InvestmentNews is our sponsor this week, and they would like to tell you about their NextGen Virtual Career Fair on November 8th. It’s an awesome opportunity for students and interns to network and find finance jobs on the spot.
Although I always knew that I wanted to run my own business, it took me until after I graduated college to actually do something about it. It’s a shame because there are all kinds of resources available for entrepreneurs who are enrolled in college. A great example is the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. They are an Amherst, MA based non-profit that supports “technology innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education to create experiential learning opportunities for students and successful, socially beneficial innovations and businesses.” The organization exists to bring all of the great thinking ideas that happen on college campuses to life through business.
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social venture
As you’ve probably noticed, we cover non-profit internships on the weekends. Occasionally I come across a company that feels like it should be on the weekend, but rules are rules (even if I’ve created them arbitrarily). Social Impact is one of those companies. They’re an Arlington, VA based management consulting firm and “global social enterprise dedicated to helping international agencies, civil society and governments become more effective agents of positive social and economic change.” Social Impact was founded in 1996 has grown to serve five regions: Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia & Pacific, Latin America & Caribbean, Europ & Central Aisa, and Middle East & North Africa.
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Virginia
Yesterday we talked about how One Acre Fund is helping people escape poverty by giving them access to technology that makes them better farmers. Today’s non-profit also fights poverty with technology, but they’re using the power of the Internet to give people in countries like India, Pakistan, Haiti, Uganda, South Africa, and Kenya access to more robust economies. Samasource is based in San Francisco, CA, and they have a technology platform that brings “dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty.” Outsourcing and offshoring often get a bad rap, but you rarely hear about how life changing the work can be for the people who get it. (I’m also convinced that outsourcing is a significant net positive for those of us who live in the countries with robust economies.)
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social entrepreneurship
As my actions show, I’m a strong believer that entrepreneurship can solve most of societies problems. It’s amazing what you can create with your own labor and a little bit of investment. That’s why I find the microfinance movement so interesting. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t more focus on this kind of lending in the United States. Grameen America is a five-year old non-profit that is changing this. They’re based in New York, NY, and they’re aiming for “a market where any individual with a dream can receive affordable financial products regardless of income, previous credit history, education, or business experience.” Grameen America is attacking poverty head on, and it seems like they’re having some great success.
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accounting,
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community development,
finance,
microfinance,
New York,
non-profit,
social entrepreneurship,
social investing
Although getting money to fund a startup company isn’t what I called easy, there’s a pretty standard process for seeking investment. When it comes to starting up a non-profit, the process isn’t often so clear. This can make finding funding seem impossible. However, there are some smart people who have taken the venture capital model and adjusted it for the non-profit world. One of these organizations is New Profit, which is based in Cambridge, MA. They were founded in 1998 and they focus “on supporting innovative social entrepreneurs who have brought a pathbreaking, big idea to life in an innovative organization.” They do this through their philanthropy fund, which has funded a ton of non-profit organizations. (I’m having trouble determining whether New Profit is actually a non-profit, but philanthropy funds usually are.)
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venture capital
Volunteering is a great thing to do while you’re in college. It’s an opportunity to do good while building valuable skills and putting yourself to work doing something other than studying (which is really helpful when you start looking for a job). Obviously volunteering isn’t only for people who have time on their hands, yet many non-profit organizations treat it like it is. Why would you have a top notch software developer running around picking up trash when he or she could be fixing a few bugs on the organization’s website? Why have a brilliant investment banker building a house when he or she could be managing the organization’s endowment? If the volunteers want time away from work and would prefer to do something different, that’s totally cool. But what if they want to offer pro bono services? Where do they find organizations who can make the best use of their time? Catchafire is a New York, NY based B-Corp (a for-profit company with a social mission–we actually featured internships with B Corporation) that aims to fix this problem. They want to “make it easy for every professional to use their skills for good, and to make it easy for every nonprofit and social enterprise to access and effectively use pro bono as a way to build capacity within their organization.”
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product management,
sales,
social entrepreneurship,
social venture,
software development,
user experience,
web development
When I was in high school, I got good grades, did community service work through my church, played baseball and basketball, and ran a fan website about my favorite rapper (it was a long time ago, and it was profitable). It may sound like a lot, but I can’t believe how much time I wasted. High schoolers are capable of a lot, and they need to be challenged. That’s exactly what the San Francisco, CA based Conrad Foundation does. They’re a non-profit organization that challenges “high school students to create innovative products using science, technology, and entrepreneurship to solve real-world, 21st century problems.” They do so through the Spirt of Innovation Awards, which is a competition put on in honor of Pete Conrad (whom the foundation is named after), the astronaut who commanded Apollo 12. Pete was expelled from a prestigious high school because he couldn’t read or spell. It turned out that he was dyslexic, and the headmaster at his new school was able to help him make the most of his genius. After high school he went to Princeton and the moon. Not bad for someone who couldn’t read or spell in high school.
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web development
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One development that I’ve become more and more aware of since I graduated college is that of social entrepreneurship. The startup culture doesn’t apply solely to for-profit ventures. The tough thing about starting your own non-profit is getting money to run the organization. Early stage businesses can either grow organically by selling products or get investment at the cost of a portion of future revenues. Early stage non-profits don’t have as many options because most donors only want to give money to established non-profits that have a track record of doing good things with the money. That’s where New York City based Echoing Green steps in. They invest in and support “outstanding emerging social entrepreneurs to launch new organizations that deliver bold, high-impact solutions.” Since Echoing Green is already an established non-profit, they’re able to raise money to support upstarts that already have top notch founders and world changing missions, but not much else.
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social venture
Believe it or not, over the past week One Day, One Internship has been coming to you from a lodge on the banks of the Grand Cascapedia river in Quebec. As I’ve learned this week, fishing for Atlantic Salmon is extremely difficult, even though you can often see the fish right in front of you. In some pools there appear to be plenty of fish, but none of them will bite. That’s probably a good thing considering the fact that the estimated annual run on the Bonaventure (where we’ve been doing our fishing) is only about 1,500-2,000 fish. That means that if I catch and release my daily limit of two fish, I’ve caught .1% of the entire run. Even though we’d really like to, we can’t even think about killing one of these fish to eat—they’re too precious. Luckily, CleanFish is a company (and a B Corporation, you know what that is now!) that offers sustainable seafood that we can eat. They’re based in San Francisco with offices in Gloucester, MA and Los Angeles, CA as well, and they’re changing the way that we eat seafood.
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When I was a junior in high school, I couldn’t make out what was written on the blackboard anymore. I had gone from having 20/12 vision – the best the nurse had ever seen – to sitting in the ophthalmologist’s office to get my first pair of glasses. The glasses only lasted a month before I got contact lenses, but it was still awkward to pull out my glasses at the beginning of each class. The glasses and contacts made a huge difference in every day life, and they also helped me lift my batting average on the baseball team from .000 the year before to .448. I didn’t like that I needed them, but I had to learn to deal with it. In retrospect, I didn’t realize how lucky I was to get excellent vision care. The Scojo Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides glasses and vision care to people in developing countries who would otherwise struggle to get by.
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Internships,
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vision
