Sunday, November 15, 2009

How to make a difference? Fast Forward Giving!

How can youth make a difference through Social Investing? EnvisionGood TV poses this question as title for recent interview profile they did on Fast Forward Fund (FFF), as part of their series on social entrepreneurs. Share your comments here or directly on the video!

One great way young adults are making a difference is by joining our Don't fall back...FAST FORWARD! campaign. The response was so enthusiastic, we're extending the campaign throughout this giving season. We need your help to blow this campaign through the roof! Check out three ways you can help : donate, promote, or suggest ideas for the campaign.

Students learning about Fast Forward through the fall '09 BGIA class recently heard first-hand about making a difference with two outstanding, back-to-back guest speakers: first Lara Galinsky wowed us during our site visit to Echoing Green, then we were inspired by Michele Kahane (until recently of Clinton Global Initiative, now Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Milano New School of Management), during her visit to BGIA. Both founding members of FFF's Board, these leaders are making their mark.

5 comments:

  1. These past two weeks i had the good fortune of having a guest speaker and an onsite class visit to Echoing Green. It's truely been a great learning experience to meet with Lara and Michele. In this manner we were able to put into context the many concepts we have been learning these past few months in class. The visit to Echoing Green with Lara was very welcoming and insightful. My favorite part of our discussion was learning about Lara's career path and she became part of Echoing Green and social philanthropy. Listening to her story made me question my own future and, more importantly, made me realize that the path towards social philanthropy is diverse Social philanthropy and social entrepeneurship is a multi-faceted arena that is particularly welcoming to innovative ideas and therefore people from all sorts of career paths. Irrespective of occupation, social impact can be a priority and vocation for anyone.
    We had a fiery discussion with Michele on corporate social responsability! What does it mean to businesses? What does it mean to the social entrepreneur and the person who wants to see change? I was very grateful for Michele's honestly on business pratices and her thoughts on what corporate social responsability really means for wealth generating businesses. Our discussion was extremely captivating especially since Michele served on both sides of the argument. I want to ask Michele, what incentives can be employed to push the threshhold for corporate social responsability? Should those incentives include government intervention (financial repercussions of socially detrimental pratices)? Or would government internvention lessen the motivation to be socially responsible?

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  2. It was such a pleasure meeting Lara Galinsky and learning about Echoing Green. Until this semester, I was not aware that there were such organizations which facilitate the work of social entrepreneurs the way that think tanks support the work of researchers. It is an indication to me of how far social entrepreneurship has come -- from random instances of altruistic innovation to an increasingly well organized network where social entrepreneurs gather at common nodes, such as Echoing Green. I can tell Lara loves her work and it's such an inspiration to keep moving forward. (Did she really launch the BRICK Award? Wow! I'd heard so much about it and aspired to one day earn it.) I especially appreciated her response to my question (What advice would you give to someone wanting to start their own social entrepreneurship venture?): Make sure you're not duplicating someone else's services, be an expert in your field, hire a strong board of directors from the start, develop a long term plan, brand the organization from the outset and sell it....All pieces of advice which have influenced the development of my application to CGI University. The part about branding the organization was something I had not thought about before. Echoing Green's photos of people holding up signs is brilliant. Since our visit, I have gone back and looked further into Echoing Green's fellows, especially Tutu Alicante who is fighting corruption in Equatorial Guinea from the United States. How bold to take on a indefatigable problem which few have fought successfully, especially when the fight has already claimed so many others' lives in his country. I've also looked into other organizations with similar models, such as Drape Richards. Reading the stories of other fellows is pushing me to strive to new heights of ingenuity and effectiveness, using the lessons we've been learning in class, most recently from Money Well Spent.

    Michele Kahane was a lovely woman -- so humble and well read. I wish I could take her class. What was most fascinating was all the different positions from which she's fought for the same cause -- a more just world, broadly speaking. She's been a UN worker on the ground, a banker for emerging markets, an employee of Ford Foundation, a director within CGI, and now a professor...what a wealth of perspective she must have. It was interesting to hear how the practice of philanthropy has evolved, depending heavily on the historical context. For example, my memory barely reaches the eighties. But according to Ms. Kahane, that is when our mentality about giving became reconfigured. Enterprise and the free market took center stage. Moreover, the rate of multi-million and billionaires increased, elevating the importance of figures such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. (I don't remember ever not knowing who Bill Gates was.) And now it appears that CGI has further altered the face of philanthropy. The internet and Clinton are bringing entrepreneurs and corporate CEOs together. Perhaps, it is an "in" thing for billionaires now...one must have a social cause. Is that reason to hope? I think Sebastian would say "no," that the social causes are just masks for social destruction elsewhere. One side of my heart agrees with him. The other side would like to think that perhaps the world cares a little more than it used to and that the opportunity to effect change is more accessible than ever before. In some ways, I think that's what Ms. Kahane was saying.

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  3. During the visit to Echoing Green, I was struck by the fact that Lara Galinsky could not only name every fellow and their project, but clearly could talk about each fellow for hours if asked. Each fellow had an exciting story and an even more exciting mission, and Lara's confidence in them was contagious. I hope to find work that I feel as proud of and inspired by as she has.

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  4. Echoing Green was a great site to visit because Lara’s path to the philanthropic and social entrepreneurship world was the answer I was looking for after reading the book, Be the Change. I was able to compare Lara’s story to the other profiles we read in that book. She explains that to start a project or an organization, you have to be an expert on the topic, create material and tools about making changes, and know your limit, strength, and weakness. She also gave us suggestion about how we can involve more young people on FFF.
    Michele Kahane was amazing. She took us to the 80s about the new model of global challenges. The new model is the way the world look at solution for social changes. It indicates that governments may not be the only source for solution. She also talked about new practices such as online to source ideas, new platform of mentoring, new financial products from the poor, giving money, extra.

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  5. I like the one hour idea. It is a good start to get people engaged into the FFF process. I really think that it would be most effective if people who donate their hour's worth tell other people about it. To me, when I see the one hour idea it strikes me as good, but if it was conveyed through face-to-face means it would be great.

    I think that this campaign has a lot of potential, and it's potential lies in making one-on-one and personal connections with people who want to donate. That way, the initial interaction with this campaign will be a lasting one that someone would be enthusiastic to spread, vs. a campaign that someone gives to and the connection stops there, without them being a catalyst for further donors.

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