And so it was earlier this evening when Sundeep Ahuja — a born connector and former marketing chief for Kiva who’s now on the executive team at RichRelevance.com — organized the second  awareness2action event at the Dragonbar in San Francisco’s North Beach. The event, attended by about 60 people involved with various social causes, featured an hour of socializing and an hour of panelists discussing social enterprises.

On the panel:

• Premal Shah, President of Kiva.org (here’s the video interview with Premal I published last week)

• Kevin Jones, Principal at Good Capital

• Steve Newcomb, serial entrepreneur & founder of Virgance.

No one videotaped the event, but here are a few snippets:

Kevin Jones mentioned the-hub.net, a co-working space for social entrepreneurs that began in London and has spread to about 8 locations in all. Good Capital is looking into opening a co-location space in San Francisco.

Steve Newcomb: "I’m on a hiring spree — I’m not paying anything, but I’m on a hiring spree." … "I don’t know how to replicate what the Barack Obama campaign did and apply it to business."

Premal Shah announced the first downturn in lending in Kiva’s history: a 10 percent drop from a year ago because of the economic downturn. The nonprofit has reduced its 2009 budget from $6 million to $4.4 million.

Premal said Kiva planned to release a developer platform with an open API in 2009 so that the community could create additional features and unlock more growth. Great news!

Premal also said Kiva should empower the 17-year-old in Boise, give him the Kiva Powerpoint presentation decks and publish it out on SlideShare. Even if volunteer evangelists got some of the facts wrong, just spreading the word is an enormous win.

Newcomb echoed the approach I’m taking with the upcoming launches of Social Media Camps and Socialbrite.org [this blog] by citing the "train the trainers" model. While many people thought the Obama campaign was a decentralized, democratically run effort, in truth the campaign used a hybrid model of command and control at the top facilitating grassroots efforts at the bottom — "managed empowerment," in Newcomb’s words.

Cool webite: Carrotmob. Carrotmob organizes consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses that agree to make socially beneficial choices.

The post Activism and the social enterprise appeared first on Socialbrite.

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.

At the Pitching in Action session, four organizations gave presentations on social enterprises they’re planning to launch. Each had a compelling story.

Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation said investors look at four things in deciding whether to invest in a social enterprise startup:

• What is the compelling problem you want to solve?
• Do you have a solution to connect the dots on a path to impact?
• Do you have a plausible path to go to scale?
• Do you have the right organization to deliver on your vision? 

BAVC

Ken Ikeda, executive director of the Bay Area Video Coalition here in SF, outlined the prospects for a new venture called FUSE, an online platform and portal to provide digital media training online.

The appeal of FUSE, Ikeda said, is that its short, intense classes last two to three days rather than the weeks or months in schools or other programs. "Most of us don’t want to go back to school," Ikeda said.

BAVC, which brings in $2 million a year in revenue, now serves 6,000 students a year, and it wants to move these training courses online and serve tens of thousands of students.

The current plan is to launch FUSE as a free-standing company and sell equity in it. (Ikeda said of BAVC, "We get buyout offers every year." Which is interesting, given that they’re a nonprofit.)

Change Agent

I was blown away by the presentation by Bob Cabeza, executive director of Change Agent, a startup in Long Beach, Calif, whose Native American ancestry informed his storytelling prowess.

Change Agent offers digital media training in such subjects as digital video production, graphic design, Web design, audio visual services, youth development and more. Their market includes nonprofits, community organizations, school districts, small companies and more.

Money quote: "If you need us after 6 months, we’ve failed you."

In 2007-08, they built the business from zero dollars to $110,000 in revenues from 19 new clients, and they’re on course to hit $200,000 in 2009. The staff includes high school interns ("these kids are digital media geniuses!" Cabeza said), an executive director, art director, two graphic artists and two digital media artists. They’re seeking $3.7 million in funding.

Their goal, in short, is to "get kids into jobs and into college through digital media training."

Youth Media

Lissa Soep, research director of Youth Media International, showed off the impressive track record of Youth Media/Youth Radio: distribution on such media outlets as NPR, BoingBoing, Jezebel, Slate, KQED, Yahoo! News, Current TV and the San Francisco Chronicle.

They’re all about creating relevant, quality content about, and of interest to, youths. YMI is positioning itself as "the gateway to the next-generation producer-citizen … through transformative content that helps shape the lives of young people," Soep said. They’re on track to bring in $350,000 in sponsorships and advertising in year two, and hope to break even on this new program in two years.

Kevin Weston of Youth Outlook Multimedia in San Francisco gave the fourth presentation but I had to leave for an interview. The organization’s goal is to "expand the news lens through ethnic media."

I’ll post video interviews of other Social Capital participants in the coming days.

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz

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