Player FM - Internet Radio Done Right
Checked 5M ago
Προστέθηκε πριν από three χρόνια
Το περιεχόμενο παρέχεται από το Romy Kochan | Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Detroit Entrepreneurs. Όλο το περιεχόμενο podcast, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επεισοδίων, των γραφικών και των περιγραφών podcast, μεταφορτώνεται και παρέχεται απευθείας από τον Romy Kochan | Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Detroit Entrepreneurs ή τον συνεργάτη της πλατφόρμας podcast. Εάν πιστεύετε ότι κάποιος χρησιμοποιεί το έργο σας που προστατεύεται από πνευματικά δικαιώματα χωρίς την άδειά σας, μπορείτε να ακολουθήσετε τη διαδικασία που περιγράφεται εδώ https://el.player.fm/legal.
Player FM - Εφαρμογή podcast
Πηγαίνετε εκτός σύνδεσης με την εφαρμογή Player FM !
Πηγαίνετε εκτός σύνδεσης με την εφαρμογή Player FM !
The Bonfires of Social Enterprise with Romy of Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Entrepreneurship in Detroit
Σήμανση όλων ότι έχουν ή δεν έχουν αναπαραχθεί ...
Manage series 3025717
Το περιεχόμενο παρέχεται από το Romy Kochan | Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Detroit Entrepreneurs. Όλο το περιεχόμενο podcast, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επεισοδίων, των γραφικών και των περιγραφών podcast, μεταφορτώνεται και παρέχεται απευθείας από τον Romy Kochan | Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Detroit Entrepreneurs ή τον συνεργάτη της πλατφόρμας podcast. Εάν πιστεύετε ότι κάποιος χρησιμοποιεί το έργο σας που προστατεύεται από πνευματικά δικαιώματα χωρίς την άδειά σας, μπορείτε να ακολουθήσετε τη διαδικασία που περιγράφεται εδώ https://el.player.fm/legal.
…
continue reading
98 επεισόδια
Σήμανση όλων ότι έχουν ή δεν έχουν αναπαραχθεί ...
Manage series 3025717
Το περιεχόμενο παρέχεται από το Romy Kochan | Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Detroit Entrepreneurs. Όλο το περιεχόμενο podcast, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των επεισοδίων, των γραφικών και των περιγραφών podcast, μεταφορτώνεται και παρέχεται απευθείας από τον Romy Kochan | Gingras Global | Social Enterprise | Detroit Entrepreneurs ή τον συνεργάτη της πλατφόρμας podcast. Εάν πιστεύετε ότι κάποιος χρησιμοποιεί το έργο σας που προστατεύεται από πνευματικά δικαιώματα χωρίς την άδειά σας, μπορείτε να ακολουθήσετε τη διαδικασία που περιγράφεται εδώ https://el.player.fm/legal.
…
continue reading
98 επεισόδια
Όλα τα επεισόδια
×Sheri Lozano of Link2Lift We had some fun jumping over to the west coast to talk with Sheri Lozano of Link2Lift. Sheri discusses her innovative and collaborative idea to use unused spaces for lifting others. For the full transcript click below R ead Full Transcript Welcome to episode 99 of the Bonfires of Social Enterprise! Wow-wee, almost at 100. Thanks for your loyal support over all of these past episodes! Oh, by the way, this is Romy, and we had some fun jumping over to the west coast to talk with Sheri Lozano of Link2Lift. Sheri discusses her innovative and collaborative idea to use unused spaces in lifting ways. Be sure to stay until the end for a great song from a Detroit artist! Now, first, we have to hear what Natalie has come up with for the fun fuel on this episode. I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you this episode’s Fun Fuel. Coworking is everywhere. What is coworking you ask? It is a work trend bringing together professionals from across all industries to form inter-connected communities. According to the website, Mindspace, the concept of a coworking space started in 1995 Berlin with 17 computer enthusiasts got together in a facility to create a space where people with an interest in computers could gather to collaborate and work in an open environment. Fast track to 1999 New York City and 42 West 24 opened to offer a work environment with flexible membership options for teams and individuals seeking a workspace. The difference here was that there seldom were any organized community events. In 2005, Brad Neuberg from San Francisco launched the first official co-working space originally referred to as a “9 to 5 group.” It was a was not a huge hit at first as no one showed up for the first month, but soon interest sparked and coworking took off. Coworking leads to great collaboration. When I hear the word collaboration, my mind goes to the lyrics of Vanilla Ice’s 1990 release of Ice Ice Baby. I hear collaboration and I then start singing: stop, collaborate and listen and then goes on to say, “if there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it.” Makes me smile every time. Let’s jump on over to see who Romy is collaborating with on in this episode and what problem they are solving. Okay, I absolutely love Natalie’s fun fuels! That was so interesting about co-working spaces! And, now I have the Vanilla Ice song in my head! Ha Ha. I have to look that up next! What a perfect lead into a collaboration that Sheri Lozano has tackled with Link2Lift. Let’s drop in on my conversation with Sheri… Romy: Sheri, why don't you give us the background about what Link2Lift is? Sheri: Link2Lift is a company that we developed in response to underutilized space. It seems like we've had a ton of buildings that are left unused, and we've developed a process where we can create co-working communities but with a purpose. Voice: Let's talk about how you got inspired first just to get everyone caught up to what originally lit your fire if you will. Sheri: You know, it's interesting because I never intended to develop a business. It was more a response to an experience that I had as a volunteer going back and forth to international ... as a volunteer doing international work with communities and then coming back to America, which is so rich, and realizing that we have needs here. And how come with all of the wealth that we have in our own county, we still have people in need? And so, I just started to be a little curious, and we talk about collaboration, that we have resources, and are we really collaborating? Are we really using our resources well to help our communities that are in the minor, and it was amazing to me that I could go into a Third World country under-resourced with 25 people from the U.S. I've never met before and go into a community where I didn't speak the language, and we could somehow see 700 patients a day. Or we could see high volume, and we could work together. So, in America, as I started to research this, it was more just out of curiosity. What I found was amazing. There's a lot of people that want to do a lot of great things, but I wasn't happy with the way I saw collaboration working, and I just thought, "We could do better." Romy: And, Sheri, what did you find some of the main key barriers or maybe just all out fail points that were reoccurring from what you were observing? Why it wasn't working? Sheri: Yeah, what was interesting, the pain points usually were really out of people wanting to do good. It wasn't a matter of people not wanting to spend their money or give or people not having heart to do well. It was truly just a lot of repeated work, a lot of overlap, a lot of people not realizing that there is something much like their great idea just down the street or next door. I did this kind of boots on the ground. I decided I ... of course, attended conferences and listened to think partners, but I also decided to do just boots on the ground. And by doing boots on the ground, I could walk with each different sector with channels of influence and see what they were experiencing, and then, I would take copious notes. So, I could walk with the family who was being cared for. I could walk with the city official. I could walk with the faith community and an investor and take notes, and what I noticed was that there was a lot of duplicate effort, and I felt like that was the one takeaway. I have to be a part of solving this problem, the duplicate effort. Romy: You hit on a lot of points. It was the faith community, perhaps the government or civic, and then, the beneficiary. It might be a family or a person, and then, what else did you say in there because the faith community, government, and maybe the family or social mission beneficiary and ... Sheri: And the non-profit [crosstalk]. Romy: And the non-profit, okay. Okay, yeah. So, you've got this discovery because I think that a lot of us acknowledge that that is happening. How did the different groups respond when you started to highlight some of this overlap? Were they defensive, or were they openly looking for a solution? Sheri: That's a good question. I think it comes with a mixed response because a lot of people, I'm sure, felt the same thing. This was not a new revelation to them, but they're weary, right? Romy: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sheri: It's like, how do you make time to collaborate well? So the good thing was coming in as a neutral convener, coming in with the heart that I just want to help make this better, and I wasn't trying to change the identity of each of the organizations and what they have to bring or even how they want to do it. I was just trying to find where are the common points so that we can really reduce overhead. We can reduce duplicate efforts and increase our impact, and people responded really well to that. Romy: Yeah, I bet. Weary, I feel is an operative word there. You can see a solution, but when you're just so tired, and you're just trying to get to that very next step, changing it even for the better sometimes can feel overwhelming, you know? Sheri: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). Romy: Yeah. We do have a lot of ... Sheri: And the good thing is, at that- Romy: Oh, I'm sorry. I talked over you by accident. Go ahead. Sheri: That's okay. The good thing is at that point; you have to keep in mind that I was still on my curious journey. So, at that point, I wasn't coming in as a business, I wasn't, or even a non-profit or a program. I was coming in asking questions. So, it seemed like for the first time, maybe why I gained some favor in the research was because I really was curious. I did not come with answers. I came to create a conversation, and I think that was really refreshing for the people who at least I spoke with. Romy: Yeah. And then now, it's fully turned in to a physical space as of last week, right, June of 2018, right? Sheri: Link2Lift? Romy: Yes. Sheri: Okay, well, so what I do is my client has physical space, so in this curious journey, what I realized was space played a role in collaboration. All these people who had weary work and were working in isolation, many times when you get them in the same room, they're more than happy to work together. So, when I identified space played a role in collaboration, and yet almost every time I had a meeting, I was meeting in these big buildings that were empty, and it just ... I found irony in it. So, yeah, we turned the idea, all the research from 2013 to two thousand ... really '15, '16. I turned it into, "Okay, how can we repurpose tools that are right at our fingertips?" A lot of these people have access to buildings, and co-working is not a new idea, but what if we applied co-working a little more intentionally and either the client as a business person who would like to build an accelerator or use technology to your advantage. But what if we dedicate a tenth of that to this non-profit collaboration? And so, in doing so, I've been able to run this model of how we can do that in almost any space, and it seems to be catching on. You're right. Last week, we opened the first center that completely went through all four stages of our company, and it's the Palau LinkCenter in Portland, Oregon. And what's fantastic about it is it's a co-working space but with a purpose, and so, these tenant partners, they have their own identity. They have their own organization, and yet, they have intentional time where they will connect with one another, do strategic planning. The co-working space, the Palau LinkCenter will become a strategic asset. It's almost like I have to be there at least once or twice a week, or I'm going to miss something. I would say that would be the element that's a little bit different than the trend-on co-working style, which is great. But Link2Lift, we're committed toward a little bit more intentional sense of community and purpose in how the workflow is in the space. Romy: And for just as a side note, let's give them their website in case they want to look at some of the pictures while you're talking here. Sheri: It'll be PalauLinkCenter.org. Romy: And let's spell that for them. Sheri: P-A-L-A-U-L-I-N-K [inaudible]C-E-N-T-E-R.org. Romy: Okay, perfect. Perfect, perfect. And there's a lot of pictures on the Link2Lift.com website, and that's www L-I-N-K2? The number 2? L-I-F, as in Frank, T as in Tom dot com. All right, so just a little sidestep there. If they want to just tune into your pictures while you're telling this great story. So let's talk about your program, The Common Good. Its Common Good Collaboration Model? Is that the full name of your program? Sheri: Yeah. For short, we call it The Common Good Collaborator, but it's a process, and so yeah, they model. It's a process of four stages. I like to go in with my client and ask a lot of questions. Usually, people have come to me because they've heard that I can help reimagine their space. It's interesting the amount of people who have this dilemma now. You look at retailers; you look at the commercial property, church buildings, faith communities, it's kind of a dilemma. What do we do? Now that technology has allowed us to do so much remotely, it's changed the consumer, how they think. So, when people approach me, they usually have an idea that they would like to impact their community. Whether it's through jobs or some other way. And so that first process is really important where I just ask a lot of really good questions. Because I believe that property owners have to really resonate with the community that they attract, you know the co-working space they attract. So, whatever it is they care about, we're gonna build something under that umbrella. I think it's the highest chance of sustainability when the owner's really behind it. We explore all the options of what that can look like, and to be honest with you, this is like the funnest part because I approach the common good collaborator like a city. Imagine a thriving city and what it takes to have a thriving city, and a post office, and a gas station, and a market, and work, and so I put that into a building, and so we have a lot of fun learning what would create a thriving community in your building, and what kind of community do you want that to look like. What kind of culture, who do you wanna impact as a result? And that's really the fun part, and then we get to create it. Have a network of people that we can bring into the conversation. I love using local talent. I think everyone who lives in town could be a part of building this space, architect's design if there is a budget for that. If not, there are a lot of people that are very creative, and they can repurpose space. But, if the property owner or my client really feels like they want me to bring in the talent like you have that and we can definitely consult on that. And then we go through just this release phase where we say to the client, "Hopefully we have helped create a co-working or shared space environment that a portion, at least a portion of it, is dedicated through common good to create greater impact. And here is the strategic plan for the next 12 months." And then we check in with them, and we help develop that shape, that culture of the community because it is gonna require a new muscle memory than the way people have worked before. Because remember, the way we worked before was very much in silos and very much caused weariness and duplication of effort. But, in that same weariness in the new environment, there's this temptation to go…
Kate Hayes EchoingGreen- Board Health Back for another conversation this time with a very inspiring woman, Kate Hayes of Echoing Green. Kate discusses her incredibly interesting journey and love for health human interactions and support. She is a current leader in the impact investing and social enterprise development space. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. Romy here back for another conversation with a very inspiring woman, Kate Hayes of Echoing Green. Kate discusses her incredibly interesting journey and love for health human interactions and support. First, let’s see what Natalie has prepared for our Fun Fuel for this episode. I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you this episode’s Fun Fuel Leadership takes all kinds of forms and has many different styles. After all, we are all uniquely made and don’t respond the same way to things. Let’s take a listen to some top leader’s motivational quotes of all time according to Inc. Magazine because according to them, “Sometimes the most powerful and meaningful things come from words that touch our heart and lead us forward to our potential.” So Author Ernest Hemingway kicks us off with his quote: "When people talk, listen completely." --Ernest Hemingway I need to work on that one myself! Retired four-star general in the United States Army, Colin Powell said, "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." --Colin Powell But I will wrap up with a motivational leadership quote from Harold R. McAlindon. He said, "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." --Harold R. McAlindon Let’s tune in with Romy as she interviews this episode’s latest trailblazer. Thanks, Natalie! So many great leaders have gone before us in history. Let’s turn our attention to a current leader in the impact investing and social enterprise development space, Kate Hayes of Echoing Green and her program, Direct Impact. Romy: Let's talk about Echoing Green. Let's talk about Echoing Green. It had a unique start. Kate Hayes: Yes. So, Echoing Green was founded 30 years ago by a group of individuals working in the private sector who wanted to see what would happen if you took the principles of the private sector and applied them to the social sector, and so they started investing deeply in early stage social entrepreneurs, and that has really been at the heart of everything that Echoing Green has been about for the past few decades. So, the core of our work is our fellowship program, where we search the globe to find amazing early-stage social entrepreneurs who have incredible ideas that have the potential to really change the world and solve big social, environmental problems, and we provide them with funding, with support from our staff, from our ecosystem and our community, as well as the community amongst one another where they are each other's best resources as they work to take their organizations to the next step and begin to really grow and scale the solutions that they've identified, and over the past 10 or 15 years, one of the things that we've become more intentional about is building out our ecosystem of support. So, we know that social entrepreneurs are incredibly important. They're close to the work. They're really dedicating their lives to solving really big problems that exist, but they can't do it alone. So, we wanted, as an organization, to become more intentional about how we create an ecosystem of support for them to really help with making that change come to life. So, with that, we started doing work in the impact investing space, as we saw more for-profit social enterprises join our fellowship program, and we wanted to connect those early-stage organizations with impact investors that were interested in supporting for profits at a very early stage, and from there, we've then developed the direct impact program, which is what I lead, and I can certainly talk quite a bit about, which is intentionally developing the next generation of board leaders to support our social entrepreneurs. So, we're very carefully thinking about every role that needs to exist in working together to solve some of these big problems. Romy: And Kate, just undoing all of that, I feel like we could probably do about 10 episodes on what you just said, all those interesting things, but for Echoing Green, how does Echoing Green define early-stage entrepreneurship? Kate Hayes: Yes. We are one of the earlier stage. So, we define that as the idea stage to about two years of operations. So, we will, if somebody has an incredible idea and a very compelling way of stating it, and stating how they're going to solve it, we will fund at that idea stage. We also will fund proof of concept or at a couple years of operations, which makes us really unique in the space, and I think part of what differentiates us is we're really focused on the leader first. We know that by investing in somebody who is proximate to the work, they've lived the challenges that they're trying to solve, they know the communities incredibly well, and they're so deeply embedded in the solutions that they're trying to create, that they're going to, no matter what, be successful. So, while we, of course, look at the organization, we primarily will focus on the individual and what they bring to the table, and then we'll look at okay, is this an innovative solution to a longstanding problem, is it a pressing problem, what does the business model seem like? It does not need to be perfect because that's an area that we can really support in, but we are very much leader first, and every year, we get somewhere around 2500-3000 applications from social entrepreneurs all over the world. It's one of the most fun parts of my job is getting to read a lot of those applications alongside my colleagues, and we're ultimately selecting around 30 each year. So, we also work to support those social entrepreneurs that apply throughout every step of the process. Whether or not they ultimately get a fellowship, we want them to receive some sort of value from going through that, especially since they're coming in as early as an idea. So, we have a lot of opportunity to help them think through and articulate what they're trying to do. Romy: That's so thrilling. So many folks in the, I'd say impact investing space broadly, will often make comments like there just isn't deal flow, but it takes a firm like yours to go in and develop the deals so that they can invest in them. That's so exciting. We want to involve you more in Detroit. I just want to raise my hand right now. Kate Hayes: Absolutely. Romy: We want to involve you more here. So, back to your firm. Many, many have not figured out this early stage piece, and I love what you said about leadership because we feel the same way. One of the taglines we have is "Supporting people first from inspiring places with productive ideas," but it's the people that make all this happen. We want to support the persons that are leading the efforts and getting them all what they need. How did you guys come to land on what seems obvious, but there's a lot of distractions around the idea sometimes, and people forget about the leadership? Kate Hayes: You're absolutely right. I think it has just been so deeply ingrained from the start that it's hard to pinpoint exactly when the organization decided that that was the goal. I'll provide an example of one of our very first social entrepreneurs that is no longer with our organization, but I think provides our continued reasoning of why we focus on the person first. So, Cheryl Dorsey was the founder of The Family Van, a mobile healthcare clinic in Boston, which actually will tie back a little bit to my story. I spent a few years volunteering on this mobile healthcare clinic, and that was what first got me interested in Echoing Green because I learned that that organization and Cheryl had been funded and supported by Echoing Green, and she stayed with the organization for some time, and ultimately, about 8 years later after that initial funding from Echoing Green, Cheryl actually took the reins as president of Echoing Green, and so we're continuously reminded of no matter what our fellows do when they start at the organization, and we do find that many of the organizations last with their original founder, who's our fellow, or with somebody else that takes the reins, but they continue to go on to do incredible things. I think a great example is Van Jones, who was a fellow in the 90s, and many people will now see him on CNN. So, we have all of these stories of our fellows going on to continue to do incredible things. It's about 85 percent of them remain in leadership positions within the social sector, and so that reminds us that no matter what that idea is, what the person goes on to do is going to have impact that we could never even see at the point of application, and at the point of that first idea, but many, like Wendy Kopt, who was a fellow in the early 90s, continues to stay with Teach for America, and now Teach for All. So, it's pretty incredible seeing the varying paths, but that's really what brings us back to this investment in the individuals first. Romy: Wow. That's incredibly exciting, and so before we stay on this track of you guys pouring into leadership, I want to talk about healthy boards and governance in a minute. Let's dip sideways for a minute and tell people a little bit more about your journey, Kate because you referenced it briefly, but what's been your journey about getting into the field? Was that your first experience with the mobile healthcare clinic, or had you been out in this type of work before you joined? Kate Hayes: Yeah, so it was one of my early experiences. Like many in the non-profit and social sector, my path has been winding but has landed me to exactly where I feel like I'm supposed to be. So, when I was volunteering on The Family Van, that was in college, and I was studying neuroscience because I'd always been deeply interested in human behavior and why people do the things that they do, and also a huge science geek, so I thought I'd bring those two things together, study neuroscience, and go on to medical school. That experience with The Family Van really opened my eyes. Social entrepreneurship was just a very early field. It was happening. Social entrepreneurship has been happening for decades, and even centuries, but the naming was just starting to come about, and it was not something that I was familiar with at the time, but when I learned about Echoing Green and learned about the work that similar organizations were doing in the space, it got me really thinking about the type of systemic impact that I wanted to make. So, I ended up graduating, took my MCAT, decided to put med school applications on hold while I tried working in the non-profit sector, and so started out at an organization focused in the education space, and fell in love with the space and could really see how I could make what I hoped and continue to hope will be transformative impact over time, or at least supporting pushing the needle on a lot of these things that I really care about, and so ended up not applying in the end and stayed in the space, and over the years was working at quite a few youth-serving organizations but was trying to narrow down to exactly what I cared most about, and it kept coming back to leadership development and this time with neuroscience, with human behavior and understanding how people grow and change, and don't change, but how you can influence that as well as this social entrepreneur field and the power of innovators that can disrupt, really positively disrupt on some of these big issues, as well as cross-sector collaboration. When I was at my previous organization, that was something that I was working within a lot, was catalyzing the power of corporate professionals to engage in the social change ecosystem, and there came a point where I said okay, I guess the best way for me to make an impact is to become a social entrepreneur. I think that many in the social sector go through this moment, and so I wrote a business plan, submitted it to Echoing Green because that's what you do when you have an idea, and made it pretty far in the process but didn't ultimately get the fellowship, but certainly reconnected me with the work of Echoing Green, and soon after, found a role working here that was really tying in those three things that I cared most about, and so I had the opportunity to join the team just about four years ago, and really rethink the way we were doing leadership development, especially for people in the ecosystem, not just our social entrepreneurs, but the other key players, primarily those in the private sector that have a critical role to play, and so have been here ever since. Romy: Wow, and you had an opportunity to see some of the social entrepreneurs around the world. I mean, we exchanged some pictures, and you've been everywhere from Rwanda to all of these places that I've seen some pictures. Can you give us a little tour of the sampling of places you've gotten to learn about entrepreneurship? Kate Hayes: Sure. So, I'll tell you first the why around those particular travels. As part of Direct Impact, the program that I run, we take cohorts of individuals from the private sector who are interested in deepening their engagement in the social sector have a lot of interest and intent and want to do it in the right way, and in a really intensive experiential leadership development driven way. So, we put them through a few retreats and then also site visit, which is where the pictures come in. We'll take a small group of individuals from across the private sector and across ... Mostly New York is where we primarily been focused, but we're starting to expand across the US and, ultimately, globally in working with corporate leaders, and we'll bring them to spend a few days shadowing our social entrepreneurs, and really experiencing social entrepreneurship firsthand. Ultimately, at the end of the days, we're preparing these individuals to join the boards of our fellow organizations, the non-profit boards. One of the things that we know to be true is that board members often have not worked in the non-profit sector. They don't have the deep, nuanced understanding of what it's like day in and day out, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, the exposure piece of this program is where these site visits come in. The social entrepreneurs we visit, they're not putting on a show. They're just doing their day-to-day work and engaging our group in what they're doing so that they can learn. We've gone a couple of times to African Entrepreneur Katie Hayes: Collective in Kigali Rwanda and that example shows one of the most exciting through lines that we've seen with the program, and that African Entrepreneur collective now has three Direct Impact graduates on their board, including their board chair. So, the transformation in this full circle ecosystem that we've been able to see from our fellows to our Direct Impact [inaudible] has been really incredible. We've also brought people to accountability lab in Nepal to Contextos in El Salvador to the Center for Civic Innovation in Atlanta because we also focus on US organizations. There's certainly a ton of value in seeing the different sides of the cities right here in our own backyard. At the end of the day, the site visits really offer this transformative moment where people are deeply out of their comfort zone. They're experiencing social impact and the work that non-profits do in a firsthand; this is the good. This is the challenging wave that really becomes a reflection point in their lives. Not only are they able to learn and becomes immersed in the work, but they're also able to really step back and think about the impact that they want to have as they join the boards of these organizations, and more broadly think about as corporate sector leaders how they can influence the social sector for the good. Romy: You know, we have a saying around here that we say, "Let's take it from the paper to the eyeballs, like, "Let's take it from [inaudible] due diligence to go and to meet them in person," because there's just a different interpretation that can't be expressed on paper as much as you can have talent in your writing and all of that. That's just different, and when you saying you're immersing them in these experiences when they get a chance to look into the eyeballs of those, you can see the heart of what they're trying to do, and they're able to engage more human contact. So, they're able to get it easier and understand it. We always say social entrepreneurship is best understood leaving the paper for a minute, and looking at the eyeballs and going back to the paper, just because- Kate Hayes: Absolutely. Romy: Just because you need to get out and get on the front like so you that you can really understand all the nuances and all the intricacies that won't prevent an entrepreneur from going forward, but they require understanding if you're going to partner or fund those on the frontline. Well, that's really exciting. Just for our listeners, many for-profit organizations also have boards. We don't want it to confuse any of that. Mostly what Kate works with is the non-profit boards, the more formalized boards. Would that be correct, Kate? I don't want to misspeak. Kate Hayes: Yes, that is. Our primary focus through Direct Impact is on non-profit boards, but what I've found to be true, especially with the...…
Genusee Wow, what a really great episode on a social enterprise called Genusee. Creatively designing eyewear out of recycled single-use plastic water bottles out of Flint, Michigan. Many of you may have heard some tough stories coming out of Flint. Specific to the water crisis over these past few years. You will meet the founders and designers, Ali Rose Van Overbeke and Jack Burns. They will discuss their journey in Flint and the whole launch process to date. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Welcome to episode 97 of the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This is Romy, and I am your host for this episode on a really great social enterprise called Genusee. They are out of Flint, Michigan. Many of you may have heard some tough stories coming out of Flint, Michigan specific to the water crisis over these past few years. You will meet the founders and designers, Ali Rose Van Overbeke and Jack Burns. They discuss their journey in Flint and the whole launch process to date. Oh, it feels good to be back after a mini-hiatus. Thanks for hanging in there while we made some new shows! By the way, we have some great episodes coming up next from the east and west coasts culminating with a finale for Season 3 and our episode 100 which will be some interviews from the recent GUS awards held in Detroit. So subscribe and stay tuned. Now, let’s see what Natalie has in store for us on the Fun Fuel. What do you have for us, Natalie? I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you this episode’s Fun Fuel. In today’s world, you see so many people wearing eyeglasses and on a super bright sunny day they most certainly break out their sunglasses. Glasses have become ultra-fashionable and why shouldn’t they? They most certainly are the very first thing people see when they look at your face unless they aren’t wearing theirs and they just can’t see you. According to the website lenspick.com, the first vision correction device was invented in 1000 AD and called a reading stone. As you can imagine, it was for farsighted folk who couldn’t read properly and was basically a glass sphere used as a magnifying glass. Now fast forward to 12th century China and you have the creation of Sunglasses. People back then used flat crystals of smoky quartz that were mounted for personal use to reduce the glare from the sun. It is also said that these ‘sunglasses’ were used by judges while presiding cases, so as not to give away their emotions. Very interesting. So, throughout history, mankind has made some very unique and purposeful inventions, including eyeglasses, that truly make our lives easier. Thanks for listening and now on to the episode. Fascinating that the first pair of eyeglasses was documented to be in 1000 AD. Thank you, Natalie, your fun fuels are always so interesting! Let’s jump on in for a listen now to my conversation with Ali Rose Van Overbeke and Jack Burns and their really great company, Genusee. Romy: So let's tell the listeners about Genusee. Ali Rose: So Genusee is making eyewear in Flint, Michigan from recycled single-use plastic water bottles that were a result of the Flint water crisis. Romy: So is it just the eyeglass frames, or are you putting the lenses in and all that? Ali Rose: Yeah, we're doing everything. The frames are specifically what's made from the recycled water bottles, but we are working with an optical lab, so we do prescription eyeglasses as well as sunglasses. Romy: So how did you make this connection, or even have this idea? Ali Rose: Yeah, so Jack and I both went to Parsons together, and worked in a fellowship shortly after graduation, where we kind of learned that we were good working as collaborators. Then in early 2016, I was back in Michigan, I grew up in metro Detroit area. I was volunteering with the Red Cross during the Flint water crisis. Just observing how much plastic, we were delivering cases and cases of bottled water door to door every day, and was kind of just shocked by what was happening, and the need in my own backyard. It was just ... Jack and I are good friends, and it was just started as a super casual conversation of, "This is what's happening in Flint. What can we do with the plastic?" Really just wanting to do something to support the community. Started just asking people in the community specifically like, "What do you need? What does Flint need?" And everyone kept telling us, "Jobs." So we knew this wasn't just going to be a charity, or an NGO, or an art project. We needed to figure out how to start a business that could actually scale, and bring living wage jobs to the city. Romy: Oh, and so how did you begin even to navigate the process of where you were going to get the bottles? Where did you even start? Jack Burns: So we started off looking ... Generally, just asking questions, and digging down this rabbit hole further and further to find out where the plastic was going, and what it was becoming, and finding out that there was just this surplus of plastic. Then really sort of hacking the system, and trying to figure out what we wanted to make from this plastic, and what was capable. It turns out you can make ... PET is the same thing as polyester; it's a highly flexible material. So we really had a broad range of things that we could make with this plastic, but we really wanted to make something that was a product of purpose, and a product of need. We found that, with our unique design backgrounds that we ... That eyewear really fit the bill for what we wanted to make because it's both a medical device and a fashion product as well. Romy: Yeah, and so are you guys designing the frames yourselves? Ali Rose: Yes. Romy: Okay, wow that's fun. That's really fun. How do you test that? How have you been prototyping your design? Ali Rose: I'll let Jack continue with this. Jack Burns: Yeah, I actually just got out of a meeting during this right now, so. Jack Burns: So what we do ... How we started off, you know we were very much on a shoestring budget, early on. We invested a lot of time into this, rather than funds in the earlier stages. We're still knee deep in time, but now we have a little bit more funding, so we can allocate that towards prototyping a little bit further. When we first began, we started off just like taking photos of friends, and drawing on top of them, and seeing what sort of face shapes, what sort of shapes worked best with face shapes. So what frames worked best in that regard. Then we laser cut heavyweight paper mockups that we could hold up to our friends' faces, photograph, see what works best. So really trying to find these democratic shapes that could fit anyone and everyone. Then we received some grant funding, and we allocated that funding towards creating 3D printed prototypes. So we've been 3D printing to really flesh out the nuances of the design, and how that fits on the face, and the ergonomics of it all. That's really where the progression of prototyping and design has led us to today. Romy: That's amazing, I love it. Ali Rose: Jack touched on it, but we really set out with wanting to create something that was democratically designed, because we were going to launch with ... We knew we only really had the funding to be able to launch with one style, and we wanted to also ... I think customers are so overwhelmed by choice often that it's a bit debilitating. And creating, streamlining, the choice for the customer, and creating a really classic, democratically designed frame that would work as both prescription optical, but as well as sunglasses, and really working from what the median range of measurements of the face are. To be really particular about the design and the shape, so that it could fit as many people as possible. Romy: Yeah I love it. It's so true. We're overloaded with choices. Even as simple [inaudible] here…especially when people are drawn to a social mission behind a product. They're already kind of excited, and they're likely to do it. It's just easier to narrow it down. How has the local community so far there in Flint, responded so far to what you're doing there? Ali Rose: So we started ... Obviously, this started really through working with the community when I was getting involved with the Red Cross, and started building really early relationships just through other people that I'd been volunteering with who grew up in the city, and are really ingrained in the culture there. For the past two years, our focus has really been building more community relationships. That's been one of the most important parts of what we're doing. We're working with the Community Foundation in Flint. MADE Institute, which is where we're doing our hiring through. So MADE Institute works with individuals who are structurally unemployable, those who are displaced workers, and returning citizens, so people who are coming out of incarceration. They're doing really amazing work, and that's who we're going to be partnering with to hire our first employees. We're working with St. Luke's New Life Center, which is where our polishing bags are going to be made. Everyone that we have been building these relationships with has been really supportive, really excited, very welcoming. Ali Rose: You know there has been some community members, who rightfully so, have been very skeptical of neither Jack or I are from Flint. I'm from Michigan, but I don't have long-term roots in Flint, and the city has been extremely taken advantage of ... through the water crisis. There's a lot of distrust, and there has been some individuals who have been a bit skeptical, but you know it's all about engaging in conversations. We're extremely open to sharing our process, and our plans, and what our supply chain is, and the immediate, and what the long-term goals are. We're mission-driven, and the whole point of the business is to be able to give back to Flint. It's really important that we are listening, and engaging in conversation with the community, and doing what's good for everyone. Romy: Yeah. I love what you're doing. In my opinion, partnerships are fun. When you're really are able to get in relationships, it's fun to be part of a team. Sometimes when you're doing your own thing in social enterprise, it is really difficult to do it and do it well. Honor both your mission and your business, because sometimes they conflict. In terms of profit, sometimes you're going to spend some extra, because of your mission, or ... Which is just the nature of it? So it feels good to get into partnership with other organizations because you can feel part of a team. Which I think is really important for all of us out here. Ali Rose: And Flint's so rich in art. The entrepreneur community there is really growing, and we've really started building relations with a lot of the other businesses and artisans down there. There's Article One Eyewear, GoodBoy Clothes, Sutorial ... Tim at Sutorial makes handmade leather boots. It's encouraging not just to be partnering with other organizations, but other makers in the city who've been there forever, and are really rooted. Romy: Yeah, I'm glad you started to talk about Flint. I'm only there about once a week, but I absolutely love Flint. For many of the listeners, they may be somewhere around the globe, and all they may have heard about Flint is maybe some negative news or watched a negative Netflix show about it. Could you speak to your view of the people of Flint, and what your experience is, at kind of a higher level? Ali Rose: Yeah. Flint is, first and foremost, the people in Flint are some of the hardest working, most resilient people, I've ever met. That's I think one of the main reasons that I was really attracted to wanting to not just start a business there, but live there, and move there as well. Media loves a good story, and a lot of times, sadly, somehow that becomes a negative story because there's more drama in it. I don't know. I see ... Media did this with Detroit for a really long time. Just always focusing on the blight, and the negativity, and the crime. Now Detroit's a global brand, and I'm not to compare Flint to Detroit at all, but just how the media recently has been so focused on the negative things that are happening in Flint. I think there also needs to be the same amount of attention to the positive things that are happening, and because the city has really, truly been kind of abandoned by the government, in being able to help them through the water crisis. You've seen a lot of local organizations, and local individuals, really step up to the plate. It's been the people in Flint who have really been the ones leading the way, though not just the water crisis, but the last couple of decades as well. Romy: Right. This has been going on a long time. The people of Flint are so resilient; it's extraordinary. Well, thanks for speaking to that, and just for many of our listeners who ... Just to orient, Flint, Michigan is approximately 70 miles or just over about 110 kilometers north of Detroit. Just to anchor some of our listeners. Let's zoom you out even further. You've had a lot of press, and had opportunities to be in some amazing publications. Let's talk about this because you've really gotten the attention at a national level. Jack Burns: Yeah, we've been really fortunate. It has not come without hard work. It's really just been contacting people, friends of friends. So much of it is just networking, in order to talk about the story, and then it really has had a bit of a snowball effect. Which is then great. We only want to continue that, and to ... fulfill on all of what we've been talking about and putting forward. We're really excited for all of the press and attention. Although our real mission, and why we do what we do, is really human focused, and focused on the benefit of the planet as well, so. While the stories are great, and the exposure is great, really the thing that we really want to do is make a difference, so. Ali Rose: And you know- Romy: Right. Of course, yep. But it helps to get exposure because it gets more customers. So it does, right? Jack Burns: Yeah, yeah. And we can make a larger difference. Yeah, exactly. Ali Rose: We've been ... the one fortunate thing about the fact that Jack and I both went to Parsons, and have lived in New York, and ... Jacks currently in New York, and I've just transitioned back to Michigan is, we've made so many amazing connections in press and media, and the creative world in New York. Obviously, there's the recent press that we have received. We've really been able to capitalize on those relationships that we've built in New York. What's exciting about that is being able to ... I think a lot of times press can be kind of ... Media attention can be kind of siloed and being able to bring those connections with us to Michigan, and to Flint. Sharing ... Bringing more attention to even other businesses, and the other positive things that are happening in the city, I think, is been one of the really exciting things for us. Just kind of creating a bridge between the creative relationships we have in New York and bringing those to Flint as well. Romy: Yeah. Awesome, yeah. Relationships and connections, it all helps, and it's really is a smaller world at the end of the day than what it seems. So, it's all about people's trust in us, and how we deliver, and execute on that. Let's kind of go back down to your business. You guys, along your development and funding stream, you were able to launch a very successful Kickstarter campaign. For those of you who might want to look up their website, you'll be able to see ... The campaign is still on your website right? The video link. Was that true, or? Ali Rose: Right now our website links to ... so the Kickstarter ended about a month ago, but we're still taking pre-orders through Indiegogo. So there's a link right now on our website, it says, "Buy Now" and it'll link you to the Indiegogo. Which has a lot of the same content in the videos from the Kickstarter. Romy: Okay. It's really good. I'd encourage all the listeners to get on there. It's genusee.com. It's G-E-N-U-S, like Sam. E-E.com. Yeah, so get on, and check this out. What's the plans, and what is the stage of business that you're in right now? You've come of this Kickstarter. You're in the design mode and getting partners. What is the phase that you're in, right at this moment? Ali Rose: Getting our manufacturing up and running. We did a Kickstarter because we needed the funding specifically to fund this first initial production run. Now that that's been successful we've ... Jacks been working on finalizing all of the design details of our frame, so it's perfect when we ship it out. Then we're going into our tooling, and our molds will be made. We'll be hiring our first employees either late July or early August to start manufacturing and assembling the frames. Romy: And do you see, Ali and Jack, that that'll probably be your primary types of roles there at your business? Assembly and manufacturing roles for jobs? Ali Rose: Starting out, the first employees that we will be hiring, the focus will be on assembly, manufacturing, logistics, but the more the business grows, and the more glasses were able to sell, we're going to be able to hire more employees. It's been really important for us to not just create one kind of job, or just manufacturing jobs in Flint, but to be able to create diverse jobs. There's people with different kinds of interests and skills, so being able to create creative jobs, even in marketing, and social media and design is really important for us. Romy: Yeah. That's fantastic. So do you guys let yourselves dream really, really big? With what you know right now, what could this look like, someday? Ali Rose: Jack, do you want to ... Jack Burns: What could this look like someday ... I mean it's ... So yes, we are making glasses now, and I definitely perceive this being a fully integrated facility where we can manufacture, do the injection molding, do all the post-processing. Have customer service, have people working on all levels, and ... with positions that have real growth potential to them. Then slowly branching out into other product spaces. Things where we can really upcycle single-use materials into products that have a much longer lifespan. That's really our aim behind a lot of what we're doing, is this single-use lifestyle just is not sustainable. So how can we leverage our knowledge of materials, and design to elevate these products, and these materials to a place that is almost endless or is endless? The product that can live and be with people and integrate themselves into everyday life. Then hopefully people will begin to really shift ideals in to, why are we using these materials that last forever in a single use platform. It just doesn't make sense. Slowly shifting away from this single-use lifestyle, and more towards upcycling. Ali Rose: We'll be the largest global upcycle of single-use plastic. Romy: Yeah, there you go. That's fantastic. Did you guys kind of land on this single use upcycling, because I liked the way you phrased that, that's very clear to what it is? When did you kind of learn about that concept, or when…
Dr. Paul Thomas with Plum Health DPC We’re back with another episode here on social enterprise. We have a doctor on this show who has been making a big impact in Detroit. It is Dr. Paul Thomas of Plum Health Care DPC. He has a dream of changing the notion of health care from a plastic card in your wallet to true healing from a healing doctor! What a concept! For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Hi Everyone, this is Romy, and we’re back with another episode here on social enterprise. We have a doctor on this show who has been making a big impact in Detroit. It is Dr. Paul Thomas of Plum Health Care DPC. He has a dream of changing the notion of health care from a plastic card in your wallet to true healing from a healing doctor! What a concept! Before we get going here, I want to give a big hello and thanks to our listeners in Japan, we appreciate you! Now, let’s see what Natalie has today for us on the Fun Fuel…. I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you this episode’s Fun Fuel. The Medicine Ball isn’t usually the hottest topic of conversation. If you like to exercise and are a gym goer, you may incorporate the medicine ball into your routine. Or perhaps this little dynamo isn’t a part of your repertoire and you pass by, leaving it sitting on the rack wondering what to do with it. While there are many ways to use the medicine ball in strength training, according to the website, azcentral.com, One of the early uses of medicine balls was around 1,000 B.C. where Persian soldiers used round bladders filled with sand as part of their resistance training. Later on, Navy doctors would tell sailors to throw the balls around the decks of the ships to reduce boredom, avoid seasickness and improve the overall health of the enlisted men. But it was the United States President Herbert Hoover who brought the medicine ball to the attention of the rest of society in 1931 with his new sport called Hoover-Ball. When the president’s personal physician noticed the president’s sedentary lifestyle he developed a medicine ball throwing game to get him up and moving around. The president and members of his team would throw the sand-filled ball over a net similar to the one used during volleyball games. Big kudos to this physician’s creativity to get his patient out and about and active. Like other early games, Hoover-Ball may not be played today, but the medicine ball surely has played an important role in many people’s overall health. Thanks for listening and now on to the episode. Well, that was truly a fun fuel fact! I love it. So much history of innovation and disruptive strategies all around us! That is a great segway to my conversation with Dr. Paul Thomas. Dr. Paul Thomas: Yes, so we are a family medicine service in Southwest Detroit, called Plum Health DPC, and the DPC stands for Direct Primary Care. What that means is that I work with my patients directly, and we don't bill or use insurance. Instead, my patients pay me a monthly membership fee to be a part of the practice, kind of like a gym membership. Our service cost is $49 a month for adults, and it's $10 a month for kids. With that, my patients can come in and see me anytime they need me. That's the basic of it. Romy: How did you get the idea to start to do this? Dr. Paul Thomas: Well, I heard a podcast in 2012, and I was driving back from a residency interview in Minnesota. My friend sent me this text, and she just said, "Hey, Paul, there's this guy doing this libertarian concept for medical care, and I think it's right up your alley." My friend's a libertarian, so I gave it a listen, and it sounded like this really great idea, but at the time, I wanted to be a teacher, a family medicine doctor who teaches other students and residents, so I filed it in the back of my mind. Then I went to this conference for the Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, and there was this really powerful speaker, who talked about the value of being a primary care doctor, all the great things that we can do for our patients, and the value of using a membership model to serve our patients. These two doctors were relentlessly positive and upbeat about their work that they were doing, and it was inspiring, so I did this road trip and visited their practices. One was in Wichita, and that gentleman was Dr. Josh Umbehr, and one was in Denver, Colorado, and his practice was NextEra Health, and that was Dr. Clint Flanagan. I had, really, two great mentors. I drove out, and I took the best of exactly what they were doing, and I brought it back to Detroit. In short, I stole the idea from some other great thinkers. Romy: So, are you originally from Detroit, or what's your connection to Detroit? Dr. Paul Thomas: Yeah, so I was born here, and I grew up in Grosse Pointe, so I've always been in and around the city. And my family has been in the city for multiple generations, so it's kind of somewhere I care a lot about and a place that I want to give back to. Romy: So, when did you officially open for business, as Dr. Paul Thomas, DPC in Detroit? Dr. Paul Thomas: November 1, 2016, and it's a little bit hazy. I know it was November, but I just had some people pre-enrolled, and then one of those people who had pre-enrolled for the IVF Plum Health actually needed something in November, so I started seeing them, and I guess it's the first official time that I've launched. And I was making house calls at that point, and then I established my physical office in January of 2017. Dr. Paul Thomas: At this point, it's about 95% in office work, and I'll make a house call here or there for people who really need it. Romy: And so, what has the response been? Because it's very inexpensive to have your services. It's really destructive in the healthcare market, and I mean that, in really, I hesitate to use the word innovative, but it's just going back to the basics, which is about us as human beings. How has it been received in the Detroit market by your customers? Dr. Paul Thomas: Yeah. I mean our customer reviews speak for themselves. We've got a ton of great reviews on Google, on Facebook, and Yelp, et cetera. I mean, that's kind of like a basic layer for that. But it's been a really positive reception from community leaders like we won the Motor City Match Award, and we're going to use that money to build out a larger office. We've been invited to speak at TEDx Detroit, and that was a really positive response to what we're doing. And I think the community has embraced this idea. I think some people might be a little skeptical at first of, "Why don't you take my insurance?" But once they get into the practice, once they meet me, once we talk and once I spend an hour with them to go over their health history and figure out what their concerns are, I win people over pretty quickly to the idea of direct primary care. Romy: Right. Just because it's always been one way for them doesn't mean it's still the right way to go forward. You know. And I don't think people realize how expensive insurance is to manage for physicians. Dr. Paul Thomas: Yeah. So typically, a doctor spends more ... half or two-thirds of their time doing non-patient care activities. And one of those, the biggest activities is billing and coding the medical encounter. So, you go in for a visit, and you have a 20-minute time slot with your doctor. And they might spend 8 minutes with you and then use the other 12 to document the visit appropriately and then send it off to the biller. And then that's not where it ends. They have to hire a bunch of billers and coders to double-check their work and then send it off to the insurance company for payment. And if you're lucky, the insurance company will pay you about 60% of what you bill out. Right? So, let's say you bill for a strep throat visit, which is $140 and get paid maybe 60% of that, so you're left with about 90 bucks. But then you have to ... usually half of your revenue goes to your overhead, you have a really high overhead running a traditional family medicine office. So, you're paying all your billers and coders to do that work. So, in short, doctors are spending a lot of time and a lot of money trying to get paid by insurance companies. So, by removing all of that, kind of, rubbish, let's say, I get to spend all of my time with my patients. And I don't have to send my bill to an insurance company. I just ask my patient to pay me the fifty bucks a month. Romy: Love it. Love it, love it. I'm a huge fan of this bringing the services direct. I love it. Eliminating the middle-man. Well, what are some of the things that you're seeing from an impact on people's health? I'm just really curious to see if more people are stepping up and saying, "I'd like to use..." They're more likely to maybe use your services. Dr. Paul Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I mean the stories that I've come across, the people that I've met are unbelievable. You know, folks who don't have insurance and are scared about what it's going to cost to go in to get something taken care of. And then they sign up for a membership with me, after like 4, 5, 10. I had a guy who came in; he was 40. And he hadn't been to the doctor since high school. So, like 22 years. Not seeing a doctor because he was scared about what it would cost. And so, I end up finding a lot of high blood pressure that's been untreated, or diabetes that's been untreated and the person may not even be aware of it because a lot of these diseases or conditions can be silent and that's the real danger. They call high blood pressure, or hypertension, the silent killer because you don't know you have a problem until you might have a heart attack or a stroke. So, those are tough, when you have that conversation, like, "Listen. Your blood pressure's been elevated for God knows how long, but I'm glad you're here now. Let's take care of it." And then they're surprised to find out that the blood pressure medication that they might need is one cent per pill. So, they're spending 30 cents a month to manage it now. Romy: Gets rid of that whole fear piece. Dr. Paul Thomas: At first, I had a pretty strong, well I still do. But I used social media to get out there. I wrote a blog post. I speak at events, like TEDx Detroit. I talk to as many bloggers and podcasters as I can. I wrote some opinion pieces for the Detroit News. I got interviewed on Channel 4, WDIV which was awesome. That really got the word out for us. That was a huge break. So, all of those things in combination has led to a strong funnel for people to find our practice and now that we're up to about 250 members, and we've been doing this for a year and a half, word of mouth is starting to play a role, where people are starting to refer their friends or family and people and people are really comfortable with the service and enjoy the service. So, we're growing in all sorts of ways now. Romy: That's powerful. I think that's pretty encouraging for other service providers considering this membership model. That's turned out to work well for you, right? Dr. Paul Thomas: Yeah. It's worked great. And I guess somebody asked me about how you've been successful in marketing, so if you're thinking of starting a business, or if you want to provide a service to the world, tell people why you're doing it. And for me, my why is that I want to bring affordable, accessible health care to Detroit. And that hasn't been here always. It's not routinely available. So, when I tell that story, it resonates with people and people want to share it. So, if you want to do something great, if you have ambition-driven business or a charitable organization, get really good at telling your story and why it's valuable for people. Romy: Yeah. That's such a good word that we can get tangled up in. Sometimes defending why we're out they and we forget to talk about that powerful why that gets us up in the morning. Dr. Paul Thomas: Right. Romy: Yeah So let's move into something ... another angle of your business. You also offer healthcare services to an entire business. Right? Kind of, I would call that almost a commercial offering. Dr. Paul Thomas: Yeah. Definitely. I have a few small businesses that have signed up for our service. A restaurant, like an organization that manufactures a product, a political campaign and in total that comes out to about 35 to 40 employees in total among those different businesses that we have enrolled. And essentially, their employees receive the same services that an individual would, but the employer pays for those services. So, it's a direct primary care option for small businesses, and it works really well for those companies that are either self-insured or they don't have enough revenue to provide health insurance for all their team members, but they do want to provide some sort of health care because it's the right thing to do. So, I'm happy to help those folks out. Romy: That speaks to the health of the business, too, right? If they've got healthy employees, then they can offer something, right? Traditional health insurance is very expensive for a small employer. And that's ... can be almost overwhelming in terms of a monthly cash flow for a small business. So, this is a great alternative. Dr. Paul Thomas: Right. So, like, yeah, it's one of employees at the restaurant cuts their finger and they need stitches, they can call me up, and they're right down the street so they can get it done, pretty much, right away. And it costs $10 for the suture material and the laceration kit, the tools that I need to do the job. So, the charge for that visit is ten bucks. Romy: Has anyone been upset with you that you're doing it this way? Dr. Paul Thomas: Well, I get a couple of people who call in and who ask me to be their doctor. Well, I can't. "I saw your great reviews on Google, like 30 five-star reviews, and my friend told me about you, and this is awesome." And I'll say something like, "Oh. This is so great. I'm so happy to hear that. Before we get started I just want to make sure that you understand that this is a monthly membership, it's fifty bucks a month, I don't bill or use your insurance." And they're like, "Well, I have X health insurance product." And I'm like, "Okay, that's great. I don't bill or use that." And they're like, "What do you mean; you don't? Like, why do I have this?" And that's like, that's the most upset anyone will ever get. And I can understand. They either hang up at that point and say, "All right. I'm sorry. I didn't understand fully." Or, I'll explain to them there's a difference between health insurance and healthcare. And health insurance is a financial product to protect you from bankruptcy, like car insurance or home insurance, et cetera. And healthcare is the relationship with the doctor. Somebody that listens to you understands your concerns and is able to help you in a holistic, patient-centered way. And that's what I throw at my patients. That holistic approach. The time to listen, the time to care about them. And that's healthcare. Romy: Yes. Right. And any other, have you inspired any other physicians to say, "Hey, gosh, I would consider either joining you or doing something similar?" Dr. Paul Thomas: Yes. For sure. So, I meet with ... I meet and talk with a new doctor almost every day. Definitely a few times a week. There's doctor who's going to be starting up in Northern Oakland County, kind of under my guidance. There's a doctor who's looking at opening up in Ypsilanti, again under my guidance. And then I have a few physicians who are interested in joining my practice. So, just kind of evaluating options and growth strategies to make it work in a sustainable way. And then another thing is I teach at the medical school, at Wayne State, and I also give lectures there and some interacting with students in trying to inspire the next generation of family doctors or internists, or pediatricians to do this, kind of, membership-based practice because I feel like there is a much bigger option for satisfaction and the ability to give the greatest care possible when you have enough time to deliver that care. Romy: Well, I love the idea of you expanding with you at the helm, because at some point there's only so many people you can see. But I love this idea that you're teaching some others or attempting to inspire some others. I'm sure you are. You're a great speaker. I've heard you speak in public before, and I was inspired. So, I think that's thrilling for me to hear that you're inviting others to participate at the table. I think the world's a better place when we invite others to join up in the train and it becomes a bigger and bigger impact. How ... that's a good segue to ask about dreaming big. If you were going to let yourself just dream off big with just what you know as of today, what could this look like? Dr. Paul Thomas: I think this could look like a nation where we, kid of, get rid of these old notions of what good healthcare looks like, and starting to realize that it doesn't look like a piece of plastic in our wallet, and it looks like a relationship with someone in our community that's a healer, that can listen, that has the time to address your concerns. And my dream is that more and more physician’s kind of wake up and also have the courage to step out on their own and to deliver the kind of care that they were trained to deliver, and rather than just being told that they only have eight minutes to spend with their patients. That rather just saying, "I get to decide what I get to do with my time because I'm not beholden to you, a third-party entity, like an insurance company or a government payer. Like my patients pay me directly so I'm going to do whatever I can to serve them the way I would want to serve a family member or friend. So, that's the message that I'm delivering to my…
PalmEraMia Thanks for tuning in for this great episode on a social enterprise out of Miami! Our guest is Andres Restrepo, one of the founders of PalmEraMia, which is a fashion design company for athletic wear. Through their product sales, they support clean water efforts in Colombia. We learn why they chose Colombia and how they became so convicted about clean water for those without access. Stay tuned until the end of the show because we have our first Spanish rapper as our closing song on this episode. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Thanks for tuning in for this great episode on a social enterprise out of Miami! This is Romy, and I am honored to be your host. Our guest is Andres Restrepo, one of the founders of PalmEraMia, which is a fashion design company for athletic wear. Through their product sales, they support clean water efforts in Colombia. We learn why they chose Colombia and how they became so convicted about clean water for those without access. We have our first Spanish rapper as our closing song on this episode. I want to take a moment to thank our listeners. Our team has grown over here at the Bonfires of Social Enterprise, and it is really about you, as our listeners, continuing to tune in. Thank you, thank you, thank you. By the way, don’t be shy! Reach out to us! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram which are all at bonfires podcast or you can jump to the website and email us or put a note in the mailbag. The website is www.bonfiresofsocialenterprise.com We respond quickly, and we love to talk to you! So, back to our topic of business and social good. I think Natalie has something about water for us in our Fun Fuel…… I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you this episodes’ Fun Fuel. Many people have taken to the longstanding sport of surfing, riding amazing ocean waves. But did you know that you can surf the Great Lakes? Now it is different than surfing in the ocean, mainly because nothing will eat you in the great lakes which to me is a huge bonus! According to Third Coast Surf Shops website, Waves on the great lakes are caused by the transfer of energy from the wind blowing over the surface of the water. Whereas ocean waves are primarily created by offshore storms far from the beach, waves on the Lakes are produced by localized winds associated with various weather systems in and near the Great Lakes region. The great lakes have plenty of wind year-round to generate some huge waves. Waves on the great lakes have been documented at over 30 feet in height. Unfortunately, these conditions have been known to be brutal and have sunk many ships over the years. So while the Great Lakes can produce very large waves perfect for surfing, keep in mind you may find those perfect waves in the harsh cold of winter. So bring a good wetsuit, board, and courage to tackle these Great Lakes waves! That’s this episodes fun fuel, now let’s join in with Romy and her guest. Surfing on the Great Lakes – love it. Thanks, Natalie! Okay, let’s drop in on my conversation with Andres and learn more about PalmEraMia. Romy: Okay. Well, welcome to the Bonfires Social Enterprise. Andres: Thank you. I appreciate it. Happy to be here. Romy: I know. We've been trying to connect for a little bit. I'm really glad to have you on the show as our guest today. Let's tell all of our listeners what Palm ... and am I saying it right? Palm Era Mia? Andres: That is correct. Some- Romy: Palm Era Mia. Andres: ... people say- Romy: Yeah. Andres: ... yes. Some people say Palm Era M-I-A because it represents Miami. Romy: Oh, Okay. Andres: Yes. Yeah, so let me tell you a little bit about it. We first started the company back in August of 2015. It was started by three family members. It's two cousins and I. We started it up just because we had a passion for fashion. We wanted to just make sure we did something about it. We had a passion for doing something different. We said, "Hey, let's give it a shot." At the time we were all looking to do something that mattered. It became more of an idea that we said, "Hey, let's put it out there. Let's see what it looks like." It was more of my cousins that started on the fashion end. I'm more of a business-oriented person. When they presented me the idea of what exactly they wanted to do, I saw that it was something that was a potential opportunity to do something that was worth it. We started off by creating some shirts and hats. We started off by getting some guidance from people that knew about the world of fashion already. We were fortunate enough to find some people that guided us along the path a little bit. Then we decided that we not only wanted to do something related to fashion, but we also wanted to do something that mattered, that took care of a problem in the world. We wanted to help out. We decided to start looking for something that mattered. We found that there was a great need for water around the world. We had some idea that there was some countries in Africa and certain things like you get to see on TV where there's places where there's drought, and there's people that suffer from water scarcity, but then we realized the problem was bigger than we thought. There's close to a billion people around the world on an everyday basis that don't have access to clean water. We said that could be a great cause because we can live without food for a while. We can live without shelter for a bit, as well, but if you don't have water within a week your body starts having big issues. We decided to take care of that immediate need and see what we could do. Now what we do is that we take 10% of profits and we donate it to those who don't have access to clean water around the world. Romy: Wow, gosh. When you brought up the social side of it, was your team in agreement with becoming basically a social enterprise? Andres: Yes, so we actually, as I mentioned, were family members. We were all raised to always be aware of those who don't have as much as you do, even if what you have isn't much, to be able to help out a little bit. Just to give out a lending hand and we thought, "Hey, maybe at some point when the brand does well, we should think of helping other people out." But then someone brought up, "Hey, but why don't we start helping since the beginning? We just make it part of who the brand is and help people identify to it." When we thought about it more we said, "Hey, that would be a great idea because what that'll do is, that'll bring additional value. When people buy something from the brand, they'll wear it with pride." That's where that came about. Since we thought about it that way, it was a unanimous decision across the board that we just wanted for it to be a portion of profits. Romy: How do you- Andres: It was very cool. Romy: Oh, I'm sorry. How do you find your customers, both new and repeating, react to that? Do you ever get any feedback from that? Andres: Yeah, so we- Romy: From social about you? Andres: ... yeah, we actually get a lot of people come on the site, and they like the brand. But we've found that what we've done not only helps people out and it's self-satisfying, but at the same time, like I was telling you, it does add that additional value to the people who are looking for something that's worth it, because they feel like they're not just buying a piece of clothing, they're wearing something that represents something good. They feel that they can ... We've had people that tell us, "Hey, look. I like your shirts and I like shirts from somewhere else, but I really appreciate that you guys are doing something for the world, so I went ahead and got something from your site." You get people giving us feedback all the time. We tend to post videos on what we've done for the cause. People have great reactions to it. They're very excited about what we're going to do next. Romy: Wow. While we're still on this social mission side of your organization having to deal with water, how did you go about selecting some of the organizations that you partner with for the water portion? Andres: Right. So, I as a ... My career is as an accountant. My mind tends to be very logical, very within-the-box, as compared to my cousins, which are more on the creative side. We actually kind of make a pretty good team because we offer kind of both sides of the spectrum, my side being more logical and seeing it from what-fits-in-the-box kind of point of view. We decided to look for someone that could show that whatever was donated was actually being used for the cause itself, that it wasn't being used for something different because as many people see it when it comes to charity, unfortunately, there's people that mishandle whatever funds they receive. We wanted to make sure that it went to somewhere where these funds were actually being used properly. At first, we started donating directly to Charity: Water, which is an organization based out of New York. They're very clear about where their funds go. They use it to directly build the wells for basically areas or ... what do you call it ... regions and little towns where they don't have access to clean water. We started donating directly to them, but as part of what we wanted to do, we wanted to get more directly involved. We didn't want to just donate the money. We wanted to be a part of what was going on, go to communities and directly make contact with these people so we can understand what needs they truly have. At first, we donated to Charity: Water just because we didn't have the resources to be able to visit these communities. We did that for the first year and a half. Actually this past year, we transitioned from donating to Charity: Water to actually going to a community that needed access to water through an organization that we had met. This organization ... that this gentleman was raising funds for his organization through a 5K. We wanted to participate, so we went to the 5K to help him raise some funds for his cause. We had a direct conversation with him. He told us what he was doing. We thought it was a great idea because we are from Colombia in South America and so was he. He was directly trying to help out some communities in Colombia. We thought, "Hey, that's a territory that we actually see that needs a lot of help, so why don't we give this a shot?" We had a conversation with him to see if we could visit the community itself. He was actually looking for volunteers to go help out. We transitioned from donating to Charity: Water to actually going to the community this past November. It was actually very representative because we were able to go during Thanksgiving. It was a great time, of in a way of giving thanks for all the people that had helped out throughout the year and purchased anything from the brand, to be able to bring all those funds we had gathered to be able to help out a community in need. It was actually really nice. Romy: Wow. I love that organic and authentic part of this story that you're from Colombia, and you ended up reconnecting right back there. It's a nicer, more natural fit. I think sometimes we ... those of us in social enterprise and impact investing ... sometimes we can get trying too hard to do the right thing, and there is something in our own history, or our own backyard, or something nearer to us that is actually a better, easier fit. That's interesting. Andres: Right. It was definitely very nice. We were [inaudible 00:11:51] being from Colombia, still having family members there, and still being very connected to the country. Even though we had heard there's areas in the northern part of Colombia that ... they're desert regions ... that we knew maybe didn't have as much access to water, but they've always been there all their life, but unfortunately the past few years they've had years of drought. There's actually areas where there's ... One of the areas that we visited, there was three years without rain. From the news and what they tell us in that area, there was a portion in that area where we visited, over that span of three years, around 15,000 children died. It's something that is a very serious problem, even in a country might have the resources to help, but they're just, unfortunately, they're not getting to the right area, so, yeah. Romy: That statistic is unnerving. Yeah. Andres: Yeah. It's tough news. We decided. We're like, "Hey, we have to try and do something. These are our people. We've got to try to do a little bit at least." Romy: Oh, yeah. Well, that's powerful. That really anchors a "why" in your mission there. Boy, I could go deep-diving into that one, but let me make sure we talk about your great product line. You have both men's, women's, and accessories. Let's kind of jump over to what I call the bonfire or the heat engine that makes this all work, the business side of it. Let's talk about your product line. Andres: So as we started on the brand, we slowly started making our name for ourselves. We've become known as the streetwear brand with a charitable mindset. We started off just with t-shirts and hats. Then we slowly started exploring other areas. We started coming out with some sweatshirts and long-sleeved shirts, and we've gotten to the point where we have some great products. Now we have jackets. We have some hoodies, some bracelets. We've made accessories, fanny packs, shoulder bags. We have plenty of nice things. We've always focused on creating great quality. As we do that, we've also slowly started venturing into new materials. One of our great products right is, for example, a gentleman's jacket that's made out of neoprene, or other people know it as scuba material, which is what scuba divers use for whenever they're diving in colder temperatures. Romy: Interesting. Andres: Yeah, so the jacket is a great feel. It's very smooth. It's great for weather. It's a little bit of whether you're in an area like us down here in south Florida where we only get a little bit of winter, just on the occasional night that drops into the 60s, 70s, or also I was recently out in Colorado in an area where it was around 30 degrees. It felt great, as well, because what that material does is that it doesn't allow the outside temperature to affect, I guess, how you feel. It just kind of keeps that out. It's like an insulator, which is very good. It's also great for traveling because it doesn't wrinkle up. Romy: Wow, nice. Nice. Yeah, so in the website right now. I'm going to give them the website a couple of times. It's palmeramia.com. Anyone who's interested in listening to the podcast right now can jump on and look what Andres is saying. Beautiful, beautiful clothing there. Andres: Yeah. And then also, you can find us on all our social media websites. It's also PalmEraMia, which is P-A-L-M-E-R-A-M-I-A. We're constantly updating you on what we're doing, and what we have coming up new collection lines. We're trying to come out with a new collection every three months or so for every season. We have some exciting things coming up for this spring, a little more formal attire. And then also for the summer, we have something that's going to be really exciting. It's going to be the big collection for the year, so look out for that. Romy: That's great. I'm sorry I took you off your track there with the website, but let's keep going. There's women's clothing, too? Andres: Yes, so actually now in the summer, we came out with the first women's collection. We offered some great ... we're starting to venture deep into a more cut-and-sew world, which is more specific into what we wanted to do, diving deeper into different materials, as I was mentioning. We also have a ladies' jacket that's very fashionable. It's great for a casual night out or a nice dinner, as well. Everything is based around comfort and quality. I'm sure you'll be able to find something there. We have some hats for ladies, some joggers that are great for a nice workout. We have a lot of different things. Romy: How did you begin studying price points? Andres: We actually have a few brands that we've looked at as we've started growing, just because we wanted to learn from those who have done it already. Not only that, but just decide what our area of competition is as we're venturing into this world, and just looking around to see what's out there, and just learning from the business, like I said, learning from founders of companies that have already done it. We try to learn the best from each one. Not only that, but listen to what they've done already, and learn from their mistakes to try to avoid it, and to try to take the best path. As we've gone on looking to the brands and see who has similar items, we decided to set a price point somewhere between. But even though there's always that temptation of pricing your products a bit higher because the pricier they are, or the more expensive they are, not only the more profit we get but the more we can help out. But we also wanted to model the brand after something that was affordable for everyone because growing up we always some brands that we looked up to, that we really liked, but unfortunately, at times they were too expensive for us to be able to get anything, just because maybe we weren't making our money, and we had to ask our parents for it, or even when we did start making money, it was something that just wasn't financially available for us. What we decided to do was to set a price point that was affordable for everyone while we could still grab a little bit to be able to help the cause side of it, and be able to take out enough to be able to keep the company growing, as well. It's just a constant juggling of being able to get the brand to the correct price point so that the customers are satisfied, and it still seems very attractive to them, while still having our goals in mind, if that makes any sense. Romy: Yeah, it's hard. Retail is tricky sometimes in fashion, but it's great where you guys are priced. It's inviting. You don't want to be ... especially when you have a cause ... you've got to mark it up enough to continue with your cause, and have the math work for your business so you can keep your doors open. But that's great, you guys are a beautiful shop. We're excited to see what happens here in the future. What's your growth plans? Let's kind of dream big with what you know at this moment, your truth is a moment. Andres: We're actually very happy about how far the brand has come...…
Kathleen Kelly Janus Back for another episode of the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. Kathleen Kelly Janus is our guest discussing her new book, Social Startup Success, How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up and Make a Difference. Kathleen is an award-winning social entrepreneur, lawyer, and lecturer at Stanford University, where she teaches social entrepreneurship. And, as usual, we have a great Detroit artist playing a full song at the end of the episode so stay tuned. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Hello there, this is Romy back for another episode on the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. We have author, Kathleen Kelly Janus, as our guest discussing her new book, Social Startup Success, How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up and Make a Difference. Kathleen is an award-winning social entrepreneur, lawyer, and lecturer at Stanford University, where she teaches social entrepreneurship. And, as usual, we have a great Detroit artist playing a full song at the end of the episode so stay tuned. Before we get rolling down the lane with good advice from Kathleen, let’s see what Natalie has come up with for our Fun Fuel for this episode. I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you this episode’s Fun Fuel. Since this episode talks about Non-profits not operating on survival mode, I started thinking about what survival mode really means and I my mind drifted to cool animal survival instincts. Survival instincts are inherent to all creatures great and small. I often wonder how animals survive natural disasters such as wildfires and tornados. I think of the birds being whipped around by such high winds and wonder if they get swooped up in the turbulence or soar higher. According to TuftsNow.com, birds can ride out intense storms by taking advantage of microhabitats. Gale force winds can knock even the sturdiest of tv weatherman off their gait, but birds can seek shelter on the lee side of trees or deep inside thick hedges. The decrease in wind speed in these microhabitats can be huge, and as long as they stay put, they are not actually buffeted much by the wind. Now they do need to find food to last out the storms. There are some reports of birds increasing foraging activity as a storm approaches, which indicate some birds can detect subtle changes in air pressure, which can indicate an approaching storm. When this happens, they immediately try to get as much food as possible. The more fat a bird has, the better chance it has of surviving and riding out a long-standing storm. So let’s join up with Romy and today’s guest to learn more about nonprofits not operating on survival mode. Love it, love it, love it. Thanks, Natalie! Alrighty, I had the opportunity to talk with Kathleen while she was in San Francisco preparing for her book launch. I mentioned earlier that Kathleen is a lecturer at Stanford, but she is also a co-founder of Spark among other human rights organizations. She informally advises a variety of non-profits and social entrepreneurs in San Francisco and more globally. Let’s drop in on our conversation and learn more about Kathleen and her great new book. Romy: What prompted you to start to write a book on how to scale? Kathleen: Well, this is a really critical question, as you know, Romy, and I think that it can be a controversial word, like a four-letter word, in the nonprofit sector and the for-profit sector because I think a lot of people would say that scale isn't necessarily a good thing for a number of reasons. Maybe we don't want big organizations. Maybe we want a lot of organizations working together. Maybe we want more Mom and Pop organizations that communities know best how to solve the problems of individual communities and scaling aren't necessarily going to be effective. Something that works in San Francisco isn't necessarily going to work in the middle of Iowa. All of that true, and, also, we do have so many organizations that have really, really great ideas to scale and to grow, to expand their impact, and so the problem is that of the 300,000 nonprofits in the United States, 2/3 of them are $500,000 and below in revenue, constantly struggling to make the next payroll, when what they really should be focused on is making impact. I wrote this book because I was really curious, who are the organizations that are getting over this revenue hump? What are the ones that are getting to, say, around two million dollars, which I define in the book as getting to a level of sustainability, where you're not constantly teetering on the brinks of collapse as an organization? I got to interview over 100 of the top performing nonprofits in the United States in order to try and get to the bottom of that question. Those are the findings that I feature in my new book Social Startup Success. Romy: Wow. Well, I'm glad you just hit that head on because I'm delighted with the idea of scale, just for all the reasons you said, and there's just efficiency as partnerships can happen in the ecosystem when you've got successful organizations instead of those that are, I think you said in your introduction, spending more energy trying to just stay alive than delivering their social mission. I think we bump into them here in the Midwest in the Detroit area left and right and the donor fatigue and the staff fatigue is so high, they are about to collapse. I was delighted when I saw the word scale because I don't know, I'm sort of a practical, in-the-weeds gal at the street level, and we see the reality of what's going on. Kathleen: Absolutely. A scale doesn't have to mean that you're a 50-million-dollar organization in the nonprofit sector. It's interesting. Kathleen: In fact, only 140 nonprofits that were started since 1970 have actually sailed past 50 million dollars, and those are the big organizations that we think of, like Teach for America, and those organizations are doing important work, but the reality is that the vast majority of organizations will never get to that level of scale, so when we talk about scale, I'm not talking about scaling past millions and millions of dollars of revenue. I'm really talking about how do we get organizations to a level of sustainability. Romy: Keeping the doors open. The first rule of sustainability. Kathleen: Exactly. Romy: First rule. Kathleen: That's basic. Romy: Let's step back to our listeners and talk about your role right now with Stanford and your history with Spark. Many of our listeners may not be familiar with that. Would you mind taking us on a little tour of your work life and your history there? Kathleen: Absolutely. Well, I think, like most people, I am an accidental social entrepreneur. I didn't intend to go out and start a nonprofit. I always felt passionate about giving back to causes that I cared about, so when I started working as a corporate lawyer in San Francisco, I wanted to get involved in nonprofits and didn't find one that was really engaging and harnessing the spirit of young people, and so we started Spark as a way to engage young professionals, millennials, in new forms of philanthropy to support gender equality issues, so at that point, I was spending my days billing corporate legal hours and spending my nights making name tags and guest lists and sending out grant reports and working on building this nonprofit, Spark. That was really, for me, the first opportunity where I felt like I could be an activist and claim that and be a leader in the social justice movement even though I was a young professional in the corporate sector, too, and I think that's one of the things that's so exciting about being alive today is that our work, giving back, doesn't have to be relegated to after five when we leave the office, that there is so much more opportunity to be involved in social causes, whether you're working at Goldman Sachs or in a law firm or for a nonprofit or a social enterprise. I started teaching at Stanford as a way to evangelize that message. I quit my job as a corporate lawyer and I started working in human rights work and social entrepreneurship. In my class, I often get students who ask me, "Should I go work for a nonprofit, or should I go make some money and then give back later?" It turns out that it doesn't have to be an either/or thing, that you can give back no matter whether you're 25 years old or you're a 65-year-old millionaire, that there are opportunities to give every space in between. That's one of the issues that I've become most passionate about is I've written Social Startup Success just thinking about how can we all have tools to be able to be more effective with the resources that we're spending on social causes so that we can be more efficient at solving these really pressing social problems, like global poverty and climate change. The clock is ticking on these issues, and we need to be effective and efficient if we want to make a dent. Romy: I love this idea that you're talking about here, that the book has launched from this student question. We get that a lot. We have students from around the globe reaching out to us asking those same questions because we're in this space here. I often get the sub or the follow-up question of, "Well, what if I wanna work for this company, but they don't have these types of programs? How am I gonna feel?" My opportunity is to say, it's always, "Well, here's your opportunity to start something and put something in place that will be a legacy for those that follow behind you. It's not always a what can you do for me and is your company gonna fit my giving pattern. It's an opportunity for you to create a way to give that's unique to you because there's probably someone else that will follow you that will enjoy your-" Romy: ... There's probably someone else that will follow you, that will enjoy your path making if you will. Kathleen: Yes, I love that Romy. You know, companies have no choice but to institute social cause programs into their work. The evidence shows that 85% of millennials specifically accept a job at a company because of their work in X cause. This is really important data when you're looking at some of the turnover at major tech companies for example. The average tenure is a year and a half. Romy: Ooh. Kathleen: And this is really, really expensive for companies, to lose employees. So if you can generate loyalty by starting social cause programs, opportunities to volunteer, to give a certain number of your hours to non-profit work, to do donation drives. Whatever your program might be, you're ultimately going to have a happier workforce, and a much more effective company too. Romy: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Before we stray off down another path, I want to get back to your great book here. As we mentioned I'm most of the way through it, and thanks for sharing it with me ahead of time. I just love so many of the basic functional things you talk about in the book, and you talk about you have this feeling in your book, in your writing of like, "It's okay to fail a little bit. It's okay to test. It's okay to experiment." Let's talk a little bit about that, related to some of your findings when you were out talking to all these non-profits that have done things well. Kathleen: Well, testing is critical, and something that non-profits and for-profits can all learn from. I think that we have, we now live in an age where human-centered design has become more common in the workplace, this is just this idea of using customer-facing mechanisms to test out prototypes in sort of low-cost ways, that you can then perfect before you scale. One of the most interesting findings from all of my interviews is that non-profits are doing this kind of testing too in small ways. For non-profits, it's really critical, particularly in the early stages of development because they don't necessarily have a lot of resources. Sadly there's not a lot of seed funding for social enterprises. This testing process becomes a way to both try and figure out what kind of program is going to work, to develop a really close relationship with your end users, your customers, your beneficiaries. And also, to develop the data so that when you go out and raise money for your cause, you can say, "Look, this is working and I have some impact to show for it." For example, ... And it doesn't have to be really expensive, or fancy. An example that I talk about is Beth Schmidt, who founded Wishbone, was a teacher in a low-income school and realized that her students weren't getting the same kind of opportunities that so many of their more privileged counterparts were getting to follow their dreams during the summer. She assigned them an essay to talk about their passions, she went to a photocopy machine, she photocopied some of the top papers in the class, and she sent them off to her families and friends. She thought, "What if I could get people to pay for low-income students to follow their dreams?" Her family and friends came back with thousands of dollars to fund these kids for art camp, and film fellowships during the summer. Then she was able to go back to those donors and tell them about the stories of these kids, and the impact that these summer experiences had, had on their lives. It was then that she realized, "Okay look, I have this idea. This is really, it's really impactful for the donors, it's really impactful for the students for all of these reasons," and she was able to go out and raise a whole bunch of money because she had done this low-cost prototype in the start. This is an example of what that kind of testing process might look like for an organization. That again, it doesn't have to be expensive, and it's critical because it develops this sense of being okay with understanding when things fail. But that's another part of the testing process that we are not so comfortable within the non-profit sector because we have to go out and raise money. There's not a lot of incentive to talk about where we're failing, and yet no one's going to be effective in the long run if they're not able to acknowledge not only what's working, but what's not working. Romy: Right. No one's going to have the answers right out of the gate. Kathleen: No, no. And what's interesting is that this testing process becomes embedded within the DNA of the organization as they grow. It enables them to constantly be improving as they grow and to scale. Romy: You know, you touched on something that is one of my, I'll call it nerve points. I'll probably have to come up with a better word for that. But, when ... Which I love you hit on this. There's that concept testing that's just talking about the theory of what you want to do, and then there's that testing where you're really trying something and asking for funding for it. Kathleen: Yes. Romy: There's something about putting money down on it, or some say, "Skin of the game," or I guess legal terms, you're putting consideration down on the deal, meaning that you're really into it. We do have some of the folks that come to us saying, "Well I've been testing this," and our auto response is, "How have you been testing this? Have customers or donors been giving you money or consideration for it, or are you talking to them about it? Cause those are two different results." Did you find any of that in your studies? Kathleen: Well absolutely. I mean, it has to be about having that really close relationship, both before and after the consideration happens, right? Romy: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kathleen: So it's not only about testing with people, but it's involving them in every step of the process. Are you engaging them to develop the idea in the first place? And this is where a lot of organizations go wrong, because frankly a lot of social enterprises are coming out of big university pitch competitions, where students are encouraged to come up with a great idea for an organization, when they don't necessarily have connections or lived experience with the issue that they're trying to solve. Not everybody is going to have list experience, and that's fine. If you haven't been homeless, it doesn't mean that you aren't equipped to try and solve the problem of homelessness. But, you better have some interaction with homeless people. Romy: Right? Kathleen: You're building a program to solve their problem. Romy: Right. Kathleen: That's not only true when you're providing services, but it's true even in the development process, even in those early stages of getting the program up and running. Romy: Yes, yes. And I feel those same principles apply to either customer acquisition, or donor acquisition, or both. There's still a similar process. Kathleen: Absolutely, absolutely. And being honest, and creating those honest relationships. So getting back to fundraising, I mean some of the best funders that I talk to will ask an organization that comes in the door, "What have you failed at? What's not working?" As a proxy for understanding whether they are really being honest with themselves, and testing in a way that is meaningful. Romy: Wow, gosh. That's interesting. I noticed this beautiful encouragement test and experiment in your book. Moving to some of the things that, that data produces, it produces both, of course, you mention data that you can share, and the storytelling. How do you find Kathleen, that the data helps give them accountability or credibility, integrity? Will you talk about how that helps an organization? Kathleen Janus: How we're collecting data to test whether what we were doing is actually having an impact. So, interestingly, in the survey that I conducted of 250 social entrepreneurs around the country, the organizations that tended to scale more quickly said that they began measuring their impact from the start. This is critical, whether you're a...…
Our Common Future Conference – Oct. 27, 2017 Part Two Our Common Future conference was held in Detroit, Michigan at the end of October 2017. We have a Part One and a Part Two to give you the top ten. We will interview several guest speakers that help shape our community. They give us some insight into the work that they do to empower entrepreneurship and Impact Investing. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Welcome Back to the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. On this episode, we continue with part two of the Our Common Futures conference. On this episode, Jennifer and Natalie, catch up with conference attendees Melanie Audette with the Mission Investors Exchange, Brenda Hunt with the Battle Creek Community Foundation, Amy Peterson of Rebel Nell, David Contorer with Hebrew Free Loans, and Jason Paulateer with PNC Bank and Foundation. To kick of Part Two, Jennifer sits down with Melanie Audette of the Mission Investors Exchange….. Jennifer: What I'd like to start off today, during our talk is to have you tell me a little bit about yourself and your organization and then we'll go from there. Melanie: Well, I'm the Senior Vice President at Mission Investor's Exchange. I am based in Seattle and Mission Investor's Exchange is a 12 year old organization with offices in New York and San Francisco and then we have some staff in Seattle, but we're a very small but mighty team that has a membership consisting of mainly foundations of all types and sizes across the US who are either building or expanding an impact investing program. And we started out as the PRI Makers Network 12 years ago, when foundations were really focused mainly on doing program-related investments, and about five years ago we merged with The More Formation Campaign, which was a campaign to encourage foundations to devote two percent of their endowments to invest for a mission. Jennifer: I love that. So here at the conference so far, what are your impressions then of how it works and how it applies to your mission through Mission Investor's Exchange? Melanie: Well the independent sector conference as well as the Council of Michigan Foundation's Conference, where we are today, represents two things for me specifically. First, the independent sector has a very much more broad attendance and participation than a lot of the conferences that we attend and that includes the foundations who are at the heart of our network, but also those who play a very important role in the ecosystem around impact investing. And that includes non-profit organizations who oftentimes have social entrepreneurial goals and projects and so, therefore can be investees of impact investment's five foundations as well as those who support them in the field, so investment advisors, philanthropic advisors, attorneys, and accountants. All of those participants really play an incredibly important part helping foundations to identify who investees can be and to be able to do the work efficiently and within the law and correctly and responsibly. The second part is the Council of Michigan Foundations, Mission Investor's Exchange has had a five-year partnership with CMF, and we've worked together over the years to provide education first for those foundations who are interested in learning about impact investing. Through this partnership, Michigan has become the model, really for the whole country informing what's now an infrastructure within that association to help foundations not only to learn about impact investing, but to actually build and identify investment opportunities, create a pipeline for investments, support them in that work and now this year, they've hired an Executive in Residence at CMF to help on a local and regional level, their membership to do this. Jennifer: So understanding that you're drawing from a large group with a lot of people here from a lot of different areas all across the globe, what do you feel has been the highlight of the conference so far for you? Melanie: Well, one of the highlights for me, because I was a speaker was seeing a room that was absolutely packed full of people who are interested in mission investing or impact investing and we've found that recently, that there is an incredible amount of interest, but what's most gratifying is to see the participants in the audience really respond to the examples of this work taking place in real life and we had panelists in our break out session, who helped people to understand, that even as a small foundation you can be responsive to the community, through different types of financial tools like alone, that really is a more appropriate use of capital for a particular situation, or an investment in a four concept business that has a mission, in this case it was Green Infrastructure that really fits our philanthropic mission as well, but it's a four profit investment that is also a real possibility for foundations to aline more of their capital with their mission. Second, and this was really personally gratifying as well, I got to see Mo Rocca, and Mo Rocca is one of my heroes. He was moderating a session yesterday, and he has a kids show on CBS on Saturday mornings that my husband and I watch and it's called Innovation Nation. Jennifer: Nice. Melanie: And he did an incredible job talking to Gary Wozniak, Amy Peterson, and Davita Davison yesterday on plenary stage. These three social entrepreneurs were so inspiring. Davita Davison actually brought tears to my eyes, talking about her work in the food space and one of the quotes I loved from Davina yesterday was, she was talking about the people that she's in a sense mentoring and she said "I encourage them to run for the United States of America, for the President of the United States of America". And to me, a statement like that means that with leadership like this in communities, she is helping people to understand that anything is possible and our session, you know Impact Investing, The Art of the Possible, was really personified on that plenary stage yesterday by those speakers. Jennifer: What are you gonna take back to Mission Investor's Exchange from this conference? And then, in turn, share with the world? What are your plans? Melanie: You know, it sounds funny but, at these conferences, there are oftentimes a lot of ... the sponsors are the ... Jennifer: The exhibitions? Melanie: The exhibitions. Jennifer: Yep. Melanie: So, a lot of times people just walk through the exhibitions, and you know that can be frustrating sometimes for the exhibitors, but I find that in talking with the exhibitors, I really learn a lot, but also find things to bring back and for this conference and this set of exhibitors, which is really excellent, I've found several things. One is the Fetzer Institute. The Fetzer Institute is an organization that is focused on, now in this environment, which is a little bit polarized, you know talking about spiritual healing. Jennifer: Yeah. Melanie: And this reconnected me with some work of Parker Palmer who is also another hero of mine and it reminded me that for our conference in May in Chicago next year, that some things to focus on include some of that racial and spiritual healing. Also, there was a group out of the booth in Chicago. There was an NBA program, a weekend program with full scholarships and for those in the non-profit sector who were thinking about learning more and engaging more in the impact investing space, that's an enormous opportunity to go from maybe having a social work background or a liberal arts background, which a lot of non-profit executives have, to having that opportunity that's funded by a foundation to have a full scholarship for a Saturday weekend program in Chicago. I thought that was amazing. And finally, the artwork. There's an artist that's collating the ideas, the inspiration from the community in order to create a community artwork here at the conference and I'm excited to see that come to fruition and also look at the opportunities for engaging with the arts community next year. So these are really practical things that I've brought back from the conference, but they're really valuable. It's a part of the value that I get from attending a conference here. Jennifer: And I'm in 100 percent agreement with you when you talk about art and what art can do and talking about being polarized in multiple different areas right now. Art can heal. Art can build bridges, and by being able to incorporate that into your conference next year, I know it's an amazing takeaway. I think that it's gonna be very impactful for the attendees and it will help heal and build those bridges. That's great. Thanks, Jennifer and Melanie, for your parting thoughts on how very important community art can be along with Melanie’s note on the great exhibitors. Next up, Natalie catches up with Brenda Hunt, CEO of the Battle Creek Community Foundation. We jump into the conversation just as Brenda begins to discuss how much all of the different sectors of funders intersect, especially at this conference. Brenda Hunt: Yeah, I think the deeper we get in, the more we all crisscross and the more we're all alike. We're more alike than different, even in the sectors. We should borrow, and pick and choose from each other. And we should use for profits when it makes most sense, and create for profits when it makes most sense for the situation and use nonprofits more sparingly would be more thought pattern. Natalie: You make a really good point about identifying the landscape with everybody working together in this space. Can you talk a little bit about how identifying the landscape is really important when it comes to impact investing? Brenda Hunt: Absolutely. We kind of rushed in and wanted to do something. I think a lot of people are rushing in trying to figure out what it is they should do after they decide they wanna do something. And we've done a few things now and more to come. But before I can say to the board, this is where we need to be in what we all call this space, this space of impact investing or however anybody chooses to frame it up, I think you need to learn about what else is taking place in our community in what I call a community capital stack. I believe those are your terms. Natalie: Everyone's got their own terms, don't you think? They all mean the same. Essentially identify who the players are, who's got the money, and who needs to deploy it and get off the couch, right? Brenda Hunt: Yeah. Exactly. One of the pieces as we get into looking at what type of funding, what type of investment, what type of loans, what type of investors you have in a community, that are investing in your community, then perhaps it becomes more clear of what our role could or should be. And in that time and in that span as you're probably doing some things, you're also a catalyst. So when we look at our staff, we can identify what we thought we're probably already missing, and when we have local people of investor quality, they're not investing locally in our community from a business sense of the word. Natalie: Right. It's that basis start of a philanthropic heart, but you have that investor mentality where this space of impact investing lives in that you are talking about. For our listeners out there, Brenda and her whole entire taskforce in my opinion, in our whole company's opinion, are just courageous thought leaders on all of this. They are out there, not only discussing about what things are going on, but really they're the ones that are actually taking action and really making things happen. So I am excited for you, Brenda, and your task force. You're the doers. You're the doers. Brenda Hunt: Thanks. I checked in with the executive committee, and they agree also. I think one of the most exciting pieces that we are waiting to see how it turns out right now is a new manufacturing startup, a food business, on the north end of our community. It's in a place that was my grocery store when I first moved to town. It's been gone for a long time. We took a look at what area we might wanna do impact investing there, and then had you folks do the research on that, and then we said, "Not now," and delivered some very constructive messages in a whole bunch of ways. Then came the calls from out of town from some other folks that had looked at investing, and there's some funds, and looked at putting some money in there. I look very forward to our future discussions of how those funds, our local investment, and some private investors might take this to the next phase. What's most important is that the leverage in this situation has brought some people in the food industry business to the table, which we're not in the food industry business. But we are the eyes and ears of the community. So there's some potential collaborations here. So, we'll just see how that turns out. Natalie: Right. I think it's very, very exciting. Like I said, you have taken the forefront lead, the pioneering piece of it. I think that's just incredible. So let's get back to the conference. What has been a highlight for you attending this? Has anything really spoken to you that you're really excited to share? Brenda Hunt: The change that's taking place you know? We have folks at this conference who are also what we would used to call them, grant seekers. Now, they're investees. They're entities, nonprofit and for-profit that we would invest in. That opens up the whole toolkit to not just grants and loans, but other types of investments that you can do through an intermediary or directly. So you can see that and feel that across here. These conferences used to be called Grant Makers and Grant Seekers, and that was never a term that necessarily resonated with me previously. But you can feel the turn. I think the fact that the impact investing sessions are packed, and there's lines out the doors, that and the whole area around healing of racism are the two pieces that I have seen from this conference that really resonate where the interests are a bit overwhelming with people wanting to do something right and good. Brenda Hunt: One is when those two items about this conference come together, then I think it's very important that we make sure that our intentions of reaching the populations that need to be reached, that need to be brought along, that need to have jobs and equality of life, and the creation of wealth, not wealthy, wealth, for equality of life that we all think that each citizen has the opportunity for and should have, that we make sure we're doing that and that we don't miss that in our work as we go forward. So, I'm still employed. I'm on my way back there so stay tuned. Battle Creek Community Foundation, best way probably is Brenda@bccfoundation.org. I will always pick up the phone, 269-962-2181. And I'm always willing to talk, because this is such an emerging area, and I don't have the answers. I've had a lot of things that we've tried. I'm always glad to share what we've tried and what we're doing. Natalie: Well, that's wonderful. And as you know, pioneering is not comfortable. Brenda Hunt: No, but it sure is fun. Natalie: Absolutely. Brenda Hunt: If we didn't have pioneering, we'd have nothing. Natalie: Right. Brenda Hunt: In our country, and in our history, and in our world, and that's I feel the field is right now, too. Natalie: Right. Well, listeners, it's just be an absolute privilege to be here with Brenda, and I'm so excited that Brenda you've taken the time to share this with us. So thank you so much. Brenda Hunt: And thank you for how you shape this work and support us. We appreciate it. Natalie: All right. Thank you. There is that ‘pioneering’ discussion. It seems to me that the pioneering work of many in the field is rising the tide for all of us. Really great. Natalie and I had a good laugh one day when one of us blurted out ‘pioneering is not comfortable,’ and it stuck, we laughed both at the simplicity and revelation of those few words all at once. But, I digress. Let’s jump back to Natalie as she sits down with Amy Peterson from Rebel Nell. Natalie: I am delighted to be here with our podcast regular, Amy Peterson, from Rebel Nell. She's been doing some speaking here. Hi to you, Amy. Amy Peterson: Hi, Natalie. I'm so excited to be here and always love the podcast that you guys are doing. Natalie: Super fun. Well, how has the conference been going for you this week? I know you've spoken quite a few times and today's the last day. How's it been going for you? Amy Peterson: This is actually a fascinating conference to be a part of, and I'm really honored to be here and to have the opportunity to speak and share our story and to be in a room full of foundations, to pick their brains and navigate these waters and understand what they're thinking about when they make investments I think has helped me understand how to maybe pitch my business better or to figure out who best to target when asking instead of spinning your wheels and wasting all this time. Really narrowing your focus and figuring out who is the best fit for you, and I think you'll have yourself a lot of time and energy when you do that. Natalie: That is true. That is one thing that's very unique about this conference where they've pooled together pretty much all the players, in a way, at this conference. It is neat to be in front of everyone and talking and learning about everything in terms of impact investing. Amy Peterson: Absolutely. The dialogue around impact investing is fascinating, too. What I was incredibly optimistic about is it seems like there's more and more foundations who want to do it and they just can't quite figure out how. But there's enough that are the pioneers in this space that are saying, "Hey, we'll teach you, or we'll find a way to do it." That was, as a social entrepreneur, really encouraging to hear. Natalie: Right. You're right, you've had experience with impact investing. How has that experience helped and shaped you so far? Amy Peterson: Yeah. I think we also at Rebel Nell are also early in this space of understanding what it is like to receive impact investing and what it takes to court investors. On more one of those points where you're in the midst of it, you think it's so challenging to do the due diligence and get your ducks in a row. You're like, "God, how many more numbers do they want from me?" In hindsight, that's so valuable as a business owner to understand why that's important. To have companies like Gingras Global who are there to really provide those supportive services and wraparound services to make sure that we are a tight, neat package when we are put in front of investors and knowing and hearing that here at the conference of how they so appreciate that just goes to show, again, how incredible you guys are in what you do. Natalie: Thank you. Amy Peterson: Yes, it's been an interesting ride to receive some impact investing, but all the grunt work behind it's been really valuable. Natalie: Well, yeah, I think that's true. There's a lot of grunt work. Amy Peterson: A lot of grunt work. A lot. Natalie: We're not...…
Our Common Future Conference – Oct. 27, 2017 Part One Our Common Future conference was held in Detroit, Michigan at the end of October 2017. We have a Part One and a Part Two to give you the top ten. We will interview several guest speakers that help shape our community. They give us some insight into the work that they do to empower entrepreneurship and Impact Investing. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Welcome to the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This is Romy, and we have something very special for you on this episode. Our Bonfires team was invited to podcast from the Our Common Futures conference which was held in Detroit at the end of October 2017. I was not able to attend but two of our very experienced colleagues, Jennifer Davis-Papa and Natalie Hazen, caught up with some very high profile attendees and speakers at the conference. They came back with so many great discussions that we had to do a Part 1 and a Part 2 to give you the top ten. So, on Part 1, you will hear interviews with Dan Cardinali, President, and CEO of Independent Sector, Joyce Cade-Hitchye from the organization, Of Impact, Angela Barbash from the financial firm, Revalue Aaron Seybert of Kresge, and Angela Rogensues of the non-profit, Playworks. Let’s get started with Dan Cardinelli of Independent Sector. He begins by answering Natalie with some organization history. Dan Cardinali: Well, first of all, Independent Sector is a 38-year-old organization that is founded with two very simple principles; that our goal is to bring the sector, the whole sector together. Grant seeking, foundations, corporate foundations, and ... Excuse me. Can I start that again? Natalie: Mm-hmm. Dan Cardinali: Independent Sector was founded 38 years ago with two very simple purposes; to bring the sector together, sector spanning, so we have grant seeking organizations, nonprofits, and grant-making organizations like philanthropy and corporate foundations. The goal of this gathering is for the community to come together in a non-transactional way. Not to cut deals, but to collectively take stock in what's going well and what's not, and how we as a sector can come together, catalyze activity, and be part of accelerating social change. That's what Independent Sector does. And then we learn from that conversation, and we translate that into our public policy work. Primarily in Washington, but increasingly we partner with state organizations to make sure we're aligned with the policies that are really going to strengthen the sector. Every year we gather, historically every year we gather the sector together in this vital meeting ground, this conference. We realize collaboration is the way of the future. Early on as were designing for this, we said, "Look, who are the strongest sector spanning organizations we can partner with." The Council of Michigan Foundations is one of the strongest state level, regional association working in philanthropy. The Michigan Nonprofit Association is a similar; it's one of the strongest nonprofit association. It made perfect sense to say, "Hey! Let's put our heads together, and let's design together." And that's what we did. It's been a phenomenal experience. Natalie: Wow. That's fantastic. I like how you're getting everybody together in the sandbox to play well together, in essence. Dan Cardinali: Right. Well, the goal I think is playing well together. I think also means struggling to do what we hope happens here. Which is to push each other. Each of us have a different purview. We look across the whole sector nationally. The Council of Michigan Foundations has their lens working with philanthropy here in Michigan. Although, they are also a national player. They've a really great purview, and similarly, the Michigan Nonprofit Association has their purview really on what's going on here in Michigan and understanding the national context. We all have strong opinions. We're all leaders in our own right. The work we did in terms of really finding the common ground among ourselves, I think then got reflected in the conference. We've been really pleased with the kind of seamlessness with which our teams have worked together, and the design of content. So the meaning that's coming out of this, the learning is actually synthetic for the whole sector. It's not anyone of those federally, or locally, or just philanthropy kind of getting the lion share of the learning. Dan Cardinali: The nice part is interesting. I think it's more of the respectful part. When you really listen to the other and realize they're coming at this one from a place of deep goodwill and a deep level of experience. You're forced to listen pretty thoroughly. And then each of us, and I have to say our partners were phenomenal in allowing themselves to be stretched and stretching us. What we found is what we learned a fair amount here. I was just talking with our team that Independent Sector is in this mode right now being a startup in a legacy organization. We after doing a lot of thinking at the nation level, a lot of listening, looking out to the way the world was changing, realized that our responsibility was to kind of called the question for this sector. That we need to change, and we need to evolve and actually pretty quickly. Our work here in Michigan grounded us in the very practical realities of where the sector is at. We figured out together the pace with which that change needed to take place. It has been an invaluable contribution as we go to L.A. next year. We've rebranded kind of the work it will now be this wonderful gathering for the social sector called Upswell. You can go to the website, upswell.org. It is not the Independent Sector conference anymore. It is the sector's conference. Much like South by Southwest is for the tech industry. Upswell is going to the gathering for this sector. We learned that in a really important way here in Michigan. It was through that collaboration that helped us really say, "How do we develop a place where those who are in transition can find themselves comfortable and be stretched. Those who are on the front edge of innovation will also be excited and can push further. And those who are skeptical can put a toe in the water and find like-minded folks kind of asking questions and exploring." Natalie: Wow. That's fantastic. You're grabbing everybody from, no matter where they are in the spectrum really. Dan Cardinali: That's the goal, right? The sector is huge. People often forget that, right? There are 11 million workers, and then if you put in the number of volunteers in America, one in four Americans, one in four Americans are involved in civil society. And yet we don't have a sense of a collective identity. Part of Upswell's aspiration is, we know that social change is happening all over America and citizens, really just Americans. People who are here in this country who are just deeply passionate about being part of community, are doing great work all the time. We want to capture that energy and share it out. So the notion of Upswell is that we're deeply locally engaged, but nationally relevant. Anybody can find their place in that conversation. Natalie: Wow. That's fantastic. I like that, but now next year we're in L.A. Dan Cardinali: We're going to be in L.A. next year. We learned a lot here in Michigan. We sent a team here back in January to live here in Detroit for a month, and to go through a human-centered design program from a local organization here trained by Stanford, and to fan out into the community. That fundamentally changed how we thought about the conference. We're doing that on steroids in L.A. We've already identified a group of community base leaders who are actually here in Detroit who are learning about what's going well and what isn't. They will become a community of changemakers over the course of the year helping us plan. So place leaders are already learning from what kind of national discourse looks like. And then turning to their home community and saying, "Wow. We have a lot to learn, and we have a lot to teach. And let's make that happen next year." Natalie: Wow. I love the gathering of the information but yet not just sitting on it. You're actually moving it forward and taking some action on it. That to me is incredible. Dan Cardinali: That's great. I appreciate you saying that. We believe one of our roles is this notion of recalibrating the tension of how the sector learns. Historically over the last 20 years, a lot of the sector leaders, the big institution, elite coastal institutions, got to kind of say what the important issues were and set the agenda. We think actually communities in dialogue with those elite institutions will create a much clearer and acute understanding of what actually the core issues are. That we then collectively need to catalyze activity and drive change. Natalie: Right, right. There's always a, making an impact to everywhere that you can go right? Dan Cardinali: That's exactly. That is exactly right. Natalie: How do you feel that the conference is going so far, and what has been the highlight or inspiration to you? Dan Cardinali: Personally, I am kind of over the moon. We were quite nervous going into this last year at our conference. We had about 800 folks come. This year I think we've come close to breaking numbers for our conference. We're well over 1400. It's an example why collaboration is so important. The Council of Michigan Foundations and Michigan Nonprofit Association, not only brought their folks but their folks had a place here and contributed. The traditional folks that we brought were in dialogue with them in a much richer way. I'm very proud and very, very excited that that meaning-making has already begun to take place here. We learned a great deal about that. The collaboration and the quality of the content ... I was coming back from a dinner last night out in the community with about 30 people. We were at a local nonprofit talking about what is it going to take for our country to become stronger. I've met a diverse group of people. On the bus ride back, a colleague of mine, that I've known for many years said, "You know, I've come to this conference a lot. Most of the time it's been maybe, you know I knew most of what I was going to, and I'd get an occasionally good idea." She said, "I have been challenged and stretched in this conference." So I'm deeply proud that was a collective effort among the sector itself. Stretching itself to grow and learn. It feels to me that is ... If anything Independent Sector can do, we believe in catalyzing leaders into transformative work. It felt to me in that moment; she was saying, "I've feel like I could go back now ready to take on harder stuff." Natalie: It sounds like it was just a great moment where she was refreshed and renewed in all that she is learning and ready to, as you said, make it into action. Push it forward. Dan Cardinali: I think that's right. I love to notion of renewal. John Gardner, who founded Independent Sector, said we have to constantly be in renewal as individuals and as institutions. So absolutely I think the conference is the gathering of the tribe, the celebration, the eating and breaking bread together, and hanging out, and laughing. I think the other component of what she said is that I had the assumptions about how I think about creating change stretched and challenged. And now I don't feel like I am destabilized, but I do feel like I have to go back now and reexamine and bring in what I've learned in the context, and really see if I can push my work forward. To me, this notions of a safe nurturing place to grow is really a tender achievement. And again, that came through collective effort. We couldn't have done it on our own. Natalie: I think that's fantastic. You're creating this space for everyone to just really be thought, partners. Dan Cardinali: That's right. That's right. That's exactly. Natalie: I like that a lot. So in terms of your views for the future of impact investing. How to you see impact investing really tie into your mission, and where do you see impact investing in the local markets really heading? Dan Cardinali: That's a great question. So I think impact investing is ... What I'm excited about impact investing is that there is a period when it was treated as kind of the be-all and the end-all. It was going to solve this issue of scale. It was going to be market-driven solutions to drive effective practice out there. I actually still believe that's what it can hold. I think there is now a sober and clear-eyed understanding of the strategies that really, I think the work you all are doing is a good example of really the embeddedness it requires in community. The marrying of those with capital looking to use market-driven solutions to drive change. And the kind of ... prior to hopping on the podcast, you use the notion of training Olympic athletes. I think that has been a missing piece. That there is this incredible commitment to these change makers, who are so poised and so capable. And our assumption is that that passion is sufficient to driven them forward. And yet we know there are really technical supports that will unleash their capability and channel that good sentiment, those values in the market-driven solutions. So I'm very bullish. I want to call out something about impact investing that I think is going to be a limiting factor unless we partner with a set of institutions that can help, whether it's on the kind of B Corp or the pure social enterprise, or the nonprofit social enterprise. This notion of the tools required for ongoing quality improvement for outcomes. Not for profit, but for outcomes. Creating meaningful social change is actually very, very difficult. There is an emerging body of work. I have to call an example. Project Evident, which is a startup, is developing a set of strategies for cost-effective tools to help startups or second stage kind of organizations begin to put together what's called strategic evaluation plan. Part of that is understanding how to get the right sets of incomes, but the key to the strategic evaluation plan is understanding the marketplace for results. So that a social enterprise is aiming in a market-driven way. So that its results, when it produces good outcomes for kids and families or whatever it's trying to do. There is actually pickup and payoff at the end. I think sometimes there is a misalignment between what in fact will ... One, first of all, how do you drive effective outcomes for difficult, intractable problems? And then two, who or how are those going to be picked up and scaled? Natalie: Right. Now I think you've hit several amazing points. The marketplace, what we're seeing and noticing is that the marketplace when you are creating your business is sometimes not really thought of. Its, yes you want to go do a great thing, have some wonderful impact, but if that marketplace isn't there for your product to help generate your business, you have to go in and create that marketplace. Then that is something we're noticing has been missed as to your point. That you really have to think about that marketplace. Is it already there? Is it waiting for me? Or is it something that I have to go and pioneer on my own? Dan Cardinali: Yeah. It's an extraordinary important point. Something we're committed to at Independent Sector is working with ... we're working right now with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to look at what we can do as an organization to create a much more rational marketplace for results. So that social enterprises don't have to have dual challenge of both innovating breakthrough strategies to create social good and market, field building or the market making that then scales that work. It's too much at any one time. We think by virtual of our sector spanning world and public policy capabilities. We have a partnership with an organization results for America which is looking at the public policies that could be put in place that will incentivize government to really reward institutions, organizations for profit and nonprofit that are delivering really material value to society. Natalie: Excellent. Wow. Thank you so much for your time this morning. I got you up early. You were ready to rock and roll. Dan Cardinali: I'm ready to rock and roll. I had a lot of coffee this morning. I'm super excited to be here. Natalie: Well, thank you. So how do our listeners touch base with you at Independent Sector? Dan Cardinali: Sure. First of all, we would love for folks to engage with us. Your listeners are learning and seeing things that often we are not. So I would really invite them to engage with us. There are a couple ways they can do that. One, our website which is independent sector, and I still misspell Independent so don't fell bad, but it is one-word independentsector.org. And then on our website, there's lot of ways to engage. We publish blogs. We invite folks if they're interested in blogging, let us know. We loved to hear their thoughts. And then if you go to Upswell.org you can sign up. And we're going to use that platform as a way to engage with folks. And because Upswell is really about kind of the whole shoot and match. We would just invite folks, please sign up, and we will begin to reach out ... and we want their thoughts. Then maybe opportunities for them to curate ideas and present on a national stage. Natalie: Well, there you have it and to all of our listeners out in L.A., alright. Ball's in your court. Jump on board, right? Dan Cardinali: Yeah, we look forward to seeing you next year. November 14th through the 16th. Natalie: All right. Well Dan, thank you so much. I so appreciate it. Dan Cardinali: Really great. Thanks, Natalie and Dan! What a great way to kick off the conference and plant seeds for next year in LA. By the time we are done listening to these great guests, we will probably all be booking some tickets. Next up, Jennifer catches up with Joyce Cade-Hitchye with the organization, Of Impact. Jennifer had some specific questions for Joyce on the conference. Jennifer: Jade, I'd love to get your ideas and thoughts about the conference so far, and also a little bit then about how that ties into what you do every day. Joyce: Well, basically, I love this. We've been coming the last couple of years when the Michigan Nonprofit Association converges with the Council of Michigan Foundations. Actually, funny story; can I tell you? Jennifer: Absolutely. Joyce: Okay, couple of years ago, we attended and, I'm a talker, so I loved the tie that this gentleman was wearing. Right? It ended up to be the president of the Council of Michigan Foundations. He remembered our little encounter years later when we went to another event in April. He told me, "You're coming to the ..." before I was even on the ... what do you call it? His website. Their website. I was like, "Of course! I can't wait to come and enjoy this!" It's really a good ... yesterday we went to the Michigan Nonprofit Association luncheon. Lots of good information. Was sitting right across from,...…
Because of a Case Hear from Jamie and Sean Strasberger talking about their business, Because of a Case. Because of a Case is a mobile phone case design company contributing to our favorite special causes. And, of course, we have a great song at the end by a Detroit artist for your listening pleasure. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Hey Everyone, It’s Romy and I am back with great conversations on the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. Today we have Jamie and Sean Strasberger talking about their business, Because of a Case. And, of course, we have a great song at the end by a Detroit artist for your listening pleasure. Let’s kick it off here with a fun fuel from Natalie Hazen; she always comes up with the best fun fuels! Hello, I’m Natalie Hazen bringing you this episodes’ Fun Fuel. Mobile phones have become such a part of everyone’s daily life that if you can’t find your phone, that can be a giant disrupter to your day! Been there! Phones have become so mainstream and normal, that a recent post on Facebook about an anniversary reminded me how far we have come in our technology with phones. This post was celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the first ever text message. In 1992, 22 year old British software engineer, Neil Papworth, sent the first ever SMS from a computer to his colleague, Richard Jarvis at Vodafone. That very first text message sent on December 3rd ,1992 simply said, “Merry Christmas.” Perhaps you remember your first text message and who it was from such as those defining moments in history where you can state your exact location and what you were doing at that moment. That was honestly no me. But now who would of thought that 25 years later it is normal to communicate via text and also send streams of happy faces, smiling little piles of poo and all sorts of characters! So happy anniversary text message and hats off to wonderful innovators such as Neil Papworth. Now on to our episode. Well, who knew, texting has been around for longer than I thought! That’s great. Let’s slide on over to another seat where we move our discussion to the designed mobile phone cases that bring funding to causes while they bring joy to the texters! Here is a part of my conversation with Jamie and Sean Strasberger of Because of a Case Romy: Let's help our listeners understand what your business is and does. Jamie S: Okay. We're a phone case company, and for every case we sell, we donate a portion to different charities. We have a phone case that we donate a portion to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, and it has sea turtles on it, metallic gold foil. We have all different designs that coordinate with different charities. Sean S: For sure, so another organization, the Anxiety ... Association ... What? Jamie S: Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Sean S: Anxiety and Depression. Do that one. We have a lot of animal causes. We have a lot of human causes. We just cover a lot of different bases, and we donate anywhere from 10% of net profits all the way up to 75% for a couple of our causes. Romy: Is the case designed for that particular cause? Am I saying that right? Jamie S: Yeah. Some of them will have a design that we want to use, with a charity in mind. Then we contact the charity after we have the design, and show them what we're thinking. Other charities have helped us design it using their colors or their logo, and we use some of those graphics in mind when we design them for the different charities. Romy: How do you get the charities to participate? What's been your method of solicitation? I don't feel like that's the right word, that's my geeky finance person coming out. Jamie S: Yeah. Sean S: It's been interesting, just because I think before we started the company, we had this idea, "Oh, we're going to help people," and that was the social aspect of it where we really wanted to bring on as many organizations, with as many causes that we were passionate about, and our followers and customer base was passionate about. We found that there's, for some of these charities, there's a lot of hoops to jump through to get them on board. You have to have a certain amount of minimum sales. There's just, depending on the charity, they're not ... Not every charity's wiling to have you on board. They need to make sure you're a legitimate company. They don't just take anybody on, which I guess I think we found kind of surprising at first, just because like, "Hey, you know, we're willing to help everybody." Jamie S: At the beginning, we're like, "We want to donate. Can somebody let us donate to your charity." But it is about just approaching them, and especially in the beginning, we approached a lot of charities. Some of them were really open to us, and really excited about working together. Some of them, yeah, we had to have a minimum sales. So it was just about making sure we approached enough charities to get enough on our site, and enough to coordinate with our different phone cases. Sean S: I think part of that is just because there's so many organizations out there that are similar in a sense that they're donating a portion of sales. That was one of the unique niches for us, where we found a hole, was that ... Like for T-shirt companies for instance, there's so many social enterprises that were T-shirt companies, where they donate a portion of sales. But with phone cases, when we started, and still at this point, there's not really, there wasn't a leader. So we kind of carved our niche there, and I think we're able to get more charities and organizations on board, because we're the go to charity phone case company. Romy: Really exciting. Jamie S: Yeah, and we have had a couple approach us since we've gotten a bit bigger. Sometimes we'll go through emails and have some charities that now we have to look into and see if we want to work with them. So that's pretty cool too. Sean S: At least, in the beginning, I know, it was just as hard to get charities on board as it was to find social influencers or celebrities on board, like it was ... Jamie had to work her tail off to prove our worth to them a lot of the time. Romy: So they were almost vetting you as a vendor, even though part of the proceeds were going to go back. Jamie S: Yeah. They just wanted to make sure that we were legitimate. We were going to donate to them. They wanted to make sure that we were going to be good to work with, and there was a lot of factors in some of them. Some of them were easier, though, to get. Romy: Yeah. Sean S: Absolutely. Romy: It is interesting. You need people to start to buy ... You got the chicken and egg thing going there. You know. I really want to help you and help each other. Jamie S: That's exactly it. Romy: Let's go back and tell, maybe the story about what inspired you to get started, or what was the light bulb moment. Sean S: That goes back to Jamie, because she got her degree in teaching, but I think it was back in 2008, 2009, where the economy wasn't doing as well. So she couldn't find a teaching job. So she had to find something else to do. That's what started it. Jamie S: Yeah, so I was looking for different things to do. I was substitute teaching, but it wasn't really bringing in enough money. It was hard to get even subbing positions at the time, so I was really just looking for anything I could do. I had a job where I was working ... I got a job I found at, in a department store working at a cosmetics counter. I really liked doing that, and I've always liked makeup and hair. So I started a YouTube channel, and I thought I could play off on this. I built up my audience, and I have about 60,000 subscribers on my channel. Romy: Oh, my goodness. Jamie S: I was reviewing all kinds of different products and makeup and hair and food, and just anything. Sean S: Stuff on Shark Tank. As seen on TV. All that sort of stuff. Jamie S: Yeah. My channel name is Reviews by Jamie, if anyone wanted to check it out. But I do all kinds of reviews. Me and Sean were always talking about, we need to come out with a product that my audience would really like, because I knew my audience really well, and they're very loyal, and they're always commenting, and they're so sweet. Sean S: I think the first thing we thought of was, we were thinking about some sort of a jam, as a play off the Jamie Jammers. Jamie S: My name. Sean S: We threw that around for a little bit. We threw all sorts of stuff around. Jamie S: Yeah, which would still be fun to do, but I really noticed that a lot of people were interested in phone cases. So we thought, "Oh this could be fun." I love designing things and I have a good eye for what's trending. I think we could come up with some great designs. We actually sat on that for a couple of years, just going back and forth. Should we start? Should we not? And then- Sean S: We went through this one company where you could actually buy all the equipment to make your own phone cases. That was kind of like a big leap for us, because we were always the type of people who never had a late credit card bill. Everything was like always very in order. We kind of had to take a little credit out to get that ... All right, let's leap, and little did we know, that was not even close to how far ... Jamie S: It was nothing compared to what we've spent now. It was a $3,000 machine. Sean S: Yeah, at the time it felt like, holy moly, we were really taking a big risk here. So we bought this crazy machine. Jamie S: But we're not the type that can use something like that and make it work. You had, there was a lot of steps involved, and we didn't make one phone case that looked good. So I was like, "This isn't going to work. We can't sell these." I'm a perfectionist too, so there would be little flaws on the printing. Sean S: You literally, you printed out the designs on this special printer, and then you'd use this heat press, which we put in the basement, which yeah, and then you heated it on in the toaster oven, and it was... Jamie S: You had to have special gloves for it, and I was like, "Sean, you can't use this. You're going to burn yourself." Sean S: Yeah, I'm a little clumsy when it comes to that kind of ... yeah. Jamie S: So we're like, we need ... We'll think of a different way for it. We really started talking, "Okay, we could do something more with this." I was having a lot more ideas for designs. Then we had the idea, after talking about donating a portion of every sale, and particularly to mental health, because I've struggled with anxiety, just generalized anxiety since I was a kid. So I thought this would be really cool, because we thought of a really good slogan, and it was, "Find your happy case," instead of, "Find your happy place." Romy: Oh, I like that. Sean S: When it started, it was actually everything was going towards helping mental health. We found this great organization, Minding your Mind, which we still work with a little bit, where they actually do mindfulness classes in elementary and middle, high schools. They do more workshops and trainings around the country to bring more awareness. [crosstalk 00:08:36] Jamie S: All these things I wish I would've had just growing up. So it's really cool, and we still work with an ADAA, but then we started having customers who were requesting different causes. So we thought, could we add more? Could we make it different? So we changed our slogan, and now it's, "Protect your phone. Protect the world." Romy: Ah, I like that. Sean S: Registered trademark. Jamie S: Yeah. Romy: Registered trademark. Very nice. Well, I love that. So you abandoned the idea of doing the equipment. I guess I'd call that manufacturing it yourself. Jamie S: We're not DIY people at all. Sean S: No. Not with anything. We're not the Pinterest [inaudible 00:09:19]. With cooking maybe, but other than that ... Jamie S: Yeah. Romy: But you do have this idea of design, which is great. An eye of what ... Jamie S: Yeah. I think I'm pretty good at finding what, and knowing what people want to see, because it's really what I want to see too. I'm really drawn to all the trendy things, and I'm pretty on top of it too, and I'll have some ideas for different designs, and then we'll see other companies do them a little bit after. We're like, "Oh, I think we were on the right track with that." Sean S: Much bigger companies, where it's frustrating, and we're like, we just had that idea a week ago. Jamie S: Yeah, things we didn't, we weren't able to come out with, that we see other companies do. Sean S: I think the funny thing too, is just like looking back to when we had that machine, which we somehow were able to get it right up on Craigslist. I'm still ... Whoever's using that, I hope it's going well- Sean: ... Get it right up on Craigslist. Whoever's using that, I hope it's going well for them. Jamie: I warned them too, I was very straightforward. I said, "It's very hard to use, I don't want you to burn yourself. We had a hard time making the cases", but they still wanted it. Sean: They did. Romy: Thank goodness there's buyers out for all kinds of stuff in the world that we live in, this time in history. Jamie: There's always somebody who wants something you're selling. Romy: Anyways, you decided not to be DYIers. How did you discover the steps to do it differently then? Sean: The funny thing about that is I think we've slowly discovered, and we had a little experience because right after college we both started a videography company, where we would do weddings and bar mitzvahs. I think that gave us a lot of insight, and actually we're doing that again now. We just recently started doing it again after a little bit. I think that really gave us a lot of insight into knowing what you can do and what you can't do. For us, Jamie initially, just because she's got an artistic...…
Douglas Bitonti Stewart Today we head over to the Impact Investing Inglenook to chat with Douglas Bitonti Stewart about his recent article titled ‘Impact Investing and the Development Professional: Learning to Ride the Wave’. You can find this published article in the Fall 2017 Issue of Advancing Philanthropy Magazine. Doug shares his very unique perspective on fundraising in the philanthropic space and how that relates to impact investing. Stay tuned until the very end for a special song from a Detroit artist. For the full transcript click below Read Full Transcript Welcome to another episode of the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This is Romy and today we head over to the Impact Investing Inglenook to chat with Douglas Bitonti Stewart about his recent article titled ‘Impact Investing and the Development Professional: Learning to Ride the Wave’. You can find this published article in the Fall 2017 Issue of Advancing Philanthropy Magazine. By the way, we have a lot of links in our show notes for this episode if you want to learn more, which, I am certain, you will after hearing from our guest. Doug shares his very unique perspective on fundraising in the philanthropic space and how that relates to impact investing. Stay tuned until the very end for a special song from a Detroit artist. Let’s jump right in to the conversation with Doug. Romy: Well, welcome to the podcast. We're going to talk today about the article you wrote, Impact Investing and the Development Professional. I love that we're going to talk about this from the framing of a development professional because it's rarely discussed, and you have a lot of experience with it. So we'll give links at the end of where this article can be found, and so let's dive right in and talk about the overview of the article first. Douglas Stewart: Sure. So thank you for thinking enough of the article to have a podcast about it. I love your podcast, and I think everybody should be listening to this, and I'm also really hopeful that development officers will start listening to your podcast because this is really important stuff. To start with the why that I felt this article was even necessary. For me, having spent 20 years as a development guy, working for mostly children's hospitals, I loved that work. And after doing that for 20 years, I was just lucky enough to be asked by a family to help run their family foundation. I never thought I was going to do that. Didn't design my career for that but was found myself ... When you've done development long enough, you start to see your role not as raising money, but you see yourself as helping people change the world. And some people do that by contributing money. Other people do that by contributing their careers. And so I had a chance to work up alongside a family, and so, I ended up becoming a foundation person, but not because that was my goal. So in my role as a foundation person, I was seeing donors, foundation staff all learning about impact investing. And it was really exciting, and then when I looked back at my peers in the fundraising field, I looked at their training sessions, and I didn't see anything there. And there was one article in this publication of the Association of Fundraising Professionals a couple of summers ago. It was a cover article, and it talked about impact investing, but there hasn't been anything in there since or before. And I felt like, "Okay, I'm going to pull the curtain back about what foundations are learning and put it in the context of a development officer so that they can start learning about this because there's opportunities here." Romy: And, Doug, just for our listeners in case they don't know the terminology, how do you define a development officer? Douglas Stewart: Sure, so for me, and when I think about that, I think of someone who is engaged in raising money for a for-impact organization, and I'll tell you why I use the for-impact and not non-profit. But for-impact organizations that are 501(c)(3)s, and their job is to help raise money for that. Now look, that could be the executive director, that they don't have a development officer or a development person. It could be a volunteer that does that but doesn't get paid and so forth, and so it's really anybody engaged in the fundraising enterprise. And just to harken back to what I said a minute ago, so it's anybody who helps people change the world through investing or giving their resources away, whether that's time, talent or treasure. But the classic definition is a full-time fundraising; this is what I do, this is what I get paid for. That's what this article was really, who that was written for. It was a full-time fundraiser, a profession fundraiser. Romy: And where would normally a full-time professional fundraiser or a development officer go to learn about things like this? Douglas Stewart: So there are national conferences like for the Association of Fundraising Professional, there's local chapters, and so they have monthly meetings. There's even another organization called the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy, which is another sort of subset of development officers that come together. Where universities play a role, we have a university that's not too far from here that actually has 450 full-time development professionals. So for them, instead of buying their training, they make it. So they'll have a training department, and that team and different components would meet every month, and they would go deep on some kind of topic. But I'm hopeful that a couple of things happen because of this article and because of this podcast and your attention to it, that development officers will start reading the things donors are reading. Start reading the things the foundations are reading. There's a publication called the Foundation ... Oh, my friend's going to kill me for not knowing this. It's called the Foundation Review, the Foundation Review by Grand Valley and the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley, Foundation Review. It's a peer-reviewed journal. All the foundation folks are reading it, and I think all the development officers should read it. GrantCraft is an online system that the Ford Foundation created, and foundation folks read it. But I don't think develop ... I didn't. I should just own it. I didn't know when I was a development officer. I didn't read these things. So they need to start reading the things that donors are reading. Douglas Stewart: You and I have talked about that before and the for-impact. When the development professionals grab hold of this, the good news is, is that there are a lot of resources for them to find that will already talk about all these tools. The Mission Investors Exchange, it's a great example. There's a number of, and we can talk about those other resources in a bit, and they're in the article too. Thankfully, they won't need to see another article from me because there's so much out there that's being written for individual investors and the program folks in foundations and so on. So what I'm hoping is that the development professional will look at this and, as they did, to planned giving way back when. That they'll grab hold of this tool, and all of a sudden, it will be one of the tools that they utilize. Program-related investments were born the year I was born. Well, I should say, they were codified in the tax code the year I was born, 1969. But they were actually created before that. The tax code was just mirroring what people were doing, and I'd be happy to give you an example of one that was even before the tax code hit if you want it. Romy: Yeah, let's do it. Douglas Stewart: You want it? Romy: Yeah. Douglas Stewart: This is a little bit self-serving. It obviously wasn't me because I wasn't born before 1969, but in 1965, Max Fisher, the namesake of the foundation that I'm very, very lucky to serve, he and a group of leaders in the Jewish Community organized a $55 million, actually it was $50 million, $50-million loan to the Jewish Agency for Israel. Now, think about this. 1965, a really important time for the state of Israel. Romy: Oh, yeah. Douglas Stewart: So lots of immigrants coming in, all sorts of things going on. The state of Israel is just getting its legs under it and starting to move and so forth. So they didn't have as much as certainly what we have right now in terms of health and human services departments and all of that. So the Jewish Agency is, even today, is a quasi-governmental agency- Romy: [cross-talk 00:08:10]. Douglas Stewart: ... but it's a for-impact or what they would have called then an NGO, a non-governmental, but it was almost quasi. So that money came from 11 U.S.-based insurance companies. They collectively lent the Jewish Agency for Israel $50 million for 15 years at 5 1/2%. The collateral was the good faith and credit of the American Jewish people, which means they didn't have physical collateral that they could just seize. And so, that 5 1/2%, I looked this up, and I'll tell you where you can see this story too. But 5 1/2%, at that time, was the mortgage rate in 1965. Romy: Oh, yeah. Douglas Stewart: And the only reason I know that is because I looked it up, and I wanted to see, was this a concessionary loan, right? And it turns out it was because you can't get a mortgage with no collateral, right? So it was concessionary, and it was 15 years, and they paid it off in like 12 or something. And if you want more information of that, we do have a Max M. Fisher Archives, it's called. It's just MaxMFisher.org, and if you were to look up loan in the resource center, you can see all the original documents. You can read the loan agreement. Romy: Wow. Douglas Stewart: So I think that and we can get to this, but the development profession with planned giving and with other instruments inside that kind of that like charitable gift annuities and so forth, the development profession has developed tools to respond to donor interests and donor needs. And so that's what planned giving was, and I think now that donors are creating something in terms of impact investing that they want, that now when the development professionals grab a hold of this, it's going to accelerate. It's not for everybody. It's not for every group, but it is for a lot of them, I think. Romy: I agree- Doug Stewart: It is for a lot of them I think. Romy: I agree. Well, and that story is absolutely fascinating. Doug Stewart: It's fun; it's really fun. Romy: It's fascinating because it was before the 1967, where they got Jerusalem. That's extraordinary to me. Doug Stewart: It's unbelievable. Romy: It's really, really unbelievable. I love the good faith. To go back to this donor drive, and I would like to come back to some of the terminology in a minute. I want to stay on this theme, because without question the drive from the donor or potential investor, I'm going to call them the philanthropic-minded person, who wants to move the needle but wants the accountability is really driving it with estate planning attorneys, life agents, program authors, financial professionals. It's whereas before it was either/or, now everyone's sort of forced to have the conversation. It's not happening in isolation just for the very, very wealthy anymore. Doug Stewart: That's right, I totally agree. We all know that Fidelity Charitable is the largest for-impact organization, otherwise knows as some people call non-profits, in the country. Out of the philanthropy 400 on the Chronicle of Philanthropy, they're number one. They've been hovering in two and threes, but now they're number one. They're amassing donor advise fund assets, and this is not against Fidelity what I'm about to say, Joshua, all these firms have these things. The question is, are they advising them philanthropically? Are they only advising them on how to put money aside, not putting money to work? Everybody is getting into the conversation. I would draw the analogy of the donor advise fund and the commercial folks going after that in the same way that I would if I can lean back on planned giving in 1987 when I first heard about it. That was my first year in college, and I got my first development job by accident at Michigan State University and found this profession that I fell in love with. Back then, donors would be talking to a development professional. The development person or a volunteer would've asked them for a gift, and they might have said something like this. They might have said, "I really want to do this, I want to make this gift, but I don't have the cash for it. You know what stinks about it, is that I have this piece of property that if I could just sell it, it has value to me, but it has this huge basis. If I sell it, I take a bath on it. I'm going to be killed. If I could make that a revenue-generating property, but I can't because it's this thing." Usually back then the development officer would say, "Oh gosh, that's terrible." Then they would go for another immediate cash gift. Then they would go back to the office and maybe tell an attorney there, an estate planning attorney, just maybe that something happened. They wouldn't do what all development officers do now, that say, "If I could show you a way to create a trust that would allow you to keep that property, and get full value of it, and when you pass we could get the asset." Now, put ourselves 30 years ahead of time, now we have donors like the two stories in the article. There's Philip and Lauren, and then there's Jamie and Denise, who made a program related investment, a loan, to an organization without even being asked. What they said was they got pitched, in Jamie's case, Jamie and Denise, they get pitched a clinic. Jamie and Denise were saying, "Look, they were very generous donors to the organization." They went into that meeting because they had made other commitments, and these aren't fake stories, these are real people. As a couple, they went in, and they were really well versed in development and so on. They've been asked, they've done leadership gifts. They said they were only going to give a certain amount, and that was $50,000, that's a lot. Jamie and Denise are in the car saying, "No more. We love this group, but let's not fall in love again in here and do more than we can." Then they ended up, through a series of questions and a series of meetings, giving $250,000 loan. They realized that there was a revenue stream attached so that they could loan them the money, shut the campaign down, and they could wait seven to ten years for their payback. The group didn't say, "Could we get a $250,000 loan?" The group was asking for the gift. Again, this isn't going to work for everybody, but it's analogous. That's why I said in the article that planned giving or impact investing in the program officer, program professional realm in 2017 is like what planned giving looked like in 1987. That's why 30 years later, here's this huge potential that development officers need to know that donors want, just like they want charitable gift annuities. Romy: I noticed the theme of both of these stories; I am full agreement with donors, is that both of these couples were very intentional about attempting to solve and help the organization they're trying to fund. What ended up happening is their capital ends up recycling to catalyze something else in the future. This is very attractive to donors, this idea. Doug Stewart: It is. I love that you said that, in terms of the recycling. I sometimes think when people, especially development professionals, I've shared this article with two of my friends who happen to lead two very large university development offices. I met with them before like, "Gosh, why don't you guys do this?" They're like, "It's complicated, we're worried about it cannibalizing our annual donors. If they start investing, will they give?" There's some concerns about that, and I say, "Man, that's the same thing we were saying about planned giving and now look." Then when others think about impact investing, they think about the high flying market-rate side of it, more like the mission-related investing. If we were to define these things, program-related investments being concessionary returns so that if you lose it, you can mark it off as a gift. On the market side, you lose it; you lose it. When you're going for market returns, this article talking to development professionals is about the concessionary side. It won't be for everyone. A women's shelter that's taking in women from domestic abuse and all these things that we're hearing so much more about nowadays, they may not have an opportunity for this. When we say the donor, we are talking about donors who are, to your point, they want to do this. Many of them are direct cash donors in addition. Our first PRI was to an organization that the family had just made ... When I say our, I mean the foundation that I serve. The first PRI that the foundation I served made was to a group that the family had just given a half million dollars to. Then they said, "Would you be interested in a loan for another 200? For seven years, use the money to do exactly what you were doing here, and then give it back to us." I'm probably talking too much, but I have one other example where this makes sense. Romy: No, I love it. Doug Stewart: You said the money recycling, one of the things that we also know about investors, in the truest sense of the word, meaning an actual financial investor; they always have a cash account. There's for cash flow purposes; there's this certain amount of cash sitting there. Foundations have that that have endowments; individuals have it. Imagine you live in a small town, and your small town gets a federal grant for a certain program, it's a violence prevention program. Like any good federal grant, you have to do it, and then they pay you. Your small town now can't do it, and because of the for-impact organizations that they're using, don't have the cash flow to front it. Everybody says, "Darn." Then they "Leave money on the table." An investor or a donor who has a cash account and has X sitting in there that might be a small portion, and all they're doing is parking their cash in a different place. It's a federal grant. They're just helping with cash flow, 0 interest. Then that money, instead of sitting in Goliath National Bank, just to use a funny. Instead of sitting in Goliath National Bank, it actually creates an impact, and then the money comes back. You're not even paying rent on it, how much are you getting in your cash account? Romy: Right, some are negative. Doug Stewart: Yeah, some are negative. That's just to your point, that's not even recycling, that's almost like putting something to use that wasn't going to be used, it's just going to sit there. Romy: That's right; it's queuing up an asset. By queuing the asset and putting it into the right puzzle for a season, it multiplies the already existing puzzle. Doug Stewart: That's a great way to put...…
DIME Detroit Time for another episode of the bonfires of social enterprise. Hear from the founders who took a chance, traded London for Detroit and began to engage with the young music talent of Detroit and then Denver. As usual, stay to the end and enjoy a full song from one of the student artists from DIME. For the Full Transcript click below Read Full Transcript Time for another episode of the bonfires of social enterprise. This is your host, Romy and I love our guests today! It is the Detroit Institute of Music Education that we abbreviate for DIME Detroit. We will hear from the founders who took a chance, traded London for Detroit and began to engage with the young music talent of Detroit and then Denver. As usual, stay to the end and enjoy a full song from one of the student artists from DIME. Let’s check in with Natalie and see what she has for our fun fuel today. Hello, I’m Natalie Hazen bringing you this episodes’ Fun Fuel. Have you ever just drifted off listening to a song and let your mind wander and float with the melody? Great songs allow for just this to happen as our senses are taken on a journey with the Artist. Notable musicians, scholars and presidents each have their own description of music. William Shakespere said, “If music be the food of love, play on.” Bono thinks, “Music can change the world because it can change people.” Stevie Wonder eloquently stated, “Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.” But I will leave you amazing listeners with one final quote from former United States President Ronald Reagan. He said, “Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.” Thanks for listening, now on to our episode. So….interesting! Natalie, you are so fun! Love it. Okay, let’s turn our ears to the interview with Kevin Nixon and Sarah Clayman of DIME Detroit. They begin by sharing some of their early success in England, their music label, and how they are empowering the kids of Detroit with music and production. Let’s drop in on the conversation now…. Romy: Okay, great well lets get started, let's talk about DIME, and do you go by DIME or DIME Detroit? Sarah Clayman: DIME Detroit here, we have DIME Denver, and we also have DIME online where we have students studying in 22 countries around the world. Romy: Yah okay so what is DIME? Sarah Clayman: So we are a music institute, we teach guitar, bass, drums, vocals, songwriting, and music industry studies at bachelor degree level. We are very focused on getting young people into the music industry, and giving them the skills, and the academic credentials to be able to earn a full time living in the music industry. So we're about long-term sustainable careers in music. Romy: Wow, that's powerful, so how did it start? Sarah Clayman: Sure. Kevin Nixon: Okay so it began back in England, we moved from England in 2014, prior to that we originally started in 2001. So Sarah, and I have had our whole lives in the music industry, and in the millennium year music went digital. And so that's when Napster came along, and the whole industry changed, and we were so brilliantly foresight that we thought we'd do something to help the next generation. Not really, we actually realized that there was a lot of change going on, and we kept, I kept getting phone calls regularly from people I'd come up through the industry with saying, "Do you know anybody who can do this job? And that job?" Some of these jobs were like really senior, like one of them was a managing director of Columbia Records in the U.K. So we started to talk about this, and say what, "How come there is not another level of people coming up who are trained and being trained to take these jobs?" And we started doing some research, and the research within the industry was very easy for us because we were part of it. Well we went to a few universities and looked at their music departments, and low, and behold, no modern music, all classical, and all jazz. And so we actually thought, "Well let's do something about this, and we kind of built a rock, and roll school. Sarah Clayman: Yah and you know we realize that unless you have a connection to the music industry how do young people get in the music industry? You know it's such a closed shop, and we wanted to change that, we wanted to help young people understand that it wasn't about selling a million records, or ten million records like the Foo Fighters, or playing guitar in your bedroom. There are many, many great jobs, and career opportunities within the music industry that young people don't find out about. Like starting a merchandise company, being a tour manager, working in publishing, you know there's so, so many that you can earn a really good living, and still do what you love, which is music. And the music industry beats getting a proper job so. Romy: Yes right. What was your background, what was your time in the music industry? Sarah Clayman: Okay, so I actually grew up in the music industry, my fathers a concert promoter and a theater promoter. He's worked with artists like Michael Jackson, Barbara Streisand, Power Rangers, Prince, Julio Iglesias, Carpenters like forever. Romy: Only those guys. Sarah Clayman: But my dad was from a generation that didn't need education, so my dad left school at 13, he grew up in the East end of London. And just threw a series of coincidences met Gordon Mills, who managed Tom Jones, who's a big singer from whales, and he got into the music industry. And my dad is a brilliant mathematician, and he promotes concerts, so he's all about risk-taking, and making money, and understand the risks in deals. So I grew up in that environment, and when I was 14 I said to my dad, "I want to be in the music industry," and he said, "No way it's not an industry for a women." So I said, "Well that makes you want to do it even more dad." So I started to just do some kind of internships with my dad in his office from the age of 13, 14, and then I went on the road, and I learned on tours, and production assistant, and things like that. And then I happened to meet the chairman of Sony music one day, and he offered me a job, so I worked with Sony music in the UK for four, and half years. And that's where I met Kev. Romy: Yah so Kevin you were there, what's your background then? Kevin Nixon: I was the manager's son; he's biggest UK act at the time, a band called, Kula Shaker, ew we got a feel of this up here. That's one of Sara's, there's loads around, but I was also from a music family, but I'm a musician, so my grandfather was a bandleader, and he was a jazz guitar player. Phenomenal jazz guitar player, there's many jazz guitar players, very few as good as him. And so all of his kids, my mom was the eldest, my mom is an expert on Sun Ra and composers. And then she's got five brothers, and they're all professional jazz musicians as well. And I was the first of the next generation, so I got to learn from all my family, and we've all been brought up on the best music. So the first music I was exposed too was Django Reinhardt, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. And I grew up with that until the Beatles exploded, and because I was the youngest, I became the one who loved all rock, and roll. And in our house, everybody went to work at 6 pm, and so I've only ever known about that really. My dad was a soccer player, and a professional soccer player so in our family you can either play music, or play soccer, and actually, we're all unemployable outside of that. Romy: So you guys met and somehow came up with the idea when you saw the gaps it sounds like? Sarah Clayman: Yah. Romy: So did you start it right in London first? Sarah Clayman: No, we started in a seaside town called Brighton on the south coast of England, and the reason we did that is because it is within 50 minutes of London. So we knew that the colleagues and friends we had in the music industry would be able to come visit the college and meet with the students. Because we realized quite early on that young people are super smart, and they started to learn from the Internet, and not just from being in a classroom. And we wanted young people to hear from professionals, and that was really the biggest thing, I think you can only learn so much from teachers. You really need to learn from people who are in the industry doing the work you know? So bringing colleagues, and friends down from the music industry to talk about their experiences. What they were doing that week was really important to the thoughts of the company and what we were trying to do. But when we opened in Brighton we opened to 180 students in the first year, it grew to 360, 480, 720, and before we knew it within five years, we had 1000 students. Which took us completely by surprise because we only had a business plan to have a maximum of 300 students in Brighton. But we really kind of captured the imagination of young people, and we created an environment that didn't feel like a university, or a college, it felt like the music industry. So young people felt very safe in our building and felt very supported through the creative process because music can be torturous as well. You know if you're a songwriter you're writing a lot about your personal feelings and your experiences. But then the other side of it was the parents really understood what we were doing because they had a guitarist kid who was slightly social awkward in their bedrooms. A mom and dad just scratching their heads going, "What am I going to do with johnny upstairs?" And we come along, and we can say well through what we've created here, not only can your child play what they love doing, which is guitar all day long, but they can also get academic skills, and credits for it. So mom and dad were really supportive, and that's why this thing just grew and grew, so. Romy: And then how did you make the decision to jump over? Kevin Nixon: So in our years, pre-music education, we both worked in the U.S. music industry as well as the UK, in fact in the international music industry. But I had an office in New York for a while, and I lived there in 94, actually Sara lived there in 94, we didn't know each other then. But I've been working it over here since about 79, and we obviously had a good understanding of the music business here, but it's actually quite different to the UK. And one of the problems with the UK is that there's only about 8000 people working it. And we'd have 10,000 graduates after 10 years, so we started to get concerned that the business was getting too big for the jobs to study ratio. And so we thought, "Well we want to keep doing this, this is such a great rewarding thing to do," but we couldn't just keep going in the UK. So we decided to sell our UK business, and actually kinda used the money to come here, which meant that we've only got one investor, and he's a friend of ours. So it meant that we could keep control of the business, which is ... Kevin: Sebastian, he's a friend of ours so it meant that we can keep control of the business, which is very important. Romy: Yeah Kevin: ... because once businesses get big, you know, everybody wants to have a piece of them. So we kind of went back to where we started, and it was a brave thing to do, and we were going to go to Brooklyn and start there, but we got invited to Detroit by a couple of people, one of which is Charlie who is our investor. He tried to get involved with us when we were in the U.K. Romy: Oh okay. Kevin: We had not worked out a deal, but he was like well come to Detroit you know and we also American Idol actually called us, and they wanted to partner with us too, but their short term-ism and our long term-ism was always going to be a bit of a clash. We came here, and we met Charlie, and we took the brave step of saying no to Brooklyn and coming to Detroit. Romy: Yeah we are so glad. So when was that? Kevin: 2014. Romy: 2014 okay. Just to repeat that so we are doing this interview in November of 2017. This really isn't even been five years. Sarah: No, it feels like a startup still. We are still learning about Detroit. We are still finding things that we hadn't even thought of. You know it's a really special city. The musical talent here is incredible, but it's a forgotten city. Romy: Yes. Sarah: You know in terms of education and the young people come to us to study. They really low level and its hard work. Romy: I am a music fan, but I'm not in it that it's a bit underground. You got to find where everybody is. Is a little bit of flushing out, who the talent is, kind of getting them to trust you to be a part of the [crosstalk 00:11:53] Sarah: And when we first came to Detroit, we realized that Detroit is city that was built for 1.5 million people and there's only 700,000 people here, so everything is really spread. We were trying to find the music scene, and we realized within a couple of weeks that there was actually five, ten music scenes and everyone was working in isolation. As we were kind of finding out the venues and meeting the bands and everything. We say to them 'well why are doing this, you know, what's next?' And they're like what do you mean what's next? Well, are you going on tour? You going to try and get a record deal? You gonna release music and everyone was like what's the point? There's no point in us doing that. No one ever comes to Detroit; we just do this because we wanna jam and we love it. We looked at each other and thought that's a big problem because the lack of belief and the belief in the opportunity that actually it could be you that makes it is not here for a lot of people in the city or wasn't. I think it is changing slowly. Romy: A little bit. Sarah: Yeah, it's going to take time because you know 30 years of bankruptcy and blight and you know all the issues that Detroit's been through. They don't disappear overnight just because people are investing in the city and new businesses are coming. It's a real ingrained attitude. Kevin: I also think to the establishment; music becomes a low priority. When you get a city like this with so many problems, it can be the last thing probably my duty list being very low priority. Sarah: But its also a lifesaver for some people. Kevin: Well, I was going to say if you look back over the generations, if you took more time out of the city, you know, that's a massive [inaudible 00:13:35] taking a limb off and[crosstalk 00:13:38] Romy: Oh yeah. Kevin: Then the number of jobs Motown provided and the not [inaudible 00:13:44] but mine probably inspiration that it created is still going on today these 50 years ago. So it's not just Motown if you look at how big Eminem got and Kid Rock and now Big Sean. There's a whole generations of kids who look up to these guys, and they can say 'Okay well if they can do it, we can do it' but actually they can't without help. You look at all those people, to Berry Gordy, Eminem, Kid Rock, [inaudible 00:14:18] Sarah: [inaudible 00:14:18] Kevin: Trackings will be good. [inaudible 00:14:22] Sarah: Big Sean yep Kevin: None of them made it without help. Romy: Right. Kevin: I'm sure he might assume that documentary about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Eminem's big thing was without meeting Dr. Dre; he would never have gotten out of Detroit. Romy: Mmm-hmm (affirmative) Kevin: So we see ourselves as just a bit of a catalyst. People can come here and feel connected to music industry that we been in all our lives and if it's noting more than that, that is something. Actually, it's such a great environment that kids start to over perform, almost immediately and so you get many examples of kids who would otherwise never be in higher education who are suddenly in the position where they're the best at it. That's where...…
Stephen of Charity Charge Welcome back to another episode of The Bonfires of Social Enterprise. My name is Romy and I’m your host and guide here. This time, we hear from Stephen Garten, the founder and CEO of Charity Charge in Austin Texas. Stephen discusses the moment the idea came together along with the current and I guess, ongoing issues of a social enterprise today. As we do over here, there’s a great song at the end of this episode, so stay tuned all the way to the end. For the full transcript – click below Read Full Transcript Welcome back to another episode of The Bonfires of Social Enterprise. My name is Romy and I'm your host and guide here. This time, we hear from Stephen Garten, the founder and CEO of Charity Charge in Austin Texas. Stephen discusses the moment the idea came together along with the current and I guess, ongoing issues of a social enterprise today. As we do over here, there's a great song at the end of this episode, so stay tuned all the way to the end. Now, Natalie Hazen has our Fun Fuel today, let's see what she came up with. I’m Natalie Hazen and I am bringing you the Fun Fuel for this weeks episode. Today’s college students are inundated with fliers & applications promoting the latest and greatest credit card. Of course, we can go back to the 1800’s when American merchants extended store credit to trusted customers. I think of all the old style cowboy movies where the weary cowboy dismounts his horse, ties the reins around a wood fence in front of the old general store and goes in to buy some well-needed merchandise like sasparilla or something. Gotta love the movies for that visual. The WalletHub.com published an article about the history of the credit card and it was in the early 1900’s that a handful of US department stores and oil companies began issuing their own credit cards to be used at that particular business. Then came the Diners Club card and American Express charge cards in 1951 & 1959 respectively. Finally, in 1966, Bank of America launched the first general-purpose credit card: the Bank Americard – the forerunner to what is now VISA. Now I’m certain, that there are still cowboys that dismount their horses and head into their local general store like in days of old, but the stores have certainly changed and so have the credit cards. Thanks for listening to today’s Fun Fuel! Now on to the episode. Oh my goodness, I have never connected [Sasparillo 00:00:46] with credit cards. Excellent Fun Fuel, Natalie you're the best. Oh my, let's drop in now to my conversation with Stephen Garten of Charity Charge. Romy: Okay, well welcome Stephen. You're calling in from Texas. I appreciate that. Stephen Garten: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Romy: Yes, we're excited to learn about Charity Charge. Let's jump right in. What is Charity Charge? Stephen Garten: Charity Charge is a credit card that lets cardholders earn cash back, that automatically gets donated to any nonprofit of their choice. It's in partnership with MasterCard, so the credit card's accepted around the world, wherever MasterCard is. I think an easy way for people to think about it for context is imagine say a Southwest Airlines credit card where every time you use that credit card, you are earning airline miles. Charity Charge is similar in nature to that, it's just that every time you use it, you earn one percent cash back that's tax deductible and automatically goes to any nonprofit of your choice. Romy: Wow. It sounds simple, but I'm sure that was not a simple thing to get set up with a big entity like MasterCard. How did you even attempt that, once you had the idea? Stephen Garten: Sure. I mean I'm trying to ... I'll answer it in two ways 'cause it's a big question, but hopefully in way that also resonates with other entrepreneurs, or people listening to the show thinking of their own ideas. I had been accumulating all these credit card reward points and come the end of the year; I went onto the bank's website to redeem 'em. I probably spent 45 minutes or so, scrolling through, hey, do I want this Olive Garden gift card for 25,000 points, or maybe I should get this Samsonite briefcase or this pair of binoculars. I was just agonizing over what to do with all my reward points. I remember that after a while, I guess that 45 minutes or so, and then just in frustration, I just logged off and thought, I don't need more stuff. The next thing I did is I checked my email and a local nonprofit, actually in Austin where I live and the company's headquartered now, sent me an email. It was the end of your fundraising drive, and that's when it clicked. I thought I was accumulating all this value in credit card reward points, and I don't want them. I'd much rather support this nonprofit that I already loved and cared about. That gave me the gist of the idea, but I think the point that I'm making, maybe for some people listening, is that it just seemed like such a big idea and I had no clue how credit cards worked or anything about the industry. I didn't know anyone in the industry. One of the really practical things I just started doing, is I leveraged Google and LinkedIn. I think the really cool thing about entrepreneurship in 2017 is that we're all connected and have access to experts. In any business that someone wants to start, there's always people who have come before 'em. A quote that I've always loved is that "Everything great is accomplished by standing on the shoulders of other giants." I just started reaching out, and cold-calling and cold-emailing credit card consultants and that started me on the path. I'm happy to go into the minutiae of how specifically I did it for Charity Charge, but it was definitely initially being willing to reach out to experts in the industry. The funny thing, I think we're gonna be putting up a blog post on our site and a blog. I'm starting to detail this, but one of the things that happened though when I reached out to one of the top payment consultants in the New York City area is that they said, "Hey, we really like your idea. We think we can help you out." They said, "We're just gonna send over a proposal." I got a proposal for ... They wanted me to pay them $250,000 just to get started for them to take me through the steps to pitch banks and put together the model that I needed to use and negotiate the partnership and all that stuff. There were a lot of challenges along the way in trying to figure this thing out. Of course, I didn't have $250,000, so I really just had to figure it out on my own. Romy: Yeah. That's a good word for everybody. That often happens to us, as well. You've got somebody in there; my sister affectionately calls them "sharks in the tank." A lot of people stop there, don't they? Stephen Garten: ... I think a big thing that entrepreneurial endeavors teach you is a level of just emotional intelligence and also just taking reality for what it is. It could have been easy for me just to have complained and said, well, these are consultants, these are sharks, they just want to charge me. The reality is that was their business, and their clients are the Southwest Airlines of the world that set the market rates, being willing to pay those enormous fees and things of that sort. I think, at the time, I was completely dejected. I thought that there'd be no way to figure this whole thing out, but very much on the flip side of what you said there, the DIY is that what I learned is you can get out there. You can connect with people that started this conversation and get advice and all that, but at the end of the day, it does fall on you as an entrepreneur to actually go forward and execute. It's been awhile since I thought about this experience, but on even this specific topic of connecting with experts in industry, I remember though that I called 17 people originally. They were credit card consultants that I found on LinkedIn or Google, and I got to number 18. The first 17 either didn't return my phone calls or if I got 'em on the phone, within 30 seconds, they rushed me off the phone, and they weren't interested in talking to me. Number 18 ended up being this gentleman, his first name's Hunter. He was working for a top consultant, one that I spoke with that didn't charge me. He was super friendly and great, gave me some basic advice on a handful of calls, a handful of emails. Then, fast forward about a year later or so, he was actually hired by MasterCard to run their co-brand business development team. Having that relationship early on, the guy that I cold-called, that I developed a relationship and he had respect for me and the idea that I was working on, was really instrumental in ultimately getting that partnership with MasterCard. Yes, which is awesome for me now, and it's funny as I think back to just being in my apartment with this idea and trying to figure it out a handful of year ago. Romy: It's just helpful to go back to those humble beginnings and draw people's attention to, yeah, we all have to walk through some of these awkward early steps, right? Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with everything you just said. I think that a quote that had really resonated with me at the time ... I think I was watching a Tony Robbins video on YouTube or something. He said something to the effect of, "You know, most people quit 'cause they say they tried everything, but you've tried everything that doesn't work." [inaudible 00:10:39]. My uncle said to me once, he was relating to kind of ... When I was originally moved to Austin, I was looking for a job, and I was having trouble finding any place that would hire me and kept going on interviews and not getting hired and stuff. And he said, "It's just a game. You pull a lot of blanks out of the bag and eventually one of them is gonna be live. So you gotta take a lot of shots." Romy: That's good advice. Let's talk about what Charity Charge has become now. Stephen: I graduated college in 2008 and moved to Austin in 2010. But we officially launched the company in June of 2016, so it's been about 15 months, or 14 or 15 months now. Romy: Let's dive in. We're recording this in the end of summer, 2017, just about September. So what's happening right now with Charity Charge? Stephen: Yeah. We've got a couple of exciting new products and things around the corner that I'm gonna go into. But I would start with just saying that the first year was, to say the least, very overwhelming. When we launched, I was not quite expecting the reception. It was another thing that I've kind of proved the doubters wrong. I was the most surprised by anyone, I think. But when we launched, Today Show picked us up and Fast Company and Huffington Post and a lot of other national new outlets like that. So we were really overwhelmed with demand but also at the same time, as an entrepreneur when you're starting a new enterprise, you're trying to figure out and get your processes in place and your team in place and understand how you can scale your business model. So the past year was getting our feet underneath of ourselves and really figuring out ways that we can scale so that we can make impact. I think that the really cool thing about Charity Charge, and kinda how I think about it, is it's really a tool for giving. I mean, we at Charity Charge have created this credit card that's really going into an industry that ... In total, 31% of consumers never ever redeem their reward points. So that's $16 billion a year that ultimately flows back to the credit card companies. They call that breakage. They really hide that from cardholders and consumers. But on the credit card industry's side of things, these big banks, they create and market these credit cards that, on the surface, seem to have really rich rewards and bonus points and all of that stuff but then they purposely create things like blackout dates or certain point thresholds you need to accrue towards in order to redeem it for that gift card or that level of cash back. That billions of dollars flows back, so at Charity Charge, what we do is, the cardholders earn 1% but they pick their nonprofits up front, any nonprofit in the United States including K through 12 schools, churches, et cetera so that it automatically flows to the nonprofits. We have no breakage in our model. I'm kinda going on this rant because I think that we've just got such a great opportunity that we really wanted to figure out how we could scale it because we see this one day redirecting billions of dollars every year back to nonprofits, which goes along with our mission, which is more profits for nonprofits. Romy: Oh, I love it. I love it. Are you able to track how many dollars have been redeemed or sent out to the nonprofits sort of through the summer of 2017? Stephen: Yeah. I mean, we're fortunate that we're able to track all that. There's some things with our agreements with MasterCard and the bank right now that preclude us from sharing really intimate details about that. But we're working on figuring out some ways that we can be more transparent about our impact as the company. Romy: Yeah. Let's land on that for a minute. It is often that you might have some relationship issues or things that you can't disclose. How are you overcoming the impact statements? Everyone's interested in reported impact and the accountability of that. Are you able to report out any portion of that, or how are you addressing that with your key stakeholders that are attracted to you because of the potential dollar impact that you might be making? Stephen: Sure. One thing, just to be really clear. For the people that are actually cardholders, they're able to, at any point in time, log in to their donation dashboard and track and see what they've earned. From a cardholder's perspective, full transparency there. And then for our nonprofits that are benefiting from it, individually, we provide a report to them and let them know how much they've earned and things of that sort. But we wanna be more public and outspoken of our impact, so we're working through some things now. I would say this, I mean, it's probably not the politically correct answer. But I think in entrepreneurship, and it's something that I do every day at the company and will continue to do, is ... You gotta excuse me, Romy. I'm blanking on the [crosstalk 00:16:49]- Romy: That's all right. Stephen: What do they say? Ask questions later or [crosstalk 00:16:54]- Romy: Oh, yeah. And apologize later [inaudible 00:16:55] apologize. Stephen: Exactly, yeah. So, no. We'll be working to be more outwardly transparent, but for anyone, that's actually involved in the company ... If you're a cardholder, there's full transparency to the cardholders and then complete transparency to the nonprofits that are on the receiving end. Romy: Stephen, have you had any, I don't know, any pushback from the industry because of this breakage issue that you talked about? That's a lot of dollars sitting on the sidelines. I mean, you're a disruptor, right? We'll just call it that 'cause you're doing the right- Stephen: Well, I think- Romy: You're a doing the right thing disruptor, but sometimes people don't like it. Stephen: Yeah. I mean, I think that we're trying to be. I think disruption is such a big word. In companies that scale, like a Tesla or someone like that, have done it, we're trying to get there, right? We need more cardholders. We need more people that, whether it's ... just choosing to add Charity Charge to their wallet. They might wanna use their other cards for different times but even if it's 10% of the time, even if it's just to buy gas, or it's when you dine out with friends, add Charity Charge to your wallet so you can feel good and do good in those times that you wanna give back. That's kind of my message one or my little plug there, to be a little shameless. But for us to actually get to that point where we're truly disrupting and sending billions of dollars back collectively to nonprofits in need ... Yeah. I think that we're a public benefit corporation, mission first, and that goes counter to the banks, right? I can't say that it's a bad thing. I think that the rules that they're playing in and the sandbox of how they're judged is just different than ours. If you're Bank of America or you're Chase,...…
Detroit Mushroom Factory with Deana & Chris Hello out there in listener land, this is Romy bringing you another episode of the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This episode is all about mushrooms! Did you know there are all different types of mushrooms that can be grown indoors, and, that there is a mushroom factory in Detroit? Well, you will meet Deana and Chris and hear all about their story from concept to now. As customary, I also like to introduce a song from a Detroit artist at the end of each episode so stay tuned to the end. For the full transcript – Click below Read Full Transcript Hello out there in listener land, this is Romy bringing you another episode of the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This episode is all about mushrooms! Did you know there are all different types of mushrooms that can be grown indoors, and, that there is a mushroom factory in Detroit? Well, you will meet Deana and Chris and hear all about their story from concept to now. As customary, I also like to introduce a song from a Detroit artist at the end of each episode so stay tuned to the end. Okay, let’s see what Luke has for our fun fuel today….. Hi, this is Luke Trombley, and I am bringing you the fun fuel for this episode. Did you know that there are over 30 species of mushrooms that glow in the dark? The chemical reaction involved in this is called bioluminescence which produces a glowing light known as foxfire. Some people will use this fungi to light paths through the woods. Thank you for listening to this fun fuel. Enjoy the episode! Very nice Luke. Glowing in the dark….what a fungi….ha ha. Okay, Romy, enough with the bad jokes. Let’s listen in to what Deanna and Chris are up to and how this all began. Romy: Okay, great. Well, welcome Deana and Chris to the podcast, Bonfires of Social Enterprise. Got your cool business here. Let's talk about the Detroit Mushroom Factory. Deana: Great. Well thanks for having us. To just give a little background, we are a mushroom farm. We grow right now just out of our home. We live in Detroit, and we grow mushrooms in the basement. We grow on a substrate that comprises spent brewery grain that we get donated to us from a brewery in Detroit called Detroit Beer Company, and we mix that with sawdust that we get donated to us from a local woodworker named Richard Ganas. And so those two things we combine, we add mushroom spawn, and then we grow those mushrooms and sell them, mostly to local restaurants. Romy: Wow. Let's go over that one more time just in case, just for terminology. So you grow the mushrooms in your basement on, what was that? It was a bent ... Say that again. Deana: Spent brewery grain. So when beer is brewed at a brewery, they are left over with all this grain that comes out of the mash tun and that's usually a waste stream [inaudible 00:01:26]. So our model, one of the aims of our business is to be a totally sustainable farm. And so we have committed to only growing on recycled materials and spent brewery grain is one of those materials. Romy: Okay. Brewery grain, just for those listening in other languages. Okay. Deana: Oh yeah. Romy: And then the sawdust. Okay. Wow, that's amazing. Do you need a lot of room for that in your basement? Deana: Well, we don't have it. Chris: I was just going to say; we have one of these old houses in Detroit. It's a four bedroom house, and it's just Deana, myself and our dog, so we really have three bedrooms and a basement and part of a backyard dedicated just to the mushrooms. So it does take quite a bit of space, I would say. It takes quite a bit of equipment, and it's a little more complicated on the front end than maybe your traditional farming or your gardening because it requires equipment. For instance, we take that [inaudible 00:02:34], which is usually barley, from the brewery, mix it with the sawdust and then we need to sterilize it. So the mushrooms grow in these special plastic bags that are sterilized. And so we do that in these autoclaves that are basically like big pressure cookers, and then we move that whole operation into one of our bedrooms, which has been set up, basically like a clean room, like a lab. And so nature really does not like sterile environments. It does not like cleanliness, so we're constantly fighting things like mold and things like bacteria. Nature really likes chaos, so it's always fighting us. We want to grow our one particular mushroom where nature wants us to grow all kinds of molds and things that are always trying to get in the way. Romy: That's so fun! All right. So the end product is the mushrooms. How did you guys originally come up with this? I met you, what? Was it three years ago? No? Four? Deana: Yeah. Three years ago, I think. 2014 is when we were in our build social class and in the markets I met you. We had the intention of starting a business when we moved to Detroit. We had both had careers in other sectors and were looking for a change. And we actually left where we were living in California and drove all around the country looking for where we wanted to live next. So we lived out of our car for about nine months and just toured around, went to different cities that people recommended to us, went to different towns and Detroit really stood out. We really loved it here, and once we decided to settle here, we thought, "Well okay. Maybe this is the place where we can try a business experiment." And Chris has had a lot of mushroom growing experience, even before we were in Detroit, that maybe he can talk about. Romy: Yeah, let's hear it, Chris. Chris: Sure. Yeah. I had grown mushrooms just as a hobby. I'm a person who takes hobbies way too far. So when I was in California, I got a little interested in growing mushrooms, I think I ordered a kit. And so you buy these kits online or wherever, you can get them in grocery stores now, where basically you make a little slit in a bag, and then you get mushrooms growing up. And they worked great. But my brain immediately went to like, "Well, I can't just keep buying kits. Now I need to figure out how to make my own kits." Or something like that and so I just started learning and buying equipment. And little by little, the apartment I lived in started getting totally filled with mushroom grow bags and the entire place was just set up for growing mushrooms. It was my living space and my lab, and it's not that different from how we do it now. Deana: Yeah. But that's when we were first getting to know each other. So as a perspective [inaudible 00:05:19] mate ... When Chris and I first started dating, I went to his house, and a few flags went up because there were mushrooms growing out of phone books and there's an old trunk with mushrooms growing out of it. He won me over, he did. He made me a delicious dinner out of mushrooms that he had grown himself and so he won in the end. But it was a lot to take in at the beginning. Chris: People talk about when they're kids; they want to be a fireman or an astronaut or whatever. I wanted to be a mad scientist. I would take everything and mix it together. I took all the chicken poo and all the whatever, all the mouthwash and I mixed it together. Luckily none of it was ... there was no bleach and ammonia or something. Romy: Right! Chris: But I wanted to mix everything together and see what would happen and entirely nothing happened. Now that I've gotten older, I think the mushrooms really rekindle that because, like I said, it's difficult in some ways, but it requires a lot of really weird equipment, and it's just strange in a lot of ways. So it just tickles me in that way, in that same mad scientistic way. Romy: That's so fun. Deana: When we got to Detroit, we were really taken with how much urban farming is going on here, and that was part of why we fell in love with the city. And when we were conceiving of our business, we wanted to find a way to fit into that urban farming community without directly competing with other growers, because it's hard to make your living growing kale and there's a lot of people trying to do it. And so it felt like we had this unique way to fit into the market because there aren't really other people growing mushrooms for commercial sales within the city. And so that felt like our niche and Chris had the experience, we had some of the equipment. My background was as an educator, so I quickly wanted to learn as much as I could and help other people understand the process and it just kind of snowballed from there. Now we have a house filled with mushrooms. Romy: Right. Deana: We arrived here somehow. Romy: And it sounds like you've got some customers. You said restaurants are starting to buy them, right? Deana: Yeah. We've been so overwhelmed and grateful by the support of the restaurants in the city. From the very beginning, really before we had our act together before we were taking ourselves seriously as a business, we kind of sheepishly mentioned to a couple of restaurants that we liked to eat at that we were trying to be a mushroom farm. And immediately they just open arms, welcomed us, said they would buy whatever we had. So we've had some really loyal customers from the very beginning. Rose's Fine Food has been buying our mushrooms since before we had mushrooms, basically. Their owner, Molly Mitchell said, "Whatever you have I'll buy." And they've been so supportive and so patient. Sometimes we have them; sometimes we don't. And then as the local food landscape has grown even more in the city, other restaurants have gotten in touch and been interested. Sister Pie uses our mushrooms sometimes, Brooklyn Street Local is a very committed customer. We sell through Grown in Detroit, which is a co-op of growers at Eastern Market. So we've been really lucky. We have a lot of different outlets, and people seem willing to go that extra mile to support local farmers, and that's why we're in business. Romy: Yeah. Wow, that's a good word. This is an odd question from somebody who doesn't understand your business, but does anyone have any trouble with the fact that you're growing them in your home? Because usually, it's probably better than just out in the random woods, right? Deana: Yeah. I don't think that's a- Chris: Yeah, I was just going to say, people certainly self-forage mushrooms. It's an entirely different set of skills. Foraging mushrooms and identifying them is really, really complicated in its own way. So the way we grow right now is, it's a business on the way to becoming a business. We came in with maybe the most important quality for new business owners or new business founders, which is, we were utterly naive about how difficult it was going to be. And we often talk to each other, and we say, "If we knew all of what we have to deal with now then, would we have even have done it?" Because a lot of what we're trying to do now is grow. So we grow in our house, but we're not producing at nearly the level we need to really have a business that can support our demand and ourselves. So we also have this warehouse that we purchased two years now? A year ago? Also in Detroit. Deana: Last July. Yes. Chris: Last July. About five minutes from our house, in the north end of Detroit. Chris: About five minutes from my house, in kind of the North end of Detroit. And so now we're trying to move basically from a large, hobby farm into a small true production farm, and just learning so much about the challenges that that poses, and very few of them so far are about growing mushrooms. It's about developing this building that's seen better days and growing, just continuing to grow, be aggressive. Romy: Yeah, that's so good. I love what you just said. I mean while you're growing mushrooms, you're trying to grow your business. It's like, there's always more shenanigans that happen than just the running the business part than I think people understand. It's just everything from the financial part, to operations, execution, marketing, communications, and I mean, oh my gosh, what about customer service? Chris: Right. Romy: So it's like everything. It's a lot when you're a small team trying to scale at least even just to the next step. Chris: Yeah, and it's funny- Deana: Right. Chris: How little of it ends up being like ... I'm a software engineer, that's my background, so I'm technical. I want the problem ... I wanted to grow better mushrooms, and it's amazing how little, at least early on, that is the problem. It becomes ... it's about running a business that's [inaudible 00:11:22] more so. Your passion takes you to a certain point and then you have to say, "Okay, now I gotta like do my books, and I gotta do the taxes, and we have to find funding, and we have…
Detroit S.O.A.R. – Sisters On A Roll, Mobile Cafe’ Hey there, I am back with another guest from the great city of Detroit. This is Romy, and I have the pleasure of introducing you to Chef Bee and Jasmine of social enterprise Detroit S.O.A.R! They have an inspiring story of joining together around health food for some very interesting reasons. This is a true story of how we are better together! Stay tuned at the end for a really fun song by a Detroit artist. As a matter of fact, you might want to find your dancin’ shoes while you are listening, so you are ready. For the full transcript- click below Read Full Transcript Hey there, I am back with another guest from the great city of Detroit. This is Romy, and I have the pleasure of introducing you to Chef Bee and Jasmine of social enterprise Detroit S.O.A.R! They have an inspiring story of joining together around health food for some very interesting reasons. This is a true story of how we are better together! Stay tuned at the end for a really fun song by a Detroit artist. As a matter of fact, you might want to find your dancin’ shoes while you are listening, so you are ready. Before we hear from Jasmine and Chef Bee, let’s see what Luke found for us on this episode’s fun fuel Hi, this is Luke Trombley, and I am bringing you the fun fuel for this episode. While on the topic of mobile food, nearly 795 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. That is approximately one in nine people. 98% of the worlds undernourished population live in developing countries. Thanks to companies like Detroit Soar, that bring food to people who don't get enough to eat, the world hunger problem has dropped from 23.3 percent in developing nations to 12.9 percent. Thank you for listening to this fun fuel. Enjoy the Episode! Thank you, Luke! Listening to those statistics, it really makes me thankful for the work of Detroit SOAR. Let’s listen in now…. Romy: We're excited to have you. You guys [crosstalk 00:00:22]. Yeah, you guys were ... we met cause you were winners at a Build Social event in Detroit. Right? Jasmine R: Yeah. So, we were in an eight-week business accelerator to help us learn how to build a business while still doing a social mission and making a profit. And we met you at our pitch competition for that. Romy: Yeah. Lucky for me! Yeah, so let's, first of all, let our listeners know about Detroit SOAR and ... I don't know is that the name you use or do you say Sisters On A Roll? Can we clarify that right out of the gate? Chef Bee: Yes. We can clarify that. Sisters On A Roll is my personal company, and me and Jasmine met through that company, and together we became partners to do Detroit SOAR, which is Sharing Opportunities And Resources. Romy: Okay. Glad to know that. Okay, so Detroit SOAR is Sharing Opportunities And Resources. Alright, I love it. And then do you still have your other company going, Chef Bee? Chef Bee: Yes. That's the company through which we do the catering for Detroit SOAR - Romy: Okay. Chef Bee: And everybody else. Romy: And you really go by ... you're really most known as Chef Bee. Right? Chef Bee: I am. Romy: And why is that? Let's go back in history just a little bit. Chef Bee: Oh, we're going way back. I was in the kitchen when Tony from Andiamo's and it was two Browns in the kitchen. So, he called me Chef Bee. Romy: Okay - Chef Bee: And I've been going by Chef Bee ever since. Romy: So that's so good. So, what is Detroit SOAR? Chef Bee: Detroit SOAR is a way that we reach the people through the medium of food. Jasmine R: Yeah. So what we're trying to do when Chef Bee and I met we had a lot in common, and one of the things was our passion over food and our passion to serve the community through food. So, what we wanted to do was create a company where we could pull both of those together. So, what we normally tell people when they ask us, "What is Detroit SOAR?" is we say it's a mission driven café that helps bring the community together through food and events. Romy: Now, are you mobile [inaudible 00:02:41]? Jasmine R: So, we are mobile. So right now for the past like six months or so Chef Bee and I have really been focused on doing a lot of pop-up events. So, I know people have seen us at Eastern Market, at [Marlow 00:02:51] Farmer's Market, at Campus Munches, a couple other pop-up places. And then we are working on becoming mobile. So, we have a couple of food trucks. One we are very close to finishing up licensing for it and then we'll be on the road, you know, being able to go around Detroit serving different areas. And then we have an additional food truck that we're trying to build out for the winter. Cause our current one only runs on diesel, which tends to gel up when it gets cold. So we have another one that runs on gas that we can use a little bit easier during the winter months. Romy: So, nice. Alright. And so the purpose, just to get real basic for our listeners, the purpose is to deliver nutritional food, right, to some of those that might not have access to it? Chef Bee: Yes. That would be our end goal ... First of all, we want to be sustainable, so we want to be able to provide a service to the people that's already in the food deserts and also serve the people that are going through food injustice. And the flip side of that is offering everybody else; we're offering everyone healthy food service. Our food service, we want you to think about it a little bit differently. Like, yeah, you can get fried chicken anywhere, but how about maybe an oven friend chicken versus something greasy. You know what I'm saying? Or - Romy: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Chef Bee: Try it this way. We take different cultures of food and familiarize it for you. So, then you can taste the flavor of love, too. Romy: And Chef Bee, what's the reason why you want to deliver some nutritional food? Chef Bee: I come from outreach ministry. So, I'm always feeding someone. And I see the quality of the food that the big non-profit companies give to some of the people, and it's horrible. Like, I don't want to put this on the air, but I'm gonna say it. Like Red Cross food trucks ... they give the people watered down soup, maybe a piece of fruit, and green hot dogs. And I think that's horrible. Like, how is that gonna sustain somebody? You know what I'm saying? - Romy: Yeah. Chef Bee: I'm coming to a truck to be fed for free. At least give me something that will sustain me. And so I feel like it's my job to do that. Like, because I know I can. [crosstalk 00:05:17] You know even though it's statistically you looked at me. I'm a walking statistic on poverty and everything else, but I don't feel that way because as long as I'm able to help my brother, I'm rich. Romy: Yes, yes. I say, "Amen" to that. My faith has me saying unto that. Yes. Yeah, well good. And you've been feeding people for a while cause I think this is part of how this all started. Right? Chef Bee: Yes. What happened was prior to me even meeting the lady that I named my business after, I was always in outreach ministry. Always cooked and feed the people. I always cooked and fed seniors, people that could no longer cook for themselves, people that had dietary issues. And what happened was my mother got sick, my husband let me take off work, and so I was cooking for people and, you know, to help make up for the lack of not having a job, that's what started it. And then a friend of a friend asked me to help a friend. And that's how Sisters On A Roll actually started. She fell backward, and they said she would never walk again, but she drug herself until her body obeyed. And so she needed somebody to go along with her to business class. I went along with her, I was learning everything she was learning, and they asked the question, and I was in the classroom, and I was like, "Well, you know, I had to remember where I come from." Like my grandparents had businesses and everything, but by the time we were of age to realize what was going on, we were already having to work for someone else. So, this whole series of tragic events turned out to be a beautiful thing. In the process, I met Jasmine, and she's loved me from the first like really ... And we lost touch for a minute, and then when we saw each other again, it was like we had never missed a beat. And then the more we talked, the more we wanted to partner up, and we was like, "Time is short. Let's just do it. If it doesn't work, we'll do something else." And we were just looking at all different injustices going on in the city, out of the city, and everything else, and we was like, "We got a solution for that." And we'd become mobile and not be tied to one particular place. Then not only can we sustain ourselves, but we can help others be sustainable and test the market as well. Romy: Yeah. That's so good. And Jasmine, what's your background. How did you sort of arrive one the scene? Jasmine R: Yeah. So, I actually went to the University of Michigan, and I was studying business. I was in their business school, and I was always interested in the start-up scene. So there in college, I worked on various start-ups, and one of the ones I started doing on my own was called DineRoll, and it was a visual way to find food in your area. So, I came to TechTown; I became part of their DTX Launch Detroit program. So, I was in it for the summer of 2015. Really interviewing a lot of restaurant owners, food bloggers, foodies, anyone in the Detroit food scene ... to do a customary discovery for the app, I was trying to build. And during that time, there was a pop-up dinner, and I never even really heard of pop-up dinners. I didn't know what it was. But there was one at Checker Bar and my partner at the time was like, "Let's go check it out." So, I checked it out, and it was Sisters On A Roll that was putting it on. So, I got to try some of [inaudible 00:08:47] food and after I was like, "Can I just sit down to interview with you and figure out some of your pain points, your backstory?" So like Chef Bee said, her and I met up and we just really bonded at the time. And my startup ended up falling through, so I reached back out to her about six months after that and then her, and I partnered up. And we've been doing this ever since. Romy: Nice, nice. Cause you guys, sometimes when you come from ... un-similar backgrounds and un-similar age groups, and all that, it's hard to mess. But I got to tell you having watched you two together; you seem like a natural fit for the business. Chef Bee: Yes. Jasmine R: I love it. Like she teaches me how to cook, and I'm now learning how to cook different things. [inaudible 00:09:30] I didn't cook them before - Chef Bee: She gives me new eyes. You know what I'm saying? Romy: Yeah. Chef Bee: Like her energy is ... how you say it? It's infective, it's like, "Oh my god!" [inaudible 00:09:43] as a bunny. You know what I'm saying? She's like my other daughter / sister / partner all at the same time. Cause like she's really actually my medium ... my middle aged daughter's age. But together, you never know that. You know what I'm saying? - Romy: Right. Chef Bee: It's like the stuff we've been through in the last year ... Chef Bee.: It's like the stuff we've been through in the last year, melded us together, she like one of the family. You know what I'm saying, it's so funny to me like my kids like, "Where's Jasmine at?" If I go to a concert separate from her, they like "Where Jasmine at?" You know what I'm saying, it's natural, it became natural. Looking at the cultures, looking at the, like you say, lifestyles, all the differences, how would that work? But we know that it's of God because we consider one another, that's what makes it work to me, and together we wage war with a fork. Romy: Yes, ah, that's so good! That's so good. You guys are a dynamic duo; there is something about you two together. I told someone that I had bumped into the next morning after I saw you two present, and I'm like, man, they are the dynamic duo. There's some sort of multiplied force when they get together; I could just see it, so good. Romy: Yeah, and you know what, I'm glad you just said that. I think sometimes, we get a lot of questions about doing business in Detroit, and my consistent theme is like, look, everybody has a story, every person who's trying to do work in the city of Detroit, especially any entrepreneurial work, every single person has a personal story and most of us are figuring out we're better together. You know ... Chef Bee.: That's the bottom line, that's the bottom line. By myself I've been trudging along, I couldn't stop even if I wanted to and just having her along the journey she gets to see things and what I love about the food part is love on a plate crosses all cultures, all economic barriers. Even if you can't speak, if you can't converse with one another, if you put love on a plate, it will tell a story. It will change the narrative; it will do away with all the stuff that we as humans get bogged down with. Romy: Yeah, it's so true. So thank you for exploring that for a second with me because I just feel like so many good things are happening for us here in Detroit and I just wanted to highlight that, no matter what the news says. Chef Bee.: And that's another thing that I found that through food we have a voice. You know what I'm saying, you might not hear me by myself but if me and her are saying the same thing, somebodies going to take notice. Romy: Yeah, that's right. We have kind of a great food scene here, don't we, I'm mean it's more that what people would think. Jasmine: Oh yeah, it's definitely coming to life in the past couple of years with the revitalization of Detroit. You know, more younger professionals moving to the city, it's completely changed, and it's awesome to see. Romy: Yeah, so Let's talk more about your business model for a minute, let's just hang out there for a second. Are you guys charging some and offering free to others or, how's that working for your own financial sustainability? Jasmine: Yeah, of course. So a lot of what we learn actually in the build social class that we met you at was how to create a pay it forward food economy. So what Chef Bee. and I are trying to do partner with our customers to help be able to feed the food deserts of Detroit. So during the day time when her and I pop up at campus marshes or Eastern market, we can charge a little more for our food. That way we can then go back out into the food deserts of Detroit where people can't afford to pay anything at all and be able to serve them still while still having a profit to offset the end of the day. Romy: Yeah, smart. Sorry, and when did you start doing that? Did you do it right away or just recently? Chef Bee.: I've always did it. A long time ago I used to be under a nonprofit before I really knew all the statistics and all that blah, blah, blah stuff about it and I saw it in action. I saw that they partnered with Gleaners, which is what we're trying to do to get food for pennies on the dollar, take that food, make a full product and then give it to the people. Because a lot of the people don't have a way to cook the food, don't have a way to keep fresh food and a lot of the food that they're given is being thrown away. So, what good is it if I can't give you something again that's sustainable, but if we take those full products that's given, giving it to them in a hot meal, they can consume it and don't have to worry about trying to figure out where they got to store it, where they have to heat it up...…
Latrice McClendon of Impact Community Health Thanks for tuning in to the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This is Romy, and I have a friend of mine on the episode today. Latrice McClendon is quite an entrepreneur and just an all around amazing person. On this episode, we will hear about one of her businesses. She has at least one other venture with her husband. And, of course, you know I love music around here, so we will hear from another Detroit artist and their full song at the end of the episode so stay tuned! For the Full Transcript – Click below Read Full Transcript Thanks for tuning in to the Bonfires of Social Enterprise. This is Romy, and I have a friend of mine on the episode today. Latrice McClendon is quite an entrepreneur and just an all around amazing person. On this episode, we will hear about one of her businesses. She has at least one other venture with her husband. And, of course, you know I love music around here, so we will hear from another Detroit artist and their full song at the end of the episode so stay tuned! Luke has our Fun Fuel today, let’s see what he found for us…. Hi, this is Luke Trombley, and I am bringing you the fun fuel for this episode. While on the topic of infant health care, did you know that around 255 babies are born each minute? So for the time, it takes you to brush your teeth, nearly 300 new lives are brought into this world. It is also estimated that 353,000 babies are born in one day around the world. So far this year, over 78 million babies have been born. Thank you so much for taking time to listen to this fun fuel! Enjoy the episode! Thanks for that fun fuel Luke! Time to check in now with Latrice and see what she is up to with beautiful mama’s and their perfect little babies…. Romy: Alright so welcome Latrice Mcclendon from Impact Community Health, I am really excited you're on our show. Latrice: Thank you, I'm excited to be on your show. Romy: Our little podcast. We love our little podcast. Well anyway [crosstalk 00:00:18] so today we're talking about health, and you've got a cool spin on your new social enterprise. Well, I guess it's not new; but I just newly met you through Build institute, Build Social, right? Couple- Latrice: Correct. Romy: Months ago. Yeah. So you were one of the winners of the program there, and I got really excited right then to put you on the podcast as a guest. So, for our listeners, let's tell everyone what Impact Community Health is in the Detroit area. Latrice: Awesome. Hello, everybody. Impact Community Health is- we are a maternal/infant health program here in Michigan, and our main goal is to reduce infant mortality rates. We work with pregnant women, caregivers of infants up to 18 months who are Medicaid beneficiaries, and we address the psycho-social issues and any logistical barriers that a lot of women or children are faced with as far as having either a healthy birth outcome, or any barriers that are [inaudible 00:01:27] and making it to their first birthday, and of course, developing up to 18 months. So that's what we do, we focus on reducing infant mortality rates. Romy: Okay. Wow. Well that's- there's a obvious social impact from saving our beautiful babies. So- Latrice: Yeah. Romy: Your business- so what do you do then? What does the business look like? Latrice: So what we do, we actually send in social workers and nurses to educate, to encourage, to give all kinds of information on how to either take care of yourself while you're pregnant or how to take care of your baby. So we also have lactation consultants that we send in. We do parenting classes to educate. So our biggest mission is to educate. And we do that because a lot of people- you can't do what you don't know. Romy: Right. Latrice: And sometimes we take for granted- we take for granted a lot of times like, oh they're having a baby, or raising a baby is easy, and people should know this. But we found out that there's a huge population of people who just don't understand what it takes to have a healthy pregnancy or get their child and have up to- I'm sorry, have their child healthy up to the age of one or 18 months. A lot of babies don't make it. [crosstalk 00:02:56] so one of the statistics I like to tell people in Michigan: Michigan's infant mortality rates are comparable that of a third world country. We have very high infant mortality rates in Michigan. For out of every thousand babies born, just in general, seven die due to- could be, maybe they slept wrong in their crib, or they weren't in a crib, they were in a crowded bed. It could be smoking issues in the house, suffocation issues. It could be parents who don't know you can't leave your baby in a hot car. We deal with so many issues that really people just don't have the understanding, and that's seven out of thousand. In Detroit, that statistic is actually tripled. And so we're on a mission to reduce the number of babies who don't make it to their first birthday. Romy: That is crazy that it's that high. That's- how did you start to even- how did you even decide to tackle this yourself? I mean that's crazy high status- Latrice: Yeah, it's very high. Well, you know, honestly what happened was, before I got into doing this I actually had a personal experience. Not with myself, but I had a nephew who was five months old, and his mother left him in a bed, and the bed was close to the wall, but not close enough where it was like- there was a space. Well, anyway, she left him in a room for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, the baby rolled over and suffocated between the wall and the bed. Romy: Wow. Latrice: And it was very devastating. Yes. It was devastating. It was devastating to my nieces and nephews. It was devastating for myself and my brother, you know. Everyone was just in shock and couldn't believe- cause, you know, no one thinks that this kind of stuff actually happens, and then, when it hits your family, it makes you think like, "Wow. You know, I didn't even know this kind of stuff existed." You don't think that it could happen to you. And so within the last two years, I was presented with the opportunity. I was working with a social worker, and we were talking about another infant who had passed away from a pillow being in the crib. And the pillow- the mom woke up, she left the pillow, the baby was under the pillow when she woke up. She lost her baby. And so I got really concerned, and I asked one question, "What can I do to be a part of this and help to reduce and get the word out?" And I started doing some research and found out that Michigan has many programs that allow people to work in this particular area. So I applied for the program. It felt like a 300-page application. [crosstalk 00:05:48] [inaudible 00:05:48] and today we're servicing over 100 women. I mean, we're really making an impact right now. Romy: Wow, so this is really- this will probably come up as question. So you applied for a state program that- did it have funding Latrice? For you to get started, is that what you mean when you applied? Latrice: Well, you have to meet certain requirements. You have take online classes. We applied to be an agency, in the state of Michigan. Romy: Oh got you [crosstalk 00:06:22] okay. Latrice: Yeah, so there are some hospitals and- matter of fact, the city of Detroit just opened up a maternal/infant health program, because it's really- the rates are really high in Detroit. So it's becoming a health issue, just across the board, so they allow individual agencies, as well as hospitals, and people who are in that profession to actually be able to start a company. So they just take you through- it's a big process, just like starting a business. You have to have a business plan, you have to have a location, you have to know what you're marketed plan is, what your strategy is to get clients, who your clients are gonna be, and so what your budget looks like, and you have to have the right amount of people hired. So it's just like starting a business, it's just with the state of Michigan, and we are- we do take Medicaid, so they want to make sure that you have no fraud, and you know all that kind of stuff, they background check, and so on. Romy: Yeah, so great. So it wasn't necessarily the funding, just for clarity there, you applied to the agency, and then your revenue then comes from the Medicaid program in the US, right? Latrice: Exactly. So, yeah. There was no funding. They were like, "Hey, you've been approved. Go run with it." So the funding was- we're like, "Well." You know, and a lot of funding came out of our own pocket actually to get the business up and to go. Romy: Okay. That's great. So this is just a whole nother type of it, and we know, in many countries around the world, some governments have funding for things like this, some doesn't. So it looks like our government, in the US, is providing some for this type of thing; which is great. And Latrice, why do you think someone hasn't tried to tackle this before in Michigan, especially the Detroit area when those stats are so rough? Latrice: You know, I think that people have tried to tackle it. There are other agencies. It's just there's so many people dealing with the issue, that it's like having a pie, and I'm not feeling greedy enough to want the whole pie, but I just want like my slice in the pie. Meaning I know I can't help everybody, because people are trying- so I believe they've working on this, it's just such a hard [inaudible 00:08:40] population, that sometimes- that we work with, and when you don't know that you should do better, you may not know that you need the service. Right? If you're a client of ours. And it's sometimes hard to talk to people or deal with people, who may not think they need something. You know, maybe it's like they're not necessarily gonna have this issue; but then when the issue strikes, they realize, "Wow, I could have used this service." I think [inaudible 00:09:07] opportunity. Romy: Yeah. Right, right. So how are you doing it differently? How are you finding the potential clients then? Latrice: So we actually work with a lot of- we- our focus is Detroit. We do service other counties in Michigan, but we focus on Detroit, and we work with- so we're out in the community. So we might throw our own community baby shower or fair. We're actually going to specific places that only have Medicaid beneficiaries. So it's- maybe if this particular healthcare- health company only takes pregnant women who are on Medicaid, we go there. We say we have this service. You know, while they're seeing you as a doctor, we're allowed to go in their house and talk to them. And so we're knocking on the doors of people, and companies, and agencies who work with the population that we're looking for to get the word out. I know everyone's saying they're fine, but the statistic says they're not. So we're here to help. And so we're just really- our approach is getting with as many community agencies as possible to get the word out, and to let people know how high the stats are. You know, it's funny, every time- I'm not the first agency in Michigan to do this, or the last [inaudible 00:10:33] probably- the maternal/infant health agency, but every time I talk about it people are so shocked about the rate, and that lets me know that we're not talking about it. That lets me know that it's out of sight, out of mind for a lot of us. Including myself, because I have three babies, didn't know the statistics were so high, and I live in Detroit. So I'm- technically could be a part of that statistic, you know what I mean? Romy: [crosstalk 00:10:59] Latrice: [inaudible 00:11:00] and it was out of sight, out of mind for me, because you think that people have a true understanding of how to take care of themselves while they're pregnant, or how to take care of their babies. Romy: Yeah, that's huge. Well, I'm so glad that you're on the street doing it and you touch on something that I think is really common to social enterprise in general. It's you gotta be out and building relationships with your potential customers and beneficiaries. It seems so obvious, but so many miss it. I think there's a lot of folks that run to the, I don't know, the place base of social enterprise thinking it's gonna be super fun, but the reality is, we're all human beings, and we all got our own issues, and we gotta get in places of relationship and trust with each other to really make real impact. At least that's my- I don't know, my Romy opinion. Latrice: No, that's true. And it's funny, because sometimes if we just- I always tell people, if we just start talking to each other, we might not have everything in common, but we all wear shoes and- Romy: Yeah- Latrice: We all wear clothes, and there's somethings that we can find in- a commonality to break the ice, and then offer our help through our businesses. Sometimes we just push our businesses on people that- you know, I was that people don't care how much you want, till they know how much you care. Romy: Yeah, yeah. Latrice: And- yeah. And I feel like the social enterprise including- especially what we do, is important. It's so important that we let people know that we care about them. We care about their livelihood; we care about what's going on in their house, their children, their health. As we do that they- I found that the response is usually, "Okay, I'm interested. What can you teach me? I'm extremely interested." But it comes from really getting out here and doing it in all directions, just absolutely. Romy: Yeah, so good. And before- and another time we were talking, we were talking about your business being turnkey. I think that's and interesting concept to touch on. Would you mind defining what a turnkey business is? Just in case someone doesn't grab that terminology. Latrice: Yeah, so I do consider our business to be turnkey because we deal with Medicaid beneficiaries. We provide a service that is ready for immediate- that's what turnkey means. Basically, it's just like when you go into a convenience store. I get a bag of chips; I pay the person for the bag of chips, I walk out with the chips. Impact Community Health, we are a turnkey business. We provide a service, we send our social worker, our nurse, our lactation consultants into a home and we get paid for that visit. Of course, I have to add- we make a social impact every time we go into that home; but we get paid for that visit, and we get immediate release of our funds, and we provide immediate service. Romy: Okay. So that's really interesting, cause we were talking about- you get some turnkey, and you were thinking about ... Was it that you were thinking about building out some other services, or ... Latrice: Yeah. So I'm very community focused and one of things, when I considered becoming an entrepreneur, or going into business for myself, I was concerned about- you know we're always worried about money. Because at the end of the day, of course, we want to make a social impact, but you gotta make some money [crosstalk 00:14:26] in order to keep the business going. I'm mean that's part of business, right? And you gotta be able to pay your employees, so ... In reaching the community, I wanted to find something that was a little bit turnkey, where we got the money- we were able to generate a revenue so that we can open up other things that are of interest to us as a company. So we understand- and for us, for me, in Detroit, there are issues with health or issues with education, and sometimes we find they go hand in hand. And so we decided like, okay we want to open up some type of avenue for the women that we are meeting- and not just women, people that we're meeting, getting some type of education, so they can get a job. And maybe it can take them to the next level in their life. Well, in order to do that, we have to figure out- okay, we need money to do it. And so the turnkey part of it allows us to go to the next level in our business, maybe. You know, we're working on the educational center now, and somethings won't be so turnkey with the educational center; but we have the money from the [inaudible 00:15:38] maternal/infant health [inaudible 00:15:40] because it is turnkey, is able to help us to support other ventures that we're looking at doing within our company. Does that make sense? Romy: Yeah, yeah. That's great. That's so great. So, it's nice- so [inaudible 00:15:52] that's a nice model, I think. You've got one area that's turnkey, it's kinda one and done; you go in, you deliver your service, and that almost gives you the opportunity to go in then and develop other ones. Latrice: Yes and we budget for that. So in our business, we take a certain percentage, and we put it towards things that we may not get money back from. Right? Romy: Yeah. Latrice: We may not make a profit off of because we're dealing with a different type of population. And so- including we have a cribs program where we help to give out cribs to people because that's like- you know, when a baby dies just because they're in a bed with someone, because a person doesn't have a crib, that's really ... That's 100% preventable. Romy: Yeah. Latrice: And so we- you know, with us wanting to get cribs in everyone's homes and make sure they have the right equipment, and the right things to take care of their baby, that's- we're not gonna get a profit off of that. We're not selling them the cribs; we're giving it to them. And the turnkey aspect allows us to do that. Romy: Ah, okay. Alright, so that's really good. And so, I think what we've been talking about, on this podcast, is you can do that in one of two ways. You know, we always say if you've got something that you're doing because of your mission, you can say this is part of our impact, part of our cost to do it. Or sometimes people do that as, what they call, traditionally a loss leader. They're doing it to invite more sales. So that's very cool. So as social entrepreneurs you can do it one of two ways. You can say, "Hey, I do this to give it away. It's part of my mission. It's part of our integrity and our overall authenticity of our company but is also...…
Καλώς ήλθατε στο Player FM!
Το FM Player σαρώνει τον ιστό για podcasts υψηλής ποιότητας για να απολαύσετε αυτή τη στιγμή. Είναι η καλύτερη εφαρμογή podcast και λειτουργεί σε Android, iPhone και στον ιστό. Εγγραφή για συγχρονισμό συνδρομών σε όλες τις συσκευές.