The Poor, Poorer, and The Ugly

Today is Sunday. A perfect day in New England. The sun is just barely peeking out from behind the clouds; the breeze is blowing at a soft gait. I am wearing a light sweater, windows and doors wide open, sleeping dogs at my side - thinking how blessed I am in the life on this perfect crisp October day.

Yet the whole world is going crazy away from here. Everywhere, but on the Vineyard. Here, folks at least try to get along. There is a growing consciousness that less deserves more and more deserves less.

My mind drifts back to my New York home and the amount of money residents spend on dining. How many Le Bernardin dinners can well-heeled city dwellers have before getting a little bored? (Prixe Fixe Dinner for Two: $275 with tax, food only.)
Maybe, never. But couldn't New York City, with its abundance of wealth and food options, feed its poor? There is something to the increasing urgent call for sharing good fortune and economic comfort with others who struggle to find even one decent meal a day.

I heard recently from a good friend -a successful entrepreneur with a strong sense of conscience and an even bigger heart - that poverty in America is different than elsewhere. The poor in developing nations experience much more hardship than we do, he explained. That's why he gives to a program that feeds and clothes children in the Himalayas. I cogitate on this and wonder. Is this true? Is it less painful to starve in Somalia than in New York City? Does it hurt less to have no warm home, or clothes on your back in Rajhastan, Detroit, South Dakota, or the Bronx?

In Somalia, mothers leave their newborns on the side of the road for want of food. Forced to make the harrowing choice between feeding older children, themselves, or their infants, some mothers leave babies to die. The young with eyes of mourning and stomachs swelling is a horrendous sight to behold. Their suffering is agonizing to those who are victims to it and devastating to those who cannot stop it.

Yet hunger is ugly, cruel, and primitive -anywhere, in any country, in any culture, to any people...what is so tragic, sadder than anything, is having a way to stop it and refusing to do so. It remains a mystery to observers in America why our government pays farmers not to grow grain or sow crops while so many go hungry. Why not feed the world, we ask, and our own hungry countrymen, women, and babies too?

A group called, "Bread for the World" claims that, "14.5 percent of U.S. households" are food deficient. That totals "49 million American, including nearly 16 million children" who depend on the fortunate majority to help put food on their tables.

Yet due to our inefficient, overstuffed, overheated, overpaid Congress, the nation's poorest will become poorer on November 1, 2013. America's hungry will find themselves with a 5% reduction in food stamp assistance - a program that provides $668 ($22.25 p/day) for a family of four, will now provide $632. For poor families with teenage children, $36 could be the difference between one meal a day or two.


If you care at all, to help your neighbors, brothers, sisters, and children too- then I urge you to take some action and contact your senators and representatives. Say no to Food Stamp Cuts and take a stand against Hunger in America: (Contact Government Here.)

 If we must make a cut in the budget somewhere, ask the lawmakers themselves to take it out of their abundant pensions and benefits or perhaps their "dining-out" expense accounts. It's only fair.

The 5 P's of Social Entrepreneurship

Here my latest article Published in Huffington Post
Tell me what you think! Or share your story here! I'd love to hear it!

Passion, Purpose, Plan, Partner, Profit! Do You Have What it Takes to Be a Social Entrepreneur?

Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. It takes vision, guts, dedication, and luck according to the experts below. Harvard professor Allen Grossman defines entrepreneurship as "an activity or behavior" that involves "the pursuit of opportunity regardless of the resources you currently control." Social entrepreneurship takes that one step further by including the objective of creating "pattern-breaking social change." Social entrepreneurs are driven by these dual objectives: make a living and make a difference.

For example, the privately held for-profit social enterprise Tom's Shoes' purpose is to sell shoes for a profit. Yet the company's purpose is equally to supply shoes to barefoot children around the world. Without its revenue base, the company could not sustain itself. Without its social mission, it would not be profitable. For Tom's, social purpose is the basis for its business model.

These dual goals make it even more challenging to sustain social ventures. Whether for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid, all enterprises need to find customers and build community support.The following 5 P's of Social Entrepreneurship are the five basic ingredients for success as a sustainable social enterprise. Defining these for your venture before you launch or as you grow will help you create a thriving profits-with-purpose business.

1.Passion

Earlier this year, James Stephenson from Entrepreneur.com named the number one ingredient for success as an entrepreneur: "Do what you enjoy!" This is what separates social entrepreneurs from the rest of the startup world. For social entrepreneurs, doing what you enjoy is a given. Yet, how can you turn your passion to make a difference into something financially sustainable?

Columbian native and social entrepreneur, Valeria Patterson turned her passion for eco-sustainability into a retail store on Avenue A at 9th Street. Sustainable-NYC opened in 2008 and calls itself an "Eco-General Store," selling everything from Tom's Shoes, organic chocolate, to recycled postcards. The charming Argentinian native advises passion-preneurs with:"Don't think:I'm going to be rich. You put your heart in it and just keep going!" The key to her first successful 5 years through a major economic crisis in one of the most expensive cities to do business in the world is her eco-conscious model. Valeria declares, "When you support local and green, you do it little by little. You will see the good things that come from that!"

2. Purpose

Going to work with an uncompromised social purpose is increasingly attractive to entrepreneurial souls! Adnan Mahmud, co-founder of Jolkona, a Seattle-based impact investment firm, helps social entrepreneurs in Indonesia and his native Bangladesh succeed. Mahmud left a secure career as a project manager at Microsoft and never looked back. He states: "A successful social entrepreneur is someone who has found the right balance: doing good while doing well."

Closer to home on Manhattan's west side, an innovative young company, Return On Change, incorporates "profits with purpose" into its core business model. An online equity crowdsourcing platform, RoC helps socially conscious ventures raise capital through a "powerful community of supporters and investors."

Early in his career, Sang Lee, the energetic founder and native New Yorker, worked as an investment banker at the French bank, BNP Paribas in its midtown location. His introduction to finance coincided with the worst global economic crisis in eight decades. Five years later, after witnessing the fallout of risky and reckless banking, Lee founded "Return on Change" to offer investors a socially conscious alternative. Says Lee: "Business doesn't have to be harmful to the community or the environment to succeed. The new model for this century is to profit with a clear social purpose that benefits all stakeholders."

3.Plan

Devin Thorpe, author of "Your Mark on the World," claims that a well-articulated vision is more valuable to an entrepreneur than a great business plan. Claims Thorpe, the real value of a business plan is "the exercise an entrepreneur completes with her team to help figure out exactly what to do."

HBR Blogger and venture capitalist, Anthony K. Tjan, takes this a step further. He says that most successful business ideas originate in "a place we call the Heart." The author of the 2012 book called, "Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck," Tjan writes: "At a business's inception, resources are limited, and the best content for a business plan is real-world data based on testing aspects of the concept. These experiments need not be complex. You want simple, iterative tests that are easily measurable and let you know whether you are winning or not."

Social entrepreneur strategist and digital media expert, Shane Snipes agrees that testing your idea is important. The former CTO of Environmental Defense Fund helps clients outline a clear vision and strategy, then encourages experimenting to see how it works. Snipes advises startups to create a "1.0 version" before adding the 2.0 and 3.0 bells and whistles. "Test it out with small groups of target customers and don't be afraid of honest feedback."

In "Lean StartUp" terms, the best entrepreneurs adapt and modify their vision as they evolve. Bestselling author and serial entrepreneur, Eric Reis says get the early version out quickly. He and his cofounders at IMVU, a successful online social entertainment company, rushed its original product out in six months. Reis admits, "The first version was terrible...Nobody even tried our product." That gave Reis and his team time to build customer flow and fix problems along the way.

4. Partner

Strategic partnerships between like-minded companies can help early stage businesses grow. The success of social enterprises depends more than most ventures on building community. Forbes writes, "One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is trying to do everything alone." When a new business lacks resources or skills, building your network through strategic partnership helps "both of you achieve more success."

Collaboration is the fastest growing business tool in the social enterprise arsenal. It even has a name: Collaborative or Shared Economy. One of the most innovative and productive examples of sharing resources are co-working spaces. Entrepreneurs at 3rd Ward, the Foundry, AlleyNYC, WeWork, General Assembly, and incubators aound the U.S. and elsewhere form communities of mutual support for early stage companies.

The collaborative community of choice for social entrepreneurs is Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) in New York's fashionable west Chelsea section. (Full disclosure: GoodB is a founding member.) Originating in Toronto, the six-month old NYC location provides affordable meeting and workspace, workshops, and networking events to support social good initiatives. Most of all, CSI supports a like-minded community of entrepreneurs who are dedicated to changing the world for the better.

5. Profit

So now what? You have limitless passion, clearly defined purpose, a well-articulated plan, and solid strategic partners, but if you don't produce revenues, you're not in business. Unless you have a large donor base or personal fortune to draw from, you need to create a sustainable financial plan.

LaborVoices "utilizes mobile technology to solve human rights issues within global supply chains." Founder, Kohl Gill, a PhD in semiconductor physics, found a sustainable way to hold suppliers accountable to brands. LaborVoices connects "workers with each other" and enables them "to report their working conditions" safely through mobile phones. Name brands pay the two-year-old for-profit tech company to insure accountability by keeping tabs on supplier worker conditions.

Finding seed and growth capital is one of the most challenging factors for any entrepreneur. For social enterprises, the dual purpose makes it even tougher to find investors. Echoing Green, Acumen Fund, Ashoka, Skoll, BALLE, and Gates Foundations are just a few of the organizations offering fellowship grants to mission-based entrepreneurs.

The equity crowdsourcing model introduced by RoC and similar platforms is establishing an entirely new asset class of social impact investments. Currently available only to "accredited" investors, the 18 month-old Jobs ACT is moving slowly toward opening up the market for others to participate. When the SEC finally regulates the new rules, ordinary investors who believe in "pattern-breaking social change" products or services will be able to support businesses of their choice. That's when real change in the social impact sector will accelerate. Until then, "reward-based" crowdfunding platforms like IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, and RocketHub offer modified solutions for raising capital.

Despite these challenges, the rugged, innovative, and creatively resourceful world of social entrepreneurship is growing by leaps and bounds. Righting the world's wrongs is enough motivation to fuel the engines of thousands of entrepreneurial pioneers.

What the JOBS Act Can Do for JOBS!

Moving Entrepreneurship Forward!
(This article was first posted on HuffPost- original content by me! @2013 Monika Mitchell)

It seems as if a whole new economic structure is forming underneath rusty old 20th century capitalism. Finally, the "trickle down" concept of 1980s Reaganomics would be replaced with a millennial-worthy "trickle up" version. The new world looked promising!

We waited patiently for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to do its job and structure guidelines to protect the average investor -- those of us with less than $1 million net worth or under $200k in annual income (a.k.a. 99 percent). We are still waiting!

Signed into law 18 months ago, the bill was scheduled to be implemented by September 2012. Yet one year later, official government policy makers continue to drag their feet.

The first significant progress made on the law arrived this summer due to the proactive agenda of Mary Jo White, the SEC's new chairwoman. Mary Jo put the JOBS Act back on the table resulting in an important new ruling on Title II which according to Forbes:

lifts the longtime ban on public solicitation and creates a new type of offering called 506(c), that essentially allows companies, for the first time in over 80 years, to freely advertise that they are fundraising to the general public.

While that is progress, we are still waiting for the SEC to allow "non-accredited investors" to join this emerging market of new companies. With Mary Jo on the scene pushing the bill forward, it seems more hopeful than ever that Title III will pass soon opening up the investing floodgates to Main Street America.

In the ultimate irony, however, the 99 percent are free to lose money through exploitive mortgages, housing market and stock market bubbles... think 1987 (Stock Market crash), 1990 (housing market bubble), 1998 (Long Term Capital crash), 2000, (Dot Com bubble), 2007-2010 (housing market crash), 2008-2009 (banking collapse), 2008-2010 (credit market crash & financial crisis)...resulting in plunging net worths and massive job losses.

Yet while these economic atrocities occur with great regularity, anyone of us can continue to invest freely and easily in large "public" companies only to find our shares plummet or disappear. (Think Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers). Or we can freely invest in our homes whose values are determined by the ever-changing dynamic of "consumer confidence," and lose our shirts (and roofs) in the process.

The question remains:

What are policymakers afraid of by forging ahead with the JOBS Act? Perhaps, it's simply fear of the unknown. The new economy, despite the SEC's recalcitrance, is emerging rapidly in the shadow of Wall Street. For traditionalists, this brings up uncomfortable questions:

What will this new economy look like? Will the old economy still be able to hold onto the purse strings for middle and working class America?

For many citizens, the new economy poised to emerge with "free market" equity crowdfunding puts much needed capital in the hands of middle class investors and bootstrapping entrepreneurs. Traditional "free marketers" should understand this more than anyone else and get out of the way.

Naturally, caution is necessary in the creation of new credit markets. Yet after two years of high unemployment and continuing recession, the time has arrived to move economic democracy forward by supporting the American entrepreneurial revolution growing by leaps and bounds behind the scenes. Unlike the industrial and financial revolutions of the last two centuries that spurred growth mainly for bankers and moguls, this emerging credit revolution leads the way to an economy of the people, by the people, and for the people.

It won't replace the old economy; it will simply establish a new dynamic and more equitable one alongside of it. That economy would help all Americans.

Towards a New Economy of Trust

Is it really possible to make business cool in 2013?

The surprise answer is yes! Business is cooler now than it ever has been. I'm sure you know that already with all the buzzwords being tossed around like entrepreneurs, social good, and startups.
 But what you may have not thought much about is why? Why is business suddenly cool again or I should say hot?

To a large degree, the answer lies in the financial crisis. You remember that little ole' catastrophe, don't you? Five years this month, the banking system in America collapsed due to the largest bankruptcy filing in the history of the world. That's not an exaggeration! The fourth largest global investment bank, Lehman Brothers, went belly up on September 15, 2008 threatening to take the world's fragile system of global credit down with it.

While investment banking's algorithms proved innately flawed as well as the human beings who relied on them, basic business 101 tools were found to have gone awry. The absence of "trust" in the mortgage securities and lending industry proved to be disastrous for the U.S. and global economies.
It proved once and for all that greed was not good at all for anyone except perhaps a handful of "lucky" bankers at the top of the heap. For the rest of the modern world as it teetered on economic collapse, only the U.S. government could save its people from bad business practices.

Suddenly post crisis, old-fashioned values like integrity and public good were back in style. It simply confirmed that despite high-tech financial innovations that modern business relies on, from mom & pops to global financial institutions, daily business is still based on trust.  Four thousand years after the first international trade markets began in Ancient Babylon, individual honor and reliability continue to be the foundation for modern economic systems.

Half a decade after the devastating display of irresponsibility in the mortgage markets, American entrepreneurs are once again reinventing themselves.  We are not transforming already existing financial systems, or retooling the fossil fuel industry, or overhauling century old corporations. Been there, done that. It's an exhausting use of wasted time to "convince" established institutions that have proven resistant to change to profit from doing good. They need us to show them how, by doing it ourselves. You really can teach old dogs new tricks, witnessing the gradual acceptance of the green economy is proof enough that yes, we can!

Instead, "we," meaning the socially good entrepreneurial community, are simply creating something wholly new away from systems that have shown themselves no longer adequate for modern needs.
This is happening in New York, Toronto, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, Boston,  Florida, Washington D.C., Austin, Houston, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Ohio, Iowa, Berlin, London, Spain, South Africa, France, Brazil....just about everywhere in the world is changing the way they do business to do better, in fact, they are doing much better, by devoting their energies to doing good through what they do for a living every day.

An exciting new world is opening all of us up to new possibilities. No matter where you have been in this cycle- just starting out or doing business the 20th century way for decades, you can join the new movement for business for a better world. It's never too late to change, and never too early to begin.

This is the first post for a new blogging page I have set up in addition to the many articles I and my colleagues write for Good-B (Good Business New York: the network for social entrepreneurs) and Huffington Post Green, Impact and Small Business pages.

I will be posting here a couple of times weekly my thoughts and new trends as I see these develop. You can find tools, news, information and advice for entrepreneurs as well as consumers. I will also be co-posting awesome articles by business colleagues, thought leaders, and friends.

So please feel free to comment with any of your ideas and join the conversation - even if you see things differently.  Respectful debate is healthy and good for all of us as we co-create a world that works better for everyone in this 21st century. Just remember the simple guidelines of no name calling or verbal abuse and your comments are encouraged! We are all in this together and everyone is welcome to share their thoughts on how business can be cool again by being good.

To share your ideas and blogs, just shoot me an email or add your ideas to the comment section.
Looking for to hearing from you and to creating a new Economy of Trust with you!

What does an Economy of Trust look like to you? We want to know...!

xoxo Monika!