Harvard B-School in the snow

On my way home from Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference. So far no delays (*fingers crossed*)! (I wrote this earlier. I was somewhat delayed, but made it back just in time for class.)

I thought I’d put together the notes I took at the conference for any interested parties. A group from CMU were planning on going, but Nemo canceled their flights. I think I’m the only CMU-er who made it there, so I kinda feel this responsibility to share the wealth.

Tracy Palandjian

The first keynote of the day was Tracy Palandjian, Founder and CEO of Social Finance, Inc. Most of you probably haven’t heard of her (I hadn’t), but she’s actually a big deal in the field of social enterprise. Her company is running the first pilot for social impact bonds (SIBs), over in the UK. For those who may not know, social impact bonds are a new, experimental financial instrument for investing in social enterprises or nonprofits. The basic idea is that investors invest money into the nonprofit and if the nonprofit reaches a stated social impact goal, the investors receive returns with interest. The government brokers the deal and is the entity that pays the investors. If the nonprofit does not reach its goal, the investors earn back nothing. Thus, the investor takes on the risk rather than the government, which would normally take all the risk through grant funding.

Some take-aways from Palandjian’s talk:

• The relationship between NPO/gov’t/investor is secured through a performance-based contract
• SIBs allow NPOs to focus on the mission rather than also worrying about fundraising
• The underlying source of value is in preventing NOW what would cost more to address later
• SIBs are actually a more expensive financing mechanism, as the gov’t has to pay interest on the returns as well as intermediation costs (ie. Legal fees for the contract, monitoring, etc.)
• It’s too early to tell if SIBs are a better way than direct gov’t funding
• SIBs are not a “silver bullet”: prevention must be cheaper than the cure if it’s to be worth it; measurability of social impact difficult; there needs to exist capable NPOs able to produce and scale results
• The UK pilot is 26 months in (working on recidivism) and 2 dozen new projects are being developed around the world
• “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason” –Jerry Seinfeld
• “If your dreams don’t scare you, your dreams aren’t big enough” –(I missed who said that)
• “IQ, EQ, & empathy are key to success” –Tracy Palandjian
• Only through scale can SIBs ultimately work

Legal Structures workshop

Next I went to a workshop on legal structures for social enterprise, led by Kyle Westaway, founding partner of Westaway Law which specializes in legal matters pertaining to social enterprise. He gave a very efficient breakdown of all the different structure options. The best way to share his info is through his slide deck, which he shared with us. You can view it here: Westaway Slides. It’s kind of amazing. Thorough, simple. Cleared up a lot of confusion for me.

Next I went to Financing Your Social Enterprise, led by Dawn Duncan, president of The Grant Connection. I was hoping this workshop would go over the nuts and bolts of investments, capital, all that finance stuff I know nothing about. It was much more focused on grant writing instead, in which I have a good amount of experience, so I didn’t take as many notes. She did share her “6 I’s”, which I found actually really helpful for building a pitch:

• Inspiration – the “why?” Why are you doing this? What is your inspiration? What makes you cry?
• Ideation – fleshing out the inspiration through a mission statement; include documentation and data here
• Infrastructure – legal structure of the org
• Investigation – where will you get the money/resources? Ie. Grants, fellowships, capital, technical assistance, etc
• Interaction – who you need to talk to, ie. Subject matter experts, target community connections, funders, etc
• Implementation – what are the next steps? What do you need?

She had us work in groups to identify each of these for our venture ideas. My partner was really really helpful, especially in thinking through how to articulate my inspiration. I’ve narrowed in on a short “hook” story to try out for pitches.

Jacqueline Novogratz

The afternoon keynote was AMAZING. Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, was so inspiring and engaging I couldn’t take notes. I only wrote down some quotes. By the end of her speech I knew I HAD to meet this woman. But, just my luck, she left immediately after for a flight to Uganda or something (no biggie). I am now scheming about emailing her, inviting her to PGH, or something. I found so many coincidences between her story and mine, I just really want to connect with her. The most odd of the coincidences was her favorite quote, by Rainer Maria Rilke, the one about living the questions. No joke, that has been my favorite quote since reading Rilke for the first time in college. It’s been a while since I looked at it, cause it was my screensaver for a long time and after changing it I didn’t go out of my way to read it. Seeing it again was like a long lost reminder to be present, be curious, be patient. Then she went into a story about being an MBA student at Stanford and connecting with a professor who became her mentor and life-long friend. For those who have taken Public Leadership, you will really appreciate this: that professor was John Gardner. I’m reading his book right now. Inspired by Gardner, Novogratz made leadership the theme/focus of her talk. Thanks to my Public Leadership class, I really got what she was saying and I could totally see Gardner’s influence on her. I can’t wait to tell Bob!

Some quotes:

• “Make the decision that will make you interested, not interesting” –John Gardner
• “It all comes down to leadership” – Jacqueline Novogratz
• “We need you not to play it safe” –Jacqueline Novogratz
• “We [at Acumen Fund] have always talked about our failures…this builds trust and accountability” –Jacqueline Novogratz
• "...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." -Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet

The third workshop I attended was Measuring Social Impact. The panel consisted of Chris Keevil, Wellspring Consulting, Alice Gallen, Mission Measurement, Nadim Matta, Rapid Results Institute, and Iqbal Dhaliwal, Jameel Poverty Action Lab. First and foremost, this workshop made me realize just how valuable Prof Amelia Haviland’s Program Evaluation class was. I knew almost everything they shared thanks to that class. I felt way above the curve, which is crazy considering my aversion to statistics. I can’t tell you enough: TAKE PROGRAM EVALUATION (specially with Haviland) if you are at Heinz.

The panel did share a few thoughts I found interesting and good for further consideration.

• Mission Management has recently finished their Impact Genome Project, basically a taxonomy of outcomes centered around a list of the 100 most common social outcomes used by social ventures. I really wanna see this list. It sounds fascinating.
• When it comes to deciding what to measure, ask, “What would the beneficiaries see as the most appropriate measurement/indicator?” Define indicators locally.
• Alice said she sees very often that the first task in developing measurements for an org is aligning all the org stakeholders around what change they want to make. She finds in many orgs different stakeholders have different ideas of what change they are trying to create. Get everyone on the same page.
• All the panelists emphasized seeing the purpose of measurement as helping the org learn and informing org strategy, rather than as mainly a way to be accountable to donors or to get funding.

  

  Head of Dell's Social Innovation Challenge, which sponsored the conference Pitch Competition

The last keynote was Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO of Change.org. Do you know what an awesome org Change.org is??? I didn’t either! His stories were incredible. Check them out. Again, I took few notes, as I was too enthralled. A few notable things he said that I did write down:

• He discovered that Change.org’s objective is “giving tools to others to empower themselves.” That made me wonder if that applies to my venture idea.
• He emphasized speed & scale as key factors in the success of a new social venture. He talked about all the strategic changes he made in the process of finding the right format and focus for Change.org, highlighting how maintaining flexibility is key. Nonprofits often don’t provide enough flexibility, as they are tied to grant agreements. He found a for-profit, private structure as best for allowing for the changes he needed to make to succeed.
• He suggested “The Grandfather/Grandmother Test” for decision making. Imagine yourself as a grandfather/grandmother—when you think back on today will you approve of or regret the decision you are making?

Overall, I’m glad I was there, blizzard and all. I have lots to think about for my own idea and my own development as a leader. Sorry this post is so long, but I hope you find something useful within it.