One Day, One Job » social venture

Sparkseed

Willy Franzen — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:55:06 +0000

As a member on the Board of Advisors for a startup non-profit, I know how hard it is to get things going. Building a website, raising the first $1,000, and writing a “business plan” are all huge challenges that separate ideas from real non-profits. And that doesn’t even include getting started on the good work that is the organization’s mission. The first few years are filled with ups and downs, and leaders of non-profit startups can use every little bit of extra help that they can get. One way that they can get that help is to work with Sparkseed, a San Ramon, CA based non-profit organization “that exists to develop the next generation of social entrepreneurs and increase their impact on society.” It’s an incubator/angel fund for early stage, student-led social ventures (both for-profit and non-profit).

Spark Your Career

The way that Sparkseed works is that they select up to ten “student-led social ventures” every year to get “six months of high-impact support.” To some extent, it’s a contest, and the prize includes the following:

Mentoring from entrepreneurs and executives
Pro-bono consulting from business and nonprofit professionals
$1,000 in seed money towards start-up costs
Webinars that teach skills such as creating a business plan, managing a team, pitching to investors, leveraging social media, and measuring financial and social impact.
$10,000 in web tools, including web site design, web hosting, & SEO consulting.
A four-day summit in Silicon Valley that includes networking, skill-building, and strategic planning.

After the six months have passed, Sparkseed chooses three ventures to receive ongoing support. I think it’s a wonderful idea, and it has the potential to significantly push forward innovation in the social venture community. As of now, Sparkseed doesn’t have any full-time jobs listed on their website or their Idealist page, but they do seem to have a decent sized staff. My bet is that if you pitched them on why you’d make a great addition to their organization, they’d at least be willing to listen. Give it a try by using their Contact page to reach out to them.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What have you heard about Sparkseed?

Housing Works

Willy Franzen — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:28:53 +0000

Homelessness is pretty terrible, but the problems that it leads to can be even worse. One of those problems is often AIDS. Housing Works is a New York City based non-profit that “provides homeless and low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families with housing, meals, medical care, drug treatment, social support, employment opportunities and other lifesaving services.” The cool thing is the scale that they’re doing this on—they are “the largest community-based AIDS service organization in the United States.” That means that since 1990 they’ve served more than 20,000 New Yorkers.

Make Housing Works Work for You

What allows Housing Works to operate on such a large scale (they did $40 million in revenue last year) is their smart approach to fundraising. They run a number of social enterprise businesses that include a chain of thrift shops and a used bookstore/café. These businesses tie into the Housing Works mission because they create jobs for the individuals that Housing Works aims to help. It’s a fantastic model that seems to be extremely effective. If this sounds like something that you’d want to be a part of, then check out Housing Works’ Jobs page, or better yet, check out their Job postings on Idealist. They have a number of positions suitable for new grads including Recreation Assistant, Case Manager, and possibly Harm Reduction Coordinator. The application instructions vary, so pay careful attention.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you think of Housing Works?

CleanFish

Willy Franzen — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:00:50 +0000

Believe it or not, over the past week One Day, One Job has been coming to you from a lodge on the banks of the Grand Cascapedia river in Quebec. As I’ve learned this week, fishing for Atlantic Salmon is extremely difficult, even though you can often see the fish right in front of you. In some pools there appear to be plenty of fish, but none of them will bite. That’s probably a good thing considering the fact that the estimated annual run on the Bonaventure (where we’ve been doing our fishing) is only about 1,500-2,000 fish. That means that if I catch and release my daily limit of two fish, I’ve caught .1% of the entire run. Even though we’d really like to, we can’t even think about killing one of these fish to eat—they’re too precious. Luckily, CleanFish is a company (and a B Corporation, you know what that is now!) that offers sustainable seafood that we can eat. They’re based in San Francisco with offices in Gloucester, MA and Los Angeles, CA as well, and they’re changing the way that we eat seafood.

Something’s Fishy About These Jobs

Our oceans may seem endless, so one would think that the supply of food that they provide would never run out. Unfortunately, we’re getting close to losing many of the ocean’s food sources—and that has negative effects well beyond not being able to fulfill our appetite for seafood. For instance, here on the Gaspé in Quebec a large portion of the economy is based on sport fishing for salmon. Commercial harvest of salmon in Greenland can significantly deplete the runs here in Canada. Fewer fish means fewer dollars spent, and that will ripple through the economy. Since we’re not going to stop eating salmon, and sometimes farmed salmon can have worse effects on wild salmon than commercial fishing, CleanFish is a great alternative. They find sustainable sources for delicious seafood, and if they can’t find a good source for a particular type, they don’t sell it.

This may sound like some kind of niche business, but I was surprised to find that many of the restaurants in Chicago that I eat at and even some of the grocery stores that I shop at stock CleanFish products. I’ve eaten CleanFish many times without even knowing it. CleanFish is an example of social entrepreneurism at its best, which is why you should consider a job with them. They don’t have any specific positions posted, but they do offer internships, which means that they value young talent. They also have an open call for résumés on their Jobs page, so answer it and help make it so that I can continue to eat salmon and catch salmon without fearing that one day I’ll never be able to do either.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What’s your favorite kind of fish to eat?

GoodGuide

Willy Franzen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:56:54 +0000

Last week we featured FitBit, a company that was recently announced at the TechCrunch50. This week we’re looking at another startup that was announced at the conference. It’s called GoodGuide, and it’s aiming to be “the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental and social impacts of products and companies.” GoodGuide is pretty easy to use – you can input a product name to see all of the details of the product’s world impact, or you can look at a class of products to find the “goodest.” For instance you can look up Fantastik All Purpose Cleaner with Bleach specifically or you can just look at the ranking for household cleaners. It’s a great concept. They’re also apparently going to offer an iPhone application so that you can look up products as you shop for them in the grocery store; although, GoodGuide would probably prefer that you buy them online through their affiliate links.

GoodGuide. GoodJobs?

GoodGuide considers themselves a “for-benefit” company, which we understand to mean “we want to make money, but we want to do it with a social conscience” (our words, not theirs). We’re not exactly sure about their revenue model, but we’d imagine that it’s based on affiliate programs. When you read a review, it presents the option to buy the product on Amazon. They get a small cut of the sale, and they hopefully become rich while making the world a better place. This is just our take on a possible revenue model, we don’t know if that’s what will truly drive their business, but there are others who agree that GoodGuide’s product is “naturally monetizable.” That’s a good thing to know if you’re going to consider working at GoodGuide.

GoodGuide’s Jobs page doesn’t have a lot of information, but it does have specific listings of positions that they’re hiring for. These include VP of Engineering, Business Development, Developer, Systems Engineer, Release Project/Program Manager, Director of Content, Researcher, Health Scientist. It’s hard to tell which of these jobs would be appropriate for a new college grad, but we’ll go out on a limb and say that VP of Engineering, Release Project/Program Manager, and Director of Content are in no way entry level. The other jobs certainly have potential. You can apply by sending a cover letter and a resume in word or pdf format to jobs@goodguide.com. GoodGuide is another startup that makes it impossible to find a physical address on their website, but we were able to determine that they’re based in San Francisco, CA (big surprise, another startup in Northern California).

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What do you think of GoodGuide? Will you use their product ratings to make purchasing decisions?

Better World Books

Willy Franzen — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:00:57 +0000

Update: Better World Books has contacted us with a coupon code offer for our readers. To take advantage, click here.

Better World Books is a company that we came across while we were looking for non-profits to write about on the weekends. They are part of a new breed of companies that are considered “for profit social ventures.” This means that Better World Books operates with all sights on making money, but they donate their profits to non-profit organizations such as Books for Africa, Room to Read, and the National Center for Family Literacy. It’s an interesting business model that is optimized to enact social change in away that many non-profits aren’t. We think the future will be full of companies with a similar structure.

The cool thing about Better World Books is that their entire business has been built with a college mindset. The company was founded by three college friends and gathers most of its books from college book drives. These books are then sold or donated to certain non-profit organizations. Any book that is not suitable for use or sale is recycled. Better World Books never throws away a book it has received – they have kept 10 million pounds of books out of landfills so far.

The profits of Better World Books’ efforts (whether they be in the form of books or money) are then donated to organizations that promote literacy. Success is measured by both monetary profits and how much change can be enacted through Better World Books’ donations. No time is wasted fundraising, because there is always a flow of income to fund the literacy and education projects that Better World Books selects.

Better World Books is currently hiring Account Representatives to maintain and develop relationships with libraries across the country. Knowing that the company was started with just one college book drive, we think this is a great place for a new college graduate to begin a career. There are a ton of challenging tasks, and you’ll have the chance to develop your sales skills in a situation that many not be as intimidating as most sales jobs, since the currency you will be dealing in is books. The more books you can bring in through the deals you work, the more successful you will be. Despite the fact that it’s not money you’re bringing in, you’re still part of the bottom line, and that’s really important for your resume and your self-confidence.

Note: On April 23rd we revisited entry-level jobs at Better World Books.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

If you’re not interested in a job, why not buy your text books from Better World and put the money to good use twice over?