Northern California Grantmakers

Have you heard? New Sector Alliance is bringing their Residency in Social Enterprise (RISE) to San Francisco.

Selected through a competitive, nationwide recruitment process the Residents are typically recent college graduates or young professionals. New Sector matches their Residents with nonprofits and foundations for a full year to tackle projects for their host organization.

And throughout their residency, Residents participate in biweekly trainings, peer-led Learning Teams that explore broad workshop issues and weekly meetings with consultant advisors for additional support and guidance.

How To Host a Resident

Interested?

Organizations who would like to host a Resident must first fill out an application which will be assessed according to AmeriCorps guidelines and New Sector’s program model.

If your foundation or nonprofit meets the need-based criteria, your organization contributes $22,000 per Resident pending AmeriCorps funding, or $35,000 otherwise.

Learn more about the Residency in Social Enterprise at New Sector’s website.

And for an application to be a host for a Resident email New Sector Alliance at applications@newsector.org.

Now just wrapping up here in 1 of 3 breakout sessions offered. I opted to attend the breakout on “Social Entrepreneurship and Corporate Philanthropy.”

Speakers included:

• Rebecca Masisak, Co-CEO, Tech Soup Global
• Bridget McNamer, Senior Program Officer, Skoll Foundation
• Sean Sannard-Stockton, CEO, Tactical Philanthropy Advsiors
• Villy Wang, Co-Founder and CEO, BAYCAT

Here are some of the highlights:

• Social Entrepreneurs are motivated by a pressing issue and come up with an innovate way to address the issue. They are characterized by passion, resilience and a relentless pursuit of results; they have proven their approach has impact and are at an inflection point to large scale.
• “Why should [social entrepreneurship] matter to business world? We’re natural partners. By working together we can help each other succeed.”
• “Investing in social entrepreneurship is like putting your corporate philanthropy on steroids.”
• There’s a shift happening in the field. The story is no longer the gift (the money given), but rather the results/impact you make.
• “Philanthropy is historically plagued [by the idea] that if it’s not invented by us, then we don’t want to be involved with it. But if you focus on the results you don’t care so much about who started it, but on what results come out of it.”
• Best way to make a movement is to follow and show others how to follow.
• Social entrepreneurship is one thing (creating a business model), but you can’t ever forget why you’re doing it.
• “You can’t solve the toughest problems in the world in a silo.”

And I’ll leave you with some of the videos we saw during the breakout:

BAYCAT student Tiffany Jones’ award-winning “Undivided Love” flash animation:

And a lesson on movement building and leadership:

Full Contact Philanthropy blogger David Henderson’s post today on  micro solutions in the social sector offers some salient critiques on this trend in the social sector.

“Failing the success of sweeping interventions, the sector has recently become obsessed with micro solutions to social problems. The wave of micro activity started with the popularity of microcredit, but has recently devolved into a flurry of any philanthropic word pre-fixed with “micro” such as micro-volunteering, micro-donations, micro-philanthropy, and micro-actions.

My macro point here is that the momentary micro dogma of the social sector distracts us from pursuing real solutions that help people.  What matters, of course, is what works, small, medium, large, or super-sized.  The micro-trend was started by microcredit, the first, and only member of the ‘micro’ solution set that resembles a real intervention rather than a gimmick focused more on size than effectiveness.” (emphasis added)

With the recent use of text donations to raise money for victims of the earthquake in Haiti, it’s important to consider how this new giving affects the field.

David continues:

“Over on the Tactical Philanthropy Blog comments section reader Chip McComb sums up the problem with micro giving nicely, in so doing revealing much of what is wrong with micro thinking in general. Chip writes

I fear that as micro giving, and mobile giving becomes more and more prevalent the attitude of those that give, could shift dangerously to think that all giving should be as easy and as pleasing as buying a coke or a big mac, and when it’s not easy or pleasing, it is therefore not worth their time or expense. What a dangerous trap!”

Read the full blog post online.

h/t to Tactical Philanthropy