Grameen Founder Appeals Mandatory Retirement. March 27, 2011; Source: The Times of India | This article by the world-renowned Indian economist Jagdish Bhagwati in The Times of India criticizes the Nobel Prize winning Mohammed Yunus with cranky sarcasm, referring to Grameen’s founder as “the saintly Yunus” and suggesting that critics of the Bangladeshi government that are trying to dislodge Yunus have been “inflating [the credentials]…of Yunus.”
Yunus was removed as head of Grameen Bank recently on the grounds that he had stayed past the legal retirement age of 60, but supporters say his forced departure was politically motivated. For Love or Lucre (March 1, 2011) A veteran social entrepreneur provides a guide to those who are thinking through the thorny question of whether to create a nonprofit, a for-profit, or something in between.
Social entrepreneurs who want to start a new venture quickly confront an important question: What type of legal structure should I create? Should I start a traditional nonprofit, a for-profit, or something in between? This is not a simple question to answer, and it is in some ways becoming more difficult with the proliferation of new legal structures like the B corporation that are intended to allow entrepreneurs to meet financial, social, and environmental bottom lines. I have started successful and unsuccessful for-profit and nonprofit ventures. My goal in writing this article is to help other social entrepreneurs navigate these waters. The first thing to remember is that the legal structure is simply a tool for accomplishing your goals. Selecting a legal structure is not a question of moral purity.
Advantages: Design Thinking for Social Innovation (November 18, 2009) Designers have traditionally focused on enhancing the look and functionality of products. Recently, they have begun using design techniques to tackle more complex problems, such as finding ways to provide low-cost healthcare throughout the world. Businesses were the first to embrace this new approach—called design thinking—and nonprofits are beginning to adopt it too. In an area outside Hyderabad, India, between the suburbs and the countryside, a young woman—we’ll call her Shanti—fetches water daily from the always-open local borehole that is about 300 feet from her home. She uses a 3-gallon plastic container that she can easily carry on her head. Shanti and her husband rely on the free water for their drinking and washing, and though they’ve heard that it’s not as safe as water from the Naandi Foundation-run community treatment plant, they still use it. D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution.
Founding a Charity at 6, and Walking Across the Country for It at 12. The boy, Zachary L.
Bonner, has walked nearly 1,950 miles from his home outside Tampa, Fla., to this spot in the desert, and he intends to walk another 500 miles or so to the Pacific Ocean, all to raise money for homeless children. At 12 years old, he is something of a prodigy among do-gooders. This is the third and longest trek he has organized to raise money for the Little Red Wagon Foundation, the charity he started when he was 6 to help get water to people after Hurricane Charley hit Florida in 2004.
“He’s just like every other kid, except he likes to do community service work for some odd reason,” said his mother, Laurie Bonner, who walks with her son, taking turns with a family friend. “He likes doing it. Zachary acknowledges that his determination to walk 2,478 miles is a little out of the ordinary for a boy his age. “Some kids are really into baseball, and that is what they do seven days a week,” Zachary says as he takes a water break in the 100-degree heat.
Ms. This year, Ms. A Wasted Opportunity for Foundations and Government - Pablo Eisenberg. By Pablo Eisenberg Last week’s announcement that five large foundations plan to add a total of $45-million to the federal government’s Social Innovation Fund has stirred much excitement in nonprofit circles.
So did the news that a coalition of 20 other foundations had pledged to spend nearly an additional $5-million to heighten the impact of the fund and share the lessons learned among nonprofit groups. Why such a fuss about a relatively small amount of philanthropic money? Obama and the Social Entrepreneurs: Boon, Bane or a Wash for the Nonprofit Sector? Every administration has its own distinctive policy fix on the nonprofit sector.
With the Bush Administration, it was faith-based organizations. With the Obama Administration, the nonprofit credo centers on nonprofit social entrepreneurs. The “news” is more than money, as the director of the Social Innovation Fund, Paul Carttar, takes pains to point out. Photo: Sister72 Last Thursday’s news event was an announcement by First Lady Michelle Obama and the Corporation for National and Community Service CEO, Patrick Corvington,of $50 million in grants from a number of foundations to or for the Social Innovation Fund—above and beyond philanthropic commitments to specific Social Innovation Fund grantees and subgrantees. Angel Baked Cookies. How Colleges Could Better Prepare Students to Tackle Societys Problems - Students. April 15, 2010 Marina Kim, director of university programs at Ashoka, will speak at the U. of Miami this weekend about her group's efforts to advance social entrepreneurship.
Enlarge Image By Brad Wolverton.