Follow Your Bliss. Make a Living.
By Marriah Star

November 2007

For centuries, the second assertion listed above dictated a person’s career choices. Sure, in college you are exhorted to go out and "change the world," but there is a reason the job market is called "the real world." There is no more guaranteed community like the one provided by a school. There are no more free or discounted meals. There are no more products or services priced for a student budget. There is no more missing class yet still getting a passing grade. Most important, there is no more free time with which to build and sustain friendships and other relationships. Once a college graduate, or even a graduate student, goes into "the real world," the cozy and collegial academic environment is supposedly replaced by the "rat race," and people behave just like rats in a maze.

Naturally, over the past few decades, there has been a backlash against this kind of work environment. Employees now want not only a fair wage but a meaningful job, one where they have true friends, free time, room for creativity, and, most importantly, the ability to grow in the company. Hence, following your bliss has become the alternative to making a living. You may not earn as much money by following your bliss, but at least you are happy.

Follow your bliss or make a living. A tough choice to be sure, however, it is also an increasingly false choice. It is increasingly possible now to follow your bliss and make a living by becoming a social entrepreneur. Indeed, many people already are social entrepreneurs and just don’t know they are part of a larger movement.

A social entrepreneur takes all the elements of social life – sensitivity to people’s needs, long-term relationships, and a commitment to bring out the best in everyone – and applies business skills to them. Instead of a division of labor to produce more goods for the market place, there is a focus on a grand vision, or life-long mission, with lots of interdisciplinary work across industries. Instead of suspending your dreams to make money and survive, you make money by pursuing your dreams and helping other people. Instead of waiting to have enough capital to pursue an idea, you pursue the idea first and hope the money and resources will follow. Instead of going to bars, movies, sporting events, and other recreational activities with friends to take your mind off your boring job, you join forces with your friends in a job that is constantly changing. As Presbyterian minister Donald Olinger says, your job becomes your vocation, the work that you are supposed to be devoting your life to, almost like a religious calling.

How is all this possible? How does one become a social entrepreneur? It starts with an emphasis on the elements that make social relationships work. Observation and innovation are key to any relationship. There are many jobs that require lots of observation and innovation, says Dr. Jacob Gayle, the Deputy Vice President for Global Initiative on HIV/AIDS at the Ford Foundation. Maybe a person drives taxis for a living. Or, maybe a person shines shoes for a living. Regardless of the job, a social entrepreneur starts by having a different perspective on the job. "When people can recognize that their job/profession is not their life but their contribution to the world," then they can become social entrepreneurs, Gayle says. The path to this changed perspective depends on the nature of the job. A high-income job will allow a person to volunteer either money or time. A low-income job, in contrast, will allow a person to observe other people. A waitress or a bartender talks with hundreds of people per day. All those conversations help these jobs give a person the perspective on other people’s lives that is essential to becoming a social entrepreneur. If a person does not have conversations with many different people every day, volunteering an hour a day or a day a week is a good start, Gayle says.

So, the first step is to get out of your comfort zone and observe the world around you. Zeeshan Suhail, a board member on Americans for Informed Democracy and a Masters student at City University of New York’s Graduate Center, maintains that a person does not "need to have a special degree or exorbitant resources." Instead, a person merely needs "a novel idea and people believing in the idea." This requires convincing others that the idea can be implemented, Suhail says. "It’s not difficult. You just need the will." However, even when you have the will, Suhail says, it is important not to reinvent the wheel. The model for Americans for Informed Democracy, he notes, is that you should "build on and customize programs that already exist."

The next step, then, is to either look for programs or start your own organization. It is possible to do both through established organizations. These include Americans for Informed Democracy, Ashoka, Ernst and Young, The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and Youth Venture. Each organization provides initial funding and/or support for a new program. Ashoka is the oldest organization, and perhaps the most well known among social entrepreneurs because of the central role it plays in David Bornstein’s book, How To Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (Penguin Books, 2004). Ashoka was started by Bill Drayton in 1980 for the purpose of catalyzing the "citizen sector" of society. A person applies to be an Ashoka Fellow, a position that provides a stipend for starting an organization and a network of other social entrepreneurs who can provide advice on the proper techniques to ensure the organization’s survival.

Once you decide to start your own organization, there are several steps. First, gather a board of directors. Second, start building up membership and financial support. Third, use business skills to allocate financial and other resources effectively to the people or conditions that need the most help. Finally, connect with other entrepreneurs to replicate and scale the business model you have developed.

Gathering the board of directors is a critical first step. This board should consist of at least four or five people who have expertise that your organization will need, but you do not possess. Ideally, your background gives you a great deal of knowledge about the problems you want to solve, and the people who will benefit most from your approach. If you want to help people whose situation you are largely unfamiliar with, the first person on the board should be someone who has already lived or worked in the area you want to address. Gathering the board is also a first test of your ability to communicate effectively about the mission of your organization. Your communication should follow the three principles of an effective social enterprise, as described by Jo Mackness, Corporate Social Responsibility Integration Leader at Ernst & Young: your idea should be Innovative, Replicable, and Scalable (IRS).

Innovative: Your organization should be doing something that has not been done before. It does not have to be something that no one has ever done. However, it should be something that no one has done in the area you want to help. This is a beneficial side effect of capitalism. According to the logic of capitalism, the best way to produce a product or service is to divide the labor in order to achieve an economy of scale, whereby the costs remain fixed, or even decrease, but the number of products or services increases. Replicable: As a result, there are many very effective methods developed under capitalism that remain isolated in their niche market. A social entrepreneur simply takes a method that already works in one industry and applies it to a social problem. By doing this, a social entrepreneur also makes sure the idea is replicable, since it has already succeeded in a niche market. Scalable: Finally, since the social entrepreneur is applying the idea in a totally new area instead of a niche market, there is no need to compete with similar solutions. This helps make the idea scalable so it can affect the largest number of people.

Once the board of directors is in place, it is time to decide on the financial structure of the organization. It is at this juncture that a social entrepreneur is distinguished from a normal profit-maximizing entrepreneur in the market or a mission-oriented head of a non-profit organization. The social entrepreneur does both. Jeff Trexler, Wilson Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Pace University’s Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship, argues that "the key word is hybrid – social enterprise blends commercial and noncommercial values. Although specific definitions vary, the term [social entrepreneur] tends to refer to a venture that combines public benefit with characteristics traditionally associated with for-profit enterprise, such as innovation, efficiency and financial return." Drayton calls this idea a business/social "hybrid value-added chain" (HVAC). In practice, this means that a social entrepreneur creates an organization that is both for-profit and non-profit. The for-profit area of the organization may provide a low-cost service to people and maintain modest profit margins. As the organization serves more people and achieves an economy of scale, the profits help subsidize the service for people who cannot afford it. This practice is nearly identical to other professions that provide high-value services to clients who can pay for it, while providing free service for clients who cannot afford the high fees. A typical law firm requires its lawyers to do some pro bono work for the poor and destitute.

So how, exactly, does a social enterprise make enough money to break even, especially in developing countries? Mackness, of Ernst and Young, applies the concept of the "bottom of the pyramid," coined by Coimbatore Krishnarao (C.K) Prahalad, of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. This approach entails using "market based and business innovations to help marginalized and poor" people, usually with new technologies. Social entrepreneurs provide products and services on a scale that this market can afford. The market is large, with approximately four billion people who live on less than $2 a day. Mackness notes that the best way to serve this market is to break up purchases into small amounts. For example, western customers tend to buy products in bulk. In contrast, the bottom of the pyramid is best served by a pay-as-you-go concept, purchasing tiny amounts of products and services, as they need them. This is also the basis of micro-credit and micro-enterprise, popularized by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, winners of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Once the organization starts to make money and become self-sustaining, the big challenge is maintaining momentum. This is where the social entrepreneur is again distinguishable from the profit-maximizing entrepreneur. The typical profit-maximizing entrepreneur starts a business and builds it until it is self-sustaining, and then sells the business to a larger company that can help create the necessary economy of scale and synergy with pre-existing products. This means that the staff of a typical start-up will leave once the business is sold, usually after four or five years, or will fold the company if it doesn’t make a profit. Hence, the typical start-up company experiences a great deal of personnel turnover. This is not the case with a social enterprise. Drayton wrote in 2006 that "social entrepreneurs need and deserve loyalty. Their work is not a job; it is their life. And they are, day by day and year after year, central to the iterative process of creation that is the essence of the value being built."

However, the paradox is that there is often an inverse relationship between company loyalty and the ability to obtain financing for the start-up costs. Venture capitalists will invest in businesses with high profit margins, understanding that the task of running a business requires different skills than the task of starting a business. Thus, managers often make lateral shifts between companies that have become self-sustaining while the entrepreneurs start one company after another. A social entrepreneur is deeply committed to the vision, but will probably have difficulty securing financing from established institutions because of the relatively low profit margins and the long-term commitment needed to realize any profits at all. Drayton recognized this fundamental limitation, and has used Ashoka to fund social enterprises since 1980. Drayton recently told U.S. News and World Report, "Ashoka is a community of and for leading social entrepreneurs. … Ninety-seven percent are continuing full time in the pursuit of their visions five years after Ashoka elects them into the fellowship."

It is important to understand the challenges that social entrepreneurs face as they pursue their visions through their organizations. Seth Green co-founded Americans for Informed Democracy (AIDemocracy) five years ago while studying at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship. He had noticed the poor quality of information that most Americans received about the world through their local news and he knew that poor information could lead to a poor foreign policy based on bad stereotypes. Thus, he wanted to bring the world home to American college students. His first step was creating a "distinct and vibrant message that people" could connect to so that AIDemocracy could compete with every other group. He studied the demographics of the American college population and discovered that there had been a huge increase since 1990 in students studying abroad. Thus, he focused on that population at Oxford with the message of building a new U.S. foreign policy after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Students abroad were open to this message because they did not have other groups competing for their attention. Once he got their attention, he had to obtain funds for the organization. He connected with Princeton’s alumni network and eventually found a mentor, Priscilla Lewis of Rockefeller Brothers Fund. She was "very passionate about youth engagement," and provided a bridge between AIDemocracy and the foundation world, Green says.

Once the funding was secure, Green had to create and manage a staff of the best people. In this he says AIDemocracy only partially succeeded. Princeton alumni came to work full-time, but he found it challenging to "create a real development plan," especially since most people left after one year. The organization has managed to generate money, but the money goes into free programs. The more AIDemocracy tries to make its programs profitable, the smaller the number of people who can participate in the programs, Green says. The organization has tried to balance this trade-off. The 2004 elections gave AIDemocracy a great deal of momentum and energy, but after the election the sense of urgency was gone. Green started to think more strategically about focusing on problems that could actually be realistically solved in the political environment at the time. Therefore Green started to focus on malaria and HIV/AIDS, since those two issues were receiving an unprecedented level of attention from the Bush Administration.

At the four-year point, Green had to find a way to keep the organization members involved as college students and alumni moved into more professional commitments in their lives. Green admits that AIDemocracy has not "succeeded all that much. We are now in the cities and have very strong professional networks. There is not a very easy way for students to connect on issues after college." Three cities, New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston, have strong professional networks that connect them with AIDemocracy. Green says that it is best to meet in person to create the network and then use online tools to sustain the network. This year Green has shifted to his own professional pursuits after graduating from Yale Law School. He wanted to make sure AIDemocracy would make a successful transition to a new leader. Fortunately, he was able to leverage the strength of people who were stakeholders and create a search committee. He asked partners for advice on candidates and worked on hiring a consensus candidate, the current president, Marceline White.

The are many ways to fix the problems of the world, and most of them start with information about the nature of those problems. AIDemocracy seeks to provide people with high quality information, and provide funding for social entrepreneurs to start tackling the problems. The typical funding sources are foundations, but Drayton has written that large foundations are simply not suited for the rapidly changing problems that require the adaptability of a social entrepreneur. "Citizen organizations of all types and sizes urgently need a new social financial services system. … consider how the structure of government grant agencies and foundations make it extremely difficult for either institution to serve leading social entrepreneurs. The people try hard, but the structural barriers are formidable and firmly set. Again, given how central social entrepreneurs are to what is society’s greatest historical opportunity now, this failure is extremely costly."

Heather Rees also noticed this problem. "I see social entrepreneurs as a much overdue answer to the lethargy and general ineffectiveness of NGOs [non-government organizations]. Whether it be because they are bound by funders’ chains or an overall loss of perspective, NGOs, particularly the larger more broad-based ones, have become a well intentioned obstacle to progress." Rees read an article about giving circles and decided to create a New York City community-based funding organization that would do giving differently. "I wanted to be a source for the courageous, the outrageous, the truly innovative and visionary individuals and emerging organizations within the five boroughs of NYC. We are still in our very early stages of development, but things are on track and we plan to provide our first ‘grant’ by the Fall 2008." Her organization, the New York City Venture Philanthropy Fund, intends to apply "collective investment in support of emerging, entrepreneurial projects focused on tackling persistent social and economic problems worldwide." Rees also worked for Business Council for Peace, an organization that provides free consulting services to mid-level businesses run by women in conflict and post-conflict countries.

Regardless of the size or longevity of the organization, Rees has noticed two critical factors that make any organization successful. First, the organization’s members have integrity. They do what they say they will do. There is always a danger when starting organizations that the people involved, especially the board of directors, will not understand the true time commitment required to make the organization function well. Indeed, too many people are seduced by the resume-building appeal of being on a board of directors or being a member of an organization. Once they are asked to contribute time or money, they quit the organization. Then there is the opposite extreme. Some people will contribute significant time and resources, but they are not able to separate the organization’s mission from their ego. This problem is a particular challenge to people who create organizations. They make the organization an extension of their will, their desires, and their needs. This attitude makes the organization’s members prone to corruption.

Rees says the best solution for the former problem, the lack of genuine commitment, is to pick people who are authentic in their desire to provide services and resources for the organization. She says that when she started the New York City Venture Philanthropy Fund, she was able to pick out the reliable people who would be effective board members in the first few minutes of the first meeting. For the second problem, egotism, Rees says an organization needs transparency and a culture of altruism. Transparency usually is in the form of annual reports. Altruism is usually evidenced by behavior among the members that is proportionate to the needs of the organization. After all, the president of a social enterprise sends a bad message to employees and investors when the president works in a luxurious corner office and receives a high salary while everyone else works in ordinary conditions on a subsistence income. Simply put, an effective social enterprise reallocates resources to address social and economic injustice. It cannot simultaneously create problems within the organization by causing a sense of injustice among the employees and membership base.

New York City Venture Philanthropy Fund has managed to raise money through its membership base with a fee of a dollar a day, or $365 a year contribution. The organization receives matching foundation grants and other sponsors’ contributions. Rees notes that "NYC-VPF’s grant comes in two parts: a financial grant and a ‘grant’ of consultant hours to address organizational capacity building and skills development." She says the organization’s strength is based on members who come from both the private and public sectors. "We ask all members to become as involved as they want – preferably more than usual. All grants are based on the preferences and leadership of the members. This gets each person intimately involved in social entrepreneurship within New York City. It opens their eyes to what others are doing and what their dollars can do to solve a real issue on their streets. But here’s the secret to social innovation: it’s true power and genius is at the crossroads between the private and public sectors. It’s taking the best knowledge, skills, and experience from each, mixing it together and applying it to the most persistent issues. This sounds simple, but it’s also truly revolutionary."

A good example of this formula is the Education for Employment Foundation (EFE), founded and managed by Ronald B. Bruder. Bruder noticed that a fundamental problem in the Arab world is inadequate education and job training for Muslim youths. Bruder had started The Brookhill Group, a real estate management company, in 1977. In 2003 he decided to apply the skills that made him successful in real estate to the problems of Arab countries. EFE identifies critical skill gaps in local Arab economies, and then it develops and manages targeted training programs that place graduates in jobs through partnerships with local universities and employers. At the moment the organization has programs in Egypt, Gaza, Jordan, and Morocco. Bruder had noticed a gap in the education success rates between Arab countries and Western countries. Whereas Western countries educate and employ 85% of their citizens, Arab Muslim countries educate and employee only 37% of the citizens. He set out to close this gap. He developed a 10-year plan for the organization, and has so far completed five years. EFE seeks out donors and participation from students. The students pay back loans by giving 10% of their earnings over one or two years.

Seth Green, Heather Rees, Ronald Bruder, and many other examples not mentioned here are what Bill Drayton calls "changemakers." They are part of a global movement that is helping the citizen sector, or social sector, catch up with the private sector in terms of productivity and employment. Drayton frequently talks about the gap between the social sector and the private sector that developed between 1700 and 1980, which grew so large by 1980 that Ashoka stepped in to close the gap. This gap witnessed the top one percent of society, the elite, generating all fundamental changes because they had the resources, including the financial capital, to do it. In the past 27 years, however, the resources have been democratized, partly because costs have lowered, and partly because entrepreneurs now have greater access to financial capital. As a result, social entrepreneurs are increasingly common. Drayton says the ultimate aim is to increase the percentage of elite change makers from one percent to 20%, and then from 20% to 100% until everyone is a change maker, everyone is a social entrepreneur. That is a laudable goal, but at this moment social entrepreneurship is still poorly understood.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepre-neurship describes Social Entrepreneurship as an approach to a social issue. "It is not a field of discipline that can be learned in academia." It is "an approach that cuts across disciplines (medicine, engineering, law, education, investment banking, agronomy, environment, etc.) and is not confined to sectors (health, transportation, finance, labor, trade, and the like)." Most important, the concept is "more related to leadership than to management." Indeed, Drayton says his biggest mistake with Ashoka in the beginning was opening up the selection process to managers. Managers, however, are not change-makers. Ashoka describes social entrepreneurs as possessing "entrepreneurial quality." This quality is the ability to "see opportunities for change and innovation" and devote one’s self entirely to making that change happen. Such a leader usually has "little interest in anything beyond" the mission. Most important, the leader will easily spend "the next 10 to 15 years making a historical development take place. This total absorption is critical to transforming a new idea into reality, and it is for this reason that Ashoka insists that candidates commit themselves full-time to their ideas during the launch phase. Ashoka is looking for the Andrew Carnegies, Henry Fords, and Steve Jobses of the citizen sector."

The best way to become a social entrepreneur, Heather Rees says, is to take three easy steps. First, "ask yourself: what has been on your mind for months, years? What issue have you found yourself drawn to? Think about: articles or books you are drawn to, discussions you’ve had with friends and family, courses you’ve wanted to take or are taking." Once you identify the issue, research who is doing something about the issue. "Is it working? Is it really addressing the issue? If the answer is no, what would work? Go to step three. If the answer is yes, find out if you can become involved or import the idea into your community if it is not already there." Finally, and most important, do something. Take action. "Begin where you are, start small. Do what you want to do really really well in a small way. Make sure it works, make sure it actually has the desired result(s) before expanding." Zeeshan Suhail adds that an effective social entrepreneur is a servant ambassador. "You can serve others by providing knowledge, expertise, best practices, etc., but you can also be an ambassador for your organization (or anything else you choose to represent) by effectively showing that certain things have worked for your people, organization, team members, etc. By showing that something has been proven to be successful, one is, in some ways, saying that that particular method or path is worth trying."

To end, heed the words of Public Enemy from "He Got Game": "Aiyo, these are some serious times that we’re livin in G, and a new world order is about to begin, y’knowhutI’msayin? Now the question is - are you ready, for the real revolution, which is the evolution of the mind? If you seek then you shall find that we all come from the divine. You dig what I’m sayin? Now if you take heed to the words of wisdom that are written on the walls of life, then universally we will stand and divided we will fall, because love conquers all, you understand what I’m sayin? This is a call to all you sleepin souls: Wake up and take control of your own cipher. And be on the lookout for the spirit snipers, tryin to steal your light, y’knowhutI’msayin? Look within-side yourself, for peace. Give thanks, live life and release. You dig me? You got me?"