Our Poor Nonprofits, Our Rich Opportunity

Esperanza International, an impact organization in Discovery mode, works with women to create transformational outcomes, like traveling a path from poverty to home ownership.

 

In order for nonprofits to transform the world, nonprofits first have to transform themselves. Nonprofits today are generally in one of three business model modes: Poverty, Discovery, or Scale.

Poverty Mode

You know a nonprofit is in Poverty mode when the leader is spending the majority of time and energy raising grants and gifts for repeat operations. This mode is where most nonprofits live – including many large, successful ones.

The reason most nonprofits live here is not complicated. They utilize all their income to execute their missions and run their organizations.

Imagine a provider whose mission is to assist women to escape trafficking, prostitution, and addiction. The provider’s model involves jail outreach, court support, and a survivor support group. It raises as much money as possible through grants and donations, and that money goes to pay staff and program costs.

The model itself puts that nonprofit into a poverty process – which is ironic, because the nonprofit is supposed to help women who are stuck in the poverty process themselves.

The group can only create more impact if it raises more money, and the capability is forever gone when the money is spent. Next year, it will have to raise the same amount of money again. The CEO will worry every day about money. No amount of fundraising will ever meet the needs of the community.

Traditional philanthropy funds our Poverty-mode nonprofits in an attempt to reduce what appear to be intractable problems and suffering in our communities. Donors give as much as they are willing and able, knowing that no amount of giving will ever be enough.

No amount of philanthropic giving can solve the greatest human challenges of a city, much less of the world.

When Poverty-mode organizations talk about raising “grant capital,” they are using the term capital incorrectly. True capital will, if successfully deployed, produce permanent increases in sustainability and capability. For a nonprofit, true grant capital is utilized to move into Discovery mode, and to transform into what I have termed an impact organization.

Discovery Mode

A nonprofit, company, or social entrepreneur moves into Discovery mode when they become committed to the idea that the key human challenge they seek to solve might be addressable with a value capture model.

When our example trafficking nonprofit serves women, it of course creates value – for the women they serve, for the community, for the donors, and for the staff. But it is not capturing any of the value for the long-term sustainability of the organization.

However, if our trafficking nonprofit decides to create a training and employment program for its clients, and they produce and sell a consumer good (say, candles) in the process, and the sales revenues offset some of the costs of the program, the organization is now capturing value. It is in Discovery mode. If it remains highly committed to increasing the amount of value that it can capture, continuously innovating its model until its revenue exceeds its program costs, it will reach Scale mode.

No matter how much a Poverty-mode organization works to be efficient, and no matter how successfully it collaborates with other Poverty-mode organizations, it cannot significantly increase its impact. It can only make marginal gains. Only value capture can create scale; efficiency and collaboration alone cannot.

Discovery mode is the impact organization’s entrepreneurial process of finding and implementing a value capture model.

Many simple value capture models have been around a long time, but those simple models generally create limited scale:

• An endowment is a value capture model – the organization motivates donors to give into a permanent capital pool and lives off the returns. Because the value capture is one-time, at the time of the original donation, the model doesn’t feed itself to grow more.
• A thrift store is a value capture model known to everyone. It provides value to the goods donor (emotional value, a tax deduction, and the convenience of dealing with items that are no longer wanted) and then captures value when it sells them to a customer.

More powerful well-known models include:

• Employment and training social enterprises that create goods or services via their clients
• Antipoverty microfinance models
• Cooperative development programs

Significant advances have been made in each of these models in the last twenty years. New domain applications, the use of technology, and collaboration among impact organizations have all driven these models to become more widespread, successful, and impactful today than ever before.

The real power in value capture models is just now arriving. Model and technology innovations in housing, the delivery of education, healthcare, and water have already blurred the line between nonprofit and for-profit impact organizations.

The most important thing a nonprofit can do in its effort to become sustainable is to stop believing that its job ends when it creates social value. It must recognize that creating social value is different from capturing value. It must look throughout its environment and constituencies to identify how it can create value for another party in a way that is translated into money, services or assets for the organization.

We have a lot of discovery and learning in front of us to find and implement the right business models. While we can’t pretend it will be easy, we should be optimistic that commitment, collaboration, and innovation will uncover powerful new approaches to creating sustainable and scalable impact.

Discovery Mode Capital

Almost all impact organizations struggle to raise the capital needed for the work of Discovery mode.

For-profit companies that are addressing key challenges often find that they can make a profit, but not enough to make them attractive to angel or venture capital investors.

Nonprofits have even more difficult challenges. Discovery mode involves trying models that may not work, making talent and execution mistakes, and changing paths and plans as results come in. Traditional funders often will not fund Discovery mode:

• They often do not want to be seen in the community as having made a mistake when innovation attempts fail.
• They hesitate to use dollars to try experiments when that money could serve people in current need today.
• Impact organizations that begin to earn revenue can be seen as “less needy” than those that spend all their income.
• Discovery mode is a long process. I tell new impact funders that they should plan on a ten year process toward sustainability.

These concerns have the perverse effect of rewarding the status quo and missing the opportunity to fund those initiatives that could make much more significant progress against the problems that funders are concerned about in their communities.

Thankfully, the impact investing movement is raising awareness of the need for funders across the phases of the capital cycle of Discovery mode. (I’ll explain those phases and their associated financing instruments in an upcoming post.)

Scale Mode

If a nonprofit can develop a model that covers some of its costs, it can increase its impact and make its grant dollars go further. If its model can cover all of its costs, it reaches sustainability. If it can capture more value than its costs, it can scale.

Each of humanity’s top challenges will become dramatically diminished when large numbers of impact organizations successfully discover and implement value capture models that enable them to scale.

Google’s founding mission statement was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” What if Google had been formed as a nonprofit library and sought foundation grants each year to index all the world’s information and give access to everyone? Would we have Google today?

Google’s growth and reach was possible because it developed a financially and operationally sustainable model.

Only Impact Organizations will be able to grow to the scale needed for our greatest challenges – and if you are looking closely, you will see that the seeds of the “Googles” of water, energy, justice, poverty, education, and more are being developed today.

Stand-Up

Everyone knows the classic joke about the man who complains, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this,” and the doctor says, “Well don’t do that.”

Think about it for a second – why is that funny to us?

The doctor’s advice is actually completely practical. But we all understand the doctor is ignoring the actual problem, and that makes it funny.

So – have you heard the one about the poor villager and the cause marketing business? The villager says, “We have no opportunity.” The business says, “Here, have these shoes.”

This time, it’s not funny. Not only is the problem being ignored, the prescription is creating side effects.

The reason people are without shoes is because they are in poverty. Shoelessness is, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Dumping shoes on the problem is, “Don’t do that.” A real doctor – and a real social entrepreneur – will spend time to understand the root cause, and work with the patient to cure the condition.

Social entrepreneurs have a natural impulse to help others. But when you take large-scale actions, it’s important to look at the side effects of your activity.

What are the side effects when you give away masses of shoes in a poor area?

– What happens to the people who make shoes in the region? What about the people who make the leather or fabric for them? The people who bring them to the village to sell?

– What happens to a child when she wears shoes for six months and then outgrows them, and there is no replacement?

– If only half the children in a village receive free shoes, what is the impact on the other half?

Real, sustainable solutions to poverty focus on empowerment – which in practice means information and access to basic resources. If a social entrepreneur wants to make a healthy impact, she focuses on sustainable ways to increase access to water, nutrition, education, healthcare, capital, employment, and legal rights – the necessary foundations for sustainable prosperity. A family with access to these foundations will buy their own shoes – the right shoes for them, at the right time for them.

It’s important to follow our impulse to help others. It’s also important to be wise about how we go about providing that help. To address the right problems. To use tools of empowerment, so that those in the grip of poverty can stand up their own lives and their own communities. No joke.

Heroes

Professor Muhammad Yunus

Most entrepreneurs, myself included, are independent spirits.

The “independent” part has always been a big piece of my personality. I’ve never aspired to be “like” someone, and when those stock interview questions show up I’ve always cringed at the one that asks “Who is your hero?”

That is, until 3 years ago.

Three years ago, I found myself with heroes, and someone I want to be like.

In 2010, I heard Professor Muhammad Yunus speak about humanity. He spoke extemporaneously for 45 minutes, sharing first hand stories of mothers and daughters whose lives had been transformed through education and opportunity; a vision for the end of the man-made condition of poverty; a call to action to all people to end the unacceptable suffering in our worldwide community.

It was the first time I ever had the thought, “I want to be like him.”

Yohaustria Pena, Hero

That same year, I went to the Dominican Republic and to Chiapas to see the work of poverty-ending microfinance institutions in the field. I saw for myself the bravery of women standing up against cultural oppression; taking steps that no woman in the history of her family had ever taken before so that her children could go to school; finding the right balance between personal initiative and working as a community; taking risks and succeeding with so little capital and time that they put entrepreneurs like me to shame. I found my heroes.

When I first started Soap Hope, my intention was to create a strong example of social entrepreneurship so that we could make a huge impact in ending poverty, both with our own company and through others adopting the model and learnings that came out of Soap Hope. And while Soap Hope did grow again for the third year in a row, and we did fund over 10,000 days of microlending for women entrepreneurs this year, most days my vision for Soap Hope still seems distant and fragile to me.

As if on cue, this week a friend sent me a video about social entrepreneurs, and when I clicked play I heard the unmistakable compassionate voice of Professor Yunus – there once again to motivate and inspire. Every time I hear his voice, I hear my calling. And when I go inside and ask what I’m to do, Soap Hope always is the answer I see.

When someone buys one bar of soap from us, it funds one day of microlending for a woman. So I say, “A bar of soap is a day of hope.” This spring, I’m starting a new initiative at Soap Hope called “One Million Days of Hope” – to fund one million days of microlending through sales and partnerships with other companies and organizations.

Everywhere Professor Yunus goes, he looks for ways to create partnerships with people, companies, and institutions small and large, to further his vision of ending poverty in our world. Yes, I want to be like him. So I will do the same.

One million days of hope would mean 100 times the impact we had last year. It would provide tools and opportunity to thousands of the women who have become my heroes. That’s not something I can do alone. You’ll surely hear me ask you for ideas and action, partnership and participation.

Watch for #onemilliondays. Think about how we can partner together. Expect a call from an independent spirit.

Stop Talking About The Poor

• “I’m looking at the best models out there for using business to solve social problems.”
• “This is so hard – I’ve been looking for the right organization to work with for almost a year. I don’t want to waste my time working on something that won’t really make a difference.”
• “One day, I hope to get involved in ending poverty, so I’m studying as much as I can today.”

These are a few of the things I’ve been told by people in the last month who have e-mailed and called because they are passionate about social entrepreneurship and microfinance.

I hate to be the one to break it to them, but talking with other people about helping the poor does not help the poor. While you are talking, they are still hungry.

If you want to discover the best model for combining business and social problems, the very first thing you should do is start a business to solve social problems, or go work for one – right now. Then you will learn what is really involved in a social enterprise. I can tell you from experience, you will be throwing out almost all the ideas and opinions you have about the matter until you do it yourself.

If you want to find the best organization to work with, go work for any organization that is focused on changing any life besides your own – right now. During the year you have been carefully avoiding wasting your time, you have wasted a year.

If you are studying as much as you can today, you have forgotten that while you are studying the problem, a child has missed her opportunity to go to school, so the cycle of poverty is being extended an entire generation in her family. Why are you studying to work on the problem later? The problem is now – work on it right now, and you will learn more than any book could ever teach you.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk, reflect, or study. But I have noticed there are too many people who are mostly talking, reflecting and studying. Ask yourself now, am I spending more time talking about changing the world than I am actually working on it? If so, I suggest correcting that imbalance – now.

Stop looking for the perfect way to participate. Go do anything for those in extreme poverty, anywhere – not for you, for them. Not a conference – first provide a meal. Not a study – first send money for medicine. Not a meeting – first fund a water well.

Raise money for Grameen Foundation. Volunteer with Women For Women. Buy a scarf from WORN. Fund a Bank of Hope at Esperanza International. Donate services to CitySquare. Start a weekend business that funds microloans.

Stop talking about it, and do it.

It’s not enough to teach a man to fish (or, Poverty is a Process)

Almost everyone knowns the proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

But what good is teaching a woman to fish if she cannot afford a fishing pole? If her children are sick and she cannot leave them? If a middleman buys her fish for a pittance and keeps all the profit, because she cannot determine the market price?

Most people view poverty as a problem, as a situation. But poverty is actually a process. The many intertwined aspects of the poverty process are self-reinforcing. In order to end the process, many simultaneous individual problems need to be addressed at the same time.

Think about a 28-year-old woman in Africa who is currently trapped in the process of poverty:

Unlike us, she was not taught to read. Did you ever learn anything from a book? Do you remember every recipe you will ever make? Do you ever use a list to remember what to do? Have you ever read how to repair something, or how to use a medicine?

Our friend cannot learn anything except what she experiences directly in person. She must remember everything important in her head. There is no to-do list, no planning. No recipes. No new food preservation technique unless she can remember exactly how to do it when shown. She certainly cannot make any written agreement with a buyer of goods. If her children need three medicines, she will need to remember the dosage and timing of each one by the color and shape of the pill. Can you do all this?

Unlike us, she was not taught how to do basic math. “How much feed can I afford to buy to raise my livestock, given the amount of time it takes to mature them and the price at the market?” “Given the cost of this thread and dye, how much do I have to be able to sell these shawls for to make it profitable?” It is almost impossible to operate the simplest trade without some basic math skills.

Unlike us, she does not have water nearby. Have you ever been thirsty for a few hours? Do you remember how slow you become, how tired it makes you , how it becomes difficult to think and the mood it puts you in?

Our friend cannot fetch water because it is 2 hours away, and she must be with her baby, prepare food and tend to her family’s other needs. So her two oldest sons, perhaps 8 and 10, walk with containers to fetch water for the family. It takes 2 hours to get there, and it takes 3 hours to get back. Have you ever carried water? It is heavy. The boys make this trip 3 times weekly. This trip is one of the main reasons they are not in school. They, like their mother, will not learn to read and write, perpetuating the poverty process.

There are many other dimensions to the poverty process. Chronic illness, climate change, political unrest and many other forces can create instability that makes it difficult to thrive.

Because there are so many interacting factors that work to keep people in poverty, many attempts to address poverty fail. If there are five or six intertwined problems and a program only addresses one or two, the program won’t work.

One of the most powerful tools for addressing all the elements of poverty comes in the form of nonprofit microfinance institutions. In the absence of an industry term, in my group we call it “Microfinance Plus.” Microfinance Plus institutions deploy programs that enable the local population to address all their poverty drivers. They provide small loans to women who use the capital to fund a personal business, like making something to sell at market, opening a kiosk, raising livestock, and yes even fishing. But these loans are also tied to antipoverty programs like literacy training, math skills, healthcare education, schools, and highly local needs like how to preserve an abundant local food or how to avoid a particular local pathogen.

They also provide the intangible but critical ingredient of human support – also known as “hope.” In many areas, poverty has been present for so long and is so profound that the people need to hear about the possibility for a different and better future for themselves and their children, in order to kick-start the process of working toward that future in a new way.

Now we can see that our old proverb doesn’t give us the outcome we want: the end of the process of poverty. “Teach a woman to read and to do basic math; provide her with affordable sources of clean drinking water, basic healthcare, and business training; give her human support and respect; and enable her children to go to school.” Then you don’t need to feed her for a lifetime. She can do that for herself and her family, just as we do.

The Moneylender in Microlender’s Clothing

When Dr. Muhammad Yunus first went into the villages of Bangladesh to study the causes of poverty up close, he found the people oppressed by loan sharks or as he calls them “moneylenders.”

Dr. Yunus’ model involved lending small sums of money to women in self-motivating, self-regulating groups of women for the purpose of creating sustainable income. His approach has improved the lives of millions of people around the world. The model became known as “microfinance.” One key success factor in his model is that the lender’s primary goal is not to earn a profit; instead the first goal is to lift women from poverty.

Dr. Yunus’ approach became so large and successful that it attracted the attention of corporate, banking and political interests around the world – most of which do not have the cause of ending poverty as their priority, but rather see profit potential in lending to the world’s poorest. These interests now dominate the microlending landscape. They have usurped the term “microfinance.” The most egregious of them are big, sophisticated, well-financed and powerfully marketed versions of the moneylenders that Dr. Yunus fought so hard against.

I have called on Grameen Foundation and other anti-poverty leaders to create a new, legally protected term for the kind of microfinance that is designed to end poverty, and to develop an international certifying body that will let philanthropists, foundations and social entrepreneurs have a clear picture of what groups are practicing anti-poverty driven microfinance. Minimum standards and practices would be developed by this international body and would evolve as our knowledge, tools and methods evolve.

In the absence of a branded term, those in my circle who work in anti-poverty driven microfinance have begun to call it “Microfinance Plus.” Microfinance Plus implies the following to us:

– The lender is either not for profit, of if it is a for profit institution (which is required by law to engage in lending in some countries) then the lender is owned almost exclusively either by a not-for-profit or by the clients of the lender themselves. Another way to think about it: the lender’s profits are not for the enrichment of anyone except the poor.

– Although failure to pay loans may impact a borrower’s ability to borrow again, the lender never punishes a borrower for failure to pay. Another way to think about this: a borrower’s financial situation is not to be made worse by having taken a loan, whether repaid or not.

– Money is only loaned for purposes of investment (for example business, education, home, and so on) and the borrower must demonstrate a plan for repayment. Loans are never given for paying back other debt or for purposes that do not increase the borrower’s ability to improve her financial situation.

– The lender, whether itself or through partners, actively works with its clients to eliminate the drivers of poverty in borrowers’ lives. These drivers are different in various parts of the world, so each lender creates its own approach. Some common drivers of poverty that are currently addressed by Microfinance Plus institutions are: lack of affordable clean water, lack of basic health education, malnutrition, illiteracy, chronic illness, lack of affordable childcare, and cultural or political oppression. There are many more. Each organization addresses its local needs.

It is imperative that the anti-poverty driven microfinance industry move quickly to create a protected term and a certification process, because without it we cannot drive large capital flows into Microfinance Plus institutions. Companies like my business Soap Hope (which invests all its profits into Microfinance Plus institutions) and philanthropic donors and investors need a simple and reliable way to identify these groups and to hold them accountable. By making the investment to define and certify what qualifies as anti-poverty microfinance, our industry will be able to grow the number of people served under Dr. Yunus’ original intent.

– Salah Boukadoum

Stay in touch with me:
salah@soaphope.com
@soaphope
(subscribe to this blog in the sidebar on the right)

The Deep Well

Regardless of any political party, sociological theory, or business organization telling you to the contrary: it is a fundamental part of our humanity to help those who are in great need. It is totally unacceptable to allow another human being to suffer in poverty without assistance.

I did not teach myself to read, did not haul my own drinking water across miles today, did not give myself a vaccine against polio. Because I’m smarter or work harder? Of course not – it was a gift of the circumstance of my birth, and yours.

A close up look at the lives of those in extreme poverty will show that the poor are creative, resourceful, and hard-working – contrary to common prejudices held by many in the developed world. Realize the amazing enormity of the gifts you were given in life, and give just a small share to those who haven’t been so lucky. Use your time, talent or money – all three if you can. Start right now, not tomorrow.

If you don’t know where to start, I invite you to go to any of the pages at the end of this post to learn about nonprofit microfinance, my preferred way of enabling those in very deep poverty to lift themselves up.

If you are in a deep well, no amount of creativity and hard work will get you out of that well. You will need someone outside the well to throw you a lifeline, or you will die in the well.

Those in the deep well of poverty cannot climb out without a ladder provided by someone else. Nonprofit microfinance is such a ladder. It’s not charity. The recipient does all the climbing themselves.

Pick whatever you see as the greatest need that another human being is facing, and begin to do something about it, today – don’t let this day go by without taking an action for another human being who needs you.

Please visit:

Grameen Foundation
Grameen America
Chiapas International
Esperanza International
The PLAN Fund

– Salah

The Leverage of … You

We’ve all recently heard the “dangers of leverage” – housing crisis, debt crisis, derivative losses – when it multiplies risk. But it’s also important to understand the power of personal leverage, which enables each of us to maximize our impact for good in the world.

Leverage allows you to take a small action that multiplies itself over and over, so your action can create a large positive effect in the world. It’s dear to me because it makes nonprofit microfinance work, it makes Soap Hope work, and it makes the Good Returns social business model work. Leverage will create the scale we need to solve the world’s greatest problems.

AlSol is a microfinance institution in Chiapas, the state in Mexico with the deepest level of poverty today. When AlSol provides a $50 loan to a woman and helps her start a business we see leverage operating at every level. The woman who receives the loan gets a permanent investment in her well-being. Unlike charity organizations, AlSol doesn’t give its clients food or money or clothing. Instead it gives them knowledge, confidence, skills and loan capital to start a business. AlSol uses leverage: it creates a lifelong change for its client, not just one-time help.

The $50 loan has its own leverage. As AlSol’s client becomes successful the loan is repaid. The $50 can be loaned to another woman who will also repay it. Over ten years the $50 loan will help twenty different women. A $50 gift would have helped only one.

AlSol as an institution creates leverage through the entire world of sustainable nonprofit initiatives. It shares its best practices and its lessons learned with other institutions. As it succeeds, other groups learn from its model and grow faster. Other people become inspired to start their own similar institutions around the world.

It’s because of this kind of leverage at every level that my social business Soap Hope chooses to invest in AlSol. Our own model provides leverage too. Soap Hope’s model of Good Returns, where every dollar of profit spends one year interest-free in sustainable non-profit partners, is designed to scale to thousands of businesses, creating billions of dollars of capital to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

It’s important to remember the power of your own personal leverage. As you make your every day choices in life, notice which ones will multiply many times over for the good of yourself, your family, your community, and your world.

Participate!

You can use your personal leverage with me right now. You might be surprised at the power you have to influence the behavior of thousands of people. Here are three things you can do with me right now in 10 minutes for far-reaching results:

– Share this blog. If you share this blog with 100 friends and colleagues, and they share it with 100 friends and colleagues, what will happen? One of those people – whom you may not even know – may be the next person to adopt the Good Returns model in their business. If that person’s business is an average Good Returns small business, it will generate $100,000 in loan capital – enough to serve four thousand woman through AlSol. Look at that again: one person who shares this blog can help four thousand women from poverty. That one person can be you.

– You can send a bar of soap to a friend. Soap Hope’s packages are designed for leverage. They are designed to capture your attention and educate you about microfinance and the power of each individual to make a difference in the world. If you receive a gift from Soap Hope, you can’t help but give a gift from Soap Hope to another. The profits provide capital to groups like AlSol all around the world.

– Post our video to your Facebook, blog, and Twitter. Videos have leverage – they have the opportunity to become virally active and seen by millions of people.

Salah Boukadoum
Founder, Soap Hope

Scaling Social Ventures

Pepsi – selling chips and soda

You can travel to almost any part of the world and you’ll find products made by PepsiCo. You’ll find Lay’s potato chips in India and Argentina, in France and Israel; you’ll find Pepsi drinks in Egypt, Germany, Canada and Brazil. In the third quarter of 2010, PepsiCo made $1.92 billion in profit.

Let’s look at that number again: in 90 days, during a global economic turn-down, PepsiCo sold soda and chips around the planet to earn two billion dollars in profit.

The performance of PepsiCo is a testament to the power of business. How does this happen? Clearly there’s a lot of complexity to running a global marketing and manufacturing operation. But we can still boil PepsiCo’s worldwide scale down to a few key elements:

1. It creates something that lots of people want.
2. It sells its products for a lot more than it costs to make them.
3. It has access to a vast amount of capital that finances its growth around the world.

It’s #2 – the big profit margin – that makes possible #3 – access to capital. Investors put lots of money into PepsiCo, because they know those profit margins are going to produce dividends and create a high return on investment.

Esperanza – lifting communities from poverty

Let’s look now at Esperanza International, a microfinance institution in the Dominican Republic. Esperanza makes a profit – but not much. Its goal is not to make a lot of money for investors; it is to help women come out of poverty permanently, transforming families and communities.

Unlike PepsiCo, Esperanza provides its service for the lowest possible cost at the expense of large profits. Why? Because its revenues come from the poor, and Esperanza believes it is important to leave as much money as possible in the hands of the poor that it serves. Its mission is to eliminate poverty, not to enrich investors.

Unfortunately, that decision also means Esperanza doesn’t get access to capital as PepsiCo does. Investors will not give Esperanza large and continuous infusions of capital to scale its operations, even though it is profitable – because they can make a lot more money investing their funds in PepsiCo. This is why PepsiCo is on every corner of the planet and Esperanza is not.

Notice that the social good performed by an organization doesn’t figure into the financial equation. It doesn’t matter that PepsiCo sells chips and Esperanza provides a path from poverty. All that matters is the return on investment.

Social Ventures Solve Important Problems

There are thousands of small-scale low-profit social enterprises around the world. They are working to solve urgent problems for society and for the poor. They provide medical services, housing solutions, sustainable energy solutions, clean water operations, anti-poverty programs, educational offerings – all the things we need desperately in our world. But even when these operations are capable of solving problems worldwide, they will never scale fast enough to address these problems on a global basis. They operate like Esperanza, filling an important need but earning only a small profit. There aren’t enough philanthropists in the world to put the needed capital into them. The vast sums of money that are available to finance growth for ExxonMobil, Google, PepsiCo, Bank of America, Microsoft – companies that generate substantial profits and thus high returns for investors – are not available to these important social ventures, and so the problems that they could solve worldwide remain unaddressed.

How To Finance Social Ventures

It’s always a better idea to work with existing forces rather than trying to change them. Asking investors to take a lower return in exchange for improving social conditions is an idealistic – and unrealistic – dream. Lobbying governments to provide capital is the same. That’s why we have invented the Good Returns model. This model works with existing market forces to drive capital into social ventures. It supports the desire of investors to make high returns, of entrepreneurs to create wealth for themselves, and of consumers to get the products they want at the lowest price.

Good Returns is simple. Any small business can do it: when it’s normally time to pay a dividend, instead 100% of the dividend is loaned to a sustainable social venture for one year, interest-free. After that one year, the social venture repays the capital and the investor receives his dividend.

Example: at the end of each year, my company Soap Hope calculates its profits and pays its taxes, then reserves some of its cash for the next year’s capital needs. Every remaining dollar goes to microfinance institutions so they can make more loans to more women. After a year, these institutions repay Soap Hope, and Soap Hope then distributes that money to its investors.

Why is this not philanthropy? Because the investor’s return is much higher in a Good Returns company than in a “normal” company. Because Soap Hope operates under the Good Returns model, we are able to inspire our customers to levels of loyalty and viral marketing that a traditional business never could. “100% of profits are invested for women in poverty” – it’s a powerful draw for customers. They can change the world just by choosing Soap Hope over a competitor. Soap Hope receives hundreds of messages each month from customers who are thrilled by our social mission. A traditional company would need a large marketing budget to achieve the same goal. Soap Hope has thousands of customers working to spread the word.

Is a one year loan of any use to a social venture? Definitely. If you think about the flow of money, the Good Returns model creates a semi-permanent capital pool. Each year we are repaid the prior year’s loan so investors can take their share – but we replace the capital with the new year’s profit distribution. When thousands of small companies operate together this way a very large pool of capital will be created to power social ventures.

Good Returns is organizing to provide services to entrepreneurs and social ventures around the globe. Some of those key services:

• A program to teach entrepreneurs how to implement Good Returns in their business
• A Good Returns seal to tell consumers their purchases are helping to solve the world’s biggest challenges
• An insurance bond that guarantees investors will receive their dividend after its year of service
• Education for nonprofits to teach them how to transition from a fundraising model to a sustainable low-profit social venture model

Social ventures have already figured out how to solve pressing world problems. They just need capital to scale their operations. Good Returns will generate billions of dollars for social ventures – all financed by consumers who choose companies that are working for good in the world.

Please share the Soap Hope mission – empowering institutions that help women in poverty around the world – with friends,  family, and the media. Buy from Soap Hope and help change the world.

One Billion Dollars Toward Ending Poverty – Let’s Do It

A reporter asked me today what my goals are for Soap Hope, and I gave her the answer that most of my friends know by now: to teach 1,000 small businesses the Good Returns Model and thereby raise one billion dollars for anti-poverty microloan initiatives.

I’m pretty sure this reporter was shocked – she said, “How much?!,” and actually sounded a bit disappointed. I think she felt I was being naive. Others have told me to start with a more “realistic” goal.  I’d like to show you how I believe it is reasonable to raise a billion dollars for microfinance over ten years, with just a few key numbers:

50 small businesses just like Soap Hope
In each of 20 American cities
Each generating $100,000 in profits
Each lending their profits interest-free to a microfinance institution for just 1 year
Over a 10 year period.

50 businesses x 20 cities x $100,000 x 1 year interest-free loan x 10 years = 1 billion dollars.

Let me share some key milestones and goals with you:

• 2009 marks Soap Hope’s first full year in business
• I first discussed the Good Returns model in public in the summer of 2009, just a few months ago
• We’ve already had two small businesses in Dallas spontaneously ask us for help in implementing Good Returns in their own companies
• In 2009 we’ve formed partnerships with three non-profit microfinance institutions
• In 2010 we’ll be launching an organized effort to teach Good Returns to businesses
• Simultaneously we will define sustainability programs that help nonprofits become ready for Good Returns style investments
• In 2011 we’ll be working to form an insurance fund that guarantees the return of Good Returns investment capital to participating businesses, virtually eliminating participants’ risk

One billion dollars may sound like a big number – but when you break it down, it’s right within our grasp.  If you read my last post (We Need 166 More People To End Poverty Worldwide) you know that there are six million people in poverty in the Dominican Republic.  One billion dollars is just about what it would take to give each of them a microloan.

1,000 Good Returns businesses generating one billion dollars toward ending poverty through microfinance – I don’t think it’s naive at all. Let’s do it!

Regards,

Salah Boukadoum
Co-Founder, Soap Hope

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Please help us eradicate poverty: tell someone you know about Soap Hope right now.

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