Adventures in Social Entrepreneurship, week three: monetizing the venture

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.