FeelGood: A new approach to fight hunger from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Have you heard of FeelGood? It’s an innovative nonprofit social enterprise, based on 27 college campuses, that offers a new way to make a difference in the fight against hunger.

The program transforms students social entrepreneurs and responsible global citizens. Its goal is simple: End world hunger in our lifetime. They do it one grilled cheese sandwich at a time. Founded in 2005, FeelGood empowers college students to run nonprofit delis on their campuses, specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches that are given away for a voluntary donation. At the delis, students develop business skills, launch effective educational campaigns and initiate dialogues about the root causes of and solutions to poverty.

Fully 100 percent of the profits the students raise are invested in organizations with a track record of eradicating extreme poverty and empowering self-reliance. And here’s a remarkable stat: Every $100 invested in FeelGood yields $120 for certified organizations working to end global hunger.

I ran into FeelGood’s founders, Kristin Walter and Talis Apud-Martinez, at the last Social Capital Markets conference. (The next one will be Oct. 4-6 in San Francisco).

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

You’ll be able to tell from the video that I knew little about FeelGood before our interview. And, one reason I’ve delayed posting this is that we had the most production challenges I’ve ever encountered in a shoot: jet planes and helicopters roaring overhead, an SUV that backed up and interrupted our shoot and a white balance that wouldn’t cooperate, all in the space of a few minutes.

But Kristin and Talis’s passion and dedication to a great cause are on full display, and I’ll be supporting FeelGood’s efforts as much as I can in the years ahead. Their goal is to take FeelGood to every U.S. college campus.

FeelGood in the Chase Community Giving Challenge on Facebook

Update: I just heard from Kristin, who says: “We are competing to win $20,000 today in the CHASE Community Giving Challenge on Facebook. Voting ends tonight and we need to recruit about 250 more votes in order to secure our win.”

Here are the steps:

(1) Visit: http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/760765873-feelgood

(2) Click “get started to vote” and then the “like” button (looks like a thumbs up) & allow access to the Chase Community Giving application.

(3) Click the green “VOTE” button.

(4) Once your vote goes through, the green “VOTE” button will turn into a “Share with friends” button. Please do!

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Here’s a 4-minute interview I did with Kevin Jones, founder of a new conference called Social Capital Markets. The three-day gathering in San Francisco, with 650 attendees, focused on social enterprises, the blurring line between nonprofits and socially conscious for-profits, and the tidal wave of interest in organizations that promote the common good (especially in the wake of the stock market’s meltdown). VCs, entrepreneurs, foundations, aid agencies and journalists all attended.

Watch the video in Flash on Vimeo

Watch the video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia
Download the original video from Archive.org

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz

The post SoCap: Advancing the social good appeared first on Socialbrite.

I’m here mostly to get the lay of the land. Ourmedia.org wants to support nonprofits and social change organizations by offering a suite of social media tools for cause campaigns. And SoCap is turning out to be a gathering where both the wealth of sessions and the hallway connections are equally valuable.

During today’s session on Pitching Your Organization, panelists offered tips on attracting seed funding for your social enterprise venture:

• "open with an eye-catching stat," not just a generic statistic about the size of the marketplace

• very high up in your pitch: what problem are you solving?

• who’s involved in your effort who’s impressive in this space?

For later-stage funding:

• how big can it grow to be?

• how impressive a team have you assembled?

• tell a story. try to establish an emotional connection.

• if you’re turned down, try to get some feedback on what didn’t work. what were the holes in the proposal? if they liked it but it wasn’t up their alley, ask them to forward it to other VCs who might be interested.

• for followups, use the phone, not email.

A few of the folks I interviewed or chatted with included:

• Kevin Jones, organizer of the conference
• Sara Olsen of SVT Group
• Joyce Kim of Fortis
• Jerry Michalski of Sociate
• Juliana Pastoriza of Brazil’s Geracao de Impacto (Impact Generation)
• Jim Schorr of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
• Barbara Roder of TUM Business School in Munchen, Germany (sorry, too tired to look up diacritic marks right now)

Heading back on Tuesday.

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz

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