Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Thanks to being a Skoll Award winner, I am frequently blessed with the opportunity to hear from the world’s most inspiring leaders. Whether it’s local in California, or at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, there is a regular chance I will have my mind expanded. The latest Skoll opportunity came along with the recent visit of Mary Robinson to Palo Alto. She hit the world stage most notably as Ireland’s first female president, and has continued to campaign for the world’s most vulnerable people, especially women. Mary spoke privately to a small group of social sector leaders at the Skoll Foundation offices. I want to share just two insights from Mary that made a big impression on me. First, she saw 2015 as having two watershed events. The first was the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. These goals commit all countries of the world to make progress on critical social objectives, such as ending poverty and hunger, improving access to clean water, e...

I just read the new book from Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, and strategy guru Roger Martin, Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works. Even though I’m a Skoll Award winner, it really made me think about my organization, Benetech, and what we are trying to accomplish. The book is an expanded version of their seminal article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review from 2007, “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition.” I always refer aspiring social entrepreneurs to the article when they ask me how they can win a Skoll Award. But, it’s always useful to explore the framework of one’s work.  Sally and Roger's book challenged me to do just that. Framework for Producing Transformative Change Two key concepts from the book really stuck with me. The first is their core concept of equilibrium change. Did the world move from one stable but unjust equilibrium to a new and better one? Of course, this is a familiar concept to me as someone w...

My favorite conference of the year is the Skoll World Forum in Oxford. That’s still the case even after attending the Forum for eleven straight years as of last week! Why, after all these years, do I love going back? First and foremost, it’s the people. This is my posse, the global social entrepreneur community, as well as the people who appreciate and support them. Everybody there understands the issues at the intersection of social good and innovation at scale. That is why conversations at the Forum start where conversations elsewhere end. Thanks to the environment of trust and effectiveness, there are nearly one hundred people on my list of follow-ups from last week! The programming also works well for me and most of my fellow social entrepreneurs. That’s no accident: since its inception, the Skoll team has continuously improved the Forum. The event starts with two-and-a-half days of the Skoll Convening: a gathering of all of the current and former Skoll Awardees . This year’s...

My personal goal is to channel the aspirations of the technology community to do more social good. More and more of my time is spent around both raising money and raising awareness of how much more could be done with technology to increase social impact. In this update, I’m delighted to be able to share Benetech’s latest efforts to do both. First, I’ll cover our biggest fundraising effort of the year: individual philanthropy is crucial to us; it’s the portion that makes 10X impact possible! Then I’ll share the latest stories on the impact of our tech volunteerism and human rights tech efforts as well our new tech leadership. Highlights of this Update: Join Benetech in Making the World Better for All SocialCoding4Good and New Tech Leadership Human-Oriented Tech for Human Rights Join Benetech in Making the World Better for All At Benetech, we touch the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals in often-difficult situations. From people in Latin America who face severe wate...

“Mobilizing for Impact.” That was the theme of the ninth Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting that President Bill Clinton, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton recently convened in New York City last month. At CGI Annual Meetings, leaders from across sectors do more than just developing new ideas or getting inspired: they come together to take real action to address pressing global challenges. I had the honor of attending CGI 2013 where I announced Benetech’s latest Commitment to Action . I’ve just had the chance to reflect on how cool CGI 2013 and some of the ideas I’m still processing! President Obama and President Clinton discussing health care reform From the opening “Mobilizing for Impact” panel moderated by President Clinton and featuring Bono, Khalida Brohi, Christine Lagarde, Mo Ibrahim and Sheryl Sandberg (including Bono’s hilarious “Clinton” impersonation, as well as Ibrahim accusing most of corporate attendees of exploiting Africa); to a ...

Martín Burt is one of the greatest social entrepreneurs I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for many years. So I was recently taken by surprise when I discovered by mere coincidence that he had become the Chief of Staff for the Interim President of Paraguay, Federico Franco! It turns out Martín was asked by Franco to join his administration when he took office in June 2012. He will serve in this position until Franco finishes his term in August 2013. I found it incredible that almost no one in the social entrepreneurial field knew about this and decided a blog post was in order! Martin Burt at SWF10 Martín is a pioneer in applying microfinance, youth entrepreneurship and economic self-reliance methodologies to address chronic poverty. A citizen of Paraguay, he is the founder of Fundación Paraguaya , a financially self-sustaining social enterprise that promotes entrepreneurs in Paraguay and Africa through microcredit and entrepreneurship education. He is also one of the creators of ...

This post originally appeared as part of an online debate about How Big Data Can Have a Social Impact, which the Harvard Business Review Blog Network hosted jointly with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship . Right now I'm in Oxford, England, for the annual Skoll World Forum! Big Data is all the rage in Silicon Valley. From Facebook to Netflix, companies are tracking and analyzing our searches, our purchases, and just about every other online activity that will give them more insight into who we are and what we want. And though they use the massive sets of data they collect to help create a better experience for their consumers (such as customized ads or tailored movie recommendations), their primary goal is to use what they learn to maximize profits. But can Big Data also create positive social change? Many activities in the social sphere also generate lots of information. Massive amounts of data are collected on the pollution in our cities and the changes in our...

I was recently at the Skoll World Forum, probably the best conference in the world for meeting with top social entrepreneurs. As a longtime member of the Skoll community, I prize this week for the opportunity to talk frankly with peers about our biggest mutual challenges. Peer learning is the most valuable opportunity for a field that has no operator's manual -- like social entrepreneurship! The constant theme is raising money for our social enterprises. But not just any money -- we talk about the most difficult money to raise: the unrestricted funding that is the lifeblood for a social entrepreneur. This kind of funding is essential for innovation, for responding to time-critical opportunities, prototyping new ideas and getting them to the point where they are a saleable product to customers and/or issue-focused donors. But, unrestricted funding is far harder to raise, because the donor is investing in the leadership of the organization as opposed to a specific set of deliverab...

When I first started pursuing the idea that technology can be harnessed to the cause of social good, it was pretty far out. Now, more than twenty years later, what has become known as social entrepreneurship is a hot global movement that is transforming the ways in which we approach the world’s most pressing problems and in which society organizes itself to solve them. Social entrepreneurship has its own conferences, publications, academic programs and awards. We celebrate the notion that nothing is as powerful as a great idea when put in the hands of a bold entrepreneur, and the lionization of entrepreneurs is a trend. Let’s remember, though, that behind the entrepreneurs are equally daring angel investors: those who bet on these men and women when they have nothing to show but passion and excitement, and who empower them to realize their vision. After all, any great idea needs a vote of confidence, great advice and an infusion of cash to have a large-scale impact! Even today, it’s no...

One of the more interesting people I met at the Oxford Skoll meeting this year was Raja Moubarak, founder of Winquest . Raja is a seasoned business executive with senior level experience in multinationals (Coca-Cola, B&W/BAT, BOC Group, Societe Generale) in Europe, Asia and in multiple Middle East/North African countries (MENA), as an entrepreneur and as Managing Director of one of the oldest retail groups in the MENA region. His idea is straightforward: he believe the Middle East/North Africa region is ripe for values-centered for-profit social enterprises that can both make plenty of money and deliver social benefits. With his long expertise in bringing products to this region, he's working to find connections with companies interested in expanding into this area. But, just companies that have social good as a crucial part of their DNA. It's probably not a coincidence that the Obama Administration is focusing efforts on entrepreneurship in the Muslim world: there'...

The WEF is all about having a critical mass of incredible people. This enables great conversations: the serendipity effect is huge. I just wanted to highlight three conversations I had today, each of which shows why this is such a great opportunity for Benetech to attend. Conversation One Just as I finished my breakfast, I looked across the way and saw Larry Brilliant, the new head of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund. That shortchanges Larry’s background: he was the key leader in the campaign to eliminate smallpox in India, cofounded the Seva Foundation and a couple of high tech companies, and was most recently running Google.org. We then spent an hour in a wide ranging and stimulating conversation about the new Fund, its first grants, how to help social entrepreneurs we both know and admire, the energy coming from college and grad students eager to make a difference and the challenges of bringing more measured conversations back into a global society faced with enormous issues with si...

It's amazing how time flies so quickly these days. I blinked and the Skoll Forum was already in the past. It's worth recapping some of the events that stuck in my brain. On the opening evening, my favorite section was when Pat Mitchell (former head of PBS) moderated Dr. Nafis Sadik, Karen Tse and Jody Williams. Dr. Sadik has worked on women's health for many years in the UN system and mentioned her unsuccessful audience with the Pope (I assume John Paul II) on some of the policies coming out of the UN's Population and Development conference in Cairo in the 1990s. Jody Williams was bold and outspoken (I assume, as usual) and funny: she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on the campaign to ban landmines. And, Karen Tse, one of my fellow Skoll social entrepreneurs, gave such a dramatic and inspirational remark near the end that Pat Mitchell simply declared the session done and we floated out of the room looking forward to changing the world after being insp...

I'm coming home from my annual pilgrimage to Oxford for the Skoll World Forum. The Forum has become the international event for social entrepreneurs, and has now been heavily, heavily oversubscribed for the last two years. This is my fourth time to the Forum: and each time actually gets better (as it gets harder to imagine how they'll pull it off again next year). For me, the highlights are the networking (especially peer networking) and the rockstar plenaries. The number of Nobel Peace prize winners has been just incredible: I think we had at least three speak at plenaries this year. The event kicks off with a Tuesday night dinner for grantees at Exeter College, which is what Hogwart's (in the Harry Potter movies) was modeled after. The new Skoll Award winners each get three minutes to tell us a story. Wednesday during the morning and early afternoon are sessions for the social entrepreneurs. Jeff Skoll spends an hour and a half explaining what he's been up to s...

I just came across extensive blog coverage of the Skoll World Forum, written by Vivian Hutchinson. He heads the Social Innovation Investment Group and the New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship. He did a comprehensive take on the conference that I found very interesting. Of course, one of the reasons I liked his blogging is because he used several photos I took, which I posted on Flickr! I just got a brand new camera and I've been having lots of fun taking pictures of the many events I attended in the last two months. Go to my Flick page to see photos from the Skoll World Forum and the Gathering of the Social Enterprise Alliance. There are always interesting conversations going on when you get lots of social entrepreneurs together. There always seems to be a definition conversation going on, something along the lines of either "what is a social entrepreneur?" or "what new name should we use for social enterprises?" Tim Freundlich passed along a ton...

I just returned from a couple of days at the Council on Foundations annual meeting in Seattle. I was part of a panel that included Orlando Ayala of Microsoft, Linda Segre of Google.org, Sally Osberg of the Skoll Foundation and was moderated by Akhtar Badshah of Microsoft. The title was "Changing Poverty through Profit." It was very interesting, hearing a blend of corporate positioning from Microsoft and Google combined with real interest in social issues. Of course, Sally Osberg kept the social side of the equation by providing real examples of social entrepreneurs making impacts (while working with corporations). I followed up with examples from my journey from tech entrepreneur to social entrepreneur. The questions from the audience were great, and it was one of the better panels I've been on (thanks to good prep work from the Microsoft team that organized the panel, especially Jane Meseck). I was also able to talk to many people from major foundations, and had ...

We recently had a meeting in Silicon Valley to celebrate the progress we're making with the Route 66 Literacy program. Gerry Davis, who is one of our board members was there and took some pictures, and I thought I'd blog them and share the moments. The main reason for the meeting was that Professor Karen Erickson was in town. Karen is the innovator behind Route 66, and it was a chance to have Karen speak to us and some of the key donors who made Route 66 possible. She heads the Center of Literacy and Disability Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two local Silicon Valley foundations were especially noteworthy for supporting Route 66 at its earliest stages. The Severns Family Foundation and Special Hope Foundation both were enthusiastic about Route 66 and willing to take the risk that this effort would lead to a real effort to advance reading for people with developmental disabilities. Dave and Sharon Severns attended: the Severns family helped ta...

I've just co-authored an essay that presents the challenges of accessing capital for expansion for social enterprises. The paper, Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: Addressing the Critical Gaps in Risk-Taking Capital for Social Enterprise, was published by the Skoll Centre at Oxford's Said Business School. Jed Emerson and Tim Freundlich asked me to join them on this paper one year ago at the 2006 Skoll World Forum, after I said something relevant in one of the plenary sessions. The structure of the nonprofit capital market has been something I am dedicated to trying to both understand and influence. Since I come from the Silicon Valley venture world, I'm familiar with a capital market that is tough, but very much provides incentive to accomplish the goal of maximizing financial returns to investors. The nonprofit capital structure is more complicated, but it could be augmented with some new approaches that would drive the goal of maximizing social returns to society.

The Balancing Act: just about right This is my third Skoll Forum, and I definitely think that it was the best. And that's saying something, since I got my award last year and that was pretty exciting. The challenge here has been the balancing act between the business school home of the Forum and the practitioner community. A couple of years ago, the focus was too academic and much of the material was not interesting to the social entrepreneurs. And, I know that academics need this kind of interaction: it's their career and passion. This year I think they got it right. Most of the plenaries were focused on inspiration and building the field as a whole. As usual (based on last year), we got to see four Sundance-created short films on Skoll entrepreneurs. The researchers got two days of focused seminars and content, while the practitioners and non-academic attendees were happily engaged in workshops and what I dubbed "master classes:" where Skoll Award winners wou...