Teen Entrepreneur's Search Engine Is Built for a Higher Purpose. The World at Work is powered by GE.
This new series highlights the people, projects and startups that are driving innovation and making the world a better place. Name: Benelab Big Idea: Benelab, founded by Seattle teenager Jack Kim, is a search engine that donates 100% of revenues to charity. Why It's Working: By transforming an everyday task — web search — into a vehicle for good, Kim and his team of fellow students are proving that Internet technology and a little scrappiness can empower anyone to become an entrepreneur and make a difference. During his freshman year at King's High School in Shoreline, Wash., Jack Kim learned how to code HTML and build websites. His first website was an elementary search engine (now defunct) that made Kim $200 to $300 a month from 2,000 monthly visitors. He launched Benesearch.com during his freshman year, and the site simply rerouted straight to Google, generating revenue (and therefore donations) on a CPM basis.
Series presented by GE. To B or Not to B? Weighing the Benefits of Benefit Corporations. Aiden Livingston is a cause marketing expert and the author of two books on the subject.
He is also the Marketing and Communications Director at Call2Action, a New York-based social enterprise that creates online tools to help non-profits. At first glance, a Benefit Corporation seems like a good thing. I mean it has the word “benefit” right in the title, so what’s not to love? Well, dig a little bit deeper and one finds they have to dig a lot deeper to discover what exactly the benefits of Benefit Corporations are. For starters, Benefit Corporations and B Corps, terms that are often used interchangeably, are entirely different. Confused yet? 3 Best Social Good Startup Accelerators You've Never Heard Of Mashable 3 Best Social Good Startup Accelerators You've Never Heard Of. Scott Henderson is managing director of CauseShift, writes about social impact for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and is founder of NewEmpireBuilders.com, a media collaborative covering the startups, non-profits and companies making the world better.
Startups have become the darling children of the world, it seems. Aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs, Caterina Fakes and Jack Dorseys are eager to launch the next big thing. This rising entrepreneurial tide is having an impact on all sectors. The latest generation to enter the work force arrives at a time of high unemployment. Its members see large problems that need to be fixed, and often, they have little faith in incumbent institutions’ ability to solve them. No single company, non-profit or individual can solve the problems facing humanity, however. What differentiates social entrepreneurs from other entrepreneurs? Here are three more programs worth considering if you want to accelerate the growth of your social-impact startup. The rise of the social entrepreneur.
Social entrepreneurs: Agents of change. 10 Social Good Kickstarter Projects Seeking to Change the World. Everyone wants to change the world, but the money to do so is rarely available.
That's where Kickstarter comes in. Although Kickstarter is primarily a funding platform for entrepreneurs of all kinds, activists, humanitarians and other pioneers of social justice can tap this fundraising community to share their projects — and they often receive the amount of funding necessary to make a huge difference. Here are some recent projects — some of which have already reached their monetary goals — with the potential to change lives and spread awareness. Who knows? Some may prove worthy of your dollar. 1. Open Source Ecology, a "network of farmers, engineers and supporters," is working on what it calls a Global Village Construction Set — a high-performance, low-cost platform used to create 50 industrial machines needed to build and sustain a small civilization. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Lack of healthcare in developing countries often stems from the lack of trained professionals. 8. Social innovation: Let's hear those ideas.
The Big Issue magazine: Help the homeless! B Corps: Firms with benefits. HE likes to do things differently.
Yvon Chouinard changed his favourite sport, mountaineering, by introducing reusable pitons (the metal spikes you bang into the rock face and attach a rope to). Climbers often used to leave pitons in the cliff, which is environmentally messy, another of Mr Chouinard's peeves. In business, Mr Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, an outdoor-clothing firm, says he believes that well-treated employees perform better.
(He wrote a book called: “Let My People Go Surfing”.) Before it was fashionable, Mr Chouinard preached a philosophy of sustainability and long-term profitability that he calls “the slow company”. On January 3rd Patagonia was anything but slow in becoming the first firm to take advantage of a new California law designed to give businesses greater freedom to pursue strategies which they believe benefit society as a whole rather than having to concentrate on maximising profits for the next financial quarter. B Corporations: Do They Really Indicate Good Companies? The Commerce With a Conscience Series is supported by Fedex.
FedEx does more than shipping.