Social Enterprise Alliance Summit – 2010

Published on: by Gene Takagi Category:EVENTS, SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

I had the great pleasure of attending the first day of the SEA Summit in San Francisco this year.  Here are my tweets from the Summit:

  • Realize it's not just about your SE, it's about the movement – Jim Fruchterman
  • SEs in the UK: 62,000 SEs, 1% of GDP, 800,000 employees – Peter Holbrook, UK SE Coalition
  • Theme from opening plenary – approach gov't with solutions, not problems
  • Need to educate public on SE movement – Holbrook, UK SE Coalition – showed ID to Macy's clerk – "OMG, are you a socialist?"
  • Kathleen Martinez, DoL – Senate open to looking at new business models now – in light of Goldman Sachs
  • Holbrook – SEs improve resilience of economy; benefit everyone, not just the poor; and make an economic, not just a social, impact
  • Jennifer R Bishop – early in planning, don't let structure dictate activities; activities should lead to decision on structure
  • Bishop: If >10-15% of nonprofit's income from unrelated business activity, consider moving activity into a sub
  • L3C Session (Marc Lane): PRI Examples proposed by ABA Section of Taxation – http://is.gd/bNpru
  • Rosanne Haggerty re homelessness – "a lot cheaper to solve the problem than to just keep moving it around"
  • Haggerty: Homelessness is not the problem; it's the manifestation of a number of system failures.
  • Ken Kaplan: "You're not going to change the health system until you change the food system."
  • Kaplan: Strokes cost Americans $60B per year. System should not treat all strokes the same way; 95% are minor.
  • How do we avoid being overwhelmed with the complexity of social problems and fall back to (bandage) charity?
  • Chip Heath on change: struggle between the analytical and emotional components of our brains
  • Heath: We think the process is "Think, Analyze, Change" – but the real process is "See, Feel, Change" (understanding this is key)
  • Heath: Analytical side loves to focus on problems. Direct it to find the bright spots-what's working and how can we do more of it.
  • Heath: To change behavior, consider changing the environment instead of the person.
  • One missing emphasis from SEA Summit – the importance of diversity. A look at conference attendees suggests more work can be done.

Here are some of my favorite tweets from others about day two (Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable, is again the rockstar of the Summit, just as he was at ReVV2010):

  • SocialEarth: #SocEnt10 > 2010 Social Enterprise Summit: Final Day and Takeaway http://ow.ly/1Fq4f
  • deifell: Lightening rod for debate in nonprofit sector. If u want to see Dan Pallotta's keynote from #socent10 go here: http://bit.ly/biLtUN
  • plipska: Do u go into a store & buy the pair of shoes w/ the lowest overhead? But… you invest in charity w/out asking if it makes a diff
  • SSIReview: Dan Pallotta just quoted our article The #Nonprofit Starvation Cycle. #socent10. Read full article/attend the webinar: http://bit.ly/9Y2r7i
  • lestark: Donors reward nonprofits for low overhead not solving social problems..a vicious cycle that starves nonprofits, Dan Pallotta at #socent10
  • CreatingValue: The notion that overhead is not part of the cause forces charities to forgo the things they need to address the cause.
  • socialedge: #SocEnt10 conf: Curtis Chang: "mission" has shown up on time, but "marketplace" seems to have blown off the meeting" http://bit.ly/seAdvice

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