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“Disruptive Philanthropy”–From the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit

By Lee Fox for Cause Capitalism. Philanthropy is characterized by specific behaviors in the context of compassion (the love of humanity), action (volunteerism), donation (the gift of money) and collaboration (partnerships).  Successful social enterprises require each of these elements to healthfully co-exist. Of course, all it takes is the pinch of a bad economy to throw […]

Use Community to Build Your Social Enterprise (Why Stealth Mode is For Suckers)

Arm yourself.  Surrounding yourself with other social entrepreneurs is the next best thing to learning-from-doing.  A community of people with similar goals adds to your knowledge bank, provides feedback, offers shortcuts, referrals and product discounts, and pushes you forward. When Jill wanted to implement an IRA program for the employees who ran her coffee shop, […]

Should Your Business Use an e-Commerce Philanthropy Platform? What You Can Gain and What to Be Wary Of

Yesterday I wrote about some of the ways that small startups with limited resources can create a social mission.  Today, I came across a tool that makes it easy for your company to try out a buy-one-give-one model called B1G1. Traditionally, buy-one-give-one refers to like products. TOMS Shoes and Sunnight Solar are great examples. Every […]

Can Crowd-sourced Solution Campaigns Save The World?

Can crowd-sourced solution campaigns save the world?  Yikes, I need a better name for the concept, but here’s what it means: an original body that sets up the framework and partnerships to drive a social solution. The betacup and WeCanEndThis.com are two campaigns I’ve been following. Each brings together corporate, nonprofit, media, technology and design partners […]

Doing Good Isn’t Always Hard: How iStock Made An Easy Segueway Into Micro-donations

Get the Google Audio Widget widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info) Click the player below to listen or right-click and save for the MP3. I spoke with iStockphoto to learn how it lobbied for and justified its new micro-donations platform to give customers and employees an easy […]

7 Steps to Building Partnerships From the People Who Are Ending Hunger

If you truly want your company to have a great impact, you can’t go it alone. You need to have partners. But what type and how? Scott Henderson and his colleagues Anne Bertelsen and Brian Reich seem to be wizards at creating partnerships and drawing out the best from each party. Together, they launched  WeCanEndThis.com, a year-long campaign […]

PowerBars for the Mind: 14 Sites I Read on Good Business & Smart Thinking

Here are the blogs and sites I read (about half of them I read or skim daily) for sustainable business news and perspectives on good business, marketing and blogging. I like to sign up for a daily or weekly email feed so I can skim headlines and ideas without having to remember to visit the […]

Foursquare and CauseWorld Lead to Better Cause Marketing–with Joe Waters

It’s a no-brainer to decide to run a cause marketing program. There’s ample evidence that (1) consumers choose products aligned with a cause, (2) employees and brand benefit from socially driven programs and (3) causes can use the help. But there are important considerations when deciding what type of program best suites your business, how […]

One Entrepreneur’s Story of Building a Business for a Better World–With Joe Magee

PineMark is to you and me what LEED is to buildings: a certification of sustainability. PineMark founders Joe Magee and Lauren de los Santos are incentivizing and rewarding individuals for their green lifestyles and educating them along the way. I spoke with Joe, who shares a commonality with many entrepreneurs. He left his comfortable seat […]

The Accidental Niche: How GiveForward’s Fundraising Platform Attracted an Untapped Audience–With Desiree Vargas

In March 2009 Amy Cowin raised $32,000 through a personal fundraising page to pay for an operation to remove one of her kidneys and donate it to her sister Jessica. This is not Amy and Jessica’s story. It’s the story of GiveForward.org–the idea and technology that enabled this operation and hundreds of others like it. […]