New Foundry Ventures

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week eight: wrapping up

2011-08-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

We held the last session of our eight-week Get Cooking! series this Tuesday. Instead of the standard schedule of curriculum and cooking, we had a potluck celebration. We invited current as well as former Get Cooking! participants and everyone brought food inspired by the class. We had two beautiful fruit salads from Virginia and Millie, caramelized dates from Saqib, a turkey meatloaf and a three bean salad from Gilda, hummus and pita from Jade and Sandra, grits and greens from Christy and Brenda, and lots of other yummy treats. My experiment with vegan sugar-free baking was a success: everyone loved the peanut butter oatmeal banana cookies I brought. See the end of this post for the recipe if you’re interested.

One of the best parts of this Tuesday’s session was when everyone went around the table and shared what they’ve taken away from the Get Cooking! program. Current participants talked about accomplishing their food goals each week, and former participants told us how their lives have changed in the two months since they finished the spring Get Cooking! series. Millie shared, “I’ve been eating more fruit and vegetables, especially because of my diabetes.” Muriel told us, “I read the labels of all the food I eat. I cook with a lot of herbs and spices now. And I’m cooking mostly fresh and sometimes frozen foods, instead of canned foods.” Current participant Antoinette shared that, inspired by Christy, the self-proclaimed “Goal Goddess,” she hadn’t eaten any fried food in the past week. Beyond just food, and equipped with the support of the group, Antoinette was also able to cut her smoking down by two-thirds: a major accomplishment. The conversation was a heartwarming reminder of the impact this program has had on West Oakland community members.

(Photo: Virginia shows off her fruit salad served in a watermelon bowl)

So what did we, as an organization, learn from this eight-week series? If we go back to the launch of this second Get Cooking! pilot, our objective was to continue to prototype the Get Cooking! model. The goal of Get Cooking! is to make healthy eating simple, affordable, and fun for families living in food desert communities. And the hypothesis was that in order to make healthy eating a part of daily life we must address more than just physical access to food and find a solution that considers affordability, time constraints, food preparation knowledge, and eating habits, all while building connections among community members in a social environment.

Did this pilot accomplish our goal? Did it confirm our hypothesis?

I think for the current participants, the eight week series did make healthy eating more accessible, mostly through health and nutrition education and the demonstration of healthy recipes. And it definitely succeeded in building strong connections within the group. We created a special community that our participants looked forward to joining each week.

But our current participants didn’t face all of the barriers to healthy eating that others in the West Oakland community face, including time constraints and lack of transportation. Because our sessions were during the daytime on weekdays, most of our participants were not working or retired. Time constraints are not a big barrier for them. Also most of the current participants have cars and therefore have greater access to healthy groceries than many people in West Oakland. So if we ask ourselves, does our current model change eating behaviors of families that can’t access healthy food, due to a lack of time, money, or transportation, the answer is probably not yet, which is really great to know. In the spirit of the Stanford design school, we were quick to market and prototyped our idea before it was perfected. We learned a ton, which will allow us to keep experimenting. To reach and impact our target audience, we’ll have to tweak the time of day of our sessions, our marketing message, and our recruiting tactics. We still have more to learn and much more work to do in West Oakland and beyond, but we are excited and encouraged by the impact we have had to date and for what the future holds.

(Photo: chef Christy with Sandra, Gilda, and Shalina)

Sugar-free Banana Peanut Butter Cookies*
Servings: 15 cookies Prep Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

1/3 cup peanut butter
2 ripe to very ripe bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons soy milk
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 1/2 cups quick cooking or rolled oatmeal
dash cinnamon (optional)
1/4 cup flour

Method:

In a large bowl, mash bananas with a fork until smooth. Add peanut butter, soy milk, vanilla and maple syrup and mix well. Add remaining ingredients and stir until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls of dough onto an un-greased cookie sheet and bake 13-16 minutes at 350 degrees.

Note: This recipe is only truly sugar-free if you used unsweetened peanut butter and unsweetened soy milk, so read the ingredients list and look for soy milk that says "Unsweetened" right on the label.

* Recipe from http://vegetarian.about.com/od/desertrecipes/r/pbbananacookies.htm

Get Cooking featured recipe: Summer Vegetable Lasagna

2011-08-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

Here's the recipe from our Get Cooking! at the Hub event this summer. The recipe can be altered to incorporate any seasonal vegetables. Enjoy!

Summer Vegetable Lasagna*
Servings: 12-14
Prep Time: 50 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Pricing: When we made this recipe, and shopped at Trader Joe’s and Bi-Rite Market, pricing came out to ~$2.55 per serving

Ingredients:

Lasagna

1 pound box lasagna noodles, preferably whole wheat
(*can substitute gluten-free brown rice noodles)
1 batch Summer Vegetable Sauce (see below)
1 batch Pesto (see below)
1 pound bag frozen spinach
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (*optional)

Summer Vegetable Sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 large cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 large red onion, diced
4 bell peppers, diced
2 mild chili peppers (e.g., anaheim), diced
2 large eggplants, diced
4 portobello mushrooms, diced
1 750 gram box or can chopped tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Pesto

1 bunch basil
1 bunch flat leaf parsley
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
4 ounces parmesan cheese, grated (*optional)
1/2 cup walnut halves
1/2 cup pine nuts
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Prepare the lasagna noodles: place noodles in a 9”x13” baking dish. Cover with boiling water and let soak for 30 minutes.
Make the pesto: combine ingredients in food processor. Process until well blended.
Defrost the frozen spinach according to the package directions. Drain of any excess water and mix with pesto.

Make the sauce:

Heat the olive oil and garlic in a large (12”) skillet over medium flame. When the garlic begins to bubble, add the onion and sauté for a few minutes, until softened.
Add the peppers and chilies to the pan, and sauté for a few minutes to soften.
Add the eggplant, mushrooms, chopped tomatoes, and salt. Stir to combine everything, turn heat down to medium-low, cover skillet, and let simmer for 30 minutes, until eggplant is thoroughly cooked. Transfer half of sauce into blender and blend. Add blended sauce back to veggie mixture to create a chunky sauce.

Assemble lasagna:

Ladle a cup of the Summer Vegetable Sauce evenly over the bottom of the dish.
Place a layer of lasagna noodles on top of the sauce. You may have to cut them to fit.
Spread a layer of pesto spinach over the noodles and then add another layer of noodles. Ladle on a few cups of the sauce. Add another layer of noodles. Repeat until the pan is full and all noodles are used.
Top lasagna with grated Parmesan cheese.
To cook, preheat oven to 375°. Bake for 45 minutes, until browned on top. Cool for 30 minutes before slicing.

* Adapted from Operagirlcooks.com recipe

Get Cooking featured recipe: Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers

2011-08-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

Enjoy this cheap, easy, and vegetarian-friendly recipe from our Get Cooking! West Oakland series.

Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers*
Servings: about 4
Prep Time: 50 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Pricing: We priced out this recipe to cost approximately $1.50 per serving

Ingredients:

4 whole bell peppers (any color)
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon basil
2 carrots, julienned
1 cup peas, fresh or frozen
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup walnuts, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice
2 to 3 cup tomato sauce

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Bring rice and water to a boil in a small saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer at the lowest bubble until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender, 30 to 50 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes.
Wash and clean peppers. Cut off tops and remove seeds and membrane. Place prepared peppers on steamer rack in wok or Dutch oven and steam 3 to 4 minutes.
Heat oil in large skillet, add onion and garlic. Sauté 1 minute. Add herbs, carrots and peas. Continue to cook 3 to 5 minutes or until carrots are tender, stirring constantly.
Reduce heat and add the tomato, walnuts, brown rice and 1/2 cup tomato sauce. Heat through.
Stuff mixture into whole peppers.
Spread 1/2 cup sauce in bottom of baking dish. Stand peppers upright. Pour remaining sauce over the tops of peppers.
Bake in oven for 30 minutes

* Adapted from Cooks.com recipe

Optional: add ground beef or turkey to the rice mixture for a non-vegetarian variation

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week seven: eating mindfully

2011-08-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

We spent a lot of time this past week talking about mindfulness and personal responsibility. Our health curriculum was focused on avoiding mindless eating, and the food justice curriculum covered the marketing of unhealthy food to children and the sometimes-misleading marketing of functional foods.

Mindless eating is something that many Americans practice all the time. It occurs whenever we find ourselves eating without realizing why we’re eating or if we’re really even hungry. While enjoying Chef Christy’s three bean salad, we passed out a handout to our participants with ten tips to avoid mindless eating, including classic strategies like “never eat directly from a bag/box/carton” and “trick yourself by using smaller plates and glasses.” There are also ways you can take advantage of mindless eating habits to increase consumption of healthy foods. For example, leaving a serving bowl on the table usually increases consumption. Our leaving this healthy protein-packed salad on the table prompted many of us to go for seconds, which hopefully displaced some less healthy calories we’d have eaten later in the day.

(Photo: three bean salad with oil, vinegar and fresh herbs)

Jumoke from People’s Grocery talked to us about being mindful in response to marketing messages from big food companies. We shared some of the guidelines published by the Center of Science in the Public Interest for responsible food marketing to children. These include packaging food in reasonable portion sizes, reformulating products to improve nutritional quality, and not advertising unhealthy foods during kids’ television shows. Jumoke asked what everyone thought about recent Bay Area legislation banning the inclusion of toys in children’s fast food meals. Overall our participants agreed that it’s better to not teach kids to associate toys and rewards with unhealthy foods. We also discussed the misleading messaging around functional foods, i.e., foods that claim to have specific health benefits like chocolate milk that boosts immunity or yogurt that improves digestion. The message we conveyed is to not rely on advertising and claims in big letters on the front of packages but to instead use the tools we’ve taught in the class to read the labels and choose unprocessed whole foods whenever possible.

Christy wrapped up the discussion portion of the class by reiterating something she’s said each week. “We are all adults,” she reminded us, “and it’s no one’s responsibility but our own to be conscious of what we’re eating. We can blame big companies for their marketing but we don’t have to be victims. In the end we’re all ultimately responsible for our choices.”

In the kitchen this week, we worked together to prepare Brown Rice Curried Turkey Meatloaf, which combines many of the nutrition principles we’ve stressed over the course of the class: lean proteins (ground turkey), whole grains (brown rice), fresh seasonal produce (shredded zucchini, onions, and celery), and alternative ways of seasoning instead of adding tons of salt (ginger, garlic, and curry). Everyone was able to sample a meatloaf that Christy had prepared in advance and the consensus was very positive.

(Photo: Destiny and Eunique chop celery while mom Victoria H. oversees)

Next week we’ll have our last session of this eight week pilot. Instead of the standard curriculum and group recipe, we are having a potluck. Everyone will bring in something they’ve cooked from our collection of meal and snack recipes and we’ll invite former Get Cooking! participants to join us and celebrate. It was Christy’s 50th birthday last week so I’ll also be experimenting with some birthday cookies (whole grain and free of refined-sugar, of course). It should be a fun celebration!

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week six: breaking the fast

2011-08-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

This week’s curriculum had two themes: the benefits of breakfast and the distinction between good and bad fats. We applied both themes to our recipe: breakfast burritos filled with sautéed veggies (sautéed in healthy oils—safflower and olive—instead of butter).

Many of our participants struggle with breakfast. Gilda B. tells us that she rarely puts anything into her body before 4pm. Going this long without eating slows down your metabolism and makes it difficult to maintain a healthy weight. To demonstrate an easy breakfast solution, we served our “fruit + veggie” smoothie made of bananas, fresh strawberries, frozen berries, milk, yogurt, and loads of fresh spinach. Our participants were shocked to learn there was spinach in the smoothie, and also surprised that we hadn’t added any sugar or honey. Gilda B. especially loved the smoothie as a way of getting greens in her body.

(Photo: Gilda B., Brenda, Jade, and Sandra S. listen to the weekly lesson while enjoying a fruit and veggie smoothie)

While drinking smoothies, we spent some time talking about good and bad fats. Good fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These fats lower LDL (aka “bad”) cholesterol and some of them raise HDL (aka “good”) cholesterol. Good fats are found in nuts, avocados, canola oil, olive oil, fish oils, soy, and safflower oils. Bad fats include saturated and trans fats. These fats raise both total cholesterol levels as well as LDL cholesterol. Trans fats also lower levels of beneficial HDL cholesterol. Bad fats are found in animal products, packaged foods, and commercially fried foods.

After the lesson, we hit the kitchen to sauté veggies, scramble some eggs (and egg whites for our participants concerned about cholesterol), and brown some fresh-made turkey sausage. We mixed together these ingredients and rolled them into whole wheat tortillas to form breakfast burrito. Participants individually wrapped each burrito so they can store them in their freezers and pull them out when they’re in need of a quick breakfast.

(Photo: Sandra S. wraps up her egg white breakfast burritos)

Another theme of this week that arose during the session is the question of what’s going to happen next. With only two sessions left following this Tuesday’s class, everyone wants to know if they’ll be able to come to more Get Cooking! sessions. They are hungry for new recipes and more lessons around eating healthy. Josephine R. talked to me about how much she values the lessons and discussion time we have each week, “I really love the exchange of information I get from the other participants and the staff.” We’ve also loved operating this pilot every week and we’ve gained some invaluable insights. We’ve proven that our model is meeting a community need and we (New Foundry and our partner organizations, People’s Grocery and LifeLong Medical) are currently thinking about how we can best serve this need going forward.

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week five-and-a-half: sharing the model with our community

2011-08-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

This Monday we held a special Get Cooking! session at our workspace, the Hub San Francisco. The Hub is a co-working space for purpose-driven entrepreneurs with locations around the world, including San Francisco and Berkeley. The Hub San Francisco recently opened a second floor with a beautiful new kitchen that we were lucky enough to be able to use for the evening. We invited Hub members and their friends for a 90-minute cooking session on Monday evening. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness about Get Cooking! at the Hub, get some feedback on the Get Cooking! model, raise a little bit of money to support our work in West Oakland, and celebrate healthy cooking by preparing a summer vegetable lasagna that each participant could take home and serve to friends and family.

(Photo: the ingredients for our summer vegetable lasagna)

We filled the event to capacity with 13 participants, which was very exciting. To kick off the evening, we served a snack from our West Oakland program: a fruit and veggie smoothie, loaded with fresh spinach. The sweetness of the berries and bananas mask the taste of the greens, making it a great way to get green veggies into your daily diet especially for people who don’t like to eat greens. While everyone enjoyed the smoothie, Jade and I shared a little bit about New Foundry Ventures and the Get Cooking! model. We then gave a mini-lesson on food justice, defining the term “food insecure community,” or “food desert,” and talking about the food access challenges our participants face in West Oakland.

After ten minutes of talking it was time to start cooking. Our summer veggie lasagna involved a lot of chopped vegetables, so everyone teamed up to tackle the heaping bowls of fresh organic bell peppers, chile peppers, eggplants, portobello mushrooms, onions and garlic that I had picked up earlier that day at Bi-Rite Market and Trader Joe’s. All these veggies were sautéed for ~25 minutes with some olive oil and diced tomatoes, which we then partially blended to yield a chunky (and delicious) vegetable sauce. A few participants led the pesto production, blending up basil, Italian parsley, pine nuts, walnuts, parmesan cheese, garlic, and olive oil, and mixing the pesto with chopped spinach.

(Photo: Chris M. and others tackle the chopping)

While we waited for the veggies to cook, we all sat down, talked about ways to combat food access problems, and discussed the Get Cooking! model. Our attendees had lots of great ideas that we hadn’t thought of before, including Lloyd C.’s idea of helping our West Oakland participants that don’t own cooking equipment team up and cook dinners together. We were also surprised to hear from every attendee that they’d be interested in participating in cooking sessions at the Hub on a regular basis, ideally monthly. Everyone loved the idea of socializing with other Hub members and connecting while cooking together. Hosting additional sessions in the future is something we’ll keep in mind going forward.

Once the veggies were cooked and the sauce blended, everyone took turns assembling their personal lasagna: sauce, noodles, pesto, noodles, sauce, noodles, pesto... we definitely needed a mnemonic device to keep that straight. When we finished, attendees had a meal ready to take home and pop in the oven. Quick, easy and healthy: that’s the goal of the Get Cooking! model and we’re so happy we were able to share it with our neighbors at the Hub. Special thanks to Bi-Rite Market and Trader Joe’s for their support of the event, and thanks to all our attendees!

(Photo: I assemble a sample lasagna and Zach W. follows me down the assembly line)

(Photo: attendees assemble their lasagnas)

(Photo: Jeff D. and Michelle F. layer on the pesto)

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week five: feeling the family love

2011-07-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

The theme of this week’s curriculum was the magic of the family meal. The benefits of the family meal institution are vast and proven. Family meals create stronger familial relationships, keep kids out of trouble and on-track in school, enable kids and teens to be well-adjusted members of society, and improve health and well-being.

As we discussed the power of connecting with your family over a meal, we realized we’ve become something of a family ourselves. We shared a fresh fruit salad together and check-in on our weekly goal progress. This week our family’s matriarch (fearless facilitator and head chef Christy) blew us away with her unprecedentedly sunny attitude. She announced that she accomplished her truly ambitious weekly goal of not eating anything fried or eating any added salt all week. “I am a goal goddess,” she justly proclaimed. Josephine R. also wowed the family with her success on her three-part goal of going to the gym, drinking water, and eating green vegetables. In fact, she exceeded her goal by going to the gym four times instead of three. We are extremely proud of both of them!

(Photo: our fresh fruit salad with crumbled pecans and walnuts)

Gilda B. shared with us the impact family members can have on each other. She told us about how classmate and friend Sandra S. “is an inspiration. We should call her ‘sugar-free Sandra.’ She is always reading the labels and now I’ve started to do it too. It’s one thing to have someone like your doctor tell you to read labels. It’s another thing to have your friends and the people around you doing it all the time.” Along a similar vein, Shalina talked about how changing her own eating habits has impacted her daughter’s behavior. “This class has changed my whole life and my daughter Nasiya’s life too. Because I’m now trying new foods all the time, she’s also trying foods she’s never tasted before.”

(Photo: Gilda B. talks to us about the inspiration she gets from her friend “Sugar-free Sandra”)

As we all know first-hand (from being kids and perhaps raising kids too), kids aren’t always the most open-minded and adventurous eaters. This week we all shared tips on how to incorporate healthy foods into a child’s diet. Research has shown that kids are more willing to eat fruits and vegetables when they’ve been involved in the process of bringing them to the table: whether through cooking, picking out produce at a farmers’ market, or growing the fruits and vegetables at their schools or in their backyards. To demonstrate ways to incorporate veggies into traditional kid-friendly recipes, our meal this week was a healthy macaroni and cheese with spinach.

We also all know that family meals aren’t the only institution influencing children’s eating habits. This week our food justice educator, Shalina, talked to us about the strong need to advocate for healthier options in school lunch and breakfast programs. Our participants shared stories about the lunches being served in West Oakland schools and talked about the need for change.

Next week we’ll learn more about the importance of a healthy breakfast, and sneak spinach into yet another innocuous food item: fruit smoothies.

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week four: touring the social venture landscape

2011-07-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

The theme of this past week’s class was local and seasonal produce. Everyone was really excited to learn about places within West Oakland where they can buy local fruits and vegetables, like Mandela Marketplace, O.B.U.G.S. (Oakland Based Urban Gardens), and City Slicker Farms locations. The idea of keeping dollars within the local community and supporting local farmers really resonated with the participants. Most of them didn’t know there were places in West Oakland where they could access local produce.

Furthering the theme of seasonal produce, we snacked on a Pear Celery Salad and cooked Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers. The peppers were stuffed with brown rice, walnuts, carrots, peas, fresh herbs and tomato sauce. Christy brought in a plate of cooked peppers for us all to sample before we made them ourselves and they were delicious. Most of our participants would never think of making stuffed peppers without any meat but they were pleasantly surprised. As Josephine R. explained to Cynthia B., who joined us for the first time this week, “In this class, I’m trying foods I never would’ve tasted before.”

(Photo: This week’s Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers)

This week I was really impressed by our participants’ progress on their weekly goals. Josephine R. succeeded at her goal of going to the gym three times over the past week, of which she was very proud. This next week she’s going to combine three of her past goals: going to the gym, drinking water, and eating vegetables every day. Sandra S. had set a pretty ambitious goal of eating absolutely no sugar over the past week. She succeeded on four of the seven days, which is something I’m not sure I could do. Now Sandra is setting her sights on exercising five days over the next coming week. Each week our participants push themselves a little harder.

(Photo: Cynthia B stirs the brown rice and veggie stuffing)

Outside of Get Cooking!, my fellow interns and I have been exposed to a handful of other exciting social ventures this summer. New Foundry has planned some awesome field trips for us, including tours of Juma Ventures, Green Streets, Community Housing Partnerships Enterprises, and Rubicon Bakery . Each of these organizations impressed me with their innovative methods of accomplishing social change. I especially enjoyed our Juma tour, probably because it was coupled with attending a Giants game and I’m a huge fan. Juma’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty by ensuring that young people complete a four-year college education. They accomplish this mission through a few programs. The program we witnessed was employing youth to sell concessions at sports venues in San Francisco, the East Bay, and San Diego. We met a ton of teens selling snacks across AT&T Park and learned about how Juma runs the business to compete with other non-socially-oriented vendors.

Rubicon Bakery was also an exciting field trip. The bakery has a social mission to employ residents of Richmond, where the bakery is headquartered, and nearby communities. It produces amazing cakes and cookies, most of which are sold under private label for some of the biggest grocers in Northern California, while still maintaining the social value of job and opportunity creation in an underserved community. Best of all, we got to sample the chocolate mousse cake, which tasted as good as it looks.

(Photo: Rubicon Bakery’s Chocolate Mousse Cake)

Stay tuned for our next session when we focus on healthy eating for families and kids, and prepare a kid-friendly macaroni and cheese (there’s spinach hidden inside, shhh!!).

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week three: monetizing the venture

2011-07-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last week, this past Tuesday we were able to experiment with a few elements of the Get Cooking! model, which was really enlightening. We experimented with cooking first, curriculum second (not so intriguing) and with selling extra meals to community members (potentially very exciting).

We kicked off the session with some homemade hummus and home-toasted pita chips, prepared by Christy and Brenda. No one in the class had ever heard of hummus and most of them were not excited to try it. Gilda B. said she was scared of the way it looked and its texture but she ended up liking it and was glad to discover a new snack that might keep her full and satisfied longer than highly-processed snacks. Victoria H. brought her two daughters this week, Destiny (age 11) and Eunique (age 10) who especially loved the hummus and pita chips.

This week’s curriculum focused on the benefits of whole grains and legumes. We learned why whole grains keep you full longer than refined grains, and spent some time talking about the nutritional value of lentils. This coordinated with our recipe of the week: Lentil Chili. Lentils were also a new food for most of our participants and everyone was eager to sample the chili before taking it home with them. We’ve learned that for unfamiliar foods, it’s really important for participants to sample them. Otherwise there’s a chance they just leave the prepared meal in their freezer and never reheat it because they’re not convinced it will taste good. We’re incorporating this insight into next week by having Christy bring a pre-made sample of the recipe we’ll be cooking: Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers.

(Photo: Jumoke, Gilda H, and a plate of homemade hummus and pita chips)

With the two girls present this week, Christy talked to all of us about our responsibility as role models. Of course the girls’ mother, Victoria H., sets an example for her daughters, but beyond that all of us serve as role models for young people and it’s our collective obligation to future generations to demonstrate and practice healthy eating behavior. Near the end of the session, we actually saw how this relationship works in the other direction. We hold our classes at the West Oakland Senior Center and every week they hand out free loaves of bread. This week Destiny and Eunique put the curriculum into practice and opted for a loaf of seeded whole wheat bread instead of white bread. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of young people to set an example for all of us as well.

(Photo: Eunique and Destiny stir the lentil chili)

On top of cooking and sharing curriculum, our priority this week was exploring alternative ways to monetize the Get Cooking! model, besides selling meals to participants. As our class takes place at the Senior Center, we decided to try to sell extra meals to the seniors at the end of the class. We had two leftover chicken enchilada meals for four that we had frozen after last week and we sold those easily for $7 each. However it was a bit trickier to sell this week’s lentil chili. Again, those lentils are unfamiliar and even scary to some. Going forward we’ll have to incorporate sampling into any additional sales of meals. Luckily we have 4-5 leftover lentil chili meals in the freezer that we can use for future retail experiments, both at the Senior Center and hopefully at other locations around the community.

Until next week!

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week two: soaking it all up

2011-07-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

We met for our second session last Tuesday to cook chicken enchiladas. We started the session by each sharing our progress on the weekly food goal we had set during the first session, while eating fresh guacamole and homemade tortilla chips for our snack. Participants reported doing pretty well on accomplishing their goals, though I’d still like to push everyone towards setting more specific goals. It’s a lot harder to keep track of whether or not you “ate healthy every day” than it is to measure if you “ate something green at every meal.” We took steps toward specificity at the end of session two when most people set goals around the number of glasses of water they’d like to drink per day during the upcoming week.

After talking through goals, our chef Christy led the curriculum which this week covered the distinction between whole and processed foods. We shared the simple rule of only eating foods that will eventually rot, inspired by Michael Pollan’s food rules, and then walked through the whole vs. processed distinction for three food categories: fats, grains, and sugars. After Christy covered health, nutrition, and cooking skills, Shalina, our food justice educator, talked to us about the proliferation of fast food chains in low-income neighborhoods. She shared personal stories about her daughter being attracted to the bright colors splashed all over fast food locations and used in the packaging of alcohol and tobacco products.

(Photo: Shalina talks through food justice challenges)

We then headed into the kitchen to cook chicken enchiladas, packed with veggies. Overall, session two flowed smoothly and gave us some great ideas for experiments we’ll conduct in session three that I can’t wait to share next week.

In the meantime, I thought this would be a great week to share some of the other experiences I’m having working for New Foundry Ventures. When I accepted this position in January, I never expected to be so fully immersed in the world of social entrepreneurship, outside the realm of New Foundry. I spend three days each week working out of the Hub SoMa which is a co-working space specifically for social ventures. With around 900 members, I find myself constantly meeting new people who are approaching social problems in innovative ways. It might make it a bit harder for me to get as much done each day but I’m learning so much and meeting inspiring people on a daily basis.

(Photo: Christy shows Chantelle H. a quick way to chop zucchini)

The Hub also hosts events that cover interesting topics and have led me to meet even more people that share my passions around food justice and sustainable agriculture. A few weeks ago the Hub hosted a book launch party celebrating Oran Hesterman’s book, Fair Food. The event was packed with people from social ventures in the food space. They hosted another food event recently on Wednesday, July 13th entitled, “Food, Farms, and the Future of Community,” organized by the FeelGood Speaker Series and featuring Michael Dimock, the President of Roots of Change. I feel pretty fortunate to be working in a space that attracts these events and speakers.

Stay tuned for next week when we experiment with selling our prepared meals directly to community members!

New Role and Paths for Social Innovation in New Orleans

2011-07-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

Read Nick Marinello's article about how New Foundry's CEO, Rick Aubry, is developing new paths for Social Innovation in New Orleans in his new role as Tulane’s first Assistant Provost for Civic Engagement and Social Entrepreneurship.

Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week one: pulling all the pieces together

2011-07-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. My name is Michelle Klahr and I’m an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I’m spending this summer in between the two years of my MBA program working as an intern at New Foundry Ventures. Specifically I’m dedicated to the operations of Get Cooking!, New Foundry’s newest venture. Get Cooking! is a social enterprise dedicated to helping low-income families living in food deserts make healthy eating simple, affordable, and fun in order to lower rates of obesity and diet-related diseases, and improve overall well-being. To do this, Get Cooking! operates cooking clubs where community members meet with a chef to prepare and purchase nutritious, ready-to-cook, low-cost meals for their families in a community kitchen pre-stocked with fresh and healthy foods. New Foundry partnered with two inspirational organizations in West Oakland, LifeLong Medical Care and People’s Grocery to launch an eight-week pilot in West Oakland this past March. After the success of the first pilot, the partner team launched a second pilot, also in West Oakland, on Tuesday June 28th. Besides coordinating many of the behind-the-scenes logistics of this second pilot, I’ll also be spending the summer sharing an on-the-ground perspective with you on my experiences. What does it really take to launch a social venture? And what are some unforeseen challenges that come up along the way? Each week I’ll report back with an update on the pilot’s progress and my reactions. I hope you enjoy the journey.

Getting ready for the first session required a tremendous amount of preparation and a lot of hands-on work. I spent the two weeks leading up to our first session proofreading, printing, and collating curriculum, sorting through crates of cooking equipment, generating shopping lists for our chefs, and creating minute-by-minute schedules to help us squeeze a ton of content into just two hours. Our partners and chefs also worked like crazy: diligently pricing out each meal and snack recipe, doubling down on marketing and recruiting participants, creating binders to house all the materials, and more.

The resulting first session was by and large a success. We managed to get through everything in time: introductions, snacks (this week: a Kale Waldorf Salad), the ground rules, curriculum, cooking, cleanup, and the setting of individual food goals for the coming week (including cutting down on salt and eating vegetables). We had great participants that are really excited about the course including Chantelle who just learned that kale can be eaten raw and Josephine who has never known how to cook anything (self-described as “a woman who doesn’t own any pots and pans”). And the food, both the Kale Salad and the main dish: “Grits & Greens,” turned out great, although we didn’t get to sample the grits because the Get Cooking! model involves the participants taking the meals home to share with their families.

(Photo: Chef Christy shows Destiny how to sauté the greens)

Despite the success of the first class, I continue to be awed by the sheer amount of effort that these classes involve. The dedication of New Foundry, LifeLong, and People’s Grocery to this effort is outstanding. Today, there are four or five of us working hard to bring each class to life. This is not a sustainable approach, so we are continuing to test and refine to figure out a model that can be financially sustainable and replicated in multiple communities. One of the key lessons I’ve learned from taking a class at Stanford’s design school is that you can’t be precious with your prototypes, meaning, if you have an idea, go out and test it, even if it’s not perfect. I appreciate that, as a New Foundry intern, I get to be apart of such informative testing of an intriguing concept.

(Photo: Chantelle H. and Josephine R. package their Grits + Greens meals)

Stay tuned for an update on Week Two, when we’ll cook Chicken Enchiladas and learn about whole versus processed foods…

Get Cooking!: a Collaboration between New Foundry Ventures, People’s Grocery, and Lifelong Medical Care

2011-03-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

We believe healthy food should be available to all, regardless of income. We also believe that cooking healthy food for and with our families has become a lost skill in today’s fast paced world. Cooking healthy food at home seems too expensive or takes too much time or isn’t convenient. But, these things do not have to be true. Cooking healthy food can be cheap. It can be quick. It can be convenient. We also believe there is a strong link between food and our health and the health of our community.

With these thoughts in mind, we developed a new venture – Get Cooking! It is a community cooking club where folks come together to prepare and assemble ready-to-cook meals for the week while they learn some basic cooking skills with a chef who will also share important information about health, nutrition, and food justice. Get Cooking! is intended to be a practical and fun way to help busy folks with limited access to healthy foods get a healthy, affordable meal on the dinner table – fast!

We are excited to be partnering with two amazing organizations – People’s Grocery and LifeLong Medical Care – to pilot Get Cooking! in West Oakland in March 2011.

If you are interested in learing more about our venture, seeing how you could contribute, or if you are a West Oakland resident interested in participating, please contact Kari Ness Riedel at kari@newfoundryventures.org.

Small Dollar Lending Receiving Federal Support

2010-08-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

By Josh Engle, Summer Associate and MBA Candidate at Northwestern University

The inclusion of a loan-loss-reserve provision in the recently passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signifies increasing federal-level interest in small-dollar lending. These loans, unsecured and under $2,500, offer low- to moderate-income individuals a safe alternative to predatory lending. The still undetermined amount of funds will provide lenders with bandwidth to begin or expand small-dollar programs. It will be particularly useful to smaller community development financial institutions that will only have to put up an equivalent of 50 percent of the distributed dollars

Additionally, the legislation authorizes technical assistance grants that will help organizations get their staff and technology up to speed while demonstration grants will focus on small-dollar alternatives bundled with financial literacy and education.

Meanwhile, the FDIC just wrapped up its small-dollar loan pilot and will be focusing on technology and guarantees from this point forward. This shift reflects a mood of supporting the marketplace mechanisms that are nearly ready to provide access to under or unbanked people.

The federal environment seems to be moving quickly in the direction of supporting small-dollar lending and Emerge Workplace Solutions, Inc., New Foundry Venture’s first portfolio company, is well positioned to help lending institutions take advantage of this trend with its integrated technology and education platform. Through lining up employer partnerships and facilitating the loan, repayment, and education process for lenders, Emerge strives to make it as easy as possible for financial institutions to grow their small-dollar loan programs.

GETS Energy Services Launches!

2010-08-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

In our work to create social businesses that address significant problems in the U.S. we both create businesses ourselves (such as Emerge Loans) and we also work with community partners to find the best business models for creating a scalable solution. At New Foundry Ventures we are fortunate to work with many great partners in creating and scaling social enterprises. One of those partners is Rising Sun Energy Center, a Bay Area nonprofit with whom we have been working with this past year to help create an energy efficiency social enterprise. Rising Sun is now ready to launch the fruits of our collective efforts as a new social business. Here is some information about this exciting project!!

Please join us in celebrating the launch of GETS Energy Services, the pilot model of our Energy Efficiency Enterprise! We are excited to be piloting an enterprise in the energy efficiency space as we see this business model as a viable and sustainable social enterprise that can be replicated across the country (learn more).

GETS Energy Services is a triple bottom-line social venture that provides subsidized energy upgrade services to moderate-income residents in Berkeley and Richmond, California, while also providing transitional employment to graduates of Rising Sun's GETS (Green Energy Training Services) workforce development program. The workforce development program is a part of RichmondBUILD, an organization that seeks to meet the particular job training and support needs of Richmond residents, 40 percent of whom live in public housing and 30-40 percent of whom have a history with the criminal justice system. RichmondBUILD's goal is to provide job skills to people between the ages of 17-35 who are facing barriers to employment.

Our Partnership
In partnership with Rising Sun Energy Center, a Berkeley-based nonprofit, New Foundry Ventures is building on the growing market demand for home retrofits and the$625 million the government has already invested in green job training. This venture uniquely addresses the need for transitional jobs, hands on experience, and a more supportive work environment for green jobs graduates in the energy efficiency space.

Rather thanduplicate efforts, our two organizations decided to collaborate in early 2010 when we realized we were both working on an energy efficiency social enterprise that could be replicated in multiple communities. This partnership combines our proven ability to create successful and sustainable social enterprises and Rising Sun's expertise as a leading green workforce development and energy retrofit services organization, with over 15 years of green jobs training experience. This pilot will help us refine our Energy Efficiency Enterprise model and develop a turnkey 'business plan in a box' that can easily be replicated in other communities. We will then work with

Rising Sun to begin scaling this model through partnerships with other organizations across the U.S.

GETS Energy Services enterprise sets out to achieve three goals: improve moderate-income homeowners’ quality of life by lowering utility bills and making their home more comfortable, healthy, durable, and energy efficient; provide qualified graduates of Rising Sun’s GETS (Green Energy Training Services) with their first experience working in the green sector; and finally to reduce CO2 emissions.

How You Can Get Involved

Want to help create jobs in the green sector, help moderate-income homeowners reduce their energy bills, and help reduce CO2 emissions from the atmosphere - then call us about how we can help you start your own energy efficiency enterprise!

To learn more about GETS Energy Services, and determine if you or your friends can potentially benefit from its services, please contact Rising Sun at 510-655-1501 extension 17 or visit the website.

Stay in touch with us during this exciting stage of our development by following us on Twitter @GETS_ES and @newfoundry, and on Facebook at GETS Energy Services and New Foundry.

Greening Our World, One Job At A Time

2010-08-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

By Ashima Sukhdev, Summer Associate and Junior at University of Pennsylvania

The term “green collar economy” first made a lasting impact on me when I heard Van Jones speak at Penn during my freshman year. Van Jones, who has been known as the green jobs czar, is an environmental and human rights activist who served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009. He champions the idea that we can solve the two greatest challenges facing us today, the environment and unemployment, with one solution known as the green collar revolution. He’s not the lone voice that supports this idea either.

For those of you less familiar with all this terminology, the green collar economy refers to the creation of jobs that solve both socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems. Green jobs offer the opportunity to create thousands of low- to medium-skill jobs for the unemployed and under-skilled that help solve a number of environmental problems. For example, insulating old homes and buildings to conserve energy, installing renewable energy sources, waste management programs, urban gardening projects, etc. These are all local jobs that can't be exported, and that can provide real opportunities for the worst off groups (such as urban youth) to acquire skills, professional experience, and to become a part of the community again. Hearing Van Jones speak on this simple and powerful idea ignited a desire to figure out how this could work on a national, and international, scale – and whether it would indeed be successful. It was to my delight that I ended up working with a social enterprise heavily involved in the green economy just two summers later.

A Green Jobs Field Trip

A few weeks ago a group of us from New Foundry Ventures (previously known as Rubicon National Social Innovations), arrived in the City of Richmond for a field trip to see this green collar economy in action.

The US government has already invested approximately $625 million in green jobs training. One of the many programs that has benefited from this funding is that of RichmondBUILD, the site that we were visiting that day. The RichmondBUILD Pre-apprenticeship Construction Skills and Green Jobs Training Academy was developed to create employment and career opportunities in construction for Richmond residents aged 17-35 who face barriers to employment. RichmondBUILD has crafted its free training programs to meet the particular job training and support needs of Richmond residents, 40% of whom live in public housing and 30-40% of whom have a history with the criminal justice system.

The Green Energy Training Services (GETS) workforce development program is an optional energy efficiency training module that participants of RichmondBUILD can apply to participate in. Some of the participants of the GETS workforce program will go on to work for GETS Energy Services (the Energy Efficiency Enterprise that NFV and Rising Sun have launched), and some will go on to work for other energy efficiency retrofit companies. This is a perfect example of an industry helping to create “green jobs” in an urban community that needs them badly. The GETS program provides a particularly supportive training atmosphere for those who are perhaps seeking their first stable job to escape the traps of inner-city life or trying to get back into employment after long periods of economic stagnancy.

While at the RichmondBUILD site, we were able to sit-in on one of the energy efficiency training classes (most of which was far beyond my comprehension!), a large class of about 30 students from a variety of backgrounds. We also walked around the “mock house” which has been built in their warehouse where the green jobs trainees are able to gain experience and practice their newfound skills. Our tour of the site was conducted by Ramon, a graduate of the Green Energy Training Services Program. Ramon was clearly a wonderful mentor for the current students, and a perfect example of someone from the Richmond community who had clearly benefited from the training program. Having come from a rough background himself, he explained to us the impact such a training program and stable employment can have on an urban youth who needs guidance and a path to avoid getting involved in drugs, violence, and crime. What struck me most was Ramon’s awareness of the larger environmental movement he was a part of. He spoke of the importance of energy efficiency, and how exciting it was to know that he was involved in the process of reducing CO2 emissions in the residential sector. The visit re-instilled the sense of excitement I’d felt for the green jobs movement when I’d heard Van Jones speak, and I returned to my desk at the office reminded of the importance of the work I was doing.

Our Sweet Home Hub SoMa: A Haven for Social Innovators

2010-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

By Ashima Sukhdev, Summer Associate and Junior at University of Pennsylvania

Rubicon National. SOCAP. Reach Global. Adaptive Edge. SustainAbility. Acumen Fund. Kiva. Triple Pundit. Mercy Corps. Feel Good. Change.org . Singularity Institute. Benetech. Numi Tea. Equal Exchange. Good Capital. Architecture for Humanity. Terrapass. Investors Circle. B Lab. Green Chamber. Alter Eco. Better World Telecom.

Sound like a list of some of the nation’s most exciting green ventures, social enterprises, and development organizations?

That list is just my average day at work.

One of the many fascinating aspects of my summer here in San Francisco has been the office space where New Foundry Ventures is located. New Foundry Ventures' office can be found in a small nook in The Hub: Bay Area – a collaborative workspace located in the SoMa district of San Francisco. The above mentioned are some of the many organizations that we share the space with on any given day.

Aptly labeled “where change goes to work,” the Hub seeks to bring together and engage social enterprises, socially-minded organizations and individuals who dabble in similar ventures. The Hub’s network extends across 5 countries and 24 cities, with work spaces such as the one I spend my week in located all over the world. Members can either choose to have a private office (such as the one New Foundry Ventures occupies) or general membership to the common area.

When my mentor emailed us with the details of the new workspace that they would be moving into, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The idea seemed riveting, but what did this place look like? What did it feel like to work somewhere like this? Examining the floor map from various angles and scouring the website provided no preparation for the first day.

Firstly, everything is on wheels. Furniture exists to encourage the synergy of the place. You can write on walls in the meeting rooms. The décor is expectedly on the natural, woody side; my favorite is the conference table that is essentially a tree trunk with a piece of glass on top. There’s a “nest” (literally – you have to climb up a ladder to get to it) with bean bags, cushions and blankets for impromptu meetings and brainstorming sessions. Free flowing fair trade (obviously) coffee and tea are available to re-energize the weary entrepreneurial mind. As a visitor very insightfully exclaimed as she walked into the space – “Is this a library for adults!?”.

And it seems like it. Except this library is filled to the brim with global thought leaders, with a common aim to change the world. While the Hub is still experiencing a few growing pains (Hub SoMa can still be considered a toddler in comparison to the rest, at only 12 weeks), this place holds promise. The extent of the collaboration in the first few weeks was basic: what item should each of us bring to contribute to the group’s “Sexy Salad” Thursday lunches. Now, however, as members are beginning to get familiar with each other, the real synergies coming out of this space are obvious. Members reach out to each other for help both formally and informally: from legal services to logo advice. They learn about new opportunities through each other, and continue to broaden their networks. At night, the Hub transforms into a host space for events, and members (myself included) are beginning to experience the benefits of being able to attend events such as “Social Enterprise from Scratch”, “The Kiva Social” and the “Unreasonable Institute’s West Coast Pitch Fest” without really stepping away from their desks.

A seasoned “Hubber” now, I do wonder what it’ll be like having to adjust back to cubicles, white walls and an office full of people working for the same organization as me. In the mean time, the Hub Bay Area makes my 9 to 5 just that bit more exhilarating.

See the Fast Company photo (above) and read their feature article on Hub Soma.

Rubicon Bakery Tour: Good Mission, Good Eats

2010-07-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

By Mark Ding, Summer Associate and University of Pennsylvania sophomore

Two weeks ago, the New Foundry Ventures intern team got a chance to visit Rubicon Bakery in Richmond, California. The bakery is one of the very first projects Rubicon Programs started, and it has become a very successful company that serves the hardest-to-employ residents and trains these locals for future success in related careers.

Kari Ness Riedel, director of New Foundry Ventures, was formerly the general manager at the bakery, and she became our tour guide, giving us a brief history of the bakery’s growth and mission. In a nutshell, the bakery’s goal is twofold: to provide entry-level jobs for the local community and to prepare employees for a long-term career in the food industry through its job training program. Well, maybe it is threefold; a third goal is to bake delicious pastries. We soon took off to see the bakery in action. Although it was a slow day, there were people mixing the batter, baking cookies, decorating with icing, packing, storing, and delivering carrot cookie sandwiches.

After the tour, we got to sit down and chat with the new president and owner, Andrew Stoloff to discuss many of hardships social businesses that target underdeveloped communities face. Originally, the bakery was a nonprofit program focused solely on job creation in a low-income neighborhood. However, as the bakery grew successful, it was transformed into a social enterprise to achieve a greater scale. Andrew told us about many of the challenges of running the bakery.

Besides your typical business operations challenges, social enterprises face some unique issues:

Human Resources

o How do you motivate employees that have never held a job before?

o What if your employees don’t understand their performance is linked to the performance of the company?

Marketing

o How do you position your brand to communicate that it offers high quality products while achieving a social mission?

o How do you capitalize on the halo effect of running a social enterprise?

Strategy and Finance

o Where can you find affordable sources of financing that support your double bottom line goals?

o How do you manage relationships with corporate partners with socially-minded goals,
but only one bottom line?

We soon had to part ways, but not before tasting a few of the bakery’s treats. The bakery proved to be an amazing opportunity to see asocial enterprise in action and explore the options for future scalability. It is certainly not an easy task to establish a social enterprise, and it is no easier to maintain it even after the company is up and running. Nonetheless, Andrew Stoloff and Rubicon Programs did an amazing job of creating a successful company that serves the local community and provides inspiration for future social enterprises.

Why Starting Social Businesses (not Job Training Programs) is Essential to Moving People out of Poverty

2010-07-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

By Rick Aubry, CEO and Founder

One of the few ideas that won’t start a fight between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals is the social bromide to fight poverty: “We need jobs, jobs, jobs….”

But what about job training, or its current euphemism “workforce services?” The logic itself seems straightforward—people who have been chronically underemployed need skills to enter the workforce and people who have been recently laid off need new skills to prepare for a new job. Emerging industries also need newly-trained people that have the skills demanded by the industry. The government’s job is to pay for the retraining of people in the interest of both industry and people’s need for work. Job training, however, does sometimes create some political discussions about the role of government, such as who should operate the job training, the question of “entitlement” to such training, etc. Nevertheless, job training is still a point of general agreement amongst various factions; remember that the major U.S. training programs of the 80’s were co-authored by Ted Kennedy and Dan Quayle.

But what does job training mean when there are no jobs? Hard to remember, but just a few years back we had unemployment rates below 5% and were reaching what economists call full employment status. Jobs were left unfilled, employers were eager to hire, workers had choices, and job training programs had seemingly huge successes, at least as measured by the “placement counts,” that is how many people walked in for training services and left to go to a job. The fact that people were working obscured the question about how much it cost for the process in the middle (the job training) and whether there were any actual effects from the training and the placement, as opposed to the fact that there was a huge industry need for any worker.

It’s a new world order for workers now. Unemployment is disastrously high, hovering officially around 10%. Further, discouraged workers, part-time workers, and others who have given up trying to find work but still want a full-time job have the “real” unemployed rate around 17% in the country, according to the U.S Department of Labor.

A powerful investigative report in the New York Times, part of their ongoing series “The New Poor,” raises significant questions about the whole field of job training in the United States:

“It’s such an ugly situation that job training can’t solve it,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a job training expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research institution in Washington, and a former commissioner of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. “When you have five people unemployed for every vacancy, you can train all the people you want and unfortunately only one-fifth of the people will get hired. Training doesn’t create jobs.”

In such a climate, we need to re-think dramatically how we are going to help people move out of poverty, and the relative role of job training vs. job creation as an effective tool for achieving that goal.

“A lot of the training programs that we have in this country were designed for a kind of quick turnaround economy, as opposed to the entrenched structural challenges of today,” said Carl E. Van Horn, a labor economist and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. “It’s like attacking a mountain with a toothpick. You take a policy that was designed for the best economy that we had since World War II and you lay it up against the economy that is the worst since World War II. It can’t work.”

At New Foundry, our work has focused on the power of social businesses to create positive changes for low-income communities. In some cases this means access to goods and services at a fairer price than currently exists in urban communities. For example, our alternative to payday lending business, Emerge, provides non-exploitative emergency loans to workers while helping build long-term credit and establish savings plans. At scale, the business will serve hundreds of thousands and can change the equilibrium in the payday industry, which is currently gauging working folks and part of causing what Gary Rivlin has called “Poverty, Inc.” Another example is our newest exploration in developing a business to provide access to healthier food to address the “food desert” challenge in many urban communities.

Most frequently, our social businesses are designed to create actual jobs for folks not getting hired in the current environment. Our energy efficiency enterprise provides hard-to-employ workers who complete the Rising Sun Green Energy jobs training program transitional employment to perform residential energy efficiency retrofits. This fills the employment gap between completing the time-intensive training program and finding a full-time job and also allows the trainees to get real work experience using their new skills. Too many green job training programs are proving to be a dead end, so we are trying to create the social market for successful businesses that will create the jobs for all these trainees.

What is the new answer to unemployment? We believe that true unemployment will remain painfully high in the U.S. for a long time, particularly for the communities we serve. The best way we can have an impact is to focus on finding and starting businesses that go right to the source of the problem and address it head on by creating jobs in places where there are too few, and for people who are too often the first fired and the last hired. While New Foundry Ventures is sometimes mistakenly lumped in with job training and workforce programs, we have deliberately focused on the primary goal of job creation. Yes, many folks who come to us will be receiving training on the job. Yes, many people who come to us will move on to other employers, and we thus have some similar role in helping create a more effective workforce for the general economy.

Further, there are some great job training programs across the country we partner with who can help our entry level workers succeed and play a crucial role in the success of our strategy. Here, perhaps is the sweet spot for job training programs—helping new businesses find, train and sustain workers for a new enterprise.

Our primary role is starting businesses that create real jobs that can scale nationally and increase the net number of real jobs that exist because the businesses and workers provide a value to customers for which they are willing to pay. The current job training paradigm is about getting workers ready for an insatiable industry need for workers. The way forward is to help underemployed and disenfranchised communities create the new social businesses that have an intrinsic need for people from those communities to work and make those businesses thrive.

Follow Rick on Twitter @raubry.

Setting the Record Straight on Energy Efficiency

2010-07-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

By Jade Rex, Project Manager

Most of the time when I talk to people about energy efficiency, they start talking about solar and how expensive it is. I think this is a common association to make since media ubiquitously refers to the two in the same breath. Just to set the record straight, energy efficiency and solar (renewable energy) are not cut from the same cloth. I like to think of them as more distant cousins than siblings.

Energy efficiency or ‘EE’ is the practice of making your existing energy source work more efficiently for you. For example, using a CFL light bulb in place of an incandescent light bulb provides the same amount of light, while consuming less energy to do so. Renewable energy, such as solar, is about generating energy from natural and renewable sources, including sunlight, wind, rain, tide, and geothermal. The fundamental difference between the two is that energy efficiency is about how you use energy, while renewables are about how you generate energy.

Now that we’ve established that EE isn’t solar, nor is it trying to achieve the same goals as solar let’s discuss why EE is important and something you should care about. The EPA defines energy efficiency as “products or systems using less energy to do the same or better job than conventional products or systems.” In other words, EE is about using your existing energy sources more thoughtfully. Making your home more energy efficient has huge implications for your comfort, health, and wallet. With approximately 87 million of the 130 million U.S. homes built before the advent of the modern-day energy code, this means that most homes in the U.S. use energy very inefficiently and cause their owners to needlessly waste tons of money. For example, leaky ducts usually waste between 10 and 30 percent of the heating or cooling energy a homeowner purchases.

So what’s the first and most significant step you can take if you are interested in saving money, making your home more healthy and comfortable, and decreasing your home’s green house gas impact? Invest in a whole home performance test—the best and most thorough way to identify the exact fixes your home requires to improve its efficiency. An energy-efficient retrofit typically includes sealing holes, gaps, and spaces where air leaks out; adding insulation to attics, crawlspaces, floors, and walls; replacing energy inefficient appliances; upgrading doors and windows; and replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, in addition to other measures.

Check out the Department of Energy video below to see what a whole home performance looks like.

Compared to solar, installing energy efficiency measures is an easy and less expensive way to significantly reduce your energy usage and impact on the environment. Once you make your home energy efficient, you’ll be able to make your renewable energy investment go a lot further.

P.S. To stay current on energy efficiency news follow me on Twitter @jade_rex.

Fighting Food Deserts with Social Enterprise

2010-07-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

by Kari Ness Riedel, Director

One of the enterprises we are exploring at New Foundry Ventures is a social business that provides greater access to healthy foods while also creating jobs for those with barriers to employment. Many urban and rural areas are considered to be “food deserts”–that is, areas where residents have little or no access to healthy foods but have plenty of access to fast food and less healthy options. It may be hard to believe that food deserts exist when some neighborhoods boast a Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Super Target all within a one mile radius. But, in many communities, fast food outlets and local bodegas that primarily sell liquor, cigarettes and canned food are the only convenient, affordable places to get food. Take a look at his map to see food deserts around the country.

We’ve all seen the stats on the alarming rate of obesity in our country–27 percent of adults and 19 percent of kids in the U.S. are obese, and these figures are worse for communities of color and low-income communities. Studies have shown direct links between food deserts and obesity and obesity-related diseases such as Type II diabetes. We need to improve food access and promote healthy eating to reverse these disturbing health trends. Remember all the work that went into fighting the “digital divide” from the early 90s? We need to engage in a similar fight to remove this “healthy eating divide” that is plaguing our communities today.

OK, enough doom and gloom, here’s the positive news…there’s already some amazing work being done across the U.S. to address these issues. Most efforts to improve food access are focused in three areas:

1. Get mainstream grocery stores into food deserts
2. Make bodegas, or corner stores, healthier
3. Provide alternative places to buy fresh, healthy food like farmer’s markets, produce markets, and mobile markets.

A great model for all three of these efforts is The Food Trust based in Philadelphia. Their work to bring affordable, nutritious food to all is starting to be replicated around the nation.
But access alone is not sufficient; behavior change is needed to shift how people shop, cook, and eat. There’s also some great work being done on this front through community cooking classes, nutrition education, backyard gardening lessons by organizations, such as Operation Frontline based in Washington D.C. and their local chapters throughout the U.S.

And, of course, it’s fantastic to see First Lady Michelle Obama bringing attention and energy to these issues through her Let’s Move campaign, along with the celebrity power provided by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.

At New Foundry Ventures, we see a great opportunity for a social business that fights food deserts. We are currently doing due diligence on scalable, sustainable business concepts that would increase access to healthy foods in low-income communities; encourage families to shop, cook, and eat healthier meals; and create new jobs. We’ll be posting our findings over the coming weeks…so stay tuned! If you have ideas for fighting food deserts that you want to share with us or would like to learn more about our work in this area, please contact kari@newfoundryventures.org. Follow me on Twitter at nesskari.

Rubicon National is now New Foundry Ventures

2010-07-02T14:25:00.000-07:00

By Rick Aubry, CEO and Founder

As many of you know, our work at Rubicon National grew from the work we began at Rubicon Programs nearly 25 years ago, starting and operating social businesses such as Rubicon Bakery and Rubicon Landscape Services. In 2007, we realized that as important as our work had been to date, we needed to find dramatic new ways to significantly increase the impact of our work. While we had created jobs in our businesses for hundreds of people, we needed to develop businesses that created jobs for tens of thousands of people. While our services positively affected 4,000 people a year at Rubicon, we needed to develop new models that would serve hundreds of thousands of people in order for our efforts to change the inequity challenge in our country.

To achieve these audacious goals we came to the conclusion that it was essential that a new generation of nationally-scaled social enterprises be created. We initially incubated this theory as part of Rubicon Programs. To increase the likelihood of our success and to focus on our ability to build significantly larger national impact, we created and spun off Rubicon National as a separate nonprofit in 2009 to focus on our mission of building the next generation of scalable social enterprises. While we are extremely proud of the work we achieved as Rubicon Programs, we want to make sure the work we are doing today is clear as national in vision and scope and distinct from the activities focused primarily on one local region. A board member of Rubicon Programs once said to me, “National reputation, local player, what’s wrong with this picture?” We believe our new identity as New Foundry Ventures will allow us to build on our national reputation and focus on national issues.

Our reputation as action-focused, “doers” is baked into our organization’s DNA, so we loved the image of a foundry that gets things done. The work of our foundry is to build new ventures – in collaboration with others and through ventures we incubate and grow. We are market-fixers that identify opportunities where traditional markets don’t exist or are failing. By building social businesses that provide good financial credit, greater access to healthy food, and energy efficiency for low-income communities—while also creating jobs for those in need—we create lasting, sustainable and systemic solutions to some of the most important challenges facing disenfranchised communities in the U.S. Learn more about the work we are doing today across Financial Services, Energy Efficiency, and Community Food Access, as well as our Advisory Services.

Rubicon National Wins Social Impact Exchange Business Plan Competition

2010-06-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

By Rick Aubry, CEO and Founder

Greg Dees, Ed Skloot and their colleagues from Duke University as well as the folks at the Growth Philanthropy Network pulled together an impressive group of conference attendees to focus on the question of how philanthropy can scale the impact of social innovation at the Social Impact Exchange’s Inaugural Conference on Scaling. Over 450 people gathered in NYC June 17-18 to look at the challenges involved in moving to scaled solutions and look at examples of some of the best solutions available for creating this scaled change. Philanthropists, academics, practitioners and financiers spent two days hearing about the latest thinking on how to take big ideas and bring them to scale. Given Rubicon National’s mission to serve as a laboratory for scaling social impact, it was a timely conference for us to attend; and we also had a dog in the hunt at the conference.

The central part of the conference is a social business competition featuring leading new innovations ready to scale. One of Rubicon’s social businesses, Emerge, was competing in the early-stage growth category. Our venture was created as an alternative for working folks who have had no choices when they need small, short-term loans in emergencies than to go to the predatory lenders. Over 200 organizations submitted plans and 8 finalists were selected to present. Jonathan Harrison and I pitched our presentation on Emerge for 10 minutes on Friday afternoon and later that day we found out we won! In addition to $25,000 in cash, we also will receive six months of pro bono consultation from Public/Private Ventures to help us achieve the scaled impact we all are interested in. (See the press release we published on the win.)

So of course, we are jazzed and excited that we received such a prestigious recognition (and the cash could not have come at a better time for our start-up venture). We have spent nearly two years dealing with all the behind-the-scenes steps necessary to create a system-changing business—one that provides working folks access to fair credit, connections to financial services and asset building programs, and a pathway out of the debt traps that payday lenders and other predatory financial services help create. It’s satisfying to know we won because we created this solution within the construct of a market-based business that is designed to grow to scale and be sustainable. This is what Rubicon National set out to do from the beginning.

NPR Fresh Air Interview with Gary Rivlin Highlights Need for Payday Lending Alternative

2010-06-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

NPR’s Fresh Air recently invited Gary Rivlin to share his research on predatory lending in the United States. Rivlin’s work is particularly pertinent at a time when Americans are strapped for cash and stretching their dollars, especially at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. His work is not only pertinent to the current economic climate, but to the initiative that Rubicon National Social Innovations is launching through our new social business, Emerge.

Payday lending accentuates the problems people who live paycheck to paycheck face, putting them at odds with making ends meet as roll-overs lead them to face nearly 400%+ APR while paying back their advance. Rivlin makes it clear that the same payday lenders that many might see as exploiting the poor working class see themselves as nobly extending services that would otherwise not be available to a large population of people. At the same time, he tells a very clear story of how the flight of traditional banks combined with the much-higher-than-average profit margins to be made by serving the working poor lead to the abundance of payday lenders in poor, urban areas.

Our alternative business model, Emerge, is positioned to fill the gap left by the imbalance in the marketplace. Seeking to systematically bring about a more equitable society through its employer-based credit offerings, Emerge aims to migrate the underbanked from predatory high-profit payday lenders toward mainstream financial services. -Josh Engel, Summer Associate

Listen to the full NPR interview with Gary Rivlin.

Welcome New Summer Associates

2010-06-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

With summer, comes summer interns, and at Rubicon National Social Innovations we're excited to welcome our outstanding group of summer associates this month. We have a diverse group of MBAs and undergrads from top-notch schools, including Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, and Wake Forest University. To kickoff their time with us, and to thank many of the volunteers who have generously given their time this year moving our mission forward, we took everyone to AT&T ballpark to soak in a beautiful San Francisco day and watch the Giants beat the Orioles (6-3). Check out photos from our outing.

Lucky Sharma, Josh Engel, Jonathan Harrison, Bernard Geiger, Brendan Pierpont, Andrew Kintner, Melissa Foley, and Mark Ding

Jade Rex, Bernard Geiger, Brendan Pierpont, and Andrew Kintner

Lucky Sharma, Josh Engel, and Jonathan Harrison

Bernard Geiger, Brendan Pierpont, Andrew Kintner, Melissa Foley, Mark Ding, Ashima Sukhdev, Kathy Liu, and Sandie Taylor

Social Enterprise Essential to Combat Predatory Lending

2009-11-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

With select state legislatures moving to ban Payday Loans via interest rate caps and the Federal Government looking to put its hat in the ring with a 36% federal interest rate cap, it begs the question “is government regulation enough to help consumers avoid predatory lending?” Surely setting caps at 36% will prevent the unscrupulous payday loan model that creates long term debt traps at 400% APR interest. Compare that to the APR for a 30-year fixed Home Loan which is only 5.225%. Payday Loans are unsecured – they have extremely high costs of borrowing and short term limits—thus they are dangerous product for chronic borrowers. With only 14 days to repay, payday loans create massive pressure for loan rollovers which incur more fees and increase the debt burden. This is supported by a study of practices in Indiana before new laws went into effect, that saw an average rollover rate of 10 times. This usurious practice is unsustainable for the borrowers. So banning payday lending via an interest rate cap is a good thing because these products will no longer exist, right?

Not so fast. There is a reason people are taking out payday loans. It is because they are either consciously rejecting mainstream banking products or more likely, unable to gain access to mainstream credit products that charge reasonable interest rates. So if the borrowers were so desperate to use a payday lender in the first place, how will they fair? Many will bounce checks or incur overdraft protection fees as their main source of credit. This practice can be just as exploitative as payday loans4. Credit cards can perpetuate a cycle of debt, as available credit on cards often exceeds one’s realistic ability pay down principal balances. Just as often, credit cards are typically inaccessible to many in this population population. More than 100 million Americans are considered “unbanked”, “underbanked”, or credit underserved5. So what options are left for this population if governments essentially ban short term small dollar loans? Pawnshops or black market loan sharking? The answer is that tough choices will have to be made by consumers until mainstream banks and credit unions can develop credit tools and risk models that address the needs of the underbanked.

Fortunately, there are a handful of organizations working on payday lending alternatives including community development credit unions and social venture funds. This is a perfect opportunity for social enterprise and innovative solutions. Social Enterprise can step in to prove the market, as early stage venture philanthropy will be needed to cover the initial costs of research and development and subsidize the development of risk models and new technologies to reach these consumers. To serve the underbanked, there is an immediate need to have a socially minded business model that is more focused on educating and serving the consumer for the long haul; rather than continuing a practice of short term economic exploitation. Furthermore, innovation is essential to create new financial products that are economically sustainable and viable. In the long run, for any loan product to reach scale and have a significant social and economic impact it will have to be financially profitable in order to reinvest revenues back into more loans and more social benefit. Innovation in terms of technology, risk-modeling, private-public-nonprofit partnerships, and education have the potential to reduce costs and develop a loan portfolio with risk profiles that can compete with mainstreamed personal loan products. Together social enterprise and innovation can address Payday lending properly.

It would be much easier if the problem of predatory lending could be solved via a legislative fiat. Unfortunately, this problem is a complex one that governmental regulation alone cannot fix, and worse yet, traditional business structures have neglected to substantially address. Which is why Rubicon National Social Innovations is stepping up to the challenge: to serve the poor by filling the gaps between the abilities of government, traditional charity, and for-profit businesses (see Table Below). Whether one is concerned about predatory lending’s impact upon the working poor or worried about government regulation into the market, it can be agreed that social enterprise solutions can address this issue. To learn more about the work of Emerge, our product in this area visit http://rubiconnational.org/our-projects/emerge-loan-program/

by Jeff O.
Bain Fellow

Sources:

Center for Responsible Lending http://www.responsiblelending.org/payday-lending/

Chase Home Fixed APR 30 year rate checked on Nov 5th 2009 at http://mortgage.chase.com/pages/shared/gateway.jsp

http://www.reallifedebt.com/payday-loan-cash-advance-money.html

Center for Responsible Lending, http://www.responsiblelending.org/overdraft-loans/

Reuters, July 30th, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS175151+30-Jul-2008+BW20080730

2009-10-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday representatives from RNSI attended the West Coast Green 2009 Conference. West Coast Green is a conference focused on environmental innovation in the building industry. Along with the usual tradeshow floor offerings, the conference hosted an overabundance of classes and seminars focused on education of eco-friendly construction practices. The conference was chock-full of interesting organizations vying for face time and growth in the green building sector. These organizations ran the gamut from traditional construction companies reforming their practices to disruptive technology producers aiming to save the world. Some of my personal favorites were Ideabuilders, North Cal Wood Products,and Driptech.

The ability to network with and learn from these organizations is what drew RNSI to this conference. Environmental protection is currently the vehicle of two of our enterprises (Mattress Recycling and Energy Efficiency Retrofit). While at the show we were able to connect with other organizations in the green space and develop our network. We are excited that at least one of these connections will blossom into a customer for our recycling program. But not only did we meet potential business partners, we also learned of exciting new trends in the industry. It is impressive the speed with which companies are adopting green practices. It took a while for the snowball to get going but it is truly picking up speed.

The West Coast Green experience was valuable for Rubicon National Social Innovations. The success is obviously manifested in the partnership we came away with, but other wins occurred as well. The conference was a valuable opportunity to make contacts with the visionaries who are changing the building industry. Additionally, it laid the seeds for future innovations and projects. Disruptive innovations could provide us with excellent opportunities to fulfill our mission, to employ the hardest to employ populations. West Coast Green was also an excellent chance to update ourselves with the technological advances that are changing construction. Our presence at the conference heightened the importance of being in the bay area, a great hub for environmental and social enterprise work. The connections and collaborations here are great for incubating ideas that we can then scale nationally.

Plugging Away

2009-09-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

For the past year Rubicon National has been working to get mattress recycling off the ground as a social enterprise diverting waste and employing the hardest to employ workers. Now, with a facility open (and at last report covering all direct costs!) in San Jose and a facility close to launch in Philadelphia (check out the article on page 17 of Grid Magazine below), we are working to identify the remaining U.S. markets where mattress recycling is likely to be a viable social enterprise.

Key to making the market is a governmental presence committed to environmental sustainability and consumers that value waste diversion and recycling of resources enough to demand it of the businesses from which they buy their new products. We've talked to several retailers who don't think their customers value waste stream diversion enough to pay an extra $10 at the time of purchase to guarantee their mattress is recycled. We don't think that's a valid assumption. Only time will tell, but we will continue to develop the business infrastructure that will allow the opportunity to recycle mattresses to exist. When every mattress store offers a recycling option, we will know we've been successful.

Mattress recycling coming to Philly! Check out page 17: http://issuu.com/redflagmedia/docs/grid_2009.09

live from SoCap09

2009-09-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Our director, Jonathan Harrison, recently spoke at the Social Capital conference. One of the conference volunteers took a moment to interview him for their blog, we thought it might be interesting for our readers as well.

http://www.socialcapitalmarkets.net/index.php?/component/option,com_wordpress/Itemid,64/p,579

A Summer Intern’s Thoughts on Working for Rubicon National

2009-08-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Before I became an intern at Rubicon National Social Innovations, I had little idea of what social enterprise entailed. I received a summer fellowship from U Penn with funding provided by the Levy Social Impact Fund at the Wharton School. I was intrigued with the internship position because it focused on a feasibility study on the viability of a weatherization and energy efficiency retrofit social enterprise and I had similar previous coursework related to sustainable energy.

My knowledge of social enterprise was limited to the notion that social enterprise somehow uses business skills to try to solve injustices or economic inequities throughout the world. With the little experience I had from doing community service in my spare time, I honestly could not distinguish one non-profit from another in terms of their strategies and approaches to having social impact. After a phenomenal and memorable 2-month experience with RNSI, I am proud to say that I can now make that distinction (or at least I think I can).

One thing that I have questioned over the years while participating in numerous service activities is how effective those service organizations are. Although their direct services were beneficial to those they were helping, it never seemed like lasting change in people’s lives was being made. By no means are these organizations unnecessary or obsolete; it just seemed to me that their work was “patchwork,” -- only temporarily providing relief.

That’s partly why I have continually been impressed by the work that Rubicon National is doing. The approach to battling a vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty is deeply rooted in creating sustainable, long-lasting employment opportunities powerful enough to lift people up and out of their predicament. The social enterprise models that are developed are truly innovative, creating social enterprises relying on market forces (for financial stability) and operating on a national scale to maximize social impact. They clearly break away from the patchwork model of traditional charities and make a lasting social impact in the communities that need the most help.
What’s more is that their recognition that social change and environmental responsibility do not have to be mutually exclusive, a tenet to which I firmly adhere. During my time here at Rubicon National, we have been diligently developing an energy efficiency retrofit service as a social enterprise that would create green collar jobs and pathways out of poverty in cities around the United States. Because of the federal mandate for economic recovery and climate change mitigation, Rubicon National realizes that retrofitting homes with energy efficiency measures creates excellent opportunities for the hardest to employ, offering training services and career advancement possibilities in a growing industry.

By leveraging tremendous volunteer support, Rubicon National has made significant progress on the enterprise that would not otherwise have been achieved. It is incredible how much buy-in to the project Rubicon National has received from corporate, civic and professional groups, accelerating the development process exponentially. Not only have the volunteers shown their interest in energy efficiency retrofits, but also that they genuinely believe in the potential it has for making a lasting social impact.

As my internship comes to a close, I am proud to say that I contributed meaningfully to Rubicon National’s energy efficiency retrofit enterprise. As biased as this may seem, I believe that Rubicon National Social Innovations is one-of-a-kind, having unmatchable experience in the field of social enterprise and a proven track record of success. They may just be getting their footing as social enterprise modelers, but they truly are the “laboratory for scaling social enterprise” and deserve much recognition for their work.

New RNSI Website! www.rubiconnational.org

2009-08-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

It's official!

On July 1st, after a successful two-year incubation and with the support of the Surdna, S. H. Cowell, REDF, William Randolph Hearst, Woodcock, and John S. and James L. Knight Foundations, Rubicon National Social Innovations (RNSI) was launched by Rubicon Programs as a separately governed nonprofit organization to become the national laboratory for scaling social enterprise, focusing on nationally scaled initiatives built through local collaborative partnerships.

Check out our new Rubicon National Social Innovations website at www.rubiconnational.org for more information about our current initiatives.

a note from our president

2009-02-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

Our president, Rick Aubry has been in Davos, Switzerland over the last week participating in the World Economic Forum. Better than anything we could write to let you know what he has been up to, get the info straight from the horse's mouth...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfKxYiFd-fs&feature=email

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-204161?ref=email

Who knew what you could you do with a MATTRESS?!

2009-01-20T17:14:00.000-08:00

Turns out, mattresses are a perfect recyclable item: they are large, easily identifiable items that landfills don't particularly like as they are difficult to compress and they damage equipment such as tractors and backhoes. To dispose of them, they often require special delivery to landfills where even still they actually "float" to the surface, even when covered with dirt. If recycling was an option, people's disposal behavior would barely need to change. The problem? To date, there are few uses for mattress components - creating little market justification for the expense of the recycling process.

Until now.

In September, RNSI partnered with Architecture for Humanity to release the Discarded Dreams mattress recycling design competition. The competition challenged designers to re-envision a world where used mattresses and box springs are turned into new, useful, and commercially viable products that RNSI could test in a new mattress deconstruction facility that we are partnering with Goodwill Silicon Valley to launch in San Jose.

See the results this Thursday, January 22 from 6 - 9 p.m.
We are hosting a reception, with sponsorship from Keetsa and the International Sleep Products Association, to take place this Thursday at the Keetsa Mattress Company (271 9th Street in San Francisco, CA). The design reception will showcase the winning entries as well as over 20 entries from around the world.

This event is open to the public.

2008-10-17T14:38:00.001-07:00

Guest Spot- A Quick Q &A with Allison Kelly

Allison Kelly is the Statewide Director for Employee Onramp Initiatives at Pacific Community Ventures based in San Francisco. We asked a few pointed questions of Allison recently about her sector switching, why she works in the social change movement and the results her program is having in the workplace.
---------

We understand you recently left the for profit world to enter the nonprofit world. Please describe your path to getting here and what motivated you to do change sectors?

I started my career with a tour in the Peace Corps. I served in Mauritania, West Africa from 1996-1998. When I was there, I realized that if I could figure out how to equip people with assets, the power to make their own decisions about health care, education, food choices, etc., that would be the most meaningful work I could do. So I returned from the Peace Corps and worked in the private sector for 2 ½ years to get the necessary experience to get into business school. I graduated from Thunderbird in 2002 and took a job back in the non-profit sector with Population Services International (PSI). This was my first foray into health, by way of marketing. At PSI, we did social marketing for public health products in developing economies all over the world. The behavior change communication we were involved with was really impactful and interesting. I ultimately decided to move back to the West Coast, however, to be closer to family. Upon my move back to San Francisco, I took a job back in the private sector doing product marketing for a biotech company in South San Francisco that had a product which did HIV resistance testing. I ultimately stayed in pharmaceuticals and biotech for about 4 years doing product marketing and strategic planning. Although I enjoyed the work and my colleagues, I felt I had more to give and wanted to get involved in a social enterprise. When Pacific Community Ventures called me to see if I’d be interested in taking on the leadership of our Employee OnRamp initiatives, I couldn’t refuse. This is a very smart, driven and innovative organization and I couldn’t be happier to me here.

Describe the products/services you are working at PCV. How are they helping to change the workplace?

My responsibilities at Pacific Community Ventures include overseeing our health policy work, our economic self-sufficiency initiatives and launching VidaCard, our first healthcare product. PCVs work in health policy is to help engage the companies in our network in the policy debate. There are many organizations advocating for companies larger than the ones we serve, and many for smaller sole proprietorships, but our networks’ voice has been under represented. We hope to bring our perspective to the policy debate and contribute towards favorable policy for our network of companies. With regards to economic self-sufficiency, we engage our companies to offer financial literacy trainings at their work place during business hours. Additionally, we partner with sister organizations (such as TaxAID) to help promote the services available to the low/moderate income workforce that we aim to serve. Finally, our work launching the VidaCard has been really exciting! We have a health care product that operates like and HRA whereby an employer who can’t afford to insure their workers, or can’t insure part-time workers can offer a health benefit in the VidaCard. VidaCard can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted to access health care. Additionally, we have a partnership with the only licensed discount dental network in the state of California to offer reduced rates for dental care. We are in the pilot phase of our roll out right now but will be launching to the market Jan 1, 2009. It’s a very exciting time.

How do you measure success within your organization for your particular area of focus?

We measure success in a variety of different ways. There are very quantifiable measures that we track as a company such as annual budget and headcount. Then we have more specific measurements for each of our lines of business. For example, for our Social Evaluation Consulting arm, we measure # of clients and earned income. For my line of business, Employee OnRamp, we measure # of employees accessed and # of VidaCards sold, for example. From a qualitative perspective, we measure levels of engagement at events that we host. We keep track of testimonials that we get from folks who benefit from our products and services. For example, I was at Farmacia Remedios in the Mission District a couple of weeks ago as they received their VidaCards and the gratitude and pride that was demonstrated both from the employees receiving the health benefit and the employers who were able to give it to them, was an incredible measure of success.

What are you looking forward to in this field?

I’m looking forward to continue to track and contribute to the innovation that’s going on within a lot of organizations right now to help bring economic self-sufficiency, of which I see healthcare being a big part, to low/moderate income people. I think the industry is getting smarter and more efficient about our work and it’s really rewarding to be part of it.

What do you do when you are not working to change the world?

Lately I haven’t done much but work! However, I am a member of Net Impact, which is a great organization of business leaders who want to use business to change the world. I have volunteered for their Service Corps program which provides pro bono consulting to non-profits in our community. I’ve found my involvement in that to be quite rewarding. I also try to ride my bike to work whenever possible!

If it’s Thursday, it must be Dubai?

2008-09-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

In order to get the word out about RNSI to potential funders, partners and others, we have adopted a very active public speaking schedule. We will be talking about Rubicon and scaling of social enterprise at a variety of venues and conferences over at conferences all around the world in the next 60 days.

Social Capital Conference in San Francisco – “Future of Social Enterprise” (Jonathan) – This is a gathering of 100’s of social investors who we hope will be interested in our work.
World Knowledge Forum Korea (Rick) – We have been invited to present the RNSI work at an international gathering of business and government leaders interested in the model that we have created at Rubicon.
World Economic Forum Conference Dubai (Rick) – WEF has selected from amongst Schwab Fellows a “social entrepreneur’s council” of the leading social entrepreneurs and Rick has been asked to serve as the Chair of this Council. The first meeting is being hosted jointly by the WEF in Dubai; the goal of the council is to present a proposal to the WEF in Davos in January of a more substantive way for the work of social entrepreneurs to be supported by the business community.
Net Impact Conference, Philadelphia – “Scaling of Social Enterprise” (Jonathan) – As reported above, we are co-sponsoring a major national competition with Net Impact and we will be featured at their annual conference in November.
Social Entrepreneur Conference France (Rick) – The President of France is sponsoring a gathering of the 50 world leading social entrepreneurs in Evian and we will be presenting our work to the business community interested in ways to scale impact.
The Economist Magazine business summit San Francisco (Rick) – We have been asked to be a principal presenter on a panel on social innovation at t he Economist Magazine conference in San Francisco.
Time-Fortune Magazine’s CNN conference of “The Principal Voices”: NYC – (Rick) Last year, Time-Fortune and CNN did a special article and show about our work as part of their “Principal Voices” series focusing on new models to end poverty in the world. The magazines are sponsoring a one day gathering of all the selected “principal voices” in New York

Collaboration and Partnerships:

RNSI has been busy on the phone crises-crossing the nation formalizing our local collaborative partnership agreements, including on-site visits to Philadelphia, Newark, and Baltimore to develop local collaborative partnerships throughout the country. We now have commitments from 18 organizations in 14 U.S. Cities to review business ideas with RNSI for potential fit. We are focused on both social enterprise employment models (supportive employment) and social franchise models with these partners.

Rubicon RNSI Open House:

People keep asking us where we are located, and now we have a productive answer – come visit us—October 2nd 4-7 pm We have sent out invitations and are looking forward to seeing friends and Rubicon board and staff members at the October 2nd Open House to share in person an update on the latest RNSI happenings.

Social Enterprise needed more than ever?

2008-09-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Unscathed by the declaration by the Wall Street Journal and Republican pundits of the failure of social enterprise and social mandates (in response to the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), we’ve just been keeping our heads down and aggressively pursuing our work to create nationally scaled social enterprises that we will be able to bring to market and pilot within the next year.

Here is some of our progress over the past three months on the development process:

Evaluated eight new “phase I” businesses that entered our pipeline for compatibility and fit with our social enterprise feasibility criteria for phase II. Two of these businesses passed through for phase II analysis and are being evaluated in our pipeline.

Completed two complete feasibility analyses for a mattress/bulk item recycling business and a payroll advance business.

Developed significant relationships with waste haulers, recyclers, mattress and carpet retailers and other key partners to create competitive advantage within the mattress business

Conducted numerous interviews with necessary business partners for the alternative to pay day lending program

Leveraging Volunteer Resources To Make Our Workplan Possible:

We have leveraged a significant amount of pro bono resources in support of our work. We’ve creating four critical partnerships with organizations that believe in our work and which have contributed significant amounts of resources to support our team. Our four key partners are Bain & Co, Net Impact, the design firm IDEO, and our co-tenants in San Francisco, Architecture for Humanity.

Managed 3 Net Impact teams: The first phase of our Net Impact partnership is their working with us to find 9 Net Impact business management volunteers to work with us on three critical teams. We focused the three teams on mattress recycling, employer based payroll advances, and deconstruction/waste management services.
Bain and Company Brainstorming Sessions: We have had two high engagement meetings with potential partners, industry experts and philanthropic partners facilitated by Bain & Co. Travis Pearson, a partner at the SF Bain office, has been an invaluable and hard working additional member of our team. In preparation for, and at these meetings, Travis brought in other Bain associates and partners with content knowledge in the industries we are examining. This week, we received an additional commitment from the firm of a “virtual team” of Bain associates to work with us.

Idea Generation Competitions and Gatherings:

Architecture for Humanity and our Mattress Recycling Design Competition – We are currently running a national competition online in partnership with Architecture for Humanity to encourage product designers, students, and others interested in innovative ways to improve the environment through finding a re-use of the stuff inside mattresses we all throw away.

Discarded Dreams Mattress Competition - Lead Mattress Sponsor: Keetsa Eco Friendly Mattresses - Lead Sponsor: ISPA - Hosted by Rubicon National Social Innovations and Architecture for Humanity

IDEO, the award winning national design and planning firm, has been brought on board to facilitate a pro bono brainstorming session focused on “the next big social enterprise” and we’ve invited 50 folks from the social entrepreneurial and business community to help us think through some new ideas.

The Net Impact/Rubicon “Next Big Social Enterprise” Challenge invited 10,000 Net Impact members to submit their ideas and expand on others in an online competition focused on RNSI’s national scaling strategy. Results and further brainstorming will be reported out at the Net Impact National Conference in Philadelphia by RNSI staff.

Interview with Joe Alexander from Keetsa Mattress

2008-09-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

Joe Alexander is Director of Sales and Marketing for Keetsa Mattress here in San Francisco. Keetsa is a leading manufacturer of green mattress and bedding products, using recycled and sustainable materials to produce high quality bedding for its customers. Keetsa is the bedding sponsor for the Discarded Dreams Mattress Recycling Competition, cohosted by RNSI. Jonathan Harrison, Director of RNSI, posed the following questions to Joe:

1. The mattress industry has a bad reputation for confusing pricing structures, deceptive sales tactics, and renovated product that is sometimes passed off as new. Is that reputation deserved?
I would have to say, in my experience, it is an earned reputation. Before the advent and accessibility of the internet, customers were subject to the marketing of the mattress giants. Shopping for a mattress was similar to the process of buying a car. In the "old days", you would go from dealership to dealership, listening to salespeople, collecting brochures and getting pressured to buy now. When the internet gave customers the ability to research, price and compare, it changed the landscape. The same thing is now happening for mattresses. Customers are now coming into the market informed, asking the right questions. Because of this, the old sales tactics many companies rely on are now accounting for a rise of alternative bedding companies. It's why you see so many of the major mattress manufacturers suffering in this economy and many alternative companies thriving. Mattresses are a perceived need. Good or bad economy, people still need mattresses. And if you give the consumer respect for being intelligent and savvy, if you give them value, they will buy.

2. Your company is pretty green in the scheme of things? But what are you doing that is different from other mattress companies?
What we are doing is pretty radical from most mattress stores. We do not spend tons of money on radio and TV. We don't blanket newspapers with ads. We live off word of mouth and the internet. This helps us keep our pricing affordable. In respect to being green, we are constantly challenging ourselves by searching for new innovations. We have lots of customers who cannot afford latex or are allergic to it. We make a healthy version of memory foam. In fact, we just pioneered the world's first castor oil foam. We replace over 10% of the oil with castor oil, a natural plant oil, for lower dependency and reduced VOC. We are also about to unveil our first natural latex mattress with organic cotton and wool. By packaging our mattresses in boxes that can fit in your car, we are able to send customers home in their car, taxi or BART with a new mattress.

3. Keetsa is growing fast. This might present a few challenges in your day . . . what keeps you up at night?
First, I am daily innundated with emails from customers, potential customers and inquiries from media. It amazes me how passionate people are about their mattress! But the one thing that keeps me up at night are the people who attack us. When you are on the forefront of change you are a target. I work very hard with our staff to educate customers about how our mattresses are different from other mattresses. And yet, to some people, it is not enough. Fortunately though, you are right, we are growing very fast. We make a great mattress for a great price.

4. What is Keetsa going to look like in 10 years?
In the year 2019 we will have flying mattresses! No, just kidding. Actually, if all goes according to plan, Keetsa will be a household name in ten years. I personally would like to see us making 100% biodegradable mattresses that last 25-50 years. That way waste and disposal are things of the past when it comes to mattresses. These are some of our goals.

5. Tell us the story about a customer experience that made you proud?
Our staff works tirelessly to make our customers happy. I try to remind them all the time that you never know the circumstances of why someone is shopping for a mattress. A young lady came into the store the other day and fell in love with our mattresses. She was distraught because she had been to some big retailers and could not afford a mattress. Her family came back an hour later and bought the mattress for her. It seems her husband of 5 months had run off with another woman and took all the furniture. She was so grateful for her new mattress!

6. Why is reducing your companies' carbon footprint so personally important to you as an manager?
As an avid surfer and runner, I enjoy the outdoors. Before Keetsa I had lived in Hawaii for two years and Tahoe for a winter. We have such an amazing planet! I want my three kids to be able to enjoy this place long after I am gone. With Keetsa, I get to contribute on a daily basis.

Discarded Dreams . . . Coming Soon

2008-08-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

In our journey to find a scalable social enterprise, we've been looking long and hard at the potential of mattress recycling. Hmm, you've probably never thought of it. Neither had we, but it is starting to make sense. We've just finished a feasibility study complete with location analysis on the potential for co-locating pilot facilities with local collaborative partners with strong social service delivery models for the "hard to employ" target clients that we seek to help most. Things look promising. During the pilot phase,the business looks marginally profitable as a single stream bulk item facility that brings mattresses in the front door and breaks them down to their commodity parts (cotton, wood, steel, shoddy, etc.) and tries to find markets for these core components.

Even at large volumes, the markets for mattress parts are not very financially attractive. So we got to thinking . . . what if we created a line of products developed from 100% reclaimed materials, in large part from the mattresses we are breaking down. This was the question that we asked the creative folks at Architecture for Humanity who, among many other things, run international design competitions on their Open Architecture Network. After a few conversations with Director Kate Stohr, we were slated to run a mattress competition that will ask the best and brightest product designers that age old question- "When a mattress falls in the dumpster, does anyone hear it fall?" That is, what are we going to do with all these mattresses besides pulverize them and re-landfill the resultant waste?
Thanks to help from Kate and lead sponsors at the International Sleep Products Association, we may have an answer to that question.

On September 1st, the Discarded Dreams Mattress Recycling Competition will officially open and we'll invite entrants to create innovative ways of converting used mattresses into useful products (which are 75%+ mattress components.) The competition aims to encourage entrants to form groups capable of creating a consumer product, instructions detailing how to make the product, and a plan for production on a larger scale. Entrants must create designs that take into account the volume of mattress waste generated each year. Groups are encouraged to utilize local resources, including existing manufacturing facilities and other waste products.

We know the problem. Without a line of commercially viable products to develop at the end of the life cycle for so many products including computers, hair dryers, carpet, Styrofoam, etc, the business of recycling them is a marginally profitable one, especially give the nature and construction of products like mattresses. They often end up in landfills because they cannot be broken down and their component parts are hard to utilize.

Until now.

Rubicon in the News - SmartMoney

2008-07-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Read about Rubicon and Rick Aubry in this month's issue of Smart Money - Small Business . . .

Starting Up: Nonprofits Launch Social Sidelines

by Diana Ransom

WANT TO KNOW how to start up a nonprofit with deep pockets? Here's a hint: Make sure it's also a multimillion-dollar business.

Consider Rubicon Programs, a Richmond, Calif., nonprofit that provides jobs, housing, and life skills to poverty-stricken, formerly incarcerated and disabled individuals. The organization, which was founded in 1973, has started two businesses and helped more than 40,000 individuals find jobs and live independently.

However, even after Rubicon started its first enterprise, Rubicon Landscape Services, 25 years ago, the idea of using earned income to support the organization didn't exactly register . . . read more

RNSI Adventures - San Patrignano

2008-07-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

The following entries are from a trip our Director, Jonathan Harrison, took on behalf of Rubicon Bakery to San Patrignano, a social enterprise bar none outside of Rimini, in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. San Patrignano is so large; it is really a small town as well as an tremendously successful residential drug recovery program and community. The over 1000 people in recovery work are not charged for room, board and intensive therapies including free health care, but rather work in community-owned businesses including about a thousand of acres of vineyards, a world-class winery, high end Italian furniture, cheesemaking, and all of the operating principles of a sustainably managed farm system. The average “stay” at San Patrignano is 4 years, with a minimum of 3.5 years in residence. Their success is over 80% who do not relapse after leaving the program, (tracked at 1, 2, 3, and 5 years intervals). This is compared to shorter programs of 30-90 days where success rates hover in the 10-15% percentage rates.

Jonathan was joined on this journey by Jaime Cunningham, training manager of the Rubicon Bakery. The two of them were invited to participate in a trade pavilion at the San Patrignano Food and Wine festival called “Squisito” (Exquisite). Squisito was created five years ago as an event dedicated to the culture of good taste, good food, and to those who never tire of trying new flavor combinations and sampling long forgotten culinary traditions. Michelin starred chefs, experts, journalists and gourmets meet each year to redefine contemporary cuisine, creating an itinerary of taste that goes beyond our nation's borders. This 4 day event brought the best of Italian artisan meats, cheeses, breads, and wines and a little bit of everything (over 200 vendors in all) complete with all the culture and charm that is Italy and the Italian people. It was a very difficult assignment, but Jaime and Jonathan were willing to sacrifice their precious time for this great cause.

RNSI Adventures - San Patrignano Day One

2008-07-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

I am looking out my window in Rimini at my hotel balcony and can see and smell the Adriatic a block away. I am here finally, it is nearly 24 hours in real time since I left the offices of Rubicon. There is a Pizzeria tipico near here with good margherita pizza so I hear; I will follow my nose. Tomorrow we set up our booth for the Festival, where we will be sampling bakery confections including gourmet marshmallows and Rubicon’s new product—Cocoaberries, a lower calorie dark chocolate covered berry meringue.

We were invited to participate in the Good Food Pavilion, where organizations from around the globe gather to display the results of social enterprises including those produced at places like Fifteen (Jaime Oliver’s social enterprise which trains at-risk youth in culinary arts in an on-the-job restaurant) and organizations looking for alternatives to drug crops in Afghanistan (from poppy to Saffron and teas), Columbia (from coca to cacao), Thailand (from marijuana to macadamia nuts) and even Roots of Peace, a US nonprofit dedicated to eradicating landmines worldwide and rehabilitating the land to make it productive once more. Rubicon was in good company.

RNSI Adventures - San Patrignano Day Two

2008-07-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

It is quite an experience in so many ways here at San Patrignano, which is a virtual gastronomic overload. In many ways this is one of the most impressive social enterprise in the world, as far as I can tell. Where else can you spend between 3.5-5 years in recovery from drugs? The Italians are smart; they combine the best in all the worldly arts - cheese, wine, and smoked meats - and help 1000 people in their community build skills and craftsmanship that can take them places in the outside world. It is really a small city complete with hospital, kitchens that feed hundreds, horses, kennels with breeding facilities , artisan pigs (which become high end prosciutto and other hams) and a dairy. Perhaps it was just that they were on their best behavior with so much company visiting, but San Patrignano runs like a well oiled machine. The people are what make the place. Although they are struggling, they are compassionate, tender, and always ready for a joke.

Our booth in the Good Food Pavilion was right inside the front door, and we had thousands (some say 40,000 total over 4 days) and it was great to test market the marshmallows and Cocoaberries.
The reactions were wonderful, although the Italians don’t eat marshmallow (an American phenomenon) and it was hilarious to watch them try one. Of course, the children all loved them and said that they saw them on “Charlie Brown”. The parents were skeptical, even when touching them, most were shocked that they were soft (morbido in Italian). I don’t think they will be a big hit in the Italian market, but who knows, it just might be strange enough. The Cocoaberries were a hit, but not when we told people that they were low calorie (“light” as they say in Italian). Most people said diet foods are for Americans and were a bit superior sounding if you ask me. Many, many people wanted to buy the products – mostly the marshmallows, but definitely a strong demand given that most were on vacation and ready to spend.

RNSI Adventures - San Patrignano Day Three

2008-07-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Wandering around the festival a bit it is clear. Even compared to the sizable movements afoot in Northern California to bring artisanship and slow food back to America, I was struck immediately about how authentic and grounded everything was. Okay, it was my first time in Italy and all, I know I am stating the obvious! But artisanal everything!? Beer, cheeses, meats capo and prosciutto, Pizzeria and Barbecue. I am getting tips on how to roast a pig from a family member who has been curing meats for hundreds of years. Of course not just any pig, but a local heritage breed, a free range breed: mora Romagnala.

San Patrignano has social enterprises within its community. For example, the Neapolitan pizzeria (open to the public) that recently won 5th place in the world competition, is extremely authentic and uses world class ingredients that are "confirmed" by Naples.

RNSI Adventures - San Patrignano Day Four

2008-07-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

I attended the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (based in Vienna) seminar today to learn about the trials and tribulations of turning drug crops in developing countries into "alternative agriculture" crops to drug crops. Ironically to Americans mainly, San Patrignano operates a vineyard and a winery and other social enterprises (for at risk youth) operate breweries. The relationship to wine and beer is a culinary and cultural one that does not force an “abstinence only” ideology for well-being. On a lighter note, San Patrignano has just introduced cheese wrapped and and aged in a tobacco leaf that when swallowed leaves a delicious burn in the throat that tingles like you just smoked a cigarette - really strange but delicious.

I will just leave you with a few of the more mouthwatering delicious culinary offerings that our hosts forced us to try:

- Bombanella sandwich (From Puglia)- pork sausage wrapped in bacon and then shish kabobed and put into a sandwich cone
- Tripe Sandwich – this was the Tuscan version from Florence, never thought I liked tripe until I ate this!
- Fried tiny fish - don’t know the names, tasted like the sea
- Asti Champagne and a Canoli - a peak eating experience
- Gelato – one with Pistachios from Lebanon, one with saffron and mint from Afghanistan and one with mangos from Columbia.
- “Caramela” - handmade pasta by Fifteen that looks like shape of caramel, stuffed with cheeses
- Olives stuffed with beef and pork, breaded and deep fried
- Copa di Parma, and the Culatello di Zibello courtesy of the ancient local breed of pig, mora Romagnola

RNSI Adventures - San Patrignano Day Five

2008-07-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Back to the airport . . . Driving back to Bologna it was a regular UN. I got background information from my two new Afghani friends from Hirat (this is the relatively “safe” place in the Western part of Afghanistan which borders Turkmenistan and Iran) on the ever worsening conditions in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s hold on the region of the country that they are trying to convert from poppy but can’t safely enter to even speak to farmers. Also on the bus were a Colombian woman, a Chinese woman from Myanmar, a few folks from Thailand and the Italian driver. I am looking forward to being forced to go again next year.

A Message From Rick Aubry

2008-03-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

Bold. Audacious. Risky. Essential. Foolish. Critical. Necessary. Quixotic. Impracticable. Romantic. Impossible. Unrealistic. Finally . . .

These are just some of the adjectives friends of Rubicon use as I describe our new vision for social enterprise in the United States. Our vision is now embodied by our new Rubicon National Social Innovation team. Many of you know Rubicon Programs. For 35 years we have created jobs, housing, services and hope for people and communities left out of the mainstream, including homeless people, residents of neglected communities, people in the mental health system, formerly incarcerated people, young fathers wanting to re-engage with their families and many other marginalized communities. We have built social enterprises, worked with employers to create pathways into the mainstream, taken vacant land and turned it into affordable housing and created innovative programs which have become models for others. Our work has been focused in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have served over 50,000 people the last 20 years.

Most notably, we are seen as a leader in the field of social enterprise in the United States. Rubicon Landscape and Rubicon Bakery are oft sited examples to define social enterprise in the United States. With our roots in Richmond, one of California's most economically disadvantaged communities, our entrepreneurship was born out of necessity. We have had to rely on innovation, bold ideas, and scrappiness to survive and build an organization which has a direct impact on the people we serve and on helping build and define the field of social entrepreneurship.

We are proud that our positive social impact has been recognized with accolades such as the Fast Company Magazine's "Social Capitalist of the Year" five years running, Time Magazine/CNN's "Principal Voices" on social entrepreneurship, and our selection to be a part of the yearly World Economic Forum's "Schwab Foundation of Social Entrepreneurs" since 2001.

However, we have always tried to rely not on past successes, our own press releases, or to drink our own kool-aid as we contemplate our future. During a comprehensive strategic planning process, we concluded that amongst the variety of integrated solutions we offer to create paths out of poverty for people and communities, our best chance to dramatically change the system is to more than just improve our performance within that system as a great but local non profit. We must re-imagine the scale, scope and impact of social enterprise in the United States, and build a game shifting national social enterprise. To do so, we have created a "laboratory for scaling social enterprise" which we hope will bring social enterprise to a national level in the United States.

We believe that for social enterprise to have a significant impact on poverty and employment opportunities in America, it must be re-imagined on a much greater scale with the focus on a national business model of greater social impact and public presence then is widely seen today. We believe social enterprise as non profit poverty alleviation strategy has been important but limited in its impact, even for field leaders such as Rubicon. Rubicon currently runs small to mid-size businesses in a local market, similar to virtually all the other social enterprises which have been created during the past 20+ years of the social enterprise movement. Aside from the national thrift shop models created by St Vincent De Paul, Goodwill Industries and others, social enterprise remains predominantly local.

For us to move from a regional to national platform we have committed to a significant organizational re-structure to maximize the likelihood of success in creating a national social enterprise. We are leveraging our experience, relationships, and reputation to create a special "National Social Innovation Team". We set out to bring on new project staff to develop a new Social Enterprise business model. From a 35 year old success story, this small "start up team" will focus on developing business models that fit within a national social enterprise model.

We brought on an amazing dream team of folks with deep experience in the social enterprise, corporate and marketing worlds and launched November 2007. Our team is building partnerships with individuals and organizations around the country with aligned interests to broaden our intellectual capital.

At the heart of our exploration is the recognition that for social enterprise to be a powerful tool of social change, we must imagine and develop a greater scale and a national platform. We are finding that when we consider opportunities from this radically different perspective, there are exciting new ways to fundamentally re-structure the way social enterprise can address poverty in the United States. I invite all of you to stay tuned for what's coming and to actively join us as a business idea submitter, advisor, and financial supporter of our start up work.

Welcome To Our Blog!

2008-02-19T13:43:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the Rubicon National Social Innovations blog.

Below you will find articles we are reading, updated daily.

Enjoy!