social enterprises of the year

Social Enterprises of the Year

Fast Company staff — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:30:07 -0500

Enterprise Community Partners, has invested $9 billion in equity capital, pre-development lending, mortgage financing, and development grants to house low- and moderate-income Americans. It also helped create the low-income-housing tax credit that for 25 years has provided a way for the business world to address the need for affordable housing while still making a profit. That credit has accounted for some 90% of the affordable rental housing in the U.S. Now it is taking on the credit crunch with innovative financing and a green-building initiative.

HopeLab: Video Games for Health

Jennifer Vilaga — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:30:18 -0500

Cancer-afflicted teens often have a hard time sticking to their meds. So Pam Omidyar -- a tech enthusiast with a background in immunology and wife of eBay founder Pierre -- came up with a spoonful of new sugar: video games. Two years ago, HopeLab, Omidyar's not-for-profit, released Re-Mission, a shooter game in which players destroy cancer cells. But it wasn't until this past summer that clinical evidence was published showing that the game actually works.

The Institute for OneWorld Health: Not-for-profit Drugmaking

Jennifer Vilaga — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:30:16 -0500

Ten years ago, Victoria Hale wrote a manifesto targeting five diseases in need of drug development and turned it into a business plan for the first pharmaceutical not-for-profit in the United States. Today, her organization, the Institute for OneWorld Health, is on the verge of proving that its no-profit/no-loss model can work. Its first drug, paromomycin -- a treatment for visceral leishmaniasis, an illness spread by sand flies that mostly afflicts the poorest of the poor -- is months from completing its final stage of clinical trials. Up next: malaria.

DataDyne: EpiSurveyor

Kate Rockwood — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:30:09 -0500

Data collection in developing nations usually involves heaps of paperwork and maddening data entry. But public-health workers in 15 sub-Saharan nations are using pioneering software from the D.C.-based not-for-profit DataDyne to digitize and streamline the process. Cofounder Rose Donna explains how EpiSurveyor can be more efficient than paper surveys: "With a question like, 'Are you male or are you female?' people were being asked if they were pregnant even if they answered male.

The Acumen Fund: Pulse

Anne C. Lee — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:15:13 -0500

How do investors make smart choices without data or measuring tools? Answer: They can't. So the Acumen Fund, led by CEO Jacqueline Novogratz, is launching Pulse, its portfolio data management system for donors and philanthropic investors.

High Point: Seattle's Gren Community

Fast Company Staff — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:15:27 -0500

"When George shows you his water trick, be very amazed," whispers Enterprise Community Partners CEO Doris Koo. "It's his favorite." We are at High Point, a 120-acre mixed-income project in Seattle, waiting for George Nemeth of the city's housing authority. He arrives bearing charts, graphs, and a bottle of water.

Husk Power Systems: Rice-Fired Electricity

Sara D. Anderson — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:15:11 -0500

In India's Rice Belt, 350 million people live without reliable electricity. But they do have lots of rice -- and rice husks discarded from harvest. So University of Virginia business students Chip Ransler and Manoj Sinha recently devised a way to give them their own form of energy independence by turning husks into biogas, which fuels mini power plants. Hundreds of homes in five rice-growing communities now have affordable power. And the ash from generating the gas isn't wasted: It can be used as fertilizer or as a low-cost ingredient for cement.

The Academy for Urban School Leadership: A Teacher-Training Residency

Kate Rockwood — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:00:19 -0500

If you applied the medical-residency model to urban schools, you'd have the AUSL's teacher-training program: mentoring, grad school, 49 weeks shadowing a veteran teacher, and four years teaching in Chicago's neediest classrooms. "Many teachers aren't prepared for an urban setting, so they drop out," says executive director Don Feinstein. "Our graduates come out with real practical experience." Since 2005, the number of students meeting state benchmarks has soared 66% in schools run by AUSL.

Do Something: An IPO

Jeff Chu — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:00:17 -0500

The typical not-for-profit sends its donors a thank-you note, a glossy annual report with pretty pictures, and maybe an umbrella or a book -- not exactly the seeds of loyalty or deeper involvement. New York-based Do Something, which aims to get teens involved in volunteering, wanted to create a class of donors who did something more. In other sectors, such people are often known as shareholders, so the organization launched an IPO in September.

The 10 Best Social Enterprises of 2009

Fast Company Staff — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:00:15 -0500

We have found them: Nine bold and timely ideas that wow us -- and that have earned these organizations a place alongside Enterprise Community Partners on our honor roll of 2009 Social Enterprises of the Year. Will all of these notions work in the long run and on a grand scale? Perhaps not. But they represent the kind of innovative thinking that can transform lives and change our world.

Do Something: An IPO

Edward Norton's $9,000,000,000 Housing Project (that's $9 Billion)

Ellen McGirt — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:00:14 -0500

Edward Norton, the two-time Oscar nominee, stood at the podium at the Hilton Washington this past May and tried to be humble. The actor was in the capital to present a major civil rights award to someone he knew well -- his grandmother. It was gearing up to be a nice moment. "I work in a profession," he told the crowd of social workers, lawyers, and community organizers, "that gets a totally disproportionate amount of attention relative to its true contribution to our culture." Suddenly, from the front row, the no-nonsense clerk of the U.S.