Mission Driven Business
November 2011
20 posts
Idea Factory: Eliminate Credit Cards →
businessinsider.com
“Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it’s on track to move more than $350 million in the next year.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-28-year-old-is-making-sure-credit-cards-wont-exist-in-the-next-few-years-2011-11#ixzz1e3x39Zld
Idea Factory shows you that if you see a need for a product or service, you can probably make a business case for it.
“When we look at how change happens in the business world, it usually comes from two different kinds of business: Those, usually smaller, companies that take big risks and, when they succeed, inspire others to follow. Or the larger companies that gain inspiration from the smaller pioneering changemakers and through their scale make even more change happen.”
—Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea
Five lessons for making a difference in the world →
one.org
5. Never stop innovating. The future of social entrepreneurship is limited only by our imaginations and creativity. In many ways, all socially-responsible businesses are moving in this direction. Their employees and shareholders are demanding they be accountable for more than just dragging money to the bottom line — making new approaches to problems a must. We are in continual dialogue with our clients to identify the new products and services that they most need to build stable, more secure livelihoods.
Welcome to the Mission Driven Business tumblr
As we approach the end of 2011, some of you are asking yourselves what do I need to accomplish in the coming year. You might be thinking about new projects or benchmarking the status of current efforts. You may be seeking inspiration from the successes (or failures) of others.
At UCP Mission Driven Business, we are thinking about all those things and hope to be your companion in the coming time, in part, through this tumblr technology. We will update you on thought leaders’ thoughts and inspiring stories of accomplishments and our own success stories.
The name Mission Driven Business probably connotes different things to each person, and that is fine. To us it means creating and fostering an entrepreneurial culture in the delivery of services and advocacy for people with disabilities.
We have no road map for this drive, but many fellow travelers.
This tumblr will be read by participants from inside and outside the UCP network and around the globe. We hope this will be a place to learn, converse, challenge and inspire ourselves and each other.
So, welcome to this journey into the culture of entrepreneurship as we dedicate ourselves to a life without limits for people with disabilities.
Structuring Leadership: Alternative models for distributing power and decision-making →
buildingmovement.org
For the past ten years the Building Movement Project has addressed leadership in the nonprofit sector by focusing on generational shifts, multigenerational leadership and new ways of leading. In each of these areas, the question we are most often asked by younger generations is whether we can provide them with new models of how to run/lead organizations that do not concentrate authority and responsibility in one top person. We believe these models exist but they are either unrecognized or embedded within traditional-looking hierarchies. We also believe that highlighting different leadership structures will offer organizations examples for effective ways to operate that can increase impact.
In this report, written by Caroline McAndrews, Frances Kunreuther, and Shifra Bronznick, we set out to identify and document these models with a focus on increasing organizational impact. Our interest was to find operating structures that address potential barriers to effectiveness, including the growing demands on executives running nonprofits, the current realities of a multigenerational workforce where older leaders will stay longer, and the expectations and work style of new generations coming into the workplace with a strong team orientation. Research, demand and anecdotal evidence points to the need to lift up new ideas for leading organizations, but nonprofit examples have not been systematically documented.
What we identified was less alternative organizational charts and more foundational work and practices that promote different leadership structures. The foundations – trust, learning, values and time – are key in developing healthy and productive work environments. Practices such as embracing autonomy, creating buy-in from staff and board members, sharing information, clarifying roles and letting go of control could be taught and reinforced in leadership training including with boards of directors. Finally, the point of sharing leadership is to have more success in our work, both internally and externally.
