The Thrust Fund

Do you ever rely on a friend? Would you ever bet on them? Thats what three promising entrepreneurs behind the Thrust Fund are proposing to kickstart their next ventures. The deal is simple: $600,000 for 6% of their life’s earnings. That’s an average of $250,000/year before retirement age. Startups traditionally pinch pennies, weary of handing control [...]

Auto-Tune The News – Innovative Solutions for Social Change

Here at Do Good Well we look for innovative solutions for social change. In the past we have been critical of blanket, top-down, development projects uninformed by the needs or wants of a community. However, today the U.S. Senate proposed an initiative so absurd, so obscene, that it might just work: Build a Turtle Fence. [...]

Fair Trade Frenzy

Great news over with Ben & Jerry’s today. They have made the commitment to go fully fair trade. Now you can eat ice-crema and feel better. Check out the post over at Fast Company for move…

Silicon Valley and Social Good

Communications technology has lowered transaction costs, uniting a global world on the web. Like the TV before it, the internet has excited potential for education and other social change. With all of its promise why isthe web is cluttered with time-suck games like farmville, internet scams from nigerian princes, and a schmorgesborg of smut? Well what [...]

Philanthropy for All

Every economics 101 course introduces the idea of opportunity cost: the cost of a good is its price plus the entire realm of other opportunities not pursued. In other words, you pay for everything you don’t do – and thats a lot of stuff. Seems grim, right? Barry Schwartz explains in my favorite TED talk [...]

Social Enterprise, The Hybrid Nerd

Social enterprises are like the smart geeky high school student who is also a an all-american football star. Well, with one exception – social enterprises are handicapped. They sit in the shaky middle between bottom-line, for-profit companies and socially & environmnetaly focused non-profit organizations. They are hybrids. Despite recent buzz about the field, there has been a general [...]

A Culture of Generosity (Cross Post on Change.org)

This is part 4 of an 11-part series on Undergraduate Social Entrepreneurship coordinated by the Social Innovation Initiative at Brown University posted on Change.org. There is a culture of generosity embedded in the principles and institutions of social entrepreneurship. After all, social entrepreneurship emerged out of a demand for both nonprofit values and for-profit strategic impact, [...]

Question of the week 1/15: Does the proliferation of product certifications dilute their meaning and effectiveness?

Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, Organic, Wild Harvested, Heart Healthy, what do they all really mean? Each certification has different standards and a different emphasis on social, environmental, and labor practices. While certificaitons assure consumers that their purchases are ethically sound, does the proliferation of certifications, especially in the food industry, dilute their meaning and effectiveness? Multiple [...]

Do Good Digest: Maybe Money does Grow on Trees

Pitfalls of Non-Profit Marketing: In his latest HuffPo blog post,George Weiner, CTO of DoSomething.org explains the greatest misunderstanding in online fundraising: strangers don’t want to give you money, nor do they want to marry you. Rather, they might like a story or useful and interesting content to get them hooked. DoSomething.org is one of the most [...]

The Future of Social Entrepreneurship

Last week I had the pleasure of moderating a conversation with Diana Wells, the president of Ashoka. We discussed how Ashoka has diffused the concept of social entrepreneurship through its network of fellows. Nearly 30 years since Ashoka started the dialogue, social entrepreneurship and innovation has reached a national consciousness. Last summer, the Obama administration [...]