Last week I covered The 2009 National Conference on Volunteering & Service with [BusinessBoomer], the site that provides access to business leaders and social entrepreneurs hosted by the spunky Arabella Santiago. The conference and interviews were live streamed by [BusinessBoomer] and can be found on its home page. There were over 4,000 eager volunteer and service leaders from the across the nation gathered in San Francisco to embrace the President’s call for Volunteering and Service. The energy, passion and enthusiasm reached an intoxicating level as each speaker rooted for each and everyone in their community to get involved. The Opening General Ceremony was led by an extraordinary line up of motivational speakers including our very First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, California’s First Lady Maria Shriver, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi along with great entertainment.
An Action Packed First Day
It was an action packed first day with Michelle Obama and Maria Shriver spending the early afternoon acting as a personal example to all by participating in a community project by dedicating a playground to an elementary school in San Francisco. Michelle Obama also promoted President Obama’s call to service, United We Serve and highly encouraged all to access its newly launched site Serve.gov to find local volunteer opportunities. She also stressed for all to make volunteering “cool” and make time for it. Entertainers making a difference in their communities were there too, such as Bon Jovi who played at the opening ceremony and Alvin Ailey and Chaka Khan who entertained at the evening party at Fort Mason. In addition the sponsors involved were too numerous to name but I found it impressive that Target was a Title Sponsor, along with Shinnyo-en Foundation established by a lay Buddhist order, Shinnyo-en, which translated means “Borderless Garden of Truth as the Civic Energy Sponsor. Also present were Google, Chevron, KPMG, Bank of America, L’Oreal and so many other great civic-minded companies.
A Panel of Innovation and the “Social Intrepreneur”
A hot topic at the conference was “Innovation.” There is even a hip magazine called the Stanford Social Innovation Review that provides the strategies, tools and ideas for nonprofits, foundations, and socially responsible businesses. The session “Innovation and the Social Entrepreneur” panel, moderated by Jamie Hartman of the TapRoot Foundation, set the stage perfectly with a definition of “Social Intrapreneur,” as “ One who as an innovator makes change from within their organization. It involves learning how to bring projects to life through deft manipulation of the latent intellectual and financial capital inside.” The panelists, Gwyneth Borden of IBM, Gail Gershon of the Gap, and Joceyln Watt of Ideo were three accomplished women who had “walked-the-talk” and shared their personal experiences of creating innovation within their own companies and how they inspired others to get involved along with the best practices of working with a nonprofit and vice-versa. Cari Class, Principal of Design Source, who attended felt empowered after the session due to the tangible tools provided and ways to approach both nonprofit and companies to get involved and innovate.
Field Trip to Goodwill
I experienced Entrepreneurial Innovation in action with a field trip to Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin. Goodwill’s main mission is to provide education and career service to those who have huge obstacles to overcome due to past. Through their business of collecting donations and selling them online and at 17 retail outlets they are able to pay for 85% of the cost those services. Incredibly, every month they serve 325 program participants, place 73 people in jobs, process over 100,000 retail transactions, and divert 1.5 million lbs. of material goods from landfill. Goodwill is there to help those not so fortunate to get back on their feet with programs that will get them there such as there recently launched ReCompute Program that diverts used electronics, working or not, from their landfills and donations. They also offer job training and educational programs. After a tour of the facility of their large warehouse where their employees sort through their donations we met with Goodwill’s CEO Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez spoke about the challenges faced every day and how they are able to overcome them by working with the community, their partners such as Salesforce and through specially design programs that provide winners and contributors to our society. If you find yourself throwing away anything, think first about donating to Goodwill where it will be put to good use.
The Full Circle Finish
The conference was capped for [BusinessBoomer] with coverage of Full Circle Fund’s “Social Innovation: A White House Perspective” which featured Greg Nelson, formerly Vice Chair of the Environment / Energy Circle and now working full time at the White House as the Associate Director for Energy, Environment, and Technology in the Office of Public Engagement. By the end of the night with other inspiring speakers rooting for everyone to get involved, it really dawned on me the close access we all have to President Obama through these brilliant, hard working people and how important our issues are to him. If we just work together to make those changes happen then changes can and will happen in our economy, our environment, our schools and wherever we make the effort. I then finished the evening with great wine as after all, we were at the CrushPad venue, and continued to network and meet with some of the best, “good people” in San Francisco.
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