't hold your breath that it is going to be volunteered by those that have and control the wealth.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net

Well, since I run a hybrid model social enterprise and come only from the for profit world, this is a topic I am very interested in. I think there is lot more talk than action in this area though.

I keep going back and forth on this. Should I work for a nonprofit, or found my own? Should I organise my activity as a for profit, or a nonprofit, or both?

If your purpose is charitable and you don't really care about paying dividends, then being a nonprofit opens lots of doors, and gets you some instant trust with a lot of people.

However, there seems to be a certain kind of lying that festers more in nonprofits than for-profits. I mean, lying is pretty rampant everywhere, but in nonprofits it gets weirder. In a for profit you can say, "well of course I'm here primarily for the money, but I also like the social purpose".

And someone who invests in a for-profit can say the same thing. But the people who make grants to nonprofits don't always mention tax savings as a major motivator. And the extra trust nonprofits get, that the managers and employees and volunteers are supposedly really committed to the cause, and not there pursuing their own selfish agendas, well, that's based on the laws and regulations designed to prevent nonprofits from "cheating" and "benefiting" the people who are making the decisions. Oh brother, that's about as effective as the gas tax has been at increasing the demand for mass transit.

I have a couple of issues to throw into the mix here.

1. I would like to see "Continent-collaborative" projects. Every project in Africa seems to be so "piecemeal" at the moment. Many have grand plans to inspire the whole of Africa, but (currently) have no real hope of making it happen.
2. It would imho be useful to publish threads for projects where collaboration is "invited". Sometimes we post asking for help and advice, sometimes we post hoping someone might have some cash and sometimes we genuinely feel our vision would be best served with national or international collaboration. Making these easy to spot would help it happen.

Ben Parkinson said:

1. I would like to see "Continent-collaborative" projects. Every project in Africa seems to be so "piecemeal" at the moment. Many have grand plans to inspire the whole of Africa, but (currently) have no real hope of making it happen. (snip)

Ben, not sure about "every" project but at least in part, I agree. In fact, even dealing with (the Australian offices) of 4 of the largest and most internationally recognised NGOs ("piecemeal" funding, indeed) with regards the small and seemingly specific one-off project I'm supposed to be starting shortly, it has turned into a logistical and managerial nightmare. (and all are on the ground - in some form or another - across Africa!!)

That written, look at what has been achieved by Christina, Nancy, Dennis and many others who are "dug-in" at a local level - not trying to "inspire all of Africa" but working in a responsive, community informed and driven, collaborative manner at a local level.

Is the problem you mention more to do with the mindset of ever-increasing small and new orgs perhaps?

"Saving Africa" vs the sort of work LiA/Opok Farms has achieved?

Oh but we are going to save Africa, Gayle! didn't you realize? Actually, save is not at all the world I'd use, but I have always had a vision for Life in Africa's continent-wide evolution. The challenge is finding the right structural vehicle (or combination of vehicles) to get it there. Another challenge is understanding time as an asset in the mix. On the one hand things seem to dire and urgent; on the other hand, the more time goes by the more and more we see that grassroots initiatives are taking off and increasingly connected. I am a firm believer that there is much more going on in Africa than most people actually see. As connectivity continues to roll out across the continent, then connecting all of these initiatives will be able to happen.

One thing about NGO/For Profit collaboration can be very tricky is that the NGO sector has a lot of weird politics in it that really don't have a natural place in business. Posturing for donor support and padding budgets to make funding packages politically acceptable are issues that have always rubbed against my business sense. And here in Northern Uganda I've recently encountered a lot of confusion over using business principles to tackle complex social issues. Some people view this as an out and out threat to the charity sector and will fight viciously against it.

Christina Jordan said:

Oh but we are going to save Africa, Gayle! didn't you realize?

Sorry darlin' ... don't know what I was thinking - my bad :)

Actually, save is not at all the world I'd use, but I have always had a vision for Life in Africa's continent-wide evolution. The challenge is finding the right structural vehicle (or combination of vehicles) to get it there.

I was super inarticulate in my post (it's late here and I've worked a long day ... pitiful excuse but..!!).

"Evolution" - from something specific, local and proven - would have been a vastly better way of describing what I meant in terms of mindset. And your mention of business frameworks (below) meshes into this; most new businesses wouldn't consider trying to "go national" straight away - they evolve and grow in response to many factors. (product development, community acceptance and confidence, growth of brand-name recognition, capital growth, franchising, etc. etc.)

Another challenge is understanding time as an asset in the mix. On the one hand things seem too dire and urgent; on the other hand, the more time goes by the more and more we see that grassroots initiatives are taking off and increasingly connected. I am a firm believer that there is much more going on in Africa than most people actually see. As connectivity continues to roll out across the continent, then connecting all of these initiatives will be able to happen.

One thing about NGO/For Profit collaboration can be very tricky is that the NGO sector has a lot of weird politics in it that really don't have a natural place in business. Posturing for donor support and padding budgets to make funding packages politically acceptable are issues that have always rubbed against my business sense. And here in Northern Uganda I've recently encountered a lot of confusion over using business principles to tackle complex social issues. Some people view this as an out and out threat to the charity sector and will fight viciously against it.

.....in the middle of writing a super basic overview of Australian understanding, expectations and legalities on that last point right now.... mainly due to thoughts had after reading Dave's post, but certainly in relation to the challenges you've faced in this area.

Back to the main topic. I wonder if the One Campaign’s Red program will hurt corporate/non profit partnerships. I think that was widely believed to be a major disappointment and ended up loosing a lot of money with little evidence of PR gains for the corporate partners.

On the other hand, there are probably thousands of small partnerships between non profits and business that we never hear about. In my opinion, the large campaigns are much less likely to be useful then the small ones, so we have to figure out a way to highlight and learn from the smaller, hidden, successes.

This is regarding thoughts evoked by David's post; or more specifically, community perceptions and expectations of for-profit and not-for profit orgs..... because I found it really interesting.

In Australia, (and remember, like the U.K., we have a parliamentary system of Government, Universal Health Care and the tenants of the "welfare state" - and the resulting responsibilities of Government - still embedded in our societal expectations & thinking) we have Government department provided services/programs/projects, Non-Gov't Orgs (NGO) both for-profit and not-for-profit (of which some are registered charities and some either don't meet that legal/taxation criteria but want to or just don't fit into that type of service provision) and then there are the organisations that wouldn't not be considered NGOs (as they don't offer services/support as such) but would not really be considered "businesses" in a traditional sense either. (socio-political, environmental and/or single-issue lobby/activist/informational orgs where funds are raised through subscriptions as they don't meet the tax-deductable donation criteria).

The community expectations and scrutiny of not-for-profit NGOs is every bit as rigorous (if not more so) than on the for-profits these days. (it's an ethics-based, fair-go sort of mentality, I guess.)

Either way - there is a very strong community expectation that basic and sound business practices incorporating transparency and full disclosure at AGM time, will be adhered to regardless of the NGO charter - and, large or small, it has been make or break for many of them over here.

Two of the biggest and boldest examples over the past decade are World Vision and Care. (the Australasian divisions).

Following a number of op-eds and feature articles revealing & dealing with the excessive salary packaging of CEO/Executive staff and the percentage of sponsor donations chewed up by such excesses, World Vision (in particular) was facing very real financial difficulty less than a decade ago. The Australian public would simply not wear it and monthly donor subscriptions plummeted. It took a new but very (locally) well-known and respected CEO - Tim Costello - to take the reins and re-build "consumer" confidence. (primarily on the back of his own impeccable reputation alone). The trend here seems to have moved rapidly and robustly toward public generosity coupled with very high expectations of the recipient organisation.

On the other side of the ledger, profitable businesses with their products on supermarket shelves in Australia do very well when they align themselves to a single-issue cause, charity or NGO in Australia. (ie: on the label of the product there is a notion that 20c, 50c or some specified percentage of purchase price goes to a specific charity, NGO or perhaps a research initiative such as breast cancer)

Those types of corporate/non profit partnerships - the simple, clearly defined, cause & effect, buy Brand A and this cause/charity gets X amount - have been very successful in Australia .... and seem to be on the increase. There is definitely a slow shift toward this type of partnership being more of a "norm" than an exception. (typical of Australians and the kill two birds with one stone mentality .... buy a product you were already going to purchase AND make a small charitable donation in one hit ... BONUS!)

I know I've droned on (it's after midnight and self-editing ain't my gig at this time of night :) but I can't go without a stroke of marketing genius in the corporate/non profit sector that was borne out of disaster and gratitude, paid off BIG TIME and served as an example to the Australian corporate world that this partnership thing just might be a very smart win-win social/business move.

(Marky-boy ... you'll love this!)

The freshly-squeezed, bottled juice market in Oz is huge in size and competition. A few years ago, one of the "younger" players was a company called "Nudie" juice. (http://www.nudie.com.au/)

Started from the owner Tim Pethick's kitchen, the business grew and just as significant expansions had started to pay off, their factory burned down.

Even though the building wasn't able to be saved, the first thing Pethick did when they found new manufacturing premises was to create a limited release, one-off juice called "Fire-fighter Nudie" - with bright red cranberry juice (plus something else - can't remember) a distinctive white label and bright red print ..... detailing that a percentage of the sale price was being donated to the New South Wales Fire Department for their amazing efforts in trying to save the building but more importantly, keeping everyone safe. (buildings can be replaced, people can't)

Well to say it was a hit with the public would be the understatement of the century!! Every news and current affairs program carried a story about it, the N.S.W. fire department were delighted and - 3 years later - it remains on the market as one of their biggest sellers. (still with a percentage donated as it originally was.)

Win-Win ..... and trend changing.

I had a great meeting with a potential business partner yesterday. Our one point of contention, though, comes about with my impulse to give a portion of sales directly to charity, and to allow the consumer to have a say in where that should go. His point is that we need to focus on profitability first and then incorporate the charitable elements down the road; if we don't, it'll fail. Any good ideas on how I can convince him that he's wrong :) ?

Luke Martin said:

I had a great meeting with a potential business partner yesterday. Our one point of contention, though, comes about with my impulse to give a portion of sales directly to charity, and to allow the consumer to have a say in where that should go. His point is that we need to focus on profitability first and then incorporate the charitable elements down the road; if we don't, it'll fail. Any good ideas on how I can convince him that he's wrong :) ?

see my "Nudie" juice example above :)

I think Gayle's trend in Australia is happening elsewhere, Luke. Seems to me that if you want to be ahead in the market with any product, you need to understand and play to the trends. Business equations change as society changes. If your colleague thinks this is about a difference in personal values between the two of you, maybe it could help if you could develop some arguments based on the business-sense in tapping new values-driven markets.

my impulse to give a portion of sales directly to charity, and to allow the consumer to have a say in where that should go.

In re-reading this, Luke, I wonder if the complexity of these concepts together couldn't be broken down into a step by step plan. Maybe it would be more palatable to start out giving a portion of sales directly to charity and plan to eventually consider giving consumers a say in where that should go.

Luke, your parner might not be wrong. Some business models cant spare the cash drain in early years. It all depends on if the marketing driver of the link exceeds the cost. There is nothing less ethical about giving a lot of money later vs less along the way.

Ben Parkinson said:

I have a couple of issues to throw into the mix here.

1. I would like to see "Continent-collaborative" projects. Every project in Africa seems to be so "piecemeal" at the moment. Many have grand plans to inspire the whole of Africa, but (currently) have no real hope of making it happen.

Amen, Ben. My mentor, June Holley, has been a consultant to the UN in using Network Weaving to support economic development in West Africa. She quickly found out that, while many people have strong networks within their countries, in most cases, the networks between countries tend to be much weaker.

Luke Martin said:

I had a great meeting with a potential business partner yesterday. Our one point of contention, though, comes about with my impulse to give a portion of sales directly to charity, and to allow the consumer to have a say in where that should go. His point is that we need to focus on profitability first and then incorporate the charitable elements down the road; if we don't, it'll fail. Any good ideas on how I can convince him that he's wrong :) ?

I'm not sure that convincing him that he's wrong is exactly the approach I would suggest (even though I know you are somewhat kidding).

Instead, I think it is VERY important that you both make sure that you have the same fundamental values going into the business. There are different approaches to doing business. The for-profit first approach has been successful in the past -- in generating profits (given the fact that most startup businesses fail in the first place!). The social enterprise approach is currently proving successful in lots of situations -- in both generating profits and creating social value (e.g. see the White Dog cafe at http://www.whitedog.com).

But, unless you and your partner have fundamental agreement on your core values, and have honest enough communication to explore those values together, things are not apt to work out very well.

At this point, communication is the key. You need to make sure that you both have agreement on your core values, and are open to exploring alternatives that might create a "win-win" situation for everybody. For example, if your potential partner truly would like to be able to create a business that had social benefits, and is hesitant simply because he believes that it is necessary to focus first on building a for-profit business -- would he be open to learning from successful case studies such as the one described?

If that is not the case, would you feel comfortable investing a whole lot of your life energy in building a business that did not embody your values from the start -- but that "might" at some point in the future, if things work out, and the business is successful, be able to allow doing some social good? Or, is your partner open to risking his business success by learning a totally different approach to doing business that is new and relatively unproven?

It seems like that, to do business together, each of you will need to learn from one another and create a synthesis that will work for both of you -- or for one or both of you to live with resentment or fear. That is not a good basis for a partnership!