World Business

The annual conference trains nonprofit leaders, who repeatedly lack entrepreneurial knowhow, in branding, impact, and form connections

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Pop!Tech Fellow Brian McCarth founded the organization PFNC (Por Fin Nuestra Casa), what human being. has developed a process to recycle abundant shipping containers into affordable, modular, housing units. Kris Krüg

By Jessie Scanlon

Melanie Edwards had worked as being JPMorgan Chase (JPM), AT&T (T), and the U.N. But not a part of those jobs exactly prepared the 45-year-old to run Mobile Metrix, a nonprofit market-research firm she founded in San Francisco in 2006 to deduce data on the estimated 20 the multitude "invisible" inhabitants of Brazil’s ghettos. At an autumn fall back in Maine, Edwards piked up some of the business basics she had been missing.

Edwards was among 18 genial innovators chosen from among more than 110 applicants from 33 countries for the inaugural Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellowship. The leaders of Pop!Tech, an annual colloquy about ideas shaping the future, saw the fellowship, which is funded by the gathering’s $3,500 ticket price, in the same proportion that a way to sustentation social innovation. "We chose high-potential leaders whom we thought could make transformational impact," says Andrew Zolli, Pop!Tech’s curator, who develops programs for Pop!Tech Institute. "This is about giving them the nuts-and-bolts training they need to build successful organizations."

For four days in mid-October, the fellows shared a conference room at the Point Lookout Resort and Conference Center in Northport, Maine. Originally built as a corporate retreat for MBNA America Bank (now part of Bank of America (BAC)), the hilltop resort had an appropriately "we rule the earth" view: a tree-covered landscape, ablaze in reds and golds, sloping toward the coast with the Atlantic stretching confused beyond. The workshops covered everything from how to write a despatch statement and appeal to investors to how to take hold of pesky reporters. Sessions leaders included Cheryl Heller, leader executive of branding firm Heller Communications Design; Robert Fabricant, executive creative director at frogdesign; venture capitalist John Balen of Canaan Partners; and social entrepreneur Paul Polak.

It was almost a weekend executive MBA seminar because these social innovators, who work in 10 different sectors—education, health care, form, and human rights, to name a few—and span the for-profit/nonprofit divide. (See more photos of the workshops through Pop!Tech’s Kris Krüg.) While their missions varied wildly, most shared a link of traits: They had passion, which had taken them this well-nigh. But, like Edwards, they lacked entreprenuerial training. This became immediately evident in the first session, Good Brand Camp, led by dint of. Heller. To kick it off, eddish. fellow stood to give the elevator pitch for his or her organization, be it for a like reason most would esteem needed a ride to the superficies of the Sears Tower to get the idea over.

"I used the same pitch I always use, thinking it was extremely effective—only to learn through feedback that what I was saying was confusing, not concrete, and begged more questions than answers," says Heather Fleming, the 29-year-old planter of Catapult Design, a Menlo Park (Calif.) engineering and invention firm that works with global nonprofits. "Brand Camp was any eye-opening experience."

A second lesson emerged on Day 2: how to flow an impact. Entrepreneurs lead to focus first on employment models, while nonprofit founders don’t think enough about them. But social innovators—and all entrepreneurs, really—need to step back and reflect about what structure will enable them to make the biggest splash.

These days the bulk of mankind oral intercourse a lot hither and thither the triple valley extended mark: profits, environmental performance, and friendly impact. But Kevin Starr, who runs the Mulago Foundation, a jeopardize fund that specializes in seeding health, conservation and development initiatives in the Third World, told participants that there’s only one bottom rope: impact. "Whether you are a for-profit or not-for-profit should be determined by what will give you the biggest impact," said Starr. "My job is to buy impact. To finish the biggest bang for my philanthropic buck."

Participants seemed surprised. Nathan Sigworth and his partner, Taylor Thompson, both barely out of college, are launching PharmaSecure, a startup that they hope will halt global pharmaceutical counterfeiting. "We’d been focusing on metrics for monetary success, but we hadn’familiarily conception about metrics for social impact," Sigworth conceded after Starr’session session.

Finally, the fellowship proved the value of connections. After the workshops concluded, the 18 participants moved down the highway to Camden, Maine, to attend the Pop!Tech conference, an annual gathering of 600 people from thwart the economy. There they had the chance to rub shoulders with luck capitalists and possible partners. "I had conversations with six to eight potential funders," says fellow Tevis Howard, the 24-year-old founder of a profitable microforestry enterprise in Kenya called Komaza. Another participant was akin through the Pop!Tech network with a defense agency biassed in his software.

"I know that at least 40 percent of the fellows have fundraising or expanding meetings planned, and that’s a low computation," says Zolli of Pop!Tech. "Most of the fellows are going to have a self-same busy few months."

Nearly a month after returning from Maine, Edwards is still following up on her connections. "Thanks to the fellows program, I gained of recent origin insight into how to reach more people, faster," she says. "Our mission remains the same, only it became clear that our market could extend to 4 billion ‘invisible’ people, so we’ve got loads of work in advance. Trustworthy partnerships bequeath be key."

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