How To Use Technology To Maximize Success in Your Social Enterprise

Dahna Goldstein, of PhilanTech, LLC - one of America's most promising social entrepreneurs

This week’s guest on Planet Good Radio is one of Biz Weeks 25 most promising social entrepreneurs, Dahna Goldstein. As the founder of Philantech, LLC she has discovered how to utilize an important tool to help social sector organizations devote more time and resources to their core competencies and towards the vital products and services that they exist to provide.

Learning how to use Technology beneficially is increasingly important for the success of social enterprises, whether they are nonprofits, nonprofit subsidiaries, or for profits.  With the wrong organizational orientation towards technology, social enterprises risk wasting a lot of time, money and social impact.

PhilanTech, a founding B Corporation, is dedicated to using technology judiciously to enable social sector organizations to maximize service delivery and social impact.  Its suite of products, the PhilanTrack online grants management system, helps foundations and nonprofits redirect some of the $5 billion spent annually on grants administration towards the social impact the grants are intended to fund. Dahna also produced interactive eLearning programs, including the award-winning “What Is a Leader?” program, for Harvard Business School Publishing and Global Education Network. Dahna holds a BA from Williams College, a Master of Education degree, with a concentration in technology, from Harvard University, and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.o

Two organizations Dahna mentions in her interview are  www.nten.org and www.idealware.org.

Tune in Thursday to hear to learn new tips on how technology can improve your social enterprise.

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Divinely Successful: Pioneering a Fair Trade Chocolate Brand

Erin Gorman, CEO of Divine Chocolate, USA

Join us this Thursday on Planet Good Radio for a really sweet treat:  Chocolate!  That’s right – we’ll be speaking with Erin Gorman, the CEO of Divine Chocolate, a pioneering social enterprise co-owned by the farmers of Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana.

The success of Divine means that farmers have a secure source of Fair Trade income that continues to grow year on year. Kuapa Kokoo has invested its Fair Trade income in building schools, sinking wells for clean drinking water to villages, providing mobile medical clinics for farmers in remote growing regions, and fostering women’s income generation projects to help women earn additional income for their families when the cocoa season is over.

The farmers’ ownership stake in Divine Chocolate means that Kuapa Kokoo has a meaningful input into decisions about how Divine is produced and sold. In addition, Kuapa Kokoo receives a share in the profits from their ownership shares and in 2007 celebrated the first distribution of dividends from Divine in the UK.

The farmers of Kuapa Kokoo own one-third of Divine Chocolate in the US. Additional investment is provided by Divine Chocolate Ltd. in the UK, Lutheran World Relief, Oikocredit, and SERRV International.

Erin previously served as the Program Director for Co-op America (now Green America), expanding consumer activism to grow the green and fair trade marketplace. During her tenure she founded the Fair Trade Alliance, a network of community activists committed to building awareness about Fair Trade as a market based approach to development. Erin has been a consultant for several Fair Trade nonprofit organizations and commercial companies. She is the past Vice Chair of the Fair Trade Federation, the US trade association for Fair Trade businesses.

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The Top 10 Things Businesses Can Do to ‘Weather’ this Economy

Drew Tulchin, Managing Partner of Social Enterprise Associates

This week on Planet Good Radio we will talk with Drew Tulchin, Managing Partner of Social Enterprise Associates – a consulting firm that specializes in fostering ‘triple bottom line’ solutions supporting entrepreneurs, their organizations, and the industries in which they operate.

Drew will share with us his best tips and advice on how small and medium businesses can survive ‘this economic winter.’   He’ll also give us some great resources he’s found to be of value in running a successful social enterprise.

Drew’s professional experience spans the non-profit, for-profit, public and banking sectors. He has helped launch 15 entities, including 501c3 status for 5 non-profits. His consulting has taken him across the U.S. and to more than 20 countries. He has written dozens of socially entrepreneurial business plans. Prisma Microfinance’s co-written plan was a Global Social Venture Competition award winner, published, and used to raise $1.2 million in private equity capital. Drew was Director of a U.S. microfinance organization, the CDFI called ECDC/Enterprise Development Group, which served immigrants and low-income people. He was also Program Officer for Grameen Foundation, serving as the founding staff person of the Capital Markets Group.

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