A Month of Entrepreneurial Stories

Posted on November 30, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

Our Inclusive Entrepreneurship work at the Case Foundation is built upon the core value that we must change the way we all talk about entrepreneurship, expanding who we lift up as success stories and busting myths that hold entrepreneurs back. National Entrepreneurship Month gave us a great opportunity to dive into the subject again and to celebrate entrepreneurs from a wide variety of backgrounds. It also gave us a chance to provide an honest look at some of the challenges of entrepreneurship.

We focus our work in Inclusive Entrepreneurship on challenges across race, place and gender, driven by the stark statistics that show the disparities faced by diverse entrepreneurs. Just looking at venture capital distribution reveals that only 10 percent of venture-backed companies have a female founder and only one percent have an African American founder. And just 75 percent of all venture capital is being distributed to just three states; California, New York and Massachusetts. Talent is everywhere; opportunity is not. And many of these elements are central to the stories that were at the core of our National Entrepreneurship Month blogs.

November 1^st was both the first day of National Entrepreneurship Month and National Stress Awareness Day, so we kicked off our series with an examination of the role stamina and support plays in becoming an entrepreneur. We asked our #FacesofFounders entrepreneurs how they manage the stress of launching and running a business. See what they said in Confronting the Dark Side of Entrepreneurship.

On Veteran’s Day, we shined a spotlight on veterans in entrepreneurship and ways to support them. Our friends at Bunker Labs took to #FacesofFounders to share how the organization is working to build an ecosystem to support veteran entrepreneurs. Read what CEO Todd Connor had to say in How Bunker Labs Is Building an Inclusive Ecosystem for Veteran Entrepreneurs.

Then we looked back at the Essence Festival panel our senior vice president, Sheila Herrling, moderated with a group of entrepreneurial changemakers. Herrling shares some of the top takeaways from the informative and action-inspiring conversation in Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship.

Finally, to celebrate Small Business Saturday and #Giving Tuesday we focused on some of the many ways individuals can support entrepreneurs running businesses of all sizes. Not every entrepreneur has the same financial and social resources, and in Keeping Entrepreneurship at the Heart of the American Experience, we highlighted the many ways that individuals can support entrepreneurs in their daily lives and with the purchasing decisions they make.

We hope these stories has given you a chance to learn more about entrepreneurs, their valuable contributions and how you can support them. To learn more and to access a list of resources on these subjects, visit our website, follow our Medium publication #FacesofFounders and subscribe to Breaking Good, the Case Foundation’s weekly newsletter, to see more from us on entrepreneurship, race, place and gender.

There is much more work to be done and while Entrepreneurship Month may be over, we will continue to champion building onramps to entrepreneurship for all with the goal of everyone having an equal chance at unlocking the American Dream. We hope you will join us.

How Dan Thiede Gets In The Arena with Clean Energy Resource Teams

Posted on November 29, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

Continuing our series of highlighting incredible changemakers who are Getting in the Arena for the causes they care about, we chatted with Dan Thiede, Communications Manager at the Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs), to talk about how he and CERTS Get in the Arena for clean energy in Minnesota.

We met Thiede this year at MCON—the Millennial Engagement Conference—where we were celebrating our 20^th anniversary and rallying people to “Get in the Arena” around the causes that mattered most to them. At MCON, we partnered with Comcast NBCUniversal who brought along their Chat Box to help capture inspiring stories on video. We invited attendees to jump in the Chat Box and record their answers to the question “How are you using technology and innovation to #GetInTheArena and inspire change in your community?” The chat box was a big hit and we recorded lots of great video stories from attendees about how they are turning their interest into action! Dan was one of these stories.

As you can see, Thiede’s story stood out to us as he and his team at CERTs are working on citizen-centered solutions to clean energy and they are reaching beyond their bubble to work with changemakers across sectors. After seeing him in the Chat Box, we wanted to learn more about Thiede’s work with CERTs, how they’re solving local problems, how they build excitement around clean energy and how they’re using technology to do it. Read on to see what he had to say.

Can you tell us about Clean Energy Resource Teams and how the organization came together?

The Clean Energy Resource Teams—or CERTs—are a statewide partnership in Minnesota that connects individuals and their communities to the resources they need to identify and implement community-based clean energy projects. We have twenty people working across four organizations that spend most of their time doing outreach, education and technical assistance on energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

CERTs came together in 2003 when people across rural Minnesota began thinking about new opportunities in clean energy and how their communities could benefit. We split the state up into regions and had lots of conversations with everyone from city and utility staff to businesses and nonprofits, from policymakers and school teachers to farmers and engineers. Those early grassroots efforts resulted in regional energy plans, and in the time since we’ve been focused on helping Minnesotans learn, connect and act.

What inspired you to “Get in the Arena” to promote clean energy?

We’re inspired by the positive economic impacts that saving energy and producing clean energy have, the incredible job growth we’ve seen in the industry (now the fastest-growing part of Minnesota’s workforce) and the transformative effect that projects have on communities when people come together toward a common purpose, have some success and then go even further than we imagined.

How does Clean Energy Resource Teams use technology to advance your work?

CERTs provides all sorts of resources to Minnesotans in order to help people learn about technologies and models, understand their options and move forward with clean energy projects. Technology plays a huge role in the resources and tools we provide. Key examples include our interactive solar site assessment tool that uses LIDAR, solar resources and weather data to let people know if they have a good place for solar; our online directory of solar companies, community solar gardens and energy auditors; a mobile app that helps people pick out the perfect energy-efficient LED light bulbs; a solar video contest that encourages people to get creative in their efforts to educate Minnesotans about clean energy; and a robust energy benchmarking platform that allows public entities to track their energy usage and compare it to similar buildings.

What problem are you hoping to solve and what goals are you working towards?

CERTs believes that there are amazing clean energy opportunities out there, but that we have a long way to go to make sure that energy efficiency and renewable energy truly permeate every community in Minnesota. We’re working to tip the scale to make clean energy the norm and to ensure that everyone can benefit from these solutions.

How do you build excitement around clean energy and encourage Minnesotans to get off the sidelines and change their habits around energy use?

CERTs definitely likes to have fun, we’re solutions oriented, and we believe that action on clean energy is contagious. One of the key ways that we build excitement is through peer-to-peer events, campaigns and recognition. Examples include cities hosting tours for other cities, neighbors getting together to kick the tires on EV cars at the farmers market, students selling LED light bulbs for fundraisers, utilities getting together to talk about successful program models and farmers coming together for lunch to check out the latest in energy-efficient equipment. People see folks just like them taking action, reaping the benefits (and having a great time and they want to do it, too! In most cases there is also money to be made or money to be saved, and real improvements to quality of life without sacrificing comfort. When it all comes together it’s super exciting.

How does CERTs’ approach help others to Get in the Arena and be part of the clean energy solution?

The Clean Energy Resource Teams empower communities and their members to move forward with energy efficiency and clean energy work by meeting them where they’re at, understanding their unique situation, needs, assets, and concerns, and then ensuring that they have the information, connections, financing and other essentials to see clean energy projects through to their completion. We don’t stop there, either. After they finish a project we publish stories about them, help them celebrate their success, and make sure that they’re on their way to making even more progress toward meeting their energy goals. That’s also usually the point in the process where their peers start to take notice, ask questions and think about how they can move forward with projects, too. It’s contagious in the very best way!

Do you have any success stories that inspire you to keep doing this work?

We literally come across success stories every week that keep us going, and keep up a blog and send out a newsletter called MN Energy Stories packed with successes every couple of weeks. It’s a steady drip of inspiration for the work that we and so many others are doing every day to shape Minnesota’s clean energy future.

It’s particularly inspiring when we’re able to figure out a solution to a tricky problem that opens the floodgates for projects, which is definitely what happened in Minnesota with Property-Assessed Clean Energy—or PACE—financing. Lots of businesses, nonprofits, and other groups were having trouble financing energy efficiency and clean energy improvements, because traditional banks didn’t really understand them. We’ve been working to expand PACE availability in Minnesota, and now just a couple of years in there have been hundreds of projects and millions of dollars of financing, all through property tax assessments.

We’d like to thank Dan Thiede for sharing how he’s Getting in the Arena with us. To learn more about CERTs, check out their website. To learn more about our Get in the Arena efforts, and to see what other MCON attendees said about their #GetInTheArena moments, check out our Get in the Arena page.

#GivingTuesday: a Chance to Use Tech to Give Back

Posted on November 28, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

Some time ago, the idea of putting your credit card number on the internet seemed unthinkable, but today almost 80 percent of Americans shop online. And with the holidays coming up, online marketplaces are seeing an impressive spike in both traffic and orders. In fact, this year, more people are expected to shop online than in-store.

While e-commerce has forced traditional brick and mortar retail to evolve, the convenience of online shopping for consumers has been advantageous for online giving. This summer, we talked about how tech trends like the emergence of online payment platforms have made it that much easier for everyone to jump into philanthropy. Millennials are key players in that trend too; the Millennial Impact Report found that 80 percent of Millennials made donations last year, and 62 percent have expressed interest in using mobile as a giving platform.

In 2012, we helped support the first official #GivingTuesday campaign, founded by the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation. We were very excited to play a part in #GivingTuesday’s transformation from a campaign to a movement, both through our own donation matching campaigns and by supporting the overall tracking of fundraising activity each #GivingTuesday.

Five years later, it’s more convenient than ever to give. New platforms allow users to search for charities that match their interests, donate by shopping for things they’d already buy and use social media to donate and fundraise.

Here are some easy ways you can use tech to give on #GivingTuesday.

Donation Platforms

If you’re not sure where to start, there’s a variety of platforms that can help you find a cause you’re passionate about and verify the credibility of the organization behind it so you can donate with confidence.

If you shop online, you’re already familiar with PayPal, but did you know that you can also use the payment service for donations? The Paypal Giving Fund lets you browse charities and donate to them online through your PayPal account.

If you’re searching for a specific charity, or already know which issue you want to support, Network for Good* has an online database of over a million charities of all sizes and issue areas. You can also purchase Good Cards on the site if you want to give someone else a gift card that they can use to donate to the charity of their choice.

Interested in taking a more international approach to your giving? Global Giving allows you to donate to vetted projects from around the world and will send you updates on how your money is being put to work.

And if you’re interested in helping educators in the U.S., Donors Choose can connect you to a public school in need. Teachers use the site to share the projects for which they need funds, and how much they need to reach their goals. You can use the site to donate to the classroom project of your choice.

Crowdfunding platforms

Donating to a crowdfunding campaign is a great way for people on a wide range of budgets to work with others in the online community to help someone in need, and there are several platforms you can use.

GoFundMe allows online donors to contribute to individuals or groups taking on a wide variety of projects and problems. And it’s making a real difference—more than $4 billion has already been raised through the site. If you’re looking to contribute to an individual or a new organization that hasn’t registered as a charity yet, GoFundMe provides that flexibility.

Crowdrise is a social fundraising tool that supports corporations, nonprofits and events. Nonprofits and individuals can set up fundraisers for their favorite cause with specific goals and timelines. Do you want to use your network to expand your impact on #GivingTuesday? Crowdrise can help you do that. The website also allows users to explore trending fundraisers and look for ones in the categories they’re interested in.

A different type of online crowdfunding source is Kiva. Kiva gives users a chance to lend as little as $25 to help people across the globe with everything from going to school to launching a business. Kiva donors get their loans repaid, and then can reuse the repayment for another loan, or withdraw it.

Purchase roundups

When checking out at a brick and mortar store, you’ve probably been given a chance to round-up your purchase to the nearest dollar or more and have that extra change go to charity. Now you can do that online, and you can choose which charity receives that extra money.

We micro give is an online platform that rounds your online and in-person purchases up to the nearest dollar and donates the change to the charity of your choice. The site allows you to set monthly maximums and provides users with an online dashboard to summarize their giving activity.

Similarly, Coin Up offers a website and an app that donors can use to have their credit and debit card purchases rounded up and donated. The site tracks your donations over time and sends a year-end donation total so you can see your yearlong impact.

Network for Good* recently launched Hippo Give, an app that also helps you make secure donations through purchase roundups. You can support multiple organizations with your spare change and see your donation activity tracked in real time. Hippo Give even makes a donation on your behalf when you get started. It should be noted that this is still in minimum viable product development stage (MVP), but it’s an exciting new platform that shows promise.

And finally, if you use Amazon.com, you can give back without spending an extra dime just by changing the URL. If you use https://smile.amazon.com/, 0.5 percent of your purchase total will go to the charity of your choice.

#Donate Using Social Media

Organizations and individuals often use social media to give their fundraisers a promotional boost, but now there are ways to donate directly though the social media sites themselves.

Facebook has a donating platform that organizations can use year-round to give their followers an easy way to donate and share. And this #GivingTuesday, the site is stepping up its commitment to support online giving through an up-to-$2 million matching campaign in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

You can also donate instantly across social platforms with Goodworld. All you have to do is comment or reply #donate on a participating cause’s Facebook or Twitter post, and you’ll be sent a secure, one-time link you can use to apply your donation.

Last year, #GivingTuesday saw a record $168 million in charitable donations, and we expect to see similar results from today’s activity. Every year, online platforms like these make it that easier, more interactive and more fun for users to donate to causes close to their hearts. Charitable giving is truly just a click away. We hope you’ve been inspired to give to a cause you care this #GivingTuesday (November 28 this year) and throughout the year.

*Brian Sasscer is on the Board of Trustees for Network for Good

Keeping Entrepreneurship at the Heart of the American Experience

Posted on November 20, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

Entrepreneurs are vital members of our communities. The products and services they provide, innovation they spur and jobs they create are critical to the economic wellbeing of a community and a core part of the American Experience. As we have seen in the growth of the Impact Investing movement over the past ten years, entrepreneurs are also increasingly focusing part, if not all, of their efforts on addressing social and environmental problems that other stakeholders have been somewhat ineffective at solving.

While we know that the idea of entrepreneurs toiling away by themselves alone in a garage is a myth, while bringing forward these innovative new ideas, many entrepreneurs do spend a significant amount of time working by themselves or in small teams before their business gets to scale. It takes a village to get a startup off the ground, but building the community needed to succeed can be challenging. For example, 48 percent of women founders cite a lack of available mentors as a barrier to success and the average cost to launch a startup is around $30,000 with reports claiming that 80 percent of funding for new businesses comes from personal savings, friends and family. This creates additional roadblocks for entrepreneurs without wealthy friends and families.

We believe that entrepreneurs are only as strong as the community around them — investors, ecosystem builders, their team, supportive policy and you! As we approach Small Business Saturday and #GivingTuesday, we have rounded up some of the ways that anyone, anywhere can help entrepreneurs succeed.

Head to #FacesofFounders to read more about how you can support the entrepreneurship ecosystem…

Bringing the Last Decade of Impact Investing to Life: An Interactive Timeline

Posted on November 17, 2017November 11, 2021 by Case Foundation

Over the past decade, the Impact Investing movement has grown in extraordinary ways. We have seen investors and entrepreneurs from all backgrounds stepping up their commitment to bridge profit and purpose and embracing Impact Investing. In 2017 alone, the Ford Foundation committed $1bn from its endowment, TPG’s Rise Fund surpassed its $1.5bn fundraising target, and the world’s largest pension fund, JPIF, allocated over 1 trillion yen to socially responsible investments.

The pivotal milestones that have led us to where we are today wouldn’t have been possible without the group of innovators who came together in 2007 to formalize the term “Impact Investing.”

To celebrate 10 years of growth in the field, and to highlight these key milestones, we put together an interactive timeline. The timeline looks back at the last decade of growth in Impact Investing, and spotlights the many pioneers who jumped in and propelled it forward.

The moments captured on this timeline are just some of the activities that have helped to shape the ecosystem we have today, but they bring to light the importance of distinct actions that have pushed the field forward and created opportunities for others.

Take a look at the timeline below.

We hope this interactive timeline gives those within the sector an opportunity to reflect on our shared growth. For those who haven’t jumped in yet, we hope it shows the promise of the field as we work towards a future where Impact Investing is the norm.

Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship

Posted on November 15, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

At the core of the Case Foundation’s Inclusive Entrepreneurship work is finding solutions that allow all innovators, specifically women and people of color, to explore and participate in the entrepreneurship arena and all it has to offer.

As a part of the 2017 Summer Essence Festival, I had the pleasure to host an engaging panel discussion with Kristen Sonday, Co-Founder of Paladin (and a #FacesofFounders winner!), Kathryn Finney, Founder of digitalundivided and Brian Brackeen, CEO and Founder of Kairos. These changemakers are disrupting the image of who is and can be an entrepreneur and are part of a movement to seize the opportunity that inclusive entrepreneurship provides and dramatically change the distribution of capital required to make that happen.

On the Essence Festival stage, we had thoughtful and action-oriented conversation trying to unbundle what’s at play behind the following set of stats: If women are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs, particularly black women, women-led businesses are outperforming their male peers in many VC portfolios and racially-diverse companies are outperforming industry norms by 35 percent, why does so little capital go their way? For context, less than 10 percent of venture-backed companies have a female founder; less than one percent have a black founder; less than one percent have a Latinx founder, and; a mere 0.2 percent have a black female founder.

These statistics make up the backdrop to the great conversation we had on stage. Key themes we covered are:

Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not.
It’s not just about the financial capital; social capital is hugely important.
He (because it’s largely men) who make the decisions matters
Media plays a big role in setting default narrative and images of who is an can be an entrepreneur.

I hope you’ll watch and share your feedback on social media using #FacesofFounders!

Be Fearless Spotlight: Foster America

Posted on November 10, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

This Spotlight is a part of a special blog series curated by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field. Follow along with us as we meet people and learn about organizations that are taking risks, being bold and failing forward in their efforts to create transformative change in the social sector. This Spotlight is authored by Emily Ente, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Foster America.

At least one in eight children in America is abused or neglected by the time she or he turns 18. When this happens, the U.S. child welfare system—a network of federal, state, local and nonprofit agencies—provides services to keep children safe in their homes, and, in the worst cases, places them in foster care. But across all key measures, our country is failing these most vulnerable kids. For example, among older youth leaving foster care, only half graduate from high school, one-third experience homelessness, and four out of five young men in this group are arrested. Unfortunately, the child welfare system is stretched beyond its capacity and expertise to change the odds for these kids. We can and must act with urgency to do better.

Sherry Lachman, Founder and Executive Director of Foster America, knows from both personal and professional experience about the challenges that kids face in the child welfare system. Between the ages of six and eight, she was placed in three different foster homes. As Sherry explains, “Ultimately I feel very lucky. Instead of allowing me to view myself as a victim, my fourth-grade English teacher Ms. Owen convinced me that I could someday use the trauma I had experienced to help other vulnerable kids. Ms. Owen’s message changed my life.”

Motivated by her experience and wanting to improve outcomes for other kids in the system, Sherry took a risk in late 2015 and left her job as domestic policy advisor to Vice President Biden to found Foster America, an organization devoted to improving the child welfare system. Sherry first interviewed over 100 experts in the field about critical pain points in the child welfare system and why it has been so slow to evolve. She recalls, “One of the major themes that emerged from these interviews is that there is a shortage of reform-minded leaders in the field with the diverse skills needed to drive change.”

To address this critical gap, Foster America launched a fellowship program, reaching beyond its bubble to build a pipeline of extraordinary leaders with the diverse skills, bringing these seemingly unlikely partners together to tackle the major challenges in the child welfare system. The Foster America program recruits and prepares talented mid-career professionals from business, technology, health and education backgrounds for high-impact fellowship roles at child welfare agencies.

In the short run, Foster America fellows lead reform projects at these agencies, leveraging their professional expertise to develop new approaches to child welfare problems. For example, fellows with expertise in marketing and user-centered design can help child welfare agencies improve the recruitment and retention of high-quality foster families. Fellows with data expertise can develop predictive analytics models that enable agencies to predict and prevent negative outcomes such as child abuse or neglect. Each fellowship project is designed to have a lasting local impact while also informing scalable solutions for the child welfare sector.

In the long run, Foster America’s aim is to build a national movement of fellowship alumni who will move on to higher levels of child welfare leadership and help transform the child welfare system. Foster America is making a big bet and setting an audacious goal: within five years, Foster America intends to recruit more than 100 new leaders, who will reach more than 75 percent of children in foster care. Given the relatively small scale of the child welfare field in the U.S., 100 new leaders can have a major impact on outcomes for kids and families nationwide.

Progress is already underway. Foster America launched a pilot fellowship cohort in Fall 2016. In the process, the organization confirmed there is a high level of demand for the program from both child welfare agencies and prospective candidates. Leaders at 13 child welfare agencies expressed an interest in participating in the pilot and the Foster America team chose three: New York City, Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) and Rhode Island. During the pilot, agency partners invested about $800,000 in the fellows’ salary and benefits, which further signaled their commitment and strengthened the organization’s sustainability and scalability. More than 250 candidates applied for eight fellowship spots in the pilot cohort, resulting in an acceptance rate of only three percent.

In 2018, Foster America will continue to support the first cohort of fellows, who are already making significant contributions on the ground, and add new fellows to the original partner sites. The program will also post fellows in four additional sites, including the child welfare agencies of Washington, DC, Minnesota, Missouri and Washington State. Overall, the organization is committed to fearlessly continuing to bring together nontraditional partners from across sectors and challenging the status quo. This bold experiment, coupled with an organizational culture of continuous experimentation, learning and improvement, positions Foster America, along with its partners in child welfare, to fundamentally transform outcomes for kids and families.

Visit www.foster-america.org to learn more about Foster America and how you can partner with the organization as a fellow, volunteer, donor or corporate partner. If you have any additional questions about how to get involved, contact me, Emily Ente, Foster America’s Director of Strategy and Partnerships, at Emily.ente@foster-america.org.

Feeling inspired? If you’re ready to begin your own Be Fearless journey start by downloading our free Be Fearless Action Guide and Case Studies.

A New Form of Digital Philanthropy: Open Sourcing #FacesofFounders

Posted on November 6, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

Open source software, by its simplest definition, is a work of software whose source code is available for others to read, study, modify and redistribute with little restriction other than that the free access is maintained. Earlier this week, I wrote in an op-ed in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) about how we at the Case Foundation see open source as another form of philanthropy—a digital one whose contributions influence the success of many by providing publicly accessible software. In the article, I shared how we see the potential of open source software and how it can spark innovation, accelerate social good and ultimately help change the world.

Building on the early work of Jean and Steve Case—pioneers in the democratization of information with AOL—technology has always been a crucial part of how the Case Foundation works, and our tech-centric legacy has led us to champion early ideas that are now commonplace such as online giving and digital advocacy. In the course of that work, we have often used open source technologies because of their scalability and opportunity for customization. Giving the technology we create for projects at the Foundation back to the open source community is the next logical step. As we take on new challenges and new campaigns that serve our movements, we will also begin to take the time to ask ourselves and the community if a project that we think would be good for our efforts would also be good for others’ efforts. If that is true, we will dedicate time and resources in the project to open source the components that the community needs. Our contributions will always follow the needs of our broader goals, and we will open source the work in which we and the community find of real value.

So, as a part of our commitment to this open source ideal, we are excited to release the code that powered our #FacesofFounders campaign. This open source code includes features that powered the social photo upload and filters, applicant and story submissions, and the distributed judging platform. By releasing this platform’s code into the community, we are aiming to help those looking to launch similar campaigns where applicants must submit information and have a pool of judges evaluate the submissions.

We designed this platform that powered the first phase of the #FacesofFounders campaign to attract entrepreneurs, particularly women founders and entrepreneurs of color, to share their photos and stories of entrepreneurship on FacesofFounders.org or on Twitter using #FacesofFounders. Launched at the White House’s South by South Lawn festival, in partnership with Blackstone Charitable Foundation, Google for Entrepreneurs and UBS, along with Fast Company, #FacesofFounders sought out and lifted up America’s dynamic entrepreneurs who are key to driving innovation and job growth. The winners of the crowdsourced contest, who were reviewed by our panel of 40 guest judges, were selected because they bridged innovation and a commitment to inclusiveness. We then featured the winners of the contest on FastCompany.com and our #FacesofFounders Medium publication.

The technology powering this campaign was a huge part of its success, and we’re excited to share this code with the open source community. Throughout the judging process, we received numerous comments on how easy it was to use. The platform has three unique components that are all a part of a combined codebase.

Social Media Profile Photo Filter

The first of which is the photo upload feature that allowed visitors to upload a photo (or select their Facebook or Twitter profile photo) and place a campaign-themed filter on top of it. The visitor could then make that filtered photo their profile image on their social media profiles, and the photo was added to a shared photowall on the homepage, which continually displayed all new and past filtered photos. In addition administrators had the ability to remove inappropriate photos from the homepage.

Story Submission

The second feature is the story submission system. In addition to, or instead of, uploading a photo, visitors could submit their story to the judging platform. This submission tool contains customizable forms and can be placed in a “closed” state once judging begins. All submissions entered through the form then go into a queue for a site administrator to assign to judges. Because the platform is built into WordPress, it is also possible to directly upload submissions via WordPress’s dashboard.

Story Review and Judging

The third and final component of this codebase is the judging platform. As visitors submit stories, they queue in the judging section of the backend. Once all submissions are final, assigned judges can log into the platform and request submissions to review. The judges score each submission on a numeric scale, and the platform uses those scores to begin ranking each submission. Site administrators can then log in and view the stories ranked by their aggregate scores to determine winners. The entire codebase comes packaged as a WordPress theme for easy deployment and visual customization using WordPress’s robust theme system.

This open source #FacesofFounders platform is a useful tool for organizations running any sort of applicant submission and review process, and it could be modified to accommodate a grant or scholarship application review, among other uses. If you have a pool of judges or reviewers who are geographically separated or difficult to coordinate on schedules, the platform accommodates such logistical challenges by facilitating an individualized back-end review process. We believe that this code will be integral for the prizes and challenges community.

Given the collaborative nature of the open source community, we are looking for organizations interested in using this code in their own campaigns, as well as suggestions for ways to improve the #FacesofFounders codebase. Moving forward, we plan to share more of the software powering other campaigns and efforts with the open source community.

We at the Case Foundation hope our work can help others, and we’ll do our part to help catalyze the open source movement as we share our resources, our time and our talents with the community. We are excited to share this multifunctional platform with the community, and we look forward to further contributing to this part of digital philanthropy.

You can find the #FacesofFounders platorm here.

Impact Investors Are Setting the Tone for Aligning With the SDGs

Posted on November 2, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

Earlier this fall we talked about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a collective action agenda that offers a coordinated approach to ending global poverty. We were particularly inspired by the strong examples of SDGs providing a unifying framework for corporations to double-down on integrating impact. But corporations are not the only group of actors finding alignment across the SDGs. Some impact investors—a community that continues to grow in size and scope—are already there.

Since the SDGs were formalized in 2015, we’ve seen impact investors reframe their thinking across both measurement and the development of new products. And the data supports this with the latest Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) Annual Survey reporting 26 percent of the investors surveyed already track performance of their investments to the SDGs. An additional 34 percent plan to do so in the future—this will represent more than half of the active respondents already engaged in Impact Investing. Of the respondents who participated, many cited easier communication of impact (78 percent) and alignment with global development structures (75 percent) as key strengths of using SDG-aligned language.

Advancements in Standards and Frameworks

Standardization around how we invest in—and measure—the SDGs will be critical to truly meeting the Goals. Establishing a coherent set of frameworks that guide investors on “how” will also help us speak the same language. This year alone we’ve seen a thoughtful emergence of some of these SDG-aligned frameworks. Many allow investors and companies to measure how their investments and enterprise activity contribute to “achieving” the SDGs. Different approaches to measuring and integrating the SDGs are a positive sign that they could become best practice around how the sector designs for impact:

SDG Compass developed by GRI, the UN Global Compact and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) provides company-level guidance on measuring and managing the effect and contribution of companies toward the SDGs
Toniic—a global action community for impact investors – released a framework earlier this year to allow their investor community to align their investments with the SDGs. These framing facilitated better identification of synergies across global investment opportunities
The MSCI ACWI Sustainable Impact Index works across the public markets to consolidate the 17 Goals into five investible themes – basic needs, empowerment, climate change, natural capital and governance. The Index identifies companies that derive at least 50 percent of their revenue from products and services that address environmental and social challenges within these themes, and weights them accordingly.

Innovations in Products and Processes

Impact investors are also leading in other ways, experimenting with actual integration of the SDGs into their decision-making process. For these investors and managers, the SDGs offer guidelines on how they make decisions, the investments they select, the companies they support and how to measure that impact:

Encourage Capital, an emerging market-based private equity fund manager has identified five impact objectives all closely aligned with the SGDs—financial inclusion, climate change, sustainable infrastructure, sustainable seafood and water conservation. According to a GIIN Report on the SDGs, Encourage uses the SDGs to “ground the impact outcomes that might be more difficult to conceptualize.”
Sonen Capital, a multi-strategy impact investing manager framed its 2015 Annual Report around how its investment strategies link to the SDGs. According to the firm, the SDGS could be good for business, serving as a “compass” to ensure investments can be measured in their contribution to the Goals.
PGGM, the second largest pension fund in the Netherlands, modified their investment strategy to include “Sustainable Development Investments (SDIs)”. These investments must fulfill regular risk return requirements, while providing a substantial and measurable contribution to one or more SDGs. Aligning across six of the SDGs, PGGM focuses on climate change mitigation, water, food, and health.

The above are only a handful of the innovative experiments and commitments on the part of impact investors to make the SDGs a part of how we invest and what we measure.

To truly end global poverty and achieve the Goals, we’ll need many different folks around the table. Creating a common language for all actors is critical and we should continue to commit to learning from those who are experimenting. We hope that the development of measurement frameworks, investment products and ecosystem building will only increase over time. To facilitate doing that the right way, creating synergy across how we talk about the Goals will take us one step closer to effectively channeling capital to solve our most pressing challenges.

With thanks to Mai Nguyen (Social Innovation Intern at the Case Foundation) for her support in researching this piece.

Confronting the Dark Side of Entrepreneurship

Posted on November 1, 2017October 25, 2018 by Case Foundation

November is National Entrepreneurship Month, and the irony that the month kicks off with National Stress Awareness Day will not be lost on any entrepreneur.

Throughout the month, we at the Case Foundation will be celebrating entrepreneurs and all of the contributions they bring. When we talk about putting our Be Fearless principles into practice, it’s not surprising that we often turn to startup founders for inspiration. For “Make big bets” you can’t help but think of Sara Blakely and Jeff Bezos; “Let Urgency Conquer Fear” evokes the story of Daymond John; “Make Failure Matter” conjures images of Oprah who was told she wasn’t made for TV, Elon Musk, or Thomas Edison who famously declared, “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

But the story of many entrepreneurs, because they can be so inspirational, can also become over-glamorized. What we don’t talk about enough, however, is the stamina — mental and physical — required to be an entrepreneur. It’s an essential part of the narrative of who is and can be an entrepreneur. And since that very notion was the premise of our recent #FacesofFounders campaign, we reached back out to some of those featured founders to take on the topic of stress management.

Head to Faces of Founders on Medium to see what they said.

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Month: November 2017