Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

Express Bike Shop is a learning lab where young people develop the habits and skills for work. Today might be a good day to ride a bike. In fact, almost any day is a great day to ride a bike. Biking can be fun. It’s great exercise. It reduces your carbon footprint. The environmental impact of manufacturing and maintaining a bike is far below that of a car. The only thing better than a new bike is a used bike. And the only thing better than a used bike is a used bike that provides jobs for young people with a barrier to employment. Express Bike Shop in Saint Paul, Minnesota is a full-service repair shop that also sells refurbished bikes. Profits from bike sales and repair go towards a youth apprenticeship program. Express Bike Shop is a social enterprise owned by a nonprofit organization, Keystone Community Services. Bicycles are considered hard to recycle items. When you donate a bike to the Express Bike Shop, they either strip the bike down for parts or build the bike up for resell. Since their inception,

The Magic of Tiny Business is now available for preorder. Sharon Rowe is a pioneer in social entrepreneurship. She launched her company, Eco-Bags Products, almost thirty years ago. Her company produces ECOBAGS, the original reusable bag. When the daughter of a friend approached Sharon looking for a book on how to launch a business, Sharon looked around and didn’t see what she wanted in the marketplace. Like any good entrepreneur, Sharon decided to fill that gap. The solution is her new book, The Magic of Tiny Business: You Don’t Have to Go Big to Make a Great Living. Sharon first told me about her book exactly one year ago when she first appeared on Social Entrepreneur. You can hear her interview here: https://tonyloyd.com/162 When I asked Sharon who she had in mind when she wrote the book, she quickly responded “Me. Thirty years ago.” She wrote the book that she wishes would have been on the market when she began. Sharon takes on the myths that keep aspiring entrepreneurs from starting. “There are too many

This Moved Me helps purpose-driven changemakers speak with confidence, clarity, and authenticity so they can create talks that move the world. This interview contains bonus material where Sally discusses: How she learned to be a speaker and coach. What she got wrong about coaching. Her personal mantra as a coach. How feedback can be a gift. You can find the full interview here: https://tonyloyd.com/239 Social Entrepreneurship Resources: Find the full interview with Sally Koering Zimney here: https://tonyloyd.com/239 This Moved Me: http://www.thismovedme.com Sally’s TEDx talk on being an Un-Speaker: https://youtu.be/BJLA2GeRtOc This Moved Me on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/thismovedme This Moved Me Talk Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ThisMovedMeTalkClub This Moved Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thismovedme This Moved Me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thismovedme This Moved Me podcast: http://www.thismovedme.com/podcast Youth Frontiers: https://www.youthfrontiers.or

The Natural Capital Project is developing practical tools and approaches to account for nature’s contributions to society. As Bonnie Keeler grew up in Eagan, MN, she loved to explore Minnesota’s natural wonders with her family. “My mom was a master at relationships,” Bonnie recalls. “One of the things she taught me was, how people are at the center of everything. Every problem is essentially a problem of relationships. Science can take us part of the way there, in terms of providing the appropriate knowledge base. But when it comes down to actually making change, that’s all about relationships.”   Today, Bonnie is a lead scientist with The Natural Capital Project. The Natural Capital Project is a partnership between the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, the Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund. They solve big problems related with how we value nature, and the relationship between people and the environment. The Natural Capital Project works with a variety of organizations from local commu

LemonAID Warriors is a youth empowerment program that aims to give young people the tools that they need to turn their compassion into action, and raise funds and awareness for causes that they care about Lulu Cerone was an entrepreneur from an early age. At the age of six, she opened her first lemonade stand. At first, she used the money to buy toys or candy. But her mom made a suggestion. Why not use the profits to help someone else? Lulu looked into it and found an animal shelter that needed the funds. “This really crazy thing happened,” Lulu said. “This crazy thing I was doing with my friends actually took on this whole new meaning. It became a lot more fun. My friends and I became more engaged. We felt like what we were doing was meaningful.” Lulu became interested in community service. However, she had a hard time finding opportunities to serve at a young age. Most organizations require volunteers to be 16 to 18 years-old. She found a few opportunities through her school. Her parents tried helping her

CASE Smart Impact Capital is a toolkit that helps you to raise capital that aligns with your needs. In 1992, Cathy Clark had a conversation with Lloyd Morrissett, the co-founder of Sesame Workshop. Lloyd told her “Change happens when the right people with the right idea and the right capital come together at the right time.” This idea stuck with Cathy and has guided her career since. When Cathy first appeared on Social Entrepreneur in January 2016, she said. “It isn’t enough to have a good idea, to want to help people, but you have to have an organization to do it, and eventually that organization needs capital. And that has become the theme of my career.” Cathy Clark is the faculty director for the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at the Duke Fuqua School of Business. She runs the Initiative on Impacting Investing. Cathy and the team at CASE have developed a resource to help social entrepreneurs to be more efficient and effective in raising investment capital. The solution is ca

BONUS Episode: Cathy Clark Talks About Larry Fink’s Letter to CEOs   Cathy Clark stopped by to talk about CASE Smart Impact Capital, a rich resource to help entrepreneurs to be more efficient and effective in raising investment capital. While she was here, I took the opportunity to ask Cathy about a letter that Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, wrote to CEOs. Blackrock manages $6.3 trillion in investments. In this letter, Mr. Fink said, “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.” You can read the entire letter here. You can hear the full interview with Cathy where she talks about CASE Smart Impact Capital here. I asked Cathy about this letter, and about the dynamic tension that business leaders sense between shareholders and other stakeholders. You can hear her answer to thes

The Venn Foundation uses Program-Related Investments in surprising new ways. This week, we’re kicking off a two-part mini-series how to fund a business that does social good. We did something like this in April 2016. Next week, Cathy Clark is going to be here to talk about CASE Smart Impact Capital, an online resource to help social entrepreneurs figure out how to find the right capital at the right time. This week, we’re talking to Jeff Ochs of the Venn Foundation. Jeff is an experienced entrepreneur and investor. He invented and commercialized an educational party game that was licensed by Hasbro. He started a successful nonprofit, Breakthrough Twin Cities. And he was the Executive Director of an angel investing network. In each of these instances, Jeff saw the difficulty of getting the right investments to the right startups at the right time. Jeff explains that today there are two types of capital: Charitable donations, which support causes we care about with no expectation whatsoever for financial ret

Global Gaming Initiative provides a suite of tools and services to make it easier for game developers and publishers to produce and monetize games for social good. Elizabeth Sarquis was born in a small town along the Magdalena River in Colombia. When Elizabeth was five years old, her family moved to the US. Growing up, she went to school in the US and spent time her summers in Colombia. Elizabeth says “It struck me when I would see children on the streets begging. Then I would go back home, and I would have everything. It didn’t make sense to me.” As an adult, Elizabeth worked in nonprofits focused on children’s issues. During the 2008 financial meltdown, Elizabeth observed how difficult it was for nonprofits to raise funds. And, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, she noticed that there was a wide gap between the money raised and the impact of those funds. “I knew something had to change,” she says. “I wanted to create a model that used technology, which I love, and create an impact.” In 2010, Elizabeth’s