Technology Plus Humanity: An Equation for Social Collaboration

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By Elly S. Brown

A version of this post was originally published on Next Billion.

Image via Next Billion

What is technology’s role in the social sector today and how does it advance philanthropy?

The 2011 Columbia Social Enterprise Conference session on “Bold New Ventures: Visionary Philanthropists and Impact Investing at the Cutting Edge” kicked off with thoughts from moderator Melissa Berman, president and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Berman reflected on the i-generation spawned by Steve Jobs and the increasingly central role of technology in our daily lives, including philanthropy.

The session included various representatives from the funder and nonprofit community, including Doug Borchard, managing partner and COO of New Profit, Mike O’Brien, CEO of iMentor, and Bonnie Oliva, director of InVenture Foundation.

The two social entrepreneurs, O’Brien and Oliva both decided at the genesis of their respective organizations to center their services on the deployment of technology to advance social impact. Through its online platform, iMentor created a successful mentoring model without sacrificing the quality of relationships. Under this model, mentors meet with mentees once a week and conduct a majority of their interactions online. The flexibility and the ease of access lowered barriers for potential mentors and significantly increased the participation rates compared to more traditional mentoring programs. iMentor became a national model and now partners with 24 organizations to replicate this model through sharing knowledge online and providing capacity building support.

InVenture Foundation, a hybrid social enterprise, provides capital, guidance, and financial tracking needed to empower microbusiness owners in lifting themselves and their communities out of poverty. The micro-entrepreneurs, selected through a strict due diligence process, create an online profile and seek investments through the technology platform. After the investments bear fruit, the investors of the micro-entrepreneurs are paid back their principle and can choose to reinvest the profits of their investments, Social Enterprise Expansion Dollars (SEED), into other potential investments.

Borchard also described the case of Single Stop USA, a Pathways Fund grantee, to illustrate a powerful application of technology in supporting an organization’s outcomes. Single Stop USA is an organization that helps community college students stay in school and complete their degrees. Recognizing the financial barriers that many students face in completing post-secondary education, Single Stop USA developed a “Turbo Tax-like” online technology that allows students to identify eligible state and local financial benefits.

For all three organizations, technology overcomes access issues and enables the successful matching of resources to their target beneficiaries. It also serves as a convenient tool to track interactions and the performance of their programs.

A theme emphasized throughout the panel was the importance of incorporating the human experience into the technology, a concept that Apples’ Jobs fully embraced. In a March speech introducing the iPad2 (more details from a recent Economist article), Jobs outlined this aspiration: “Technology alone is not enough… It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields the results that make our hearts sing.” Societal impact cannot be created by technology alone. Technology is an enabler; it addresses solutions for accessibility, scalability, and efficiency. O’Brien referenced this idea when speaking to the brilliance of technology’s ability to solve problems but limitations when relying on technology alone. For example, when incorporating a new technology into a school, O’Brien emphasized, “it will not work if you don’t have emphasis on teacher training and implementing that solution into how the school functions.” Deploying technology without analyzing its effects on people and processes will be set up for failure.

Despite several examples of success highlighted in the panel discussion, the social sector has yet to unlock the potential of technology and its ability to increase donor activity in a formalized matter. According to Borchard, some organizations such as Donors Choose, Kiva, Global Giving, and InVenture Foundation, are leading this effort and learning what works. Particularly when engaging with individuals, donors and investors are seeking transparency around how their specific contribution has been invested. This highly granular approach in tying donations to specific investments creates a tangible connection for donors.  For example, Donors Choose may identify a $600 contribution as earmarked to set up an ecology program in a particular school. Although best practices are emerging with some examples of successful applications, we are still years behind an effective social media model that transforms the way organizations find funding.

Posing a question to the panel, O’Brien seemed to underscore the panel’s outlook on technology and philanthropy: “Instead of a bricks and mortar replication model, can we use a combination of technology and consulting to partner with other organizations to do something that is more collaborative?” The key challenge facing technology in the social sector is enabling and incentivizing organizations to share best practices, collaborate, and further the field.  Jobs’ successful recipe of cutting edge technology coupled with a dose of humanity might just be the winning combination to “make our hearts sing” in the social sector as well.

Reaching the Next Billion Through Mobile

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By Grant Tudor

A version of this post was originally published on Next Billion.

Image via Next Billion

Last January, The Economist ran a piece on mobile technology in developing countries. The article, of course, wasn’t the first to conclude that “clever services on cheap phones make a powerful combination.” And it certainly won’t be the last to opine about the mobile-driven transformation of development.

But it did profile a few radical innovators capitalizing on the rapid and broad-based distribution of mobile technology. As a preview to tomorrow’s Social Enterprise Conference, I had the pleasure of speaking with one such innovator: Nathan Eagle, co-founder and CEO of Jana (formerly called txteagle), who will be leading a session on Reaching the Next Billion Consumers Through Mobile Phones.

Currently generating revenue in more than 50 countries, Jana (Sanskrit for “people”) enables global organizations to directly engage with BoP consumers through mobile phones. In exchange for free airtime, Jana incentives 2.1 billion emerging market consumers to fill out surveys and purchase products. In other words, it enables organizations to understand next billion consumers — and then engage them.

Take, Eagle explained, a hypothetical laundry detergent brand. Say it wants to know more about rural Bolivian women: what detergent they currently use, where they buy it, when they buy it — the basket of market intelligence that underpins successful marketing. Through its proprietary technology, Jana gathers data by distributing free airtime to rural Bolivian women who in turn answer survey questions on their phone.

With the new data in hand, Jana’s marketing team can turn market intelligence into something actionable: informed marketing that effectively targets rural Bolivian women. For example, deploying an additional incentive — say, printing a unique ID on the inside of the detergent pack that offers “50 cents off your next purchase of Brand X” — initiates the process of building a relationship between a global brand and a low-income customer, often for the first time.

As Eagle expounded, the implications for marketing to the BoP are anything but negligible. “If you want information on women from Kansas, there’s a ton of data out there. But there’s a total dearth of data in emerging markets. Mobile changes that.” Typically, brands learn about and speak to a small fraction of consumers at the top of the pyramid in emerging markets — through traditional research methodologies and usual communication channels. “But what if suddenly, global brands took just 25 percent of their ad budgets and redirected them from billboards directly into people’s pockets?”

The release of the newest iPhone stole headlines this week. But as Eagle cautioned, it’s very easy to get caught up with the great new specs of the latest technology. It’s not next generation technology that’s driving the mobile transformation of development, but rather the less glamorous phenomenon of very low price points. The accessibility of mobile phones today — from US $15 to $35 for a ‘grey market handset’ — “is the game-changing component behind the fastest growing technology adoption in human history.” It’s Jana’s proposition that those who capitalize on this already-existing and increasingly ubiquitous technology will successfully engage the next billion.

(Remember, if you’re joining us at the conference, be sure to check out Nathan Eagle’s session on Reaching the Next Billion Consumers Through Mobile Phones for more!)

Technology for the Greater Good

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By Kimberly Parker

Image via Nonprofit Jobs

Social enterprises apply business principles to social causes, and new and exciting technologies have helped them to work smarter. Technology being created in Silicon Valley is being used for the greater good and becoming an essential part of any strategic plan that aims to make a difference.

Mobile technology — with its accessibility and endless potential  — is at the core of many new social enterprises, such as mPedigree and txteagle, which are serving populations that are often hard to reach. mPedigree President Bright Simons was a panelist at the 2010 Social Enterprise Conference, where he discussed the dangers of counterfeit drugs in places like Ghana and Nigeria, and how mPedigree is using texting to verify the authenticity of pharmaceutical drugs in the third world. At the 2011 Social Enterprise Conference, Nathan Eagle of txteagle will discuss the potential of mobile technology for economic development in the third world and explain how txteagle taps into the consumer potential of the base of the pyramid.

Nonprofits are also harnessing the power of technology, such as Remás, which uses mobile and web technology to improve the financial options of immigrants in the United States, and Benetech, which develops technology to serve social problems.

Even if technology may not be at the core of their mission, it is especially essential for nonprofits, which often encounter a lack of resources and a lack of staff. TechSoup Global is a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits obtain and utilize technology, and Susan Tenby of TechSoup will discuss at this year’s conference how social enterprises are using multi-platform engagement channels for constituency development and to increase revenue. There is a network of organizations that also strive to connect nonprofits to technology — such as NTEN (the Nonprofit Technology Network) and NPower — in order to streamline processes, bring down costs, and improve outreach and effectiveness.

In an increasingly networked world, technology connects us to each other — and to what matters to us. TUGG (Technology Underwriting Greater Good) uses crowdsourcing to choose and support social projects. Facebook is playing an important part in the way we live our lives and in movements such as the Arab Spring, even if Mark Zuckerberg downplays the relationship. Other social networks, like Chris Hughes’ Jumo and Ami Dar’s Idealist.org, are specifically designed to connect people around their ideals. Online tools such as Causes, harness the power of the internet to fundraise for social causes. We live so much of our lives online it not only makes sense, but is imperative, that we use these tools in our efforts to make the world a better place.

Urban Farming Reaches New Heights

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By Emily Sweeney ’12

Image via Gotham Greens

By 2050 the world will have an estimated 9.1 billion people, according to UN reports, and approximately 70 percent of them will live in urban areas, increasing the need for fresh, local food in metropolises. Many people agree our current food production mechanisms cannot support this growth, particularly because of the negative effects this system has on our planet and human health. How can farmers produce local foods in an urban environment? Build upward.

It is in this context that Viraj Puri and Eric Haley founded Gotham Greens, a high-tech urban farm on a rooftop in Brooklyn, in 2008. Gotham Greens’ greenhouse uses hydroponics, a crop production system that grows plants in water, rather than soil, and a completely controlled environment, allowing it produce crops all year round. The farm currently produces more than 80 tons of vegetables and herbs annually that it then sources to local retailers, markets, and restaurants across New York City — including Whole Foods, Fresh Direct, and Mario Batali’s Eataly. “We harvest in the morning and it’s in the store in the afternoon,” Puri told FastCompany. In 2012, Gotham Greens plans to expand operations to grow an even more diverse range of premium quality leaf and vine crops.

While the idea of urban, indoor farming dates as far back as the 18th century, it has really taken root in the last 10 to 15 years. Dickson Despommier, professor of architecture and public health at Columbia University and author of The Vertical Farm, has taken urban farming to the next level by advocating for vertical farms — closed-loop greenhouse skyscrapers that would house a greenhouse farm on every floor. Sustainable Architect Gregory Kiss envisions a 150-story building that includes an indoor farm along the perimeter of the entire building that would produce enough food to feed the office workers inside.

Supporters of this shift toward a less land-intensive kind of food production argue that indoor farming will improve our environment by decreasing pollution from food production and transportation and freeing farmland to restore it to it’s natural state. Additionally, those living in cities will have better access to healthy, safe food.  And, it would also reduce the spoilage that inevitably occurs along the way, Despommier told The Economist.

Of course, indoor, urban farms may represent a paradigm shift in agriculture as we know if today and is often plagued by high start-up costs. Yet some skeptics question the economics of these projects, according to a New York Times article. How will the cost savings from not transporting the food from afar measure up to the urban building and land costs? Despite the controversy, many European cities — including in England, Belgium, and The Netherlands — have been successfully operating urban, indoor farms for years.

To dive deeper into the debate, join the discussion on October 7 at the Social Enterprise Conference.

Social Innovation in a Networked World

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As we move into the second decade of the new millennium, we live in an increasingly networked world powered by technological innovations that are redefining connectedness and transforming business. For social enterprise, these changes have the potential to produce groundbreaking business models, introduce innovative approaches for scaling enterprises, reach new audiences and mobilize additional resources to improve society:

• How have social enterprises leveraged new channels to improve existing business models and create platforms to better enable, amplify and capture social, economic and environmental value?
• What emerging technologies and ideas will drive the social enterprises of the future?
• How can businesses better manage socially relevant issues in a ubiquitously networked world?

By bringing together industry experts, thought leaders and practitioners, the 2011 Social Enterprise Conference will examine how the social enterprise sector has and will continue to explore and capitalize on new avenues of business brought to light by technological innovation.

The 2011 Social Enterprise Conference is scheduled for Friday, October 7 at Columbia University.

Do Cell Phones Help Alleviate Poverty?

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Technology has a critical role to play in economic development. After all, together with education, it is what makes humans more productive. That is the reason why the phenomenal spread of mobile phones globally has created so much enthusiasm and hope.

The mobile operators, intrigued by the success of Grameen Phone Village Ladies, have done a remarkable job at reaching everyone, everywhere. Basic phones are now ubiquitous and can be taken for granted while designing social schemes. Thanks to a dense network of distributors and resellers, mobile minutes can be bought electronically at your next-door store. And in lucky countries like Kenya, you can even send Mom some money through the wildly successful mPesa.

These new opportunities are not going unnoticed, and social entrepreneurs are bringing their start-up innovation in full force. For instance, in Colombia you can text a cab’s license plate to Taxi 911, and they’ll tell you if it is registered and give you an instant insurance policy to boot. Or you can upload your resume to EmpleoListo and be notified over SMS about any job match.

The future brings even more promise. As we go from simple phones limited to voice and text messages to Swiss-army smartphones, what applications will be created by social entrepreneurs? If you look at the Silicon Valley, one trend is clear: the integration of services unlocks tremendous amounts of value. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and most new start-ups offer ways for other developers to connect into their services and platforms. As an example, you can see what your Facebook friends are reading on the New York Times. And Google ads have powered many business models by being inserted into someone else’s web pages.

Surely social applications can also lever each other to produce richer services too. For instance, a person in Nicaragua could find a dream job with EmpleoListo and also receive his salary on his phone, no bank account necessary. Or a Taxi 911 app could show a map with the riskiest corners to grab a cab in Bogotá and send your GPS coordinates to the police.

Intrigued by the possibilities? Entrepreneurs in this space will brainstorm at Columbia Business School’s Social Enterprise Conference. Join us for a panel that will explore how to build a regional system to distribute, control, and pay for medicines and other basic goods in Kenya. All that, of course, using a lot of mobile phones.

David Del Ser, contributor of this post, is the founder and CEO of Frogtek. Del Ser will speak on the panel Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World.

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