William Brindley spent most of his career keeping financial institutions at the leading edge of technology. Now, as CEO of the nonprofit consortium NetHope, he is using those same skills to help nonprofits do the same. Brindley joined NetHope two years ago after a long career on Wall Street, most recently as a senior executive at Citigroup’s Citi Private Bank. He also served as CitiBank’s deputy chief technology officer where he helped manage the bank’s global information technology (IT) systems.

NetHope was launched in 2001 by Edward Granger-Happ, another Wall Street veteran who was then running Save the Children’s IT operation. What Happ noticed was that other international aid organizations were struggling with many of the same IT issues that he was, in particular how to provide computer and voice communications to field-workers in remote and often undeveloped parts of the world. His solution was to form NetHope, an organization that would coordinate the efforts of various aid organizations to jointly develop IT solutions that were better, more reliable, faster, and less expensive.

NetHope now has 25 member organizations, among them Save the Children, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Catholic Relief Services. Combined, these organizations operate in 180 countries, employ more than 300,000 people, and spend more than $30 billion each year.

Chris Evers / chris@chrisevers.dk

Hellere tid end penge?

According to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in October 2008, asking supporters for their time, not for their money, is a better way to increase donations. Jumping straight in and soliciting potential donors for funds can, in fact, alienate them––making them less likely to get involved and less likely to actually donate. Asking them to volunteer first, however, can positively shift their willingness to give both time and money.

The reason, according to Jennifer Aaker of Stanford Graduate School of Business and Wendy Liu of UCLA, coauthors of the study, is that questions regarding time versus money stimulate different mindsets. When people are solicited for their time, they automatically think in terms of emotional meaning and fulfillment: Will volunteering for this charity make me happy? When tapped for money, they start thinking about the far more practical, boring, and sometimes painful matter of “economic utility”: Will making a donation make a dent in my wallet?

Chris Evers / chris@chrisevers.dk

Tre eksempler på Social Business

Danone invested $1 million in the Bogra plant – a tiny amount for a company with revenue of €14.5 billion in its latest full year. For that investment it has seen significant returns that are hard to measure financially. Danone says it has learnt how to cut energy and save money in its supply chain and how to sell the idea of nutrition to the poor in emerging markets. And then there is the reputation rub-off of being associated with Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and now something of a celebrity for his pioneering work on microfinance.

Investing in social entrepreneurs can boost a company's reputation for being responsible in a way that limits the risks of investing in new products, especially when these could take years to become commercially viable.

Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline's progress on finding a malaria vaccine, which is in the final stage of clinical trials, is one of the company's favourite responses to critics of the pharmaceutical industry. But work on the vaccine may not have happened without the financial support of Path, a Seattle-based not-for-profit organisation that forms alliances with private sector partners to research and develop treatments for neglected diseases, which has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Alternatively, big companies can buy up innovative firms that have already done the groundwork on products with social benefits and commercial potential. Dow Chemical, for example, in 2006 added three water purification technologies to its Dow Water Solutions portfolio when it acquired Chinese firm Zhejiang Omex Environmental Engineering. Dow backs up this work with its more media-friendly sponsorship of Blue Planet Run, a US non-profit group that raises money for clean drinking water projects in developing countries.

Chris Evers / chris@chrisevers.dk

Unilever

Unilevers forretningsgrundlag er hygiejne, og denne kompetence anvender de i deres tilgang til CSR. Altså et eksempel på en virksomhed, der optræder socialt ansvarligt inden for rammerne af deres ekspertise. Men de er også i færd med at sprænge rammerne - virksomheden går skridtet videre, og arbejder med social innovation. Unilever bruger ressourcer på at skabe helt nye løsninger, der kan begrænse en af de væsentligste årsager til børnedødelighed i udviklingslande: Manglende hygiejne!

Læs mere om Unilevers indsats her, samt om deres produkt Lifebouy.

Chris Evers / chrisevers.dk

Vodafone - M-Pesa

Another company that understands the benefits of fostering social innovation internally is Vodafone. In February 2007, the UK mobile phone giant launched the M-Pesa mobile banking service in Kenya through its subsidiary Safaricom. The service is aimed at the 80 per cent of Kenyan adults who do not have a bank account, many of whom do have a mobile phone.

M-Pesa customers can transfer money to each other via text message. Instructions are sent to a central server, which authorises the transactions. Money can be paid in and withdrawn at kiosks, petrol stations and supermarkets that sell mobile phone airtime. M-Pesa now has 1.8 million subscribers, or 18 per cent of mobile customers in Kenya, with most transactions being relatively small ($15 or less).

Revenues from M-Pesa are growing “incrementally”, says Vodafone's global head of international payment solutions, Nick Hughes. “The objective was to come up with a commercially viable service that addressed the issue of financial inclusion,” he says. But the project would not have got started without £1 million from the UK Department for International Development, he explains. The company matched that investment.

Vodafone is now looking to extend its mobile payment service to other areas such as bill and salary payments, says Hughes. The remittance market is another key growth area. Vodafone has partnered with financial services giant Citigroup to pilot a remittance service enabling customers to send money via mobile to relatives and friends in their home countries. “We are learning lots about moving money across borders, especially compliance [with rules] around anti-money-laundering and customer due diligence,” says Hughes.

Another “strategically important” area for Vodafone's mobile banking platform, Hughes adds, is microfinance. In Afghanistan the company has been working with Roshan, the network operator, to facilitate microcredit loan disbursement and repayment, building on the pilot phase work with Kenyan microfinance institution Faulu.

The success of M-Pesa, and these new product developments, vindicate Vodafone's decision to invest in researching how mobile technology could be used to address social problems. Six years ago Hughes was working in the firm's corporate affairs department on research projects that the company grouped under the heading of “social innovation”. The initiative has developed into a new business stream, with a ten-strong (and growing) team at Vodafone's head office, functioning as a regular business unit with revenue targets.

Chris Evers / chris@chrisevers.dk

Pro bono

En non-profit organisation (NGO) kan øge effekten af den sociale indsats ved at anvende elementer fra kommerciel ledelse. Det er en interessant tese og én som Deloitte har sat sig for at bekræfte. I alle tilfælde vil de yde pro bono assistance til NGOér – læs mere herom i denne artikel.

NGOérs force er det sociale engagement, faglighed inden for det sociale område samt ofte et politisk mandat (fortalervirksomhed). Deres svaghed er ofte mangel på operationel kapacitet (f.eks. it og logistik), effektiv marketing samt tilstrækkelig kapital.

Set i det lys er det en interessant tese, og spørgsmålet er om NGOér kunne redde flere mennesker, sikre mindre CO2 udslip og rent vand, hvis barriererne ifht. kommerciel ledelse blev mindre.

I tidligere indlæg på denne blog har jeg beskrevet de fordele en virksomhed kan have ved at engagere sig i social ansvarlighed – men det gælder også den anden vej rundt. NGOér kan skabe større effekt af den sociale indsats ved at anvende kommercielle ledelsesprincipper.

Sociale entreprenører

Begrebet "Social Entrepreneurs" har i mange år eksisteret i USA. Det dækker over personer, der tænker i innovation inden for sociale områder og skaber nye løsninger ifht. sociale og miljømæssige problemstillinger. Vi kender alle Muhammad Yunus (se tidligere artikel på bloggen), der arrangerede microlån gennem Grameen bank, men antallet af Social Entrepreneurs stiger kraftigt.

Faktisk vurderer Fortune, at indsatsen omkring social innovation vil overstige indsats og resultater inden for teknologisk innovation.

I takt med at det sker, vil vi komme til at se en lang række nye tiltag, hvor den traditionelle NGO-verden vil ændre karakter. Den enkelte sociale entreprenør behøver ikke nødvendigvis være tilknyttet en NGO. De kan på egen hånd - og eventuelt i samarbejde med relevante virksomheder - løse opgaver ifht. f.eks. rent drikkevand i udviklingslande.

Der er flere organisationer, der opsøger og motiverer sociale entreprenører. Èn af dem er Ashoka, der med stor succes har bidraget til støtte af social innovation. Det er vel kun et spørgsmål om tid, før vi ser en tilsvarende organisation i Danmark. Det vil betyde, at den enkelte dansker virkelig kan gøre en forskel - der giver større nytte end at flashe et plastikarmbånd!

Chris Evers / chris@chrisevers.dk