Socential

Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Among many great ideas selected for the online end vote, helping social entrepreneurs to drive change is obviously our favorite. The vote ends on October 8th; whether you vote or not, the site could prove a good source of inspiration for social business ideas.

In this video, Barack Obama explains his view on the role of social entrepreneurs and innovative approaches to address social issues, and the role government and the private sector (businesses, foundations and philanthropists) should be taking to collaborate and make sure the best ideas can be implemented and scaled up.

• Government: to seek out and evaluate the best working, high-impact solutions existing in the community, and invest limited tax money
• Private sector: to provide seed capital to launch the ideas, the matching funds to make them grow, and the strategic advice and other resources to help them succeed
• Nonprofits: to implement the solutions

The president’s reason for applying this approach is “because ultimately the best solutions don’t come from top-down, they come from bottom-up”, and that it will help “focus on what really helps people in their daily lives”.

Although Obama was basically talking about the U.S. domestic social market, I am convinced this will increaslingy be the way forward on an international level as well, and also in Switzerland. A collaboration platform like Socential can play a key role in facilitating such collaboration and resource provisioning.

Let me share some impressions from the second day of the Global Ethics Forum on July 3rd at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Global Ethics Forum, July 3rd

Stepping into these UN premises is like entering another world. After having made it through the security checks and the passport control, I started looking for my gate (I was actually told to enter through “gate 40″!) before remembering I was actually not at the airport. Once having found the right room (which requiries being able to count in Roman, XIX in this case), I found myself in a very diverse crowd, where everyone seemed to have their own vision of how to save the world. And since they all prefer to do so in their own language, the first thing to do is to put one of these one-ear-covering ear phones on and tune into the channel with your interpreter of choice.

The roundtable session “Creating and sharing wealth in times of great uncertainty” featured insights from an good mix of people from the corporate and NGO world respectively. Some noted quotes:

Bettina Ferdman of the CSR network Philias (with whom I also had a meeting after the session) stated some important trends in CSR related to the recession:

1. Innovative solutions are increasingly sought to increase the impact of CSR activities without increasing costs.
2. Responsibility is becoming an integral part of companies’ strategies.
3. Companies with a strategic approach to CSR will be best equipped to survive through, and prosper after, the crisis.
4. Social enterprises and new forms of cooperation will evolve to solve social issues.

Fredrik Galtung of Tiri talked about the immense problem of corruption, and what it takes for a company to implement integrity effectively:

• Ensuring accountability
• Competence – which has to be contextual, every industry and country has its own prerequisites
• Addressing corruption risks explicitly – as corruption usually slips through regular audits, one has to know how to look for it
• Living core values throughout the company

There was also an insightful speech by the social entrepreneur and activist Mallika Sarabhai, describing her struggle for increased transparency in Indian politics – something which had proven to be more difficult than she had thought.

All in all, although the discussions involving the audience sometimes got very academic, it was interesting to experience such a forum first hand, and to gain new insights on some of the challenges and opportunities of corporate social responsibility.

This interesting article in the SSIR provides some worth-reading insights on what it might take to succeed as a social entrepreneur.

Worth thinking about for social investors is the statement “[...] when small-scale ideas have potential, funders ought to invest in spreading them. And where large-scale ideas have shown proof of concept, funders should provide the dollars for growth.” As obvious as this may sound, particularly those dollars for growth are often lacking in today’s market. We’re confident that Socential will be able to effectively address this equity gap.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has begun the search for the “Social entrepreneur of the year 2009″.  Since the year 2000, the founder of the World Economic Forum, Dr. Klaus Schwab, and his wife Hilde Schwab are searching globally for leading social entrepreneurs. The winner of the Swiss swiss social entrepreneur of the Year 2007 was Stefan Zappa with his “dark restaurant” called Blindekuh…a MUST-go when in Switzerland! Read more about the Blindekuh and the concept here.