Parish and Aujla argue that 3 major trends are creating an unprecedented opportunity for people to find “the sweet spot between altruism and selfishness.” The trends are:

• A rise in global empathy, or the ability for people separated geographically to be bound by common desires and goals
• The Internet as a platform for global collaboration
• Breakthrough smarter and greener technologies

These trends have resulted in “enormous new opportunities to change the world.” Far from the bleak unemployment picture facing the Millennial generation, this book turns that challenge into an enormous opportunity. This generation won’t enjoy the same careers that those who came before them did. They will create their own careers by combining the need for an income with a desire to make the world a better place.

Part self-help book, part social entrepreneurship primer, Making Good at times verges on the feel good, but for a generation faced with staggering unemployment, a really messed up global economy, and the inheritance of other equally crippling social and political problems, they probably need a little hand holding.

The authors start by laying out the opportunities that exist within seven major industries that are undergoing tremendous turmoil (crumbling education system, weak transportation infrastructure, inadequate healthcare system, broken food chain, to start.). It seems there is an endless list from which this new generation could carve out solutions.

Then they go into the 6 steps for moving from idea to action (Reflect, Adapt, Connect, Design, Launch, Organize), which is sort of like the What Color is My Parachute for the social change set. The book is a nice companion to the more case-study heavy Echoing Green book, Work on Purpose. But what is interesting about Making Good‘s approach and different than most social entrepreneurship books, is that these authors see social change work in a broad spectrum, from new start up companies and nonprofits, to freelancing, to being a social intrapreneur (within an established company).

Perhaps in some ways, though, this book is trying to cover too much ground. Probably because it is one of only a few books in the emerging social change career genre. My hope is that as social change becomes a more established industry there will be many more books like Making Change that help those entering the working world and those trying to make a move within it to embrace social change careers.

In the Introduction to the book, Van Jones, special advisor to Obama on Green Jobs, writes “”We don’t know yet if we are going to be in a continued vicious downward cycle politically, economically, culturally, and spiritually–or whether this is just volatility preceding a beautiful rebirth and rebuilding…we could be seeing the beginnings of a positive ecological U-turn, one in which democracy is renewed by a new generation taking the stage with new information technology and cooperation tools and the economy is renewed by new models of commerce that respect people and the earth.”

The authors of Making Good seem to think that by giving the Millennial generation a road map for translating their desire for change into a sustainable way to make a living we will find that ecological U-turn. I tend to agree.

About the Author: Nell Edgington is President of Social Velocity (www.socialvelocity.net), a management consulting firm leading nonprofits to greater social impact and financial sustainability. Social Velocity helps nonprofits grow their programs, bring more money in the door, and use resources more effectively. For more information, check out Social Velocity consulting services and clients.

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Related posts:

1. Sparking Social Change Movements
2. Real Innovation in Social Change Lies in Reinvention
3. The Balance of Heart and Head

Do the makers of Dunkin’ Donuts want us to think its new line of bagels are better tasting because they are made with more passion and care? You bet they do!

So why did Dunkin’ Donuts venture here and what can small to mid-sized brands and businesses learn from this?

It’s all about Marketing and figuring out how to differentiate your brand from the competition.
A few years ago, I used a similar approach while managing the Marcal line of paper products.  Marcal was known as the “Value brand” in the category.  At first glance you might think this is a good position to occupy, but it’s not. Grocery Chains typically promote their own Private Label line as the “Value” offering in the store.  So if your brand is considered “Value” you better change quick because you are competing against your customer and it’s a matter of time before your brand will be ousted from the shelf. What Dunkin Donuts did very cleverly was to leverage the idea (Artisan) to help distinguish their brand of bagels from the rest of the crowd.  Because branding is about “differentness” not “sameness”.

Fortunately in this case, Marcal had a long heritage of being made from recycled paper, so the brand was repositioned as Marcal Small Steps, the first line of 100% recycled paper products that was not only a good value, but was also good for the environment.

What does this mean in business or marketing terms?

To stay competitive, every product needs to own a point of difference in the consumer’s mind (versus its competition).  If your brand or company is considered a me-too, then the only way to compete is on price, which is a very slippery slope to be on.

So what should you do:

First, conduct a Competitive Assessment – Determine what word(s) your competition owns.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask consumers who buy your category, what they think the brands stand for.  What you will find is the bigger brands typically own the most important benefits that consumer’s value in the category.  In paper, Charmin stands for “Softness”, Bounty for “Absorbency” and Scott “long lasting”.

Next determine what word your brand owns and how does this stack up to the competition.  Owning the same word is difficult, if not impossible, unless you own a slightly different version of it and that version has a meaningful benefit to the consumer.  In paper, Quilted Northern and Charmin both look to own softness but Quilted Northern promotes their paper as “quilted softness” to differentiate themselves from Charmin.  For Marcal Small Steps we chose to own “good for the environment”, because the paper was made by not cutting down new trees.

Once identifying the word look to own that word in all aspects of the marketing mix – your product name, your packaging graphics, any advertising that supports the brand in both traditional and digital mediums, and your promotions.  Marcal Small Steps’ focused approach on its new positioning enabled the brand to regain its footing in many of the Grocery Retailers that had discontinued the “Value” version the year earlier.

No matter what industry or business you are in, you need to think about the strength of your brand’s positioning.  Dunkin’ Donuts wanted to own a larger share of the bagel business.  We will see if its “Artisan Bagels” do the trick. For me, I’m a purist.  Dunkin’ Donuts means really great tasting donuts. Please pass me a Glazed.

What are your reactions?  Do you think “Artisan Bagels” will catch on?

by MJ Jolda, CMO        201.452.0613       MJJolda@chiefoutsiders.com

The main reason is that an entrepreneur is looking at the opportunity in the deal while the investor is looking at the risk.

The entrepreneur sees the possibilities and the many positive outcomes while the investor sees the challenges and the many negative outcomes.

The investor goes through the slide set and looks at the risk at each level such as:
1. What if the proposed team doesn’t stay together and work well together?
2. What if the sales forecast isn’t met?
3. What if the customer is not happy with the product?
4. What if the price point is wrong?
5. What if the competition is stronger than we thought?
6. What if our patents aren’t awarded at the end of the process?

And the list goes on.

To raise funding, the entrepreneur needs to take as many risks off the table as possible. For example, demonstrate how well the team works together and how they have done so for several years. Show customer satisfaction with the product and their demand for more. Show how you chose the price point and why it’s correct.

By taking the risks off the table you answer the objections of the investor before he or she asks, giving you a better chance of success.

Event organizer Austin Fatheree (of Rivvir Consulting) encourages newcomers to avoid obsessive and self-centered pitching.  Instead, he says, “try to talk about something other than just yourself and use this time to form strong, long-term relationships.”  Wise words for sure.

This month, we saw new and familiar faces.  Among the many stories:

• Project Insiders had a soft launch last week (congrats to Kenley!)

• Katharina Kolos (of Omnidox) is just getting started with FoodSitter, an idea to connect personal chefs with busy families.
• Our friends at Aleberry Creative just celebrated 3 years in business (congrats to Gira and Will!).

Stephen White of Qukku says, “Coffee + Entrepreneurs = Magic”

Formed in April, 2007 by Marc Nathan, OpenCoffee is one of the longest and strongest entrepreneur meetups in Houston.  Since then, OpenCoffee has become a mainstay in Houston startup networking.

About this event:

OpenCoffee is a friendly and highly caffeinated atmosphere of sharp businesspeople, scrappy startups, and curious newcomers.  Held on the third Thursday of every month at CoffeeGroundz, the event begins at 7a for earlybirds and gets cooking around 830a for the rest of us.  Expect to stay engrossed in conversation into midmorning.

A few weeks back I wrote a post asking where are the Facebook startup deals.  Laura Beck, renowned Austin PR maven and “stripepreneur,” called my hand on that with a story about last week’s $500K funding of Lujure.  That funding included prominent Central Texans Pat Matthews and Bill Boebel, who sold their company Webmail.us to San Antonio based Rackspace.  The funding was taken not out of necessity but out of opportunity and partially out of “old school ties.”   Nathan Latka, the CEO of Lujure, dropped out of Virginia Tech to start the company, and both Matthews and Boebel are Hokies as well.

By the numbers, the company in 15 months has attracted 65,000 customers that have created more than 100,000 Facebook tabs reaching 50 million fans.  It’s growing 20% monthly on a reported revenue run rate of $1.5M.  All this is built on a very easy to use drag ‘n drop product for building Facebook tabs – no programming required.   There are numerous easy-build website tools out there, and Lujure is leading a similar charge in the Fb arena.

What’s really cool about this is that the company remains in Blacksburg, VA, home of Virginia Tech.   You drive there by going to Roanoke and then on up into the Appalachian mountains.  My one trip there was by charter to the local airport for the opening of Michael Vick’s sophomore and final season as a college QB.  Those of you who are into extreme football trivia will recall that game against Georgia Tech was halted at the opening whistle by a lightening bolt that vaporized Lee Corso’s (ESPN) rental car.  The airport is within walking distance of the stadium, and we got back to our King Air after a couple of hours under the stands where we were sheltered from a deluge.  I to pilot:  “Can we get out of here.”  Pilot: “Let’s load up fast, go to the end of the runway, and see what it looks like.”  Radar screen showed 100% storm.  Pilot: “Here we go.”  #livedtotell and #$500tailgatepartynofootball

But I digress, although I know many of my readers sometimes prefer my digressions.  The Mercury News, the very bastion of Valley journalism covered the general topic of the Fb ecosystem in an article last week.  They list the top 20 Bay Area companies thriving in this space and reckon that probably a quarter of the Fb related businesses are in that region.  They also cite a University of Maryland study which finds that all the Fb businesses employ directly 53,000 people and indirectly perhaps another 180,000.  The Fb offering is going to generate taxes that appear likely to save the California state budget, and who knows where national unemployment would stand in the absence of all this job creation.

A friend of mine who has about 600 SMB clients actually asked me this weekend whether Fb is something his clients should pay attention to or is just a passing fad.  I gave him my opinion that Fb advertising is proving to be very effective and that one can hardly ignore 900 million users.   And, the hype is just beginning as the IPO occurs.   The one Achilles heel of Fb – mobile advertising – is something that I think will be solved by location-based, time-sensitive, and click-to-call deals as people access Fb on the go.  This is just me talking, but I believe Fb is the exit strategy for all the deals companies not named Groupon.   We’ve run out of real estate on the phone for ads, and people won’t be keen to use their data allotments to see video promos, but you have the Holy Grail of targeting when your combine Fb data with location, time and instant voice connection.  As a consumer you’re about as exposed as you would be in a TSA millimeter wave scanner.

Students are applying now for the 1 Semester Startup Class at UT, and I know there are uncountable startup events, competitions, and summer programs across the country.  How many of them will add to the Facebook ecosystem and prove, like Lujure, that they don’t have to be in the Valley to do very well at that?

And, if as is probably likely the case, you can’t buy Fb shares at the IPO price, nothing is keeping you from cranking up a venture that shares in the wealth creation.   You’ll have even more “friends.”

Thanks to our sustaining sponsors MailChimp and TriNet.

<photo of King Air 200 we chartered from Epps Aviation, Atlanta>

More at AustinStartup.com

People ask me about the credibility of the latest “gimmicks” that business gurus are promoting.  They want to know if the investment matches the outcome.  The answer is “who knows…. it is up to you!”   Most programs on the market that teach career success have good ideas, but there is no way to achieve results than doing the work.  You must do the pay attention to the “job” (do good work) and to the “networking quotient” (establish connections that are meaningful).

We live in a world where everyone seeks shortcuts.  But for people to really know you and what makes you great… you need to invest the time to show them by your actions.  We can “know” someone superficially by reading their online profiles,…. but that does not mean we have a two-way trusting relationship.  If the goal is just to be “known” then the relationship is one sided.  You have to “know” the other people back.  People only care if they think you care.  Following a celebrity online is nice, but it is not a friendship (They do not know you back!).

Forget the gimmicks, shtick, and shortcuts…. make your strategy one of “Choosing People” and you will never be sorry for your efforts!

Have A Great Day.

thom singer

If you have a burning question that you would like answered, fill out the form here. And you can read past blog posts in the Reader Questions series here.

This month’s question comes from a nonprofit leader in Hong Kong. But his question is universal:

Dear Nell,

Congratulations on this great idea! Also for the excellent training given by your Webinars. I have one question–I am working in Hong Kong in a charity. Our goal is to organize a fundraising office here. As you may know, Hong Kong is a place where most of the people speak Cantonese. I speak English, and my staff is very limited–we are two. We are trying to develop our major donor program but it is quite difficult for us to expand and grow our portfolio of major donors. Any advice about how to expand our major donor list?

Thank you for your answer.

Yvan Castro

Yvan,

This is a great question and one on the minds of many, if not most, nonprofit leaders. Major donors can sometimes seem to be the holy grail of the nonprofit world. In order to expand your major donor list, you need a network of more than just you and your fellow staff member. The first place to look is your board. If correctly trained and successfully integrated into an overall major donor process, the board can instantly expand your network, your knowledge base and your ability to secure major gifts. And especially in your case, they can expand your ability to reach beyond your own language and cultural networks.

There are several steps to finding major donors for your organization.

1. Define a Major Gift. Your organization’s major donor level completely depends on the size and capacity of your current donor base. A major gift for a nonprofit is a level at which you have a few donors, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility, but most of your donors reside below that level.

1. Create a Goal. Once you have defined a major donor level you need to develop a major donor goal. How much are you currently raising at and above the major donor level you have just defined? What level of investment are you willing to put into this effort (additional staff, materials, database, etc)? Given that investment how much do you think you can grow those major donor gifts in this first year?

1. Break the Goal into Pieces. If you want to raise, say $100,000 from major gifts in the first year, you need to determine how those gifts will come in. You should get a lead gift of 10-20% of the goal, so your lead gift would be say $15,000. And then develop gift amounts at each levels below that, $10,000, $5,000, $2,500 and so on. You determine how many prospects to ask by the rule of thumb that it takes 4 asks to get a yes.

1. Create a Prospect List. Prospects must meet 2-3 of the three “C”s: 1)The Capacity to give a gift at or above your major donor level 2) A Concern, or interest in your mission and 3) A Connection to someone at the organization. So don’t just put together a list of anybody and everybody, work with your board, friends, other donors to the organization, staff, volunteers to brainstorm names of people who fit 2 or 3 of these criteria.

1. Begin to Cultivate. Once you have a list of people who meet 2 or 3 of the Cs, start to get to know them and let them get to know you and your organization’s work. Invite them for a tour, a meet-and-greet, a friend raiser. Start to develop a relationship.

1. Make a Compelling Ask. When you think they are ready, make an in-person, specific ask in an amount that you think is right for them, for a project that fits with their interests. Make sure that you have a compelling case for investment that you draw upon in order to convince a major donor prospect to invest.

If you want to learn more about finding individual donors, register for our June webinar.

Securing major gifts doesn’t have to be so hard, even for a very small staff. As long as you have a broader network of people willing to be involved, a compelling case for investment, and a systematic process for moving prospects to donors, you can find major donors. Good luck!

Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine

About the Author: Nell Edgington is President of Social Velocity (www.socialvelocity.net), a management consulting firm leading nonprofits to greater social impact and financial sustainability. Social Velocity helps nonprofits grow their programs, bring more money in the door, and use resources more effectively. For more information, check out Social Velocity consulting services and clients.

Follow me on Twitter | Find us on Facebook | Sign up for our E-Newsletter

Related posts:

1. How to Find Individual Major Donors
2. How to Find Individual Donors
3. Reader Question: How to Create a Budget for Nonprofit Growth

I work with the best clients. That may sound like “spin” coming from a public relations consultant, but it is true. They are all passionate about what they do, and understand the value of public relations. Many of them I consider more than clients, they are friends, and in one case – practically family.

My clients are concerned about my personal success and often refer me to others. They drop me thank you emails and even pick up the phone occasionally to say thank you for the work I’ve done. One client even sent me a beautiful flower arrangement on my birthday. Seriously, how could it get any better?

I often think to myself how fortunate I am to work with such great people, and then I remind myself of the formula for developing successful client relationships -

a clear understanding of your client + good communication = success.

When identifying my target client, one of the most key elements is whether or not the individual or company has used a public relations consultant or firm in the past. Those who have worked with PR firms previously are more likely to value the services I bring and understands the benefits of the profession as a whole. This puts me in the position of selling me, not my industry.

Communication, the other half of the equation, is just as important. Once a client has decided my company is a good fit, I do my best to lay out clear and specific expectations. I tell them how much their program will cost, how long it will take, etc. An important point here is setting expectations and being realistic.

Business development is a challenge for every industry, but the greater challenge is maintaining a positive and mutually beneficial relationship.

She was the executive director of a non-profit.

My answer was “Only if you might ever want to find another job or collect any donations from donors to your organization”.  Oh… “or if you ever plan to hire anyone”.  Or “if you are an active part of your business community!”

You should assume that everyone with whom you meet is looking for information about you before the appointment. This is not stalking, but instead a way to seek ideas for things and people you may have in common.

I also recommend that you never go to a meeting without reading the other person’s profile!  The little nuggets of information you obtain might be all you need to forge a meaningful conversation that leads to a more successful meeting.

My explanation to her included that it only matters if it matters to one other person who is looking for information about her (either to hire her, or because they are interested in her non-profit).  When people seek information and it is difficult to attain, they are filled with joy… they are frustrated.  When those who actively use LinkedIn as a research tool discover someone is not present (or has a lame profile), they often think “out of touch”.

If you are sure that nobody will ever seek information about you via LinkedIn, then it does not matter.  But for that one person to whom it does matter…. well……. what impression are you sending?

Your choice.

Have A Great Day.

thom singer