A well traveled Brit once remarked to me that while New York was deeply cosmopolitan and San Francisco romantic, Chicago was a distinctly American City. The more I come to know its broad avenues and cultural abundance, its gritty industrial heart, straightforward sincerity, and sheer climatic…ehm, diversity….the more I’m inclined to agree. And so I present for what they’re worth (get out your pocket change), my thoughts from an American city.
read the original article here
Head on over to the Investing In Communities blog to see my most recent set of posts, which focus on the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR).
The series begins as a reflection on CSR, and moves into a direct response to the Wall Street Journal Article, “The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility.”
As promised, the conclusion to my essay-come blog post…my blessay? Can I coin that? Anyway, here goes. Below are several examples of how various hypothetical companies in Chicago could leverage IIC dollars to fund innovation, through CSO partnerships and the exploration of Hybrid Value Chains. (warning: If you’ve read none of parts I-III, the following will come as a bit of a non sequitur).
If you’ve hung with me so far, congrats. If you’re just coming to this post, I recommend you glance back at the preceding two for a little context (or feel free to jump in here and divine what you may).
Situating IIC Along the Social Enterprise Spectrum
IIC falls right in the middle of this social enterprise spectrum I describe. It is an independent social enterprise- a NGO* that aspires to be fully self-sustaining. If you haven’t read my earlier posts on IIC, now might be a good time to acquaint yourself with our model (though I’ll restate it generally below).
IIC will support itself and advance its mission using a Hybrid Value Chain (HVC). Internally, IIC generates financial returns by charging Member Brokers modest annual dues, and by retaining 8.75 % of all funds disbursed through IIC to NGO Partners (with the goal of taking that down to 0%). Externally, it creates financial and social value by generating unrestricted funds for IIC NGO Partners. Drayton and Budinich identify cost of capital as one of the most significant barriers CSOs (NGOs) face in attempting to scale operations and increase impact. They cite a McKinsey study, which estimates that for CSOs, the cost of obtaining capital amounts to 25-40% of what they ultimately secure (vs. 2-5% for private sector firms). Thus, accessing a new stream of unrestricted funding through IIC will significantly benefit CSOs across the globe. By enabling Partner NGOs to better execute their mission, the IIC model will create external social value…
Pursuing Profit and Progress
First of all, a little terminology: the term “social enterprise” is often used to describe an entity (i.e. IIC is a social enterprise), while “social entrepreneurship” describes a business practice: using a market-based revenue model to drive a social mission within a firm or organization. This integration of mission and markets occurs along a spectrum, and CSOs and private firms will naturally engage at different points along it. At one extreme of the spectrum lie traditional CSOs: entirely mission-driven and donor-dependent organizations. At the other end of the spectrum lie traditional corporations: companies that still quantify value purely in terms of financial return. Precisely in between would be an independent social enterprise- a self-supporting entity whose internal revenue model fully funds the execution of its mission (disclaimer: this spectrum is my own attempt to organize the social enterprise sector, not HBR’s). In between these well-defined points, things get interesting.
Fall has arrived in Chicago. Almost overnight, the summer haze vanished and a crisp chill arrived in the air – a lovely but sad hint of things to come. As fall is regarded as the season of change, it seems appropriate that at Investing In Communities we’re gearing up for the national launch of our website and primary business platform, iiconline.org. It also seems apropos that the September issue of the Harvard Business Review has focused its attention on a “sea change” underway in the private and civil sectors- one that is revising business as usual and promising to deliver both social and financial returns.
This sea change is the rise of “social entrepreneurship”, and the growth of innovative partnerships between corporations and civil sector organizations (CSOs). In the lead article, “A New Alliance for Global Change,” Bill Drayton and Valeria Budinich of Ashoka make a case for increasing private – civil sector integration, via social entrepreneurship and corporate-CSO partnerships. They argue that merging social missions with market ventures will be instrumental- even essential- to solving the 21st century’s most urgent problems.
That which seems too good to be true, usually is.
We’ve all heard this old maxim, and most of us have adhered to it at one point or another in our lives. It echoes down from the same center of higher reasoning that narrows the gazes, furrows the brow, and flouts our most emphatic desire to believe that yes, one can in fact eat three square meals of ice cream a day and still obtain the figure of a Brazilian supermodel. “All you need is this little pill!”
Right.
We are hardwired to be skeptical, and as late-night infomercials prove, with good reason. A plethora of products and services attract business by attempting to offer something for nothing. Even sectors typically wrapped in the trappings of legitimacy are not immune (mortgage-backed securities anyone?).
Last Thursday I attended my first IIC event: the graduation ceremony of the 2010 Golden Apple Scholars Summer Institute. The Golden Apple Scholars Program is unique to Illinois, and now in it’s 25th year of grooming motivated young adults to become the outstanding teachers in high-need schools. Rigorous screening of applicants ensures that only the most motivated high school seniors interested in education gain admission.
As a multi-year commitment, the program captures students at one of the most formative periods of their education- the summers immediately before and after freshman year of college. The Summer Institute, hosted by DePaul University, aims to give Scholars a taste of teaching, to offer more sophisticated insight into the profession, to provide a network of support and encouragement, and to instill the motivation necessary to become and excel as an educator.
Where does Investing In Communities fit into all of this? Continue reading
The first week on the job is rarely a revelation. No matter how excited- or hesitant- one is, I’ve found that the first week is often mundane. You settle in, organize your desk, meet your new co-workers, maybe get introduced to your first assignment, and try to avoid making any catastrophic (or idiotic) mistakes. Whether fantastic or disastrous, week number one is also- in my experience- a reliably shoddy indicator of what lies in store over the months or years ahead. At the close of my first week at Investing In Communities, I’m no more able to divine my future here than any average newbie on the job. But I will venture this: something unique is afoot here, something that may have significant impact. It may even turn out to be a game-changer; not just for an industry, but for society at-large.
(First posted in Dec. 2009)
Every morning I take a long bus ride west. I watch as the cityscape transforms outside my window: clean, vibrant streets with shops and cafes give way to a colorful immigrant neighborhoods where beautiful murals compensate for increasing grittiness. Shops become smaller, buildings less well-kept. A grand park unfolds, where statues and gardens hint of a former glory, even as last night’s bullet holes can be glimpsed on a bus stop that morning. Crossing the park, a border of dignified grey stones stands as the final frontier, a dividing line between a struggling but functioning community and a world where blight and crime overwhelms. From this line it is another twenty minutes before I reach my destination. Where I debark, at the border of Austin and West Garfield Park, is one of Chicago’s roughest neighborhoods. It is a world where problems and obstacles threaten to overwhelm any proposed solutions.
Nearly six months after traveling to Washington, D.C. with my organization as part of the Coalition to Save Community Banking, my one year fellowship is complete. With a bit of downtime before I launch into my next position, I think it’s an apt time to follow-up on the work of the Coalition and reflect briefly on the remainder of my time with Bethel.
An American City 