Unleashing Entrepreneurship in Africa: Solutions for the World

Posted on July 21, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

At the core of the Foundation’s “Unleashing Entrepreneurship” pillar is the belief that startups—and entrepreneurial approaches—play a key role in tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. We’ve put that belief into practice by supporting promising initiatives that bring business to the problem-solving table and catalyze strong entrepreneurial ecosystems in the U.S. and abroad.

We’ve seen first-hand the role that a business approach can play in unleashing innovative new ideas and providing scalable models for change all over the world through a number of organizations and initiatives we’ve supported, including: the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership’s investment in entrepreneurs in the West Bank; Water for People’s efforts to leverage community-based entrepreneurs to provide access to clean water and sanitation in the developing world; and Startup America Partnership and UP Global’s development of strong entrepreneurial ecosystems. We’re also focused on building the impact investing movement, which we believe will catalyze a significant wave of new capital to companies that will not just benefit their shareholders, but society as a whole. The Foundation’s most recent exploration has been in launching an Inclusive Entrepreneurship initiative that confronts rising inequality and taps into the fuller entrepreneurial potential of communities and countries (including all backgrounds and locations) to get beyond those who traditionally have easier access to entrepreneurship and lift up women- and minority-owned businesses.

It is for all of these reasons that we are excited to participate in the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) taking place in Nairobi, Kenya later this week. We are thrilled to join the event as part of Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker’s official delegation. Our CEO, Jean Case, will moderate a panel on “Women Entrepreneurs” and will judge the GES “Women + Youth Day” seminal event—a pitch competition with financial and mentorship capital prizes. The Case Foundation is proud to contribute to both aspects of the prize pool. Steve Case, who will be participating in his capacity as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE), is moderating a panel on “Getting Ready for Growth” featuring groundbreaking entrepreneurs and investors, including fellow PAGE member Brian Chesky from Airbnb.

There is plenty of excitement over the fact that this year’s summit in Nairobi is the first GES taking place in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past few years, we’ve continued to hear about the shift from aid dollars to investment flowing to the continent, expressed by the familiar refrain that “Africa is open for business.” That is why in addition to our time at GES, we are excited to spend time in Nairobi, as well as in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria exploring these emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems over the next few weeks.

In each city, we will have the opportunity to visit with some of the organizations we’ve supported in Africa over the years (including Sanergy in Nairobi), spend time at accelerators like the iHub, HubAccra and Co-Creation Hub and participate in panel discussions with leading African entrepreneurs and investors. We expect to learn more about the unique aspects that make each city’s entrepreneurial scene tick—from social entrepreneurs tackling challenges like energy and sanitation in Nairobi, to the fashion-savvy hub of Accra and the e-commerce revolution in Lagos.

Most of all, we are excited about spending time with the entrepreneurs—with special attention given to women entrepreneurs and social enterprises—who are at the heart of driving innovation in each of these cities. In addition to site visits with some of the continent’s fastest growing companies like M-Kopa in Nairobi, Andela and ACE in Lagos and the Cadling Fashion Factory in Accra, we will host a pitch competition in each city. A set of the most promising young startups in each region will vie for an investment prize of at least $25,000 from Jean and Steve Case, matched by local and international investors.

We can’t wait to hear the stories of these entrepreneurs who are working on game changing solutions not just for Africa, but also for the world, and sharing those stories along the way. Be sure to follow along via Twitter @CaseFoundation and #CaseAfrica, as well as via our personal Twitter handles: @AllieB, @SHerrling and @Broksas.

Impact Investing Conversations Expand at Milken Institute Global Conference

Posted on May 8, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

This year, Case Foundation CEO, Jean Case, and team again traveled to the Milken Institute Global Conference to lead conversations about how business can contribute to solving social problems. The Milken Institute has the mission to increase global prosperity by advancing collaborative solutions that widen access to capital, create jobs and improve health, and impact investing is increasingly seen as one of those collaborative solutions that will bring new capital and talent to the social sector.

For some background on the good news from the last year in impact investing, check out Jean Case’s blog that ran the first day of the conference: “A New Inning for Impact Investing.” And take a look at Jean’s ongoing series on Medium—”5 Characteristics of Thriving Social Entrepreneurs” for even more detail on best practices for starting and growing a business that turns a profit and changes the world.

At the Global Conference, the Case Foundation and our partners–Omidyar Network and the Milken Institute–hosted a roundtable of investors and funds to talk about the great progress from the past year—including announcements of new impact practices at Bain and BlackRock, and $2 billion worth of new commitments to impact investing from investors like Prudential, McKnight Foundation, Ford Foundation and others. The group at the roundtable also discussed ongoing challenges in the field—including the need for better measurement of social impact, need for more deal flow and the need for more education for investors and advisors on risks and opportunities.

Jean also moderated a panel—Impact Investing 2.0: Finding Value in Doing Good, which focused on the range of products, asset classes and returns expectations that are available to new impact investors. She kicked off the panel by saying, “We see a new class of entrepreneurs who don’t just want to build companies for profit, they want to address a social challenge. And there’s a new class of investors across sectors that want more than just a financial return from their investments.”

It was a lively discussion featuring Kimbal Musk, founder of The Kitchen and member of Tesla’s board; Thomas Hyland from Aspada Investment Advisors; Jacqueline Novogratz from Acumen; Dimple Sahni from Anthos Asset Management and Gary White from Water.org. You can find the full video of the panel here.

Jean also joined Forbes Editor, Randall Lane, at a dinner to talk about how philanthropists can think about the opportunities that are available to them, from grants to support organizations like B Lab that are building a stronger ecosystem to high-return, for-profit investments in social enterprises and funds.

We hope you will join us as we continue the conversation with partners like the Milken Institute and others over the course of this year. As Jean said during the events at Milken, “Too often we haven’t invited businesses, and specifically entrepreneurs, to the table in solving social problems.” Impact investing presents a path forward to bring the power and talent of the market and the private sector into the business of solving some of our most pressing social challenges.

For more, watch Jean Case’s discussion with TheStreet’s Rhonda Schaffler about the growth in impact investing and why a whole new generation of tech entrepreneurs are making more investments in the space.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

Posted on March 20, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

This post was written by Ross Baird on behalf of the Case Foundation:

This past Monday, I participated in the “Impact Investing Rumble” at SXSW, a, lively debate hosted by Jean Case and the Case Foundation. At the heart of the Rumble was the question: “Does ‘impact investing’ necessarily mean concessionary returns?” To some, it seems completely logical that there is a class of investors that would be willing to sacrifice a little bit of profit if it meant more impact in businesses.

But I think that argument is wrong. I believe strongly that people who invest in businesses that positively impact society will make outsized returns in the next decade. Why? On Saturday (also at SXSW), Steve Case provided an excellent framing for the panel proposing the concept of the “Third Wave” of the Internet. The “First Wave”—from 1985-2000—got people online, and Steve and Jean Case had a lot to do with that. The “Second Wave”—from 2000-2015—used the infrastructure of the Internet to connect people. Mark Zuckerberg, Google, and Twitter have evaporated the distance between us and anyone else in the world in a constant conversation. Steve proposed a “Third Wave”—sharing his predictions on how the Internet, over the next 15 years, will pervade the rest of our lives, from our health, to education, to how we power and feed ourselves as a society.

The billion-dollar companies of the next fifteen years will be found in the areas that have the highest impact on people’s lives.

As Steve outlined at SXSW, the Internet has poised to transform sectors from health to education to food/agriculture to energy to financial services. At the organization I run, Village Capital, we are seeing this every day. We have an investment in Salt Lake City called TruClinic that is powering telemedicine across the world. Another investment, Spensa, in West Lafayette Indiana, is dramatically reducing the cost of pesticide application through smart insect monitoring. eMoneyPool in Phoenix, Arizona, is targeting the billion Americans who use informal savings groups as their primary bank account worldwide to credit. And PearDeck, an Iowa City company in our current education program, is transforming how teachers interact with their classroom through real-time interaction. We’re seeing these businesses get significant traction in mainstream markets—most recently at SXSW, PearDeck won the “Rise of the Rest” pitch competition as the best startup from Steve Case and Revolution’s 2014 “Rise of the Rest” tour.

Businesses in these sectors have the ability to transform things that everybody does every day—not just build apps that make the lives of the best-off in society more convenient through live social media streaming or on-demand valet parking. And the single thing they all have in common is they are under-valued by the market. At SXSW, I met a venture capitalist from a well-known Silicon Valley venture firm and we were discussing our investments in common. When I mentioned the industries we work in—health, food/agriculture, energy, education, financial services, he said “oh, we don’t touch those—they’re regulated industries.” And when I mentioned the cities we work in, he said, “oh, we only invest close to home.”

While Silicon Valley is the most amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem on the planet, current Silicon Valley investment attitudes are undervaluing 98% of entrepreneurs worldwide. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this argument. The sectors that have the potential for the most impact on our lives, positive or negative, are usually regulated (and probably should be). And the entrepreneurs who have the most potential to transform core industries such as energy or agriculture are typically placed closest to energy and food production—and sometimes far from the most active entrepreneurial hotbeds.

The bottom line: the investors in the market who do not incorporate impact into how they invest, and look for the companies that are solving the problems faced by the most people, are missing the billion-person and billion-dollar opportunities of the “Third Wave” of the Internet. And investors who overlook entrepreneurs in industries that have the highest-impact, and in locations outside of the most developed entrepreneurial ecosystems, are ignoring 98% of businesses worldwide—and missing out on transformational opportunities.

In the Rumble, Sonal Shah, executive director of the Beeck Center for Entrepreneurship, said that regularly, entrepreneurs seeking an impact automatically relegate themselves to the “kid’s table”—looking for just philanthropy and concessionary capital. Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison, pointed out the problem with this: real transformation (wireless power, thermal storage) requires in the hundreds of millions of capital—which only the mainstream markets can bring.

Yet the way the world is going, tremendous opportunities will only explode in the areas with the highest impact. To get there, though, impact investors—and entrepreneurs seeking an impact—have to identify, explore, and invest in the markets with the highest potential for impact—though they may be harder initially to develop. Entrepreneurs and investors will have to work at least twice as hard in more difficult to navigate sectors and ecosystems. The “train is leaving the station,” though, as Jean Case said at the end of the panel—and the payoff will be well worth the effort.

Ross Baird is the Executive Director of Village Capital.

The 5 Biggest Social Good Trends from SXSW 2015

Posted on March 19, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

For an update on social good trends in 2017, check out, “Biggest Trend in Social Good? Women in the Driver’s Seat!”

We came. We saw. We conquered.

In between the music, the parties and the Meerkat-ing, one thing was clear—SXSW was ground zero once again for new opportunities for cross-sector collaboration and innovation in the social good space. While previously left out of the festival all together just a few years ago, this year’s expanded Social Good Hub and Startup Village brought government, nonprofits, foundations, impact-driven startups and entrepreneurs front and center with a strong message: we can and should act on a level playing field with corporations and for-profit entities.

This year’s festival brought many newcomers, from impact investors to civic leaders. The DC government even hosted its own lounge—We DC House—across from the convention center. Tracks focused on industry verticals, like healthcare, fashion and education, instead of traditional skill-sets, causing a collision of cross-disciplinary attendees.

And come we did. This relatively new approach to format at SXSW has been embraced by both organizations and attendees alike, igniting several big trends that we at the Case Foundation are helping to spearhead:

1. Collaboration and Unlikely Partnerships Drive Success

 In the third wave of the Internet, big successes won’t come from isolated efforts, but rather unlikely partnerships will be required to accelerate growth and impact, said the Case Foundation’s Chairman Steve Case in his Saturday keynote. This sentiment was an undercurrent throughout SXSW. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, also speaking at SXSW discussed innovating in government as a multi-stakeholder process that can be driven by public and private sector collaboration. Even Yahoo’s Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos, raised how the company was breaking down internal silos to create new partnerships between user experience and security to create new alternatives to passwords.

2. Social Returns are as Important as Profit 

It’s going to be transformative breakthrough businesses that come to the table to solve the world’s biggest problems, said CEO Jean Case at the Impact Investing Rumble, where two teams went head-to-head in a debate about whether one can earn financial and social returns on investments. This was one of many featured talks at the SXSW Social Good Hub. The concept of not only making a profit but having a purpose resounded everywhere—including startups looking to change their community through technology to energy efficient internet of things devices.

3. The Rest is Rising Through Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship provides the promise of economic mobility and the power to lift up communities. With nearly double the space devoted to entrepreneurship from last year, the startup community continues to grow in visibility at SXSW. From Colorado to Iowa, local innovators outside of Silicon Valley came out to learn, share ideas and disrupt their sectors. UP Global’s Startup Oasis was bustling with pitch competitions and community-centered happy hours.

4. Diversity and Inclusion are Still an Issue 

Diversity has been an ongoing challenge in technology, but many at SXSW are actively calling for inclusion regardless of culture, race and gender. A female founders panel on accelerators and investors noted 88 percent of venture-backed companies have no female leadership. There is a business reason to have diversity and inclusion in entrepreneurship, to bring all voices to the table, said the Case Foundation’s CEO Jean Case at the Kapor Center Diversity Lunch and Pitch Competition. Entrepreneurship shouldn’t just be for the privileged. One way of policing panels for inclusion was the Gender Avenger app that allowed attendees to shame panels that didn’t have any marginalized voices represented.

5. Big Data and Measurement are Driving Innovation  

In the push for impact and transparency, data, metrics and measurement are becoming critical in aiding experimentation and rapidly assessing success. When evaluating our metrics, we see “failures” as a red badge of courage and experimentation, said Tom Nelson, president of Share Our Strength at the Case Foundation’s Be Fearless session. Many other organizations participating at SXSW such as USAID’s innovation lab, which leveraged health data to inform the fight on Ebola; and the ASPCA, which utilized adoption data and visualizations to identify gaps in their adoption programs are actively engaging on the data front as well. Increasingly, more organizations, such as Open Supporter Data Interface are working to form standards for open data and APIs to streamline integration of multiple data sets and development so measurement and evaluation can be easier and more accessible.

Did you spot any other trends from this year’s SXSW? If so, please share with us on Twitter using #CFBlog! See you at SXSW next year!

Introducing the Three Pillars of the Case Foundation

Posted on January 20, 2015October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

Ask anyone at the Case Foundation what kind of response they get when they explain the work of our foundation through our tagline: “We invest in people and ideas that can change the world,” and they’ll tell you they are often met with a smile followed by more questions. “Hmm… interesting, like what?” or “So are you about education, poverty or healthcare?” This challenge of finding the right way to talk about our work has dogged us for some time, especially since we are not an “issue” oriented foundation, but rather one that is driven by opportunities to innovate and spark new movements—that can develop in a wide variety of different areas. So in the last year we set out on an ambitious effort to find more effective ways to communicate what we really do. The official launch of our new website today is just the first of several changes you’ll see in the coming months.

The ambitious effort to understand how we could do better began by engaging a third party set of experts to perform an extensive audit of our communication channels among our peers, partners and influencers from a range of sectors. We surveyed and interviewed these groups and individuals to help us better understand how we could more effectively share information on the work of the Case Foundation, offer lessons learned and inspire others to create change. The feedback we received—from a combination of web surveys and in-depth conversations—provided a wide variety of insights for our team. This process was invaluable to us and we are grateful to many of you who participated and allowed us to identify a number of areas for improvement, from tweaks to the way we were engaging with our audiences on Twitter, to suggestions for refining our messaging, to wholesale changes to our strategy in some areas.

As we were presenting the feedback we received from the audit to our Board, my husband, who serves as Chair of the Case Foundation, offered a simple insight: “Can’t we find a way to talk about our work in a few ‘buckets’ people might understand?” I think a light bulb went off at that moment for all of us.

Armed with a charge from the Chair, and with valuable insights from many of our stakeholders, friends and followers, a new way to convey our work began to emerge. At about the same time, we added a valuable new senior member of our team, Sheila Herrling, whose detachment from our history proved invaluable in helping us reimagine how we look at and organize the various areas of our work.

So with the launch of this new website today, you’ll see how we’ve found our “three buckets” – only we now refer to them as “pillars.” They encapsulate what we see as our three main areas of interest – Revolutionizing Philanthropy, Unleashing Entrepreneurship and Igniting Civic Engagement – and within each pillar resides our various programmatic initiatives such as impact investing, Be Fearless and Millennial engagement. We purposefully designed the three pillars so that they stand independently, yet also clearly overlap to illustrate where we recognize how our work may intersect. While there still may be an occasional outlier that doesn’t perfectly fit into one of the buckets, we think these three areas hit the mark. And while we still embrace the mission that we invest in people ideas that can change the world, these new pillars provide more clarity around the vision and aspirations of our work, as conveyed in the
image below.

This elegant image, as a graphical representation of our three pillars, by no means indicates that our work is done here. Our approach with the website, just as with change and innovation overall, is based on iterations–based on the Lean Startup principle we strongly embrace at the Case Foundation, known as “minimum viable product.” As a team, we debated if we felt comfortable launching today, when there are still some parts to fill in, and some enhancements we’ll add. In the end, we made the decision that we want to continue to refine and make better our attempts to share content, learnings and opportunities for engagement–and so with the launch today we are committing to watching and listening. We will continue to adapt our new site to reflect the changing needs of our audience and the work of the Foundation to deliver the best product possible.

On the technical front, there’s quite a lot of exciting new enhancements and we invite you to “go behind the scenes” and discover the new generation of technology and tools we’ve deployed to make your time on the site most engaging, efficient and fun – – this companion blog by our very own Allie Burns and Brian Sasscer, goes deeper into both the features and some of the thinking that led to our new look and feel. Allie and Brian did most of the “heavy lifting” on this effort and once again I feel so grateful for our amazing team! As always, we warmly welcome your feedback and insights as we move forward.

Let us know what you think on Twitter using the hashtag #NewCFsite!

Celebrating the Startup Grind

Posted on October 24, 2014October 31, 2018 by Case Foundation

What could happen if you brought together dozens of people (from all sectors – government, business, nonprofit and beyond) who believe in the power of entrepreneurship to change the world for networking over pizza and beer, and an hour-long, in-depth conversation with a proven inspiring leader who has done great things (who is invited onto the stage only after several “warm up” cheers)? Well, the answer to that question is played out in more than 100 cities and 42 countries (albeit with varying food and beverage options) throughout the year – and it’s called Startup Grind. Startup Grind is self-described as a “global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs,” and we were excited when their Washington, DC chapter invited our own Jean Case to participate in their most recent monthly event.

After the Startup Grind cheer, a tradition at all chapter events designed to energize the crowd, Jean joined Brian Park, the COO of Startup Grind, on stage for an in-depth interview. The discussion touched on a range of Jean’s experiences, from being a part of the world’s first online service (The Source), to the skyrocketing days of AOL, to the moment when the Case Foundation was created 17 years ago.

Not surprisingly, the discussion focused on some key themes that are close to our hearts, including the rapidly growing social entrepreneurship space. When polled by Jean, nearly half of the audience self-identified as entrepreneurs who are building a business with a social mission – and Jean shared some key advice for them on how to stay focused on building a great business. Specifically, she emphasized the importance of marketing no matter whether you’re in a for- or nonprofit organization, noting that it is vital for all organizations to identify their unique value proposition.

Startup Grind on Social

Jean also touched upon the important role that Millennials are playing in the growth of social enterprise and impact investing. The younger generation is no longer satisfied with just getting a financial return, they also want a social one. They are getting involved as investors themselves and are affecting the way their parents and grandparents spend their money.

Brian also asked Jean an important question about one of our core beliefs, specifically “Why Fearless, when you could have chosen a dozen other words – like passion, relentless, focus”? In addition to sharing more about our aspiration to Be Fearless in all that we do at the Case Foundation, and to encourage others to take risks, experiment and develop unlikely partnerships, there was also a great discussion about failure, where Jean continued to inspire the audience:

Startup Grind on Social

Jean also shared words of wisdom about leadership and teamwork – when asked about her selection as a finalist for the Washington Business Journal’s “Most Admired CEO” award, she emphasized the importance of the people you surround yourself with. And one of her biggest pieces of advice to young founders? Make sure you hire people who are smarter than you.

Startup Grind on Social

You can learn much more from Jean’s insights – and some great questions from the audience in attendance – click here to watch the video.

And whether you’re at a startup or not, if you want to be inspired by amazing leaders, and connect with entrepreneurs – and intrapreneurs – doing incredible things, we recommend checking out a Startup Grind event near you!

The Franklin Project: It’s time to put everyone in the game!

Posted on June 26, 2013November 1, 2018 by Case Foundation

In the early days of the Case Foundation, I had the fortunate experience of getting to know Alan Khazei and Michael Brown, the bright, young founders of City Year. Their passionate vision and drive to strengthen the culture of service to others in the United States was evident to anyone who crossed their paths. I recall Alan’s dream of an American future in which “where did you go to school?” was expanded or replaced with, “and where did you serve?” Alan, Michael, and other early leaders in the service sector understood that it was the selfless acts of so many Americans who put themselves in service to others that have played a vital role in keeping our nation strong.

At the Case Foundation we came to understand in a powerful way how building pathways to service wasn’t just “nice to do,” but indeed was a leveraged and strategic way to strengthen our nation and our communities. As a result, we’ve proudly supported leaders in service and remarkable organizations that thrive because of a culture of service. These include organizations like City Year, America’s Promise, Habitat for Humanity, A Billion + Change, Special Olympics, Give an Hour, Points of Light, and many, many more.

In 2007, I had the honor of being asked by President Bush to chair his Service and Civic Participation Council. I joined with celebrities, businesses, community leaders, and philanthropists to develop a strategy to recognize, reward, and inspire service in the U.S. I remember at the time being surprised by the statistics that showed less than one-third of Americans volunteered on a regular basis – a statistic that remains about the same today. I was equally surprised this past year to hear a statistic that showed less than one percent of Americans have served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the past decade.

It was the union of these two facts that led General Stanley McChrystal to stand up at the Aspen Ideas Festival last summer and caution the attendees about the unintended consequences of a growing lack of shared sacrifice in this country. But like any great military leader, he then called for a plan of action to address the situation: the creation of a voluntary civilian counterpart to military service in the United States, with a goal of mobilizing millions of Americans in service to their country and communities.

A year later, that idea is beginning to take off as the Franklin Project – a proposal to ignite national service – launched yesterday in Aspen, CO. For the past year, leaders and practitioners from across sectors have joined with General McChrystal, John Bridgeland, Alan Khazei, Walter Isaacson, and many more proven innovators to craft the vision for a 21st century national service system that will offer at least one million full-time civilian national service opportunities for young adults ages 18 to 28 every year—on par with the more than one million Americans who serve on active duty in the Armed Forces.

The robust plan, which aims to create a new American rite of passage, includes dozens of strategies and policy proposals that suggest strengthening existing paths to service such as expanding AmeriCorps and Peace Corps; building new frameworks like a national certification system that allows any organization or municipality to create full time service opportunities; and creating stronger connections between civilian and military service by amending the current Selective Service System so that every American (men and women) age 18 or older registers and receives information about opportunities to serve in the military or in a civilian-national service capacity.

We know service is not just a nice thing do to. Research shows that service a key factor in building a better life — raising successful children, finding a new job after a period of unemployment, and playing a more active role as a citizen in one’s community. Our partners at Give An Hour, City Year, Global Health Corps, and A Billion + Change all demonstrate every day that volunteers can play a critical role in issues of great national importance like mental health care for veterans, the high school dropout crisis, global health disparities, or building the capacity of nonprofit organizations with skilled private sector volunteers (respectively). As Joel Klein puts it in his TIME story leading up to the launch of the Franklin Project:

Imagine the impact a robust national-service program — like the service corps proposed by the Aspen Institute’s Franklin Project — would have on our nation of couch dwellers. If service is therapeutic, imagine the impact, especially on boys, who are having more trouble than girls graduating from high school and college these days. If service can reconnect individuals to their communities, imagine the impact on our waning sense of civic engagement, our weirdly hollow democracy in which active citizenship has been displaced by marketing and political sloganeering. Would it be so bad if the rest of us became more attuned to the values and can-do spirit our veterans have brought home from the military?

The proposals coming out of the Franklin Project clearly show that if we are going to create greater shared sacrifice, provide opportunities for the millions of Americans that want to serve and don’t know where to start or harness service to tackle common challenges, then it will take all sectors working together to build more effective and leveraged programs and opportunities. I am delighted to see the Franklin Project resist the urge for just more of the same or overly rely on an overburdened, unreliable, federal budget.

America, and the world, is facing great disruption. Demand for social services is up and traditional sources of revenue for social service organizations are down as government and philanthropic budgets decrease and competition for dollars increase. The concept of building out national service is a big, bold idea — and one that represents some risk, especially at a time when government spending is under significant pressure. Our own focus and passion in this work will be to invest in smart, leveraged models that can help accelerate and scale service faster and more efficiently than ever before. At a time like this we must put all of our oars in the water; we need local, state, and federal government, small and big business, social enterprises and social services, and most of all we need every American with rolled up sleeves putting their unique talents to work. That’s why the Case Foundation is a proud supporter of the Franklin Project, and look forward to helping build a new civic superhighway bursting with clear on-ramps to meaningful service for all Americans.

The White House Celebrates Corporate Pro Bono Service with A Billion + Change

Posted on July 6, 2012November 1, 2018 by Case Foundation

On June 27, the Case Foundation was pleased to join our fellow leadership committee members at the White House along with other corporate, government, and nonprofit leaders who are creating social change through skills-based volunteerism. We were part of a celebration and a challenge issued by A Billion + Change, a national campaign to mobilize billions of dollars of pro bono and skills-based volunteer services from the business community to nonprofits.

More than half of the 200 companies that have pledged to create or expand skills-based volunteering programs joined us to talk about how far corporations have come in the past 10 years or so in enabling their employees to donate their skills, and not just their time, to nonprofits. We talked about not only the benefits to companies’ nonprofit partners, but also to their employees and to their bottom line.

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and the Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, opened the forum and said that companies participating in A Billion + Change were a model for others driving positive social change around the world. Her comments were echoed later in the day by Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and by Billion + Change Honorary Chairman Senator Mark Warner, who said that at a time when nonprofits are facing decreased revenues and more work, pro bono from corporations is increasingly vital.

The sentiments from leaders in the public sector were matched by those in the private sector. Our CEO Jean Case led a panel with leaders from Deloitte, the Ritz-Carlton, Capital One, COTTON7, and Golin Harris to talk about the business benefits of supporting employee pro bono. Across the board, each of the panelists said that his employees and his company received at least as much value from nonprofit partners as was provided. Pro bono was characterized as a win-win-win proposition for companies, employees, and nonprofits.

We have come a long way since Jean Case helped to start A Billion + Change in 2008 when she was a member of the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation. So far, we are proud to announce that more than 200 companies have pledged over $1.8 billion and nearly 12 million hours worth of time and talent to nonprofits.

But, we still have a way to go to reach our goal. We are seeking a total of 500 companies willing to pledge their best business skills and talents to build the capacity of nonprofits at home and around the world. Together, we will inspire the largest commitment of corporate pro bono service in history so that one day, skills-based volunteering will be the ‘new normal’ in every workplace.

To join us in the pro bono movement, visit www.abillionpluschange.org and make a pledge.

Want to learn more?

Read Jean Case’s post in Fast Company on making pro bono the new normal for corporate America.
Read Senator Mark Warner’s challenge to businesses in The Huffington Post to take the pledge to give pro bono.
Read what Ryan Scott, the CEO of Causecast, has to say in Forbes about how pro bono creates a competitive edge.

Jean Case on White House Blog: Public Sector Prizes in Innovation Democracy

Posted on June 12, 2012November 1, 2018 by Case Foundation

Today, the Case Foundation was proud to co-present “Collaborative Innovation: Public Sector Prizes” with the Joyce Foundation and the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, bringing together hundreds of leaders from the Administration and federal agencies and some of the most recognizable companies and organizations to discuss how prizes and challenges are sparking innovation and deepening citizen engagement.

We were honored to present the Department of Health and Human Services with the first Award of Excellence in Advancing Public Sector Prizes and Innovation for their commitment to this increasingly used tool to solve some of our country’s most complex problems.

The Case Foundation has long supported prizes (like our America’s Giving Challenge) as a way to ignite community engagement, connect with hard-to-reach populations, spur innovation, and make philanthropy more democratic. The White House has been at the forefront of a similar appreciation of prizes and competitions in the public sector.To find new ideas and solutions for solving a range of challenges, we must be willing to fearlessly experiment and embrace approaches like prizes that produce impact.

For more about the Collaborative Innovation event and the Case Foundation’s support of public sector competitions and prizes, read our CEO Jean Case’s post on the White House blog.

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