tyler knows nothing

echoing green and the "double bottom line"

[Note: Soapbox ahead, proceed with caution]

I have a good friend named Sarah Jane Semrad (also a fellow West Texan) who recently told me about an organization called Echoing Green.  Their primary function is to provide seed funding and support to social entrepreneurs through fellowships.  Sarah Jane is seeking the fellowship to fund La Reunion, her phenomenal idea for an artist residency and incubator here in Dallas (she assured me that even I could apply to live there as an artist in the medium of technology).  Sarah and La Reunion deserve a full blog post (and there will be one soon), but I mentioned her because she suggested that I apply for the Echoing Green fellowship as well... so I am.  The selection process is highly competitive (last year 883 applied and 20 were selected), and the final selections won't be made until May of next year, but I figure it's worth a shot!

Also, on the Echoing Green website I found an interesting article from Entrepreneur.com.  In it they speak of the growing social entrepreneurship movement and a term known as the "double bottom line:"

Many entrepreneurs have started social enterprises, breaking nonprofit tradition by blending mission with money, referred to as "double bottom line" businesses.

When I try to understand this term along with others like the UN sanctioned "triple bottom line," Jed Emerson's "social return on investment," and our own concept of the "social trust," I feel like the alphabet soup gets a little academic and unproductive. 

Arguing about the definition of "positive social impact" (or who is responsible for creating it) is like arguing about the meaning of life.  It's a waste of time.  As my dad once said, the man in the mirror is the only judge that matters... but that's easier said than done. 

It has taken me 23 years of mistakes to learn that if I have to convince myself that I'm doing "enough," I'm not doing enough.  If I have to convince myself that I'm doing the right thing, I'm probably not doing the right thing.  And if I have to convince myself that it's not my problem, it is MOST DEFINITELY my problem.  But that's the easy part.  The hard part is actually doing something about it, and I'm still a newbie when it comes to this.  You see, I can be, at times, very, VERY lazy.  And apathetic.  And greedy.  And arrogant.  And ignorant.  More so on the ignorant, actually.  Would you believe that I still don't know who to vote for in '08?

The way I see it, the problem is that it's way easier for me to do the wrong thing, or do just enough to get by, or do nothing at all (did I mention I was lazy?).   So my challenge is finding a way to make the opposite true.  In fact, I am such a flawed human being that unless I figure this out, I'm confidant that I will keep making these same mistakes over and over and over.

Thankfully for me, the internet exists.  You see, the internet has done some pretty cool things.  It is currently doing some pretty cool things.  And my bet is that we at Momo can make it do some pretty cool things too.  Like help me figure out who to vote for in '08.

But that's another story.

a (very) short momo manifesto

[Note: Soapbox ahead, proceed with caution]

It's no secret that Momo is working to join the ranks of companies that make money through social entrepreneurship. We don't think non-profits, NGOs, and foundations can handle the job by themselves. No word yet exists in the dictionary for such a company, and we hardly feel that we're in a position to make one up, but for the sake of consistency we're going to call companies that employ this business model, "social trusts." [Correction: there already is a term for this type of company, I just didn't look hard enough; see my mea culpa here.

A social trust believes its principal function is as a trust, that is, as an owner and manager of resources on behalf of another, namely society in this case. Its primary business objective is to accumulate resources in order to better serve the needs of the society from which its power was entrusted. A social trust strives to evangelize a certain collaborative standard in all business, that only avenues of business should be pursued that make doing the right thing profitable. However, a social trust goes one step further by trying to limit its own business strategy to social problem solving exclusively.

We believe that there couldn't be a more perfect or permanent business model.  There will never be a shortage of social problems, so there will never be a shortage of business.

Momo is following in the footsteps of great trailblazers.  Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, for example, just won the Nobel Peace Prize for    

"pioneering a new category of banking known as micro-credit, which grants small loans to poor people who have no collateral and who do not qualify for conventional bank loans.  The program has enabled millions of Bangladeshis, almost all women, to buy everything from cows to cell phones in order to start and run their own businesses.  Similar micro-credit projects have helped millions around the world lift themselves out of poverty."

Momo has been inspired by a new breed of companies like Google, with their slogan "don't be evil," and by a rare class of individuals like Warren Buffet, who is giving away practically his entire $40 billion fortune to charity.

Of particularly strong influence are the late Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, co-founders of Hewlett-Packard and co-founding fathers of Silicon Valley. Here is a great video clip that highlights exactly the point I'm trying to make.  In it, James C. Collins, author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, refers to an infamous meeting of business leaders long ago where the philosophy of Dave Packard got him laughed at by his own peers:    

"The purpose of a company is not to make money.  It makes money to do what it's really all about: we're here to create things, where if we didn't create them the world would be worse off."

And there you have it. Momo is welcoming feedback of any kind, especially examples of other entrepreneurs and companies that embody the principles of a social trust.  We want to give credit to as many as we can, and will be listing them in the sidebar under the heading "Companies We Love."