Too Many Nonprofits…Or A Weak Ecosystem?

Greenlights for Nonprofit Success, Austin’s nonprofit management assistance organization, today released the findings of a research study on the number of nonprofits in Central Texas.  The results weren’t surprising: we have more nonprofits (over 6,300) per capita than any other large Texas city and any other city in the Southwest region. And our nonprofits tend to be small: 93% (compared to 89% nationally) have a budget under $1 million, and 89% have a budget under $500,000.  In light of this study, Greenlights offers some good advice about looking towards cooperation, collaboration, and even  mergers given the number of nonprofits that exist and the increasing competition for funding, especially given the current economy.

What is missing from the study, however, is an analysis of the overall social sector in Austin, including philanthropy and other funding mechanisms, other social impact organizations–like social enterprises (creating social impact through market-based activity)– and the role of the public sector in all of this.  We need to take a bigger picture view and understand all of the elements and entities at play in the sector and how these elements could be better supported, analyzed, strengthened and winnowed, if necessary.  We need to take a look, as I explained in an earlier post, at the overall ecosystem for social innovation (ideas that solve existing public challenges). And we need to look at similar cities (like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh) to understand how their social sector is innovating and thriving and what we could learn from them.  The ecosystem for a thriving social innovation sector includes:

• An Engaged Public Sector: A city and/or state-level office for social innovation, similar to the White House Office of Social Innovation that puts public sector focus and resources toward strengthening an innovative social sector.  One-Star Foundation is moving in this direction.
• Larger, Innovative Philanthropy: An increased number of area philanthropists, giving more grants for capacity-building, providing growth capital to scale great ideas, giving seed funding for ideas that have potential, using mission-related investing and program-related investments, working as a group to discuss innovations in philanthropy and share and leverage projects.
• Social Investment: Adding a social element to the entrepreneurial investing that is already rich in our area, investors could create innovative funds that provide nonprofits and social enterprises financial tools such as loan guarantees, quasi-equity deals, and networks, advice, and entrepreneurial knowledge.
• Colleges and Universities Encouraging Research: Our local colleges and universities could launch centers for research on social entrepreneurship and social innovation. The RGK Center is a good start, but I’d love to see more.
• Discussions and Experiments: More events, gatherings, workshops, think tanks and other activities that help social entrepreneurship and innovation take hold in our region.

I think to truly understand where the Austin social sector is and how the number and capacity of nonprofits fit into that, we need to understand the entire ecosystem.  If we want to boast a thriving, innovative social sector we need to take a step back, analyze what we have and what we can do to encourage even more innovation.  The end result is a stronger, healthier city that ties its spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation to its desire to give back and strengthen the communities in which we live.  That is the Austin I envision.

Tags: Austin, Greenlights, nonprofit, One-Star Foundation, Philanthropy, RGK Center, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship, social innovation, Social Investing, White House Office of Social Innovation

Understanding Social Innovation

If you are interested in learning more about the social innovation movement and will be in Austin on May 14th, join me for a seminar, “New Models: Social Innovation.” This 90-minute session will discuss what social innovation is, what the terms social entrepreneurship, growth capital, venture philanthropy, mission-related investing, and social enterprise mean, and what some really innovative organizations are doing in this space.  If you run a nonprofit, serve on a board, run a social business or are thinking of launching one, donate to social impact organizations, or are interested in solutions to social problems, there is great significance for you in the social innovation movement. And because Austin  has a lead role to play in the movement, I’ll examine how Austin compares to the rest of the country.  You can read some of my past posts on Austin’s social innovation ecosystem, where Austin is going and what it needs to be a leader in this space here, here and here.

If you’ve been intrigued by social innovation and want to learn more, join us:

Lunch and Learn: New Models  – The Social Innovation Movement

May 14, 2009
11:30am-1:00pm
At Greenlights

Click Here to Register

Tags: Austin, nonprofit, social business, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship, social innovation, Venture Philanthropy

Accelerating Austin’s Social Enterprise Conversation

This is RISE week in Austin.  RISE (Relationship and Information Series for Entrepreneurs) was started by the Sosa crew–Roy and Bertrand Sosa (brothers) and Roy’s wife Suzi.  The brothers immigrated from Mexico in 1986 and started a company called NetSpend, selling prepaid credit cards to recent immigrants.  Netspend went on to be very successful, and they sold the company in 2006 to launch MPOWER Ventures, a double-bottom-line venture capital fund whose mission is to empower the world’s underserved, and MPOWER Labs a research and development incubator and business accelerator.

The Sosa’s are firm believers in entrepreneurship and are a testament to its power to transform people and communities.  They launched RISE in 2007 as a way to ensure that “Austin continues to be a leader in developing top level entrepreneurs who transform their vision into successful businesses that greatly contribute to our local, national and global economy.”  They believe that Austin has been and will continue to be uniquely positioned to foster successful entrepreneurs:

There is no better place on earth than Austin, Texas for an entrepreneur to gather the tools they need for success. As a unique intersection of the academic, public and private sectors, our city has proven itself to be an environment for entrepreneurs to succeed. Austin is home to household names such as Whole Foods Market, GSD&M Idea City, A Glimmer of Hope Foundation, Silicon Labs, The Lance Armstrong Foundation and Sweet Leaf Tea.

RISE differs from most entrepreneurial conferences, though, in that it includes a social entrepreneurship track.  The Sosas believe very strongly in social entrepreneurship, as they themselves are social entrepreneurs.  There are many great sessions on the schedule this week from Philip Berber’s (founder of A Glimmer of Hope) session on his journey from entrepreneur to social entrepreneur, to Kala Philo’s session on Muhammed Yunus’ social business model, to Doug Ulman’s (CEO of the Lance Armstrong Foundation) session on social entrepreneurship, and several others.  These sessions have all been standing room only.  It’s really exciting to see such an interest in this topic in Austin.

My colleague Jessica Shortall and I even got in on the game by presenting Startups with Social Impact, an overview of Social Enterprise, which we define as “An organization (business or nonprofit) that achieves significant social impact as a product of market-based activity.”  And then broke it down into three types, which is our modification of Venturesome’s 3 Models of Social Enterprise:

• Subsidized: Business activity operated by a nonprofit–profits are funneled back into nonprofit
• Trade-off: Business balances between the level of profitability & the creation of social impact. An increase in one decreases the other.
• Lock-step/Social Business: Direct social impact increases or decreases in parallel with financial returns.

Social Enterprise can be viewed along a spectrum like the one below, where potential for profit starts at the first Trade-Off model:

Then, two great Austin examples of social enterprise spoke to the standing-room-only group.  First, Missy Nathan, co-founder of Blue Avocado discussed how their green grocery bag system has taken off in just 4 short months through Wholefoods and other distribution channels.  Their Lock-Step business model has a triple bottom-line:  profit, environmental and social return.  They even give 1% of sales to Kiva.  Their supply chain is diligently monitored to ensure that they are environmentally sound, and they closely track and report on the number of plastic bags being reduced.  This team of three smart, tenacious women has huge goals and appears prepared to deliver on them.

Our second social enterprise was English at Work, a nonprofit that teaches English at the workplace to Spanish-speaking company employees.  Founder Maile Broccoli-Hickey discussed their unique business model which charges their company clients (large hotels, restaurants and other employers) to provide on-site English language classes to their employees.  Although they are currently charging the companies only 25% of the costs of the class, the goal is to move closer to 50% and beyond.

The session ended with a vigorous discussion of what is holding Austin back from becoming a leading social enterprise city.  Some thoughts included:

• Lack of capital–investors don’t understand or aren’t familiar with double-bottomline companies, so are unwilling to invest
• Low media interest in/attention to social enterprise
• Few events that bring together social entrepreneurs and investors
• Unclear understanding of the current social enterprise eco-system, and what is lacking compared to other thriving cities like San Francisco, London, Toronto, Pittsburgh

Some suggested the first step may be a wiki that lays out the current social enterprise ecosystem.  Once we understand what we have and where we are, we can determine what it will take to evolve.  Also, many are excited about the possibility of Brewster McCracken becoming our next mayor.  He has expressed a real interest in this area, especially as it pertains to the green economy.

There are many more sessions on tap for today and tomorrow and many more conversations to come.  But the energy and excitement for social enterprise is palpable.  I hope to see it grow.

Tags: Austin, Blue Avocado, Brewster McCracken, English at Work, Kiva, Social Enterprise, social entrepreneur, Venturesome

Resetting the Capital Approach

There is concern lately about how much worse it is going to get for nonprofits because of Obama’s new budget proposal, which will limit the value of the tax break for wealthy donors, from 35% to 28%. Many nonprofits are even more worried than they were before about revenue, for example the nonprofit Executive Director whose comments to the Daily Dish caused a firestorm of replies:

A couple of our usual big donors have indicated we should be prepared for smaller donations this year, and possibly none in the next couple of years.  They are mentioning Obama’s tax plans and their need to save money now in anticipation of that.  A lot of my colleagues in the not-for-profit world are really scared right now, and we are not happy with Obama…Organizations are going to be killed under Obama’s plan…Frankly, this sucks.

All of this talk about a deepening poor revenue picture for nonprofits makes some, like Perla Ni, founding publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, think there will be a shift in how nonprofits raise money.  Perla wrote recently that nonprofits should shift their appeals away from metrics and towards emotion:

During these difficult economic times, when all of us know someone who has or is at risk of losing their job, it’s much easier for us to relate to the appeals to our conscience and our heart. That’s not to say that there is no room for “expert” evaluations and quantitative metrics. It’s about degree and balance of the heart and the head.

Seriously?  We’re going to squander this opportunity that the crisis in our financial system affords and go back to the tin-cup mentality of nonprofit revenue generation?  I completely disagree with this notion.  Nonprofits may think that appealing to emotion is the way to go, but that will only set them back.  To me, it is akin to Marty Linsky’s recent piece about hunkering down versus resetting in these difficult times.  As Linsky puts it, we have two choices and the “hunkering down” option looks like:

Stephanie Strom’s piece in the Times on Friday of last week showering sympathy on the well-intentioned charities going belly up, rather than seeing this moment as an opportunity to rethink their priorities, eliminate duplication, introduce good management practices, and get rid of programs and people who are not performing well.

Whereas resetting is about understanding how systems are changing and that we have to adapt to the longterm.  We must embrace the change and move with it:

Here’s what Reset might look like…(1) Funding risk-takers, creators, and inventors, small and large, in manufacturing, financial services, nonprofits, and even academia…(2) targeting…spending and investing now for the long term, like…supporting new faces and burgeoning success stories in education, people and ideas to help rescue the current school-age generation…

Focusing on emotion and heart-strings in order to try to keep a fledgling nonprofit operating might be appealing, but it is a hunkering down mentality. These times call for a complete resetting of how we do things.  Nonprofit fundraisers and Executive Directors don’t have the luxury of “appeal[ing] to our conscience and our heart.”

Nonprofit leaders and board members often tell me that XYZ nonprofit is easier to fundraise for because their cause is an “easier sell,” for example children and puppies.  I don’t think that a particular cause is inherently easier to sell because it has more of a pull on heartstrings. Rather, those organizations that can demonstrate, yes through metrics and outcomes, that they are positively impacting and reversing a disequilibrium will have much more success at appealing to donors.

But also, and more importantly, organizations that demonstrate their impact are better positioned to attract new kinds of revenue which this financial crisis will create.  I truly believe that the “resetting” that is occuring in our financial markets will create an opportunity and demand for more social impact capital, which is money that used to be channeled purely towards financial profit, but now is looking for a more complex blending of profit and social impact.  I don’t mean just social enterprises, I’m talking about a complete restructuring of capital markets that allows philanthropists, venture capitalists, angel investors, foundations, wealthy individuals, traditional nonprofit donors to be more innovative with their capital and invest in organizations that are proving social impact, again through metrics and outcomes, and are willing to understand, address and appeal to those who want to see more (social returns) done with their money.

By going back to the heart strings and the tin cup, social impact organizations miss out on the great opportunity that lies in this capital market restructuring and the greater resources that will follow.

Tags: angel investors, Foundations, nonprofit, Obama, Philanthropy, social capital, Social Enterprise, tin cup, venture capital

Change is Here

One of the criticisms of an otherwise very well received speech last night by President Obama was that it was “too ambitious.”  Last night he vowed to take on healthcare and education reform, the recession, global warming, 2 wars, among other things.  That is ambitious, but does he have a choice?  Do we have a choice?  You could actually argue that it wasn’t ambitious enough.

Our world is changing so quickly and the problems are becoming larger and more complex.  This complexity requires, and indeed demands, a completely different, and by previous standards “ambitious,” approach.  The very ways in which we live, work, play, communicate are all changing, and exponentially.  Take social media and the flood of information it provides; we’re all trying to figure out how to keep up.

Lucy Bernholz, president of Blueprint Research & Design (a philanthropy consulting firm) and a philanthropic thought leader, argued recently that what we are experiencing is not a recession, but a complete restructuring of our world.  Our institutions are crumbling, our environmental resources diminishing, our economy melting down.  We are charting completely new territory:

It doesn’t make sense to think of this as a dip in an otherwise upward trend. It is more like a turn off onto a different path. People born since 1990, all over the globe, have fundamentally different assumptions than those born before that year about where information lives, who controls it, where and how work gets done, what the “proper” role of government might be, where their friends live, how much personal privacy they have, want or value, what kind of resources will be needed to fuel their futures, what kind of innovation might fuel the economies in which they will live, and what their individual relationships to others – proximal and far away – are, could be, or might be.

And she suggests many ways in which this restructuring could take place.  Several on her list point to a growing convergence among public, private and nonprofit approaches (which I’ve talked about before):

Social enterprise begins to morph the philanthropic giving that exists to its left and the commercial enterprise that exists to its right (on a spectrum from giving to investing

Individuals’ daily contributions and activities are a deliberate and recognized mix of paid and unpaid – and successful enterprises build themselves to catalyze those inside/outside, professional/volunteer, expert/amateur, user/producer contributions

Philanthropic giving is really asked (read: required by regulators or purchased: in a marketplace) to prove its value in the funding food chain of producing social good. So are social investing, social enterprise, and socially responsible investing.

Enterprises and activities that generate economic, social and environmental benefits move from marginal to the middle – and innovation shifts elsewhere

We will no longer assume that nonprofit = social good, commercial enterprise = profit, rather we will think about what we need as a society (investigative reporters, an independent media, universal literacy, human rights) and figure out new forms of delivering those things

So financing, once separated into private and nonprofit buckets, merges into a results bucket that combines social impact and financial profit.  Problems are no longer addressed from a profit or nonprofit position, but rather from a solution position, which draws on both.  Activity that provides a blending of profit and social good is no longer marginalized, but is actually revered and becomes the norm.

What we are already seeing, and will continue to see more and more, is a convergence of private, public and nonprofit money; private and nonprofit operating principles; private, public and nonprofit goals and reasons for being; private, nonprofit and government approaches to problems.  We no longer exist in neat categories that inform our activity, funding, thought, approach, world-view.

The social entrepreneurship movement has taken off so dramatically in recent years in large part because of this growing convergence.  People are recognizing that the old separations no longer make sense or work.

Convergence is real and is happening everywhere.  Those who are not “ambitious” enough and continue to view the world in stale and unbending categories will be left behind.

Tags: convergence, Lucy Bernholz, nonprofit, Obama, Philanthropy, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship

Growing the Austin Social Innovation Ecosystem

As part of my effort to encourage the growth of a vibrant social enterprise and social entrepreneurship ecosystem in Austin, I am leading two RISE sessions in early March. If you are interested in understanding what social enterprise is and seeing some great examples of it, attend Startups with Social Impact (co-lead by my colleague Jessica Shortall guest blogger of the Across the Pond: Perspectivess on Social Innovation in London post). If you are a social entrepreneur interested in finding growth or capacity capital to build your organization, attend my Growth Capital for Social Entrepreneurs session. Details and links to sign up are below. Hope to see you there!

Startups with Social Impact
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
2:00-3:30pm
This session will provide working definitions for social enterprise and social business and case studies along the spectrum of social impact and profit motivation. A panel of entrepreneurs will discuss their ventures, how they operate, how social impact fits into the business model, and the challenges they face, including raising capital. The session will end with a discussion on steps to make Austin a leader in startups with social impact.

Part of the Social Entrepreneurship series sponsored by The Silverton Foundation.

Click Here to Register

Growth Capital for Social Entrepreneurs
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
2:00-3:30pm

Social entrepreneurs and nonprofits that are interested in scaling their programs or strengthening their capacity have few opportunities to find investment capital. But with a strong plan, creative tools, and a new way to talk to potential investors, you can find the capital you need to grow. This session will take participants through the definition of growth capital for the social sector, provide case studies and develop a strategy for securing investments.

Part of the Social Entrepreneurship series sponsored by The Silverton Foundation.

Click Here to Register

Tags: Austin, growth capital, RISE, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship

Austin the Social Startup Capital of the World?

One of the things I talk and write about (possibly ad nauseam) is how well positioned Austin is to lead in the social innovation movement.  Our rank as the 3rd largest venture capital city in the country, our entrepreneurial spirit, our tech focus, our passion for green living and our tremendous wealth all make us uniquely positioned to capitalize (both financially and socially) on the growing movement for innovation and enterprise around social impact.

I’ve written here and here about what elements of a city’s infrastructure are necessary to catalyze social innovation.  And I was particularly excited when Nathaniel Whittemore, Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, described in a recent blog an ideal environment to stimulate successful social enterprise:

So here is what I’d like to see. Someone combines The Hub model of collaborative working space for social entrepreneurs with the Y-Combinator model of funding low-cost tech startups [provide promising startups small amounts of seed capital and intense mentorship and networking in anticipation of further investment ]. In this model, which is geared toward social enterprise, the Y-Combinator style investment would be focused on tech startups that are building services useful for other businesses and social startups (things like Yammer, which is great for keeping a team of volunteers or employees connected to one another). In addition to the cash investment, the tech startups get to work (and maybe even live?) in the Hub space. In return, they give up equity – but also a small chunk of their developer time (25%? 10 hpw?) to pro-bono or reduced cost projects for the nonprofit social entrepreneurs who are part of the same Hub community. This combines the density, talent and energy of the tech startup world with the mission focus of the social enterprise world. All it would take are the right partners. Sounds like a pretty good combination to me…

This sounds just like Austin.  And, in fact, we have these kind of incubators on the pure business side.  For example, Capital Factory is an Austin-based seed stage mentoring program for startups that provides a small amount of seed capital and weekly mentoring sessions by entrepreneurs who have founded successful companies.  What if there were a Capital Factory for social enterprises and social businesses?  I’m not aware of anything like that anywhere else in the country.  Couldn’t Austin pave the way in social enterprise by taking something we already do very well (venture capital, angel investing, start up incubators, entrepreneurial mentoring, etc.) and put a social spin on it? That would be truly innovative and get us out ahead of the curve of what is shaping up to be a huge movement.  And there is financial and social profit to be made.  Don’t we want a piece of that?  It seems such a natural thing to me.  What is stopping it?  And how do we overcome those roadblocks?

If you’re interested in exploring this topic more, join me and Jessica Shortall for our RISE session on March 3rd:  Start Ups with Social Impact where we’ll talk with Austin-based social enterprises and discuss what is required to make Austin a leader in this space.

Tags: Austin, Capital Factory, Center for Global Engagement, incubator, social business, Social Enterprise, social innovation, The Hub, venture capital, Y-Combinator

What Creates an Environment for Social Innovation?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot.  Indeed, the very reason I created Social Velocity was to spur, or grow the movement for social innovation here in Austin and the Southwest region.  There is a reason (or reasons) why our region has not yet caught the wave of social innovation that has been sweeping the two coasts of the country in the last 10 years or so.  We certainly have examples of social innovation (earned income enterprises, capacity-building grants) but we don’t have venture philanthropy funds, social investment vehicles, social enterprise incubators, or plentiful growth capital that other cities like San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Seattle, DC and others have.

I recently posed the question to my Tweeps (followers on Twitter).  And the initial response back was that those East and West coast cities that I mentioned all have an encouraging environment for tech startups.  That’s true, but so does Austin.  We are the third largest venture capital city in the country AND the vast majority of that money is invested in tech companies.  Aren’t we dubbed Silicon Hills?  So that’s not the answer.

I posed this question to the many people I’ve met with over the past 18 months as I was envisioning and refining what Social Velocity would later become.  And I got various answers, such as:

• Austin is basically a middle-class city with no real pressing social needs.  Innovation comes from necessity and without that necessity or deep need, social innovation cannot flourish.
• Austin’s philanthropy is young.  Other cities have had 70+ years of philanthropy to evolve and begin to look at newer models, like venture philanthropy and social investing.
• Texas, and Austin by extension, is very independent-minded.  The individual tends to be emphasized over the collective and therefore large investments in community-wide efforts are harder to come by.
• Our nonprofit sector is more grassroots.  60% of Austin’s nonprofits have a budget of $25K or less.  Some of these new models require a certain level of infrastructure in order to implement them.
• Austin is a very heterogeneous population in terms of viewpoints.  Coming to consensus on anything (from public transportation to urban development to creating an infrastructure that fosters social innovation) is difficult.

That’s just a sampling of responses I’ve received.  I’m sure there are many more reasons.  But where do we go from here?  How do we foster an environment for social innovation here?  How do we get people excited about investing capital in social enterprises?  How do we encourage social enterprise incubators to form?  How do we create a pool of social investment capital?  How do we pilot social entrepreneurial models and demonstrate and scale their success?

I think the answer lies in infrastructure.  We have to create an ecosystem that encourages and invests in social innovation.  Perhaps a breakdown of that infrastructure can be seen in my colleague Jessica Shortall’s earlier post about what created London’s social innovation environment.  She saw 5 elements:

• Public sector: A cabinet-level “Minister for the Third Sector” who focuses much of his time on social enterprise.
• Foundations: Make grants to test out ideas for social change, invest in social innovation-based businesses, talk as a group about innovations in social finance and share deal flow.
• Social Investors: Innovative funds provide new nonprofit and social enterprise finance tools such as loan guarantees for charities to access debt and quasi-equity deals to social enterprises, as well as providing networks, advice, and entrepreneurial knowledge.
• Academia: Centers for research on social entrepreneurship at several academic institutions in the area.
• Big and small ideas: Events, gatherings, workshops, think tanks and other activities that help social entrepreneurship and innovation bubble up.

I would say, broadly, that the infrastructure elements necessary include:  adequate funding, space (incubators), expertise, research, and buy in (both in words and in resources) from all three sectors (government, private, nonprofit).

As Jessica says, it’s the overall environment that creates social innovation:

It’s an ecosystem approach, where things swirl and evolve over time, with different players watching for patterns; making connections; providing physical, social, intellectual capital; and taking risks.

What can we do to create that ecosystem in Austin?

Tags: Social Enterprise, social innovation, social investment capital, Twitter, Venture Philanthropy

Austin A Potential Hub of Social Enterprise

The terms Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship are often used interchangeably, but they are really two very different concepts. While social entrepreneurship is defined as pattern changing ideas for solving persistent social problems (you can read my post laying out this definition here) Social Enterprise is any business that has a double bottom line, i.e. they exist to make a financial AND social profit.  Although I think both have potential in Austin, I would argue that Social Enterprise could really thrive in Austin’s entrepreneurial, venture capital, tech-savvy, green economy.

There is a continuum of social enterprise that ranges from a nonprofit that has an earned income venture on the side (an art museum gift shop) all the way to a publicly traded for-profit company that includes a social good in its business model (a solar panel company).

More and more people are becoming interested in the idea of social enterprise as a necessary and very viable part of a strong American and global economy. The blending of financial and social return could be a necessary salve to an economy that has been torn apart by lack of regulation and greed.

In fact, some social enterprises seem to be thriving despite the recession.  Better World Books is a great example of this.  They collect and sell used books online and then give a good part of the profit to nonprofit literacy programs throughout the world.  They are also saving thousands of tons of waste by keeping discarded books from ending up in landfills.  They are achieving a triple bottom line: financial, social, and environmental profit.  And they are doing very well, despite the recession:

• Since launching in 2002 the company has converted 16.4 million donated books into $5 million in funding for literacy and education.
• This holiday season they saw a 500%+ increase in gift certificate sales over the previous holiday season.
• Revenue grew 194% in December 2008 compared to the year before.
• December revenues grew to $2.1 million and revenue for January is expected to top $4.5 million.
• They are on target for $31 million in revenues this fiscal year.

Better World Books got a significant investment of $4.5 million in April 2008 from Good Capital, a venture capital firm whose investments have BOTH a social and financial return.

So, what you start to see is an interesting model that could really take off in Austin.  We already have tremendous venture capital wealth.  We have a very entrepreneurial business climate.  We have a real interest in social causes, particularly green ones.  What if some of the investment capital floating around the city went to social enterprises?  In fact, I think there is an opportunity for Austin to create a new model for cultivating social enterprise and become a real leader in this space.  Nathaniel Whittemore, Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, described in a recent blog an ideal environment to stimulate successful social enterprise:

So here is what I’d like to see. Someone combines The Hub model of collaborative working space for social entrepreneurs with the Y-Combinator model of funding low-cost tech startups [provide promising startups small amounts of seed capital and intense mentorship and networking in anticipation of further investment ]. In this model, which is geared toward social enterprise, the Y-Combinator style investment would be focused on tech startups that are building services useful for other businesses and social startups (things like Yammer, which is great for keeping a team of volunteers or employees connected to one another). In addition to the cash investment, the tech startups get to work (and maybe even live?) in the Hub space. In return, they give up equity – but also a small chunk of their developer time (25%? 10 hpw?) to pro-bono or reduced cost projects for the nonprofit social entrepreneurs who are part of the same Hub community. This combines the density, talent and energy of the tech startup world with the mission focus of the social enterprise world. All it would take are the right partners. Sounds like a pretty good combination to me…

Doesn’t this sound like Austin?  We have all kinds of tech incubators and venture and angel capital.  If there were a social enterprise incubator/venture fund here, we could be on the cutting edge of this movement.  And we have all the pieces already in place to make it happen.  It’s a pretty interesting proposition.

Tags: Better World Books, Good Capital, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship, The Hub