Week of Sept. 1st to Sept. 5th

Robert Chambers, co-founder and president of Bonnie CLAC (car loans and counseling) will be the keynote speaker at the FertileGround Conference 08: The Mystery of Sustainability on September 22-23 at the Spruce Point Inn in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

The creators of Zoey’s Room, a program operated by Platform Shoes Forum, have launched a new online demo for children ages 9 to 12 intended to motivate them to make better nutritional choices and to get outside and be active.

ReCycle North’s deconstruction team is at it again.  This time a four-person crew is taking apart a building to make way for a middle school basketball court….On a related note, the organization’s building materials will be used to construct a mini-golf course for the “South End Art Hop” this coming weekend in Burlington, VT….And meet Anna Urban, a 2007 Wesleyan University graduate who now designs and builds home products from recycled, used and trashed material for Waste-Not-Products, a ReCycle North program.

Triangle, Inc. will hold its 16th annual Golf/Tennis Classic on September 11th.  The event helps raise awareness for Triangle’s many services and programs.

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Week of Aug. 25th to Aug. 29th

Bonnie CLAC is profiled in Sentinel Source.com’s “Making a Difference” weekly feature.  The organization is also referenced in a Nashua Telegraph article on New Hampshire residents’ struggles with credit card debt.

ITNAmerica recently announced the launch of its ITNGreaterLA affiliate.

U.S. Senator Susan Collins recently toured Maine small businesses that have benefited from the Downeast Business Alliance’s “Incubator Without Walls” program.  The Downeast Business Alliance is a division of the Washington Hancock Community Agency.

Secure Document Business Magazine highlights the launch of Cranston Arc’s Better Shred business.

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Is your nonprofit organization in need of web design and marketing support?  If so, you might want to take a look at a program run by Axon Design and Marketing, a Portland, Maine based firm.  Axon’s “Grant Program” is structured to enable the business to give back to the community while helping nonprofits “better understand the influence a quality design and marketing program” can have on achieving their missions.  Axon awards $5,000 worth of services to one nonprofit per quarter per year.  The next application deadline is right around the corner – September 15th.   For more information on the program and application process, and to learn about Axon’s work and clients, visit www.axondm.com.

Great Bay is familiar with Axon’s work.  The firm not only conducted the design work for our Great Bay Paper Series, but also developed the initial concept and design for our Digital Library.  Axon Principal Christine Conrad has been a guest at a Great Bay Roundtable Discussion and has attended our December Conference.

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Week of Aug. 18th through Aug. 22nd

Employees from Amica Mutual Insurance Company raised $10,000 at a fundraiser for Amos House.

The Building Materials Resource Center recently honored its two biggest donors.

Here’s an article on Chris Krauss, who has been hired to manage the Center for Maine Craft. And here’s an article about the rest area where the Center will be located.

A delegation from Haiti recently visited Crossroads Rhode Island as part of a tour to gain a “better understanding of how average citizens, businesses and community groups work with government at various levels to influence political, social and economic changes.”

The Lexington-Herald Leader has an article about ITNBluegrass, an affiliate of ITNAmerica.

This article highlights ReCycle North’s YouthBuild and “Waste-Not-Products” programs. In regard to the latter program, here’s a New England Cable News video featuring a number of ReCycle North participants and Executive Director Tom Longstreth. And the organization’s deconstruction service was recently referenced in a Times Argus article.

Some photos of Safe Passage (Camino Seguro) are posted online. And a visitor/volunteer blogged about her experience visiting the organization in Guatemala.

Some lucky Triangle, Inc. participants got to ride in the Goodyear Blimp, courtesy of Sullivan Tire. Triangle received $7,500 from the Danversbank Charitable Foundation. CEO and social entrepreneur Mike Rodrigues is quoted in an article about participants returning to a group home that was devastated by an explosion two years ago. Ablevision, a television program produced and hosted by Triangle participants, has received national recognition.

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Ted Regan has been a familiar face at the Great Bay Foundation since 2002, when we first funded Rippleffect, the youth development organization he co-founded that offers “learning adventures in living classrooms” to disadvantaged youth. Among Ted’s many accomplishments during his nine year tenure at Rippleffect was leading the successful effort to buy and protect in perpetuity Cow Island, located in Casco Bay. Under Rippleffect’s stewardship, Cow Island has been transformed into a one-of-a-kind resource for Maine’s disadvantaged youth – a place where they can learn marketable skills and participate in a variety of leadership-building recreational activities. A staunch environmentalist, Ted takes great pride in the fact that all of Rippleffect’s programming on Cow Island is supported with alternative-energy sources.

Intrepid social entrepreneur that he is, Ted Regan has once again focused his efforts on launching and growing a new venture, Kaleidoscope. This “change agency” seeks to “congregate and collaborate eco-warriors, thought provocateurs, and change activists at the vanguard of social change.” Other goals include increasing environmental and social justice awareness and broadcasting extraordinary examples of leaders, leadership, and courage.

Kaleidoscope’s first program is Kindle, a three-day Northern New England Bioneers gathering that will take place in Portland, Maine from October 17th – 19th, 2008, and feature over 70 effective and innovative leaders from the local and national arenas. One confirmed speaker is Kathy Freund, Great Bay grantee and founder of both ITN™ and ITNAmerica®.

To learn more about Kindle, view videos of speakers, register for the conference, and read the Kindle Blog, visit www.kindledinme.com. Interestingly, Ted recently blogged about fellow Great Bay grantee Melvin Murrel (Poling Aquaculture Inc.) in a blog post entitled “Hornpouts, Alpacas, and Ferns, Oh My.” Ted made a trip to Melvin’s fish farm and comments on how closely the overarching environmental sustainability and social impact goals of Kindle align with those of Melvin’s operation.

For more on Ted Regan, be sure to check out his video on the Great Bay Foundation You Tube Channel.

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The Great Bay Foundation’s newest grantee is the Smokey House Center, an organization that for the past 34 years has taught middle and high school students real world skills in the areas of science, math, ecology, communications, reading, writing, problem solving, critical thinking, responsibility, and teamwork. On 4,500 acres of land used for farming, forestry, and education programming, disadvantaged youth are engaged in the active care and hands-on management of the natural resources that surround them. The alternative setting and instructional approach has proved effective in helping thousands of young people graduate from high school and develop the academic, social, and workplace skills to become contributing members of society.

Smokey House participants work in teams of six, guided by an adult leader, in a variety of farm and farm-related tasks: growing organic vegetables, blueberries, and Christmas trees; making charcoal and maple syrup; and raising sheep. Smokey House takes a two-pronged strategy to increasing individuals’ self-reliance: the organization provides its youth workers both a minimum wage and academic credit for their work, the latter of which is possible due to the organization’s strong relationship with area schools and the academic learning it incorporates into the various work tasks.

Lynn Bondurant, Smokey House’s Executive Director, approached Great Bay about obtaining funding to support the organization’s Maple Sugaring Business. Smokey House has operated this business for as long as the organization has provided work-based learning programs to disadvantaged teens. However, increases in fuel costs have made it difficult for the maple sugaring business to operate in the black. Staff and students have recently researched ways to retrofit the business so that it can once again succeed. Lynn asked Great Bay to provide $51,380 to be used to increase the efficiency of the sugarhouse and improve and expand the sugarbush. This effort will include purchasing a wood evaporator, adding 250 taps, reconfiguring other aspects of the business’s sap collection system, and hiring marketing and design consultants and a forester.

Of the 56 revenue-generating projects Great Bay has supported since 1998, this is the first to involve teens in a line of work with such a strong tradition in New England. Smokey House’s and, more specifically, the Maple Sugaring Business’s clear social and business goals make it a perfect fit for our funding.

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‘Social Entrepreneurship’ is becoming commonplace in MBA programs across the country. Schools are recognizing students’ interest in social-sector management topics and the growing trend of MBA graduates seeking to use their educations to “make a difference.” The Foster School of Business at the University of Washington has gone one step further: it holds a “Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition” (GSEC) in which “students from around the world find creative, commercially sustainable ways to address problems of poverty in the developing world.”

We see social entrepreneurship business plan competitions such as GSEC as ideal opportunities for introducing business students to the benefits of social enterprise, and to providing these individuals with real-world opportunities to investigate pressing social problems and to present practical, sustainable solutions.

GSEC’s guidelines’ are similar to those used by the Great Bay Foundation when evaluating grant requests. Great Bay needs to be sure that proposed projects can make a positive impact on the lives’ of disadvantaged individuals, that their models are capable of being implemented, and that their enterprises can be sustained through earned-income.

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Social Enterprise comes in a multitude of permutations, but we found one of the most provocative in this recent New York Times article, Youthful Offenders Restoring Luster to Diners of Old. The article describes a unique program in which offenders at the Rhode Island juvenile detention center are working to restore four vintage diners for the New Hope Diner Project. Those not nailing, varnishing, or tiling are learning the culinary skills critical to operating these restored eating establishments, and some of the new chefs will be employed in the diners once they have fulfilled the terms of their incarceration.

PS - Read the article if you need to  translate  such traditional diner fare as the “slider, sinker, and Adam and Eve on a Raft.” Bon Appetite!!

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As the fields of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise develop in practice, it is imperative that the academic theory related to these fields evolves as well. The Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) is one publication well known and respected for providing consistent research and practice-based knowledge to readers who are working to make the world a better place. Great Bay is a SSIR subscriber, and I’m sure we’ll be blogging about many of its articles as time goes on.

Today, however, I’m writing to highlight Innovations, a quarterly academic journal published by MIT Press. The journal’s content focuses on the intersection between technology, governance, and globalization. Innovations’ audience includes entrepreneurial public servants, entrepreneurs with a “public conscience,” innovators, and scholars interested in innovation. The journal’s authors include a former head of state, the founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum, a former director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, former university presidents, MacArthur Fellows, Ashoka Fellows, Skoll awardees, and Schwab Social Entrepreneurs.

According to the Innovations website, the publication is based on “two simple premises”: (1) “while culture and economics do create significant differences among populations, creativity is a characteristic shared by people everywhere”; and (2) “while many pressing societal challenges are global, their solutions are local.” The site states, “Innovations in one place can inform and inspire innovations elsewhere.” We couldn’t agree more with this statement, as social entrepreneurs’ efforts often serve as catalysts for large-scale, fundamental social change. Great Bay grantee Kathy Freund, who founded the Independent Transportation Network™ and ITNAmerica®, is a great example.

If you’re interested in learning more about Innovations, many of its articles are available free of charge online (until August 30th). Here’s a quick sample of a few that you might find interesting and relevant to your work:

“Empowering the Rural Poor to Develop Themselves: The Barefoot Approach” (Bunker Roy and Jessie Hardigan, in the Spring 2008 issue)

“Toward an Entrepreneurial Society: Why Measurement Matters” (Carl J. Schramm, Winter 2008 issue)

“Social Innovators with a Business Case: Facing 21st Century Challenges One Market at a Time” (Klais Schwab and Pamela Hartigan, Fall 2006 issue)

Are you aware of other academic publications that offer research and practice-based information for social entrepreneurs?

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The effective use of technology has become vitally important to a nonprofit’s ability to achieve its mission. Yet as nonprofit technology needs increase, so do the many software options available to meet those needs. How are nonprofits supposed to choose among the many choices and identify the solution(s) that is/are right for them? Well, an organization in Portland, Maine seeks to solve this problem.

Idealware, founded and directed by Laura Quinn, offers reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. The organization takes a “Consumer-reports-style” approach, providing relevant, unbiased, and authoritative information on various software programs. The organization offers product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news. Ultimately, the goal is to enable nonprofits to better understand the pros and cons of various software programs.

Idealware achieves its mission in two ways. First, it publishes reports and articles on topics related to constituent databases, websites, email and advocacy, and office productivity. Second, it offers online seminars, some of which have focused on building and editing websites, integrating various software systems, and understanding website analytics. Many of the resources available at www.idealware.org are free of charge. For additional information on Idealware, you can read Laura Quinn’s Blog here.

At Great Bay, we know how important technology can be to our grantees’ efforts. At our 2006 Annual Conference, we were fortunate to have as a guest speaker Victor d’Allant, who is the Executive Director of Social Edge, an online forum for social entrepreneurs sponsored by the Skoll Foundation. Victor introduced our attendees to cutting-edge online communication tools, such as Blogging, Tagging, and ‘Flickring.’ His presentation was so well received that he’ll be back again this December to update us all on recent developments in the world of online technology.

Great Bay has provided financial support to organizations already utilizing technology to achieve both social and business goals. Information Technology Exchange (led by Chris Martin) and MaxImpact Institute (led by Ben Ocra) are two examples. ITE has recently implemented an Open Source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system by the name of SugarCRM. Chris notes that the system has had a positive impact on his organization’s internal productivity, as well as its ability to build and strengthen relationships with customers and constituents.

So, how are you using technology in your organization?

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