The Business of the Third Sector by Guest Blogger Jody Mahoney

Guest Blogger Jody Mahoney is the Vice President of Business Development for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

The Business of the Third Sector

This is a two-part blog post that focuses on the mainstreaming of social enterprise in the nonprofit/nongovernmental organization sector and the impact of women as social enterprise funders; and technical women as social entrepreneurs.

Noticing a Common Gender Thread: Women as Social Enterprise Funders

I recently facilitated a workshop on social entrepreneurs and social enterprise at the 2009 Connecting Up conference in Sydney, having raised capital for three social enterprises--OpNet Community Ventures, TechSoup Global, and the Anita Borg Institute. I’ve secured loans, generated earned income, developed shared revenue through international partnerships, and served on the Advisory Board of the Nonprofit Finance Fund. I admire and thrive at the convergence of business skills and NGO mission. I appreciate the infusion of new forms of capital that accompanies the growth of venture philanthropy.

One need only look at examples like the GSIX—the Global Social Investment Exchange whose goal is to evaluate the “potential for a Global Social Investment Exchange infrastructure.” If you don’t know Lucy Bernholz, Founder and President of Blueprint Research and Design—a brilliant woman, pegged as part of the GSIX project, then check out her blog http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/

Or Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder and CEO, Acumen Fund http://www.acumenfund.org/. Check out her book The Blue Sweater

Or Shari Berenbach, President and CEO, Calvert Foundation http://www.calvertfoundation.org/

Or Mari Karaishi, Founder and President, GlobalGiving Foundation http://www.globalgiving.com/

Finally, my particular favorite—Clara Miller, President and CEO, Nonprofit Finance Fund www.nff.org who had the foresight to establish NFF Capital Partners. I credit Clara with teaching me about social enterprise funding, and I once watched her take on a traditional, noblesse oblige type funder in a room filled with other funders. Read Clara’s articles and publications at http://www.nonprofitfinancefund.org/details.php?autoID=82

The upcoming September 2009 Clinton Global Initiative meeting will focus on social enterprise. The 2nd annual SoCap09 Social Capital Markets Conference September 1, 2009 in San Francisco by the folks at Good Capital broadly defines itself as the intersection of money and meaning. President Obama opened an office of Social Innovation in order to fund innovative, nonprofit social enterprises with some serious funding behind it.

All are converging in a kind of mashup that really doesn’t care whether it’s for profit, non profit, or some combination of the two. What matters is creating an inflection point--making change.

Many, but not all, of these social enterprises are launched by social entrepreneurs and like any entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur will use whatever form necessary for the success of his or her work. The Skoll Foundation elegantly and simply defines it: a social entrepreneur functions as society’s change agent—a pioneer of innovations that benefit humanity. Check out Ashoka, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Draper Richards Foundation, Acumen Fund, Kiva, Grameen Bank, Finca International, Calvert Foundation, Nonprofit Finance Fund and the many wonderful profiles on Skoll’s website.

Getting Down to Business—Women as Social Entrepreneurs

Bravo to the Skoll Foundation. Bravo. Of the 59 social entrepreneurs funded by Skoll over the past several years, 29 of them are women—almost 50%. And if it is true, as ABI’s research shows, that women technologists are most interested in developing technology serving a broader social good, then I should be able to find women social entrepreneurs that are also great technologists, yes?

I hold as the gold standard Mary Lou Jepson, former CTO of One Laptop Per Child and founder and CEO of Pixel QI. Named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2008 for her work in creating One Laptop per Child where she was the founding chief technology officer and its first employee, Jepson was the keynote at ABI’s 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration.

Here are a few of the remarkable women--scientists, doctors, engineers and technologists that make up Skoll's portfolio of social entrepreneurs.

Victoria Hale, Ph.D., Founder and Chair Emeritus, Institute for OneWorld Health, a nonprofit pharmaceutical company that develops safe, effective, and affordable new medicines for people with infectious diseases in the developing world. http://www.oneworldhealth.org/

Engineer and Managing Director Susan Burns, Global Footprint Network which tracks how much the human demand on nature exceeds what the planet can regenerate. This measure, applied by several countries, hundreds of cities and organizations across the world, has become a leading sustainability indicator. Global Footprint Network’s goal is to institutionalize the Ecological Footprint in at least 10 key nations by 2015. http://www.footprintnetwork.org

Industrial Engineer, Founder and Director Albina Ruiz Rios, Founder and Director Ciudad Saludable, a consortium of three groups working throughout Peru and the Andean region whose mission is to contribute to a better quality of life by the means of an efficient solid waste management system. An efficient solid waste management system facilitates cleaner cities and generates employment. www.ciudadsaludable.org.

Liliana Madrigal, Vice President of Programs, The Amazon Conservation Team, with Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist, created the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) to help preserve the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people. ACT currently partners with 25 local tribes in Brazil, Colombia and Suriname to protect the rainforest by using sophisticated mapping technology and by establishing legal claims. By 2011, ACT’s goal is to double the number of rainforest acres mapped and managed from 40 million to 80 million. http://www.amazonteam.org/

ACM Award Ceremony

On Saturday I attended the annual ACM awards dinner. It is a wonderful event, a chance to see friends and colleagues. ACM goes all out to recognize the leaders in the Computing field. I was honored this year to receive the ACM distinguished service award. I've included a picture of me with the award, and with my husband (who graciously agreed to attend the event, he isn't big on crowds).

The evening hero was Barbara Liskov, from MIT, who received the ACM Turing award, the Nobel prize of the Computing Community. Barbara is a superstar in her own right, her impact on the field and the community is legendary. Barbara is the second women to receive this award, after my dear friend Fran Allen, and with her selection, having a woman recipient becomes a trend rather than a single event.

There were a number of other remarkable women on Saturday night, Barbara Grosz, a friend and colleague from Harvard, received the Allen Newell Award. Susan Eggers from the University of Washington received the Athena Lecturer Award. Unfortunately there were not many women fellows, but there were two who were present.

One of the exciting parts (for me) of the evening, was the ACM Student Research Competition. All three undergraduate recipients were women, and joined the overall SRC competition through the SRC competition at the Grace Hopper Conference. The three winners were Sarah Loos, from Indiana University, Neha Singh, from ITT Bombay, and Alice Zhu, from Harvey Mudd College. Here is a picture of me with Sarah.

I will be off the next three weeks, but I've arranged for an interesting selection of guest bloggers for TechHer. Have a great July!

Grace Hopper Celebration Early-Early Registration

It is summer time, and I am getting ready to leave for a trip to Istanbul and Greece - I am excited, I've always wanted to go. I've had my head focused on all the important last minutes items that need to happen before I leave.

But I was reminded today in our staff meeting that the early-early deadline for the Grace Hopper Conference is coming up on July 6th.

This years conference is very exciting. The theme is "Creating Technology for Social Good", and the program includes Megan Smith from Google.org, and Fran Berman, former head of the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

But the ideas of technology for social good permeate the conference. The topics are wide ranging - breaking through the glass ceiling, starting an interdisciplinary department, as well as how to land a job. It will be hard to chose.

I know how empowering the Grace Hopper Conference can be. I talked to several industry colleagues who decided that if their company wouldn't pay for them, they would drive together from California, and share a room.

Remember the date - I hope to see you there. Remember the early bird date - July 6th.

Image of Computing - the Gender Gap

A report was recently released from the New Image for Computing project, led by WGBH and ACM. I've been following this initiative, and in fact ABI was part of the genesis for some of the project launch. I'm proud to say that the work has taken a life of its own, and with this report has provided us with some great data that we can use for change.

The results of the study that this report describes found significant differences between boys and girls attitudes towards Computing. For example, the study found that
74% of boys (regardless of race or ethnicity) reported that a college major in computer science was a “very good” or “good” choice for them. Among the girls, however, computer science fared poorly—only 10% of the girls rated it as a “very good” choice and 22% rated it as “good.”

The report also describes differences in career choices. For example (from the report)

• While 64% of boys rated “being passionate about your job” as “extremely important,” 78%
of the girls felt the same.
• Earning a high salary rated “extremely important” to 50% of all boys, but only 39% of all girls.
• And “having the power to do good and doing work that makes a difference” rated “extremely
important” to 56% of the girls in comparison to 47% to the boys.


I learned about the report when a columnist Chris O'Brien from the Mercury News contacted me. His most recent column talks about this gap, and how he would like it to be different for his daughter.

I had two nieces visiting this last week - Erin (17) and Whitney (14). Because I've been hanging with them, I've been particularly aware of the messages for girls and young women. I see how so many girls are comfortable with technology, but don't see any attraction with creating technology. I agree with the report that the messages we provide our youth are the attractors for many of their life decisions. I remember a young engineer describing her experience in an High School AP Computer Science class. Because the teacher favored the boys, and geared her lessons for those who begin programming in Elementary school, this young engineer felt very isolated. She passed the class, but swore never to get near a computer again in her life. Fortunately she was exposed to new images of Computing in college, and she changed her mind.

This report is important. The action we take from here is even more so.

ACM Distinguished Member

A few years ago I agreed to co-chair the Distinguished member committee of the ACM together with Marc Snir from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. This was a new effort on the part of ACM to provide an opportunity for many senior members of the ACM professional organization, to be recognized for their contributions. This year we’ve provided additional guidance on the definition and criteria of the three member categories – Distinguished engineer, Distinguished scientist, and Distinguished educator.

I encourage you to consider nominating a colleague or a friend who has worked n the field for 15 years, I encourage you to apply for this distinction. I’d particularly love to see more women apply, unfortunately, we still see way too few. My goal is to increase women nominations by a factor of four in the next few years. The deadline is July 31st.

Please see the ACM site for information

History and Hard Work

Last Friday, several staff members and I cleaned out ABI's off site storage. I've been at ABI for almost seven years, and the storage unit pre-dates me. Every year, ABI holds a couple of large events, and we need a place to store large items such as the GHC banners. But like many organizations (and many people), we kept adding to our increasingly large pile of storage stuff, increasing our one storage unit to two units. What we realized was that no one knew what was in these two crammed storage units, and we could never find anything. For example, while preparing for the last Women of Vision event, we couldn't find the large badge holders that are critical for the event. Eventually we found them at the back, and under everything else.

We all knew it was time for a change.

There was five of us last Friday - Jerri, Kathy, Rachelle, Deanna, and me - as well as two hired men to help us move boxes. We organized and sorted all of ABI's "stuff" in two hours, and found that magically, the useful items fit in one storage unit.

Yes, there was a large stack of trash (it was sent away).

But we also had a truck load of donated items, mostly t-shirts, but including Frisbees and other ABI items. Since I had the pick up truck, at the end of the clean up, I had a pick-up over stuffed with our donated items.

Sometimes it is hard to give items away. Jerri had found a homeless shelter that took donations. I arrived at the shelter, with my stuffed truck of donation items, only to find that the shelter was a small place, and they could only take a few boxes. But no need to worry, there was a Goodwill office down the street in San Jose.

When I arrived at the Goodwill address, it turned out that this particular site was a distribution and sorting center, filled with volunteers, none of whom knew what to do with my stuffed truck. Eventually I found someone in charge, and she gave me a list of Goodwill's that would take donations.

I left, list in hand, on my quest to give our stuff away.

I picked from the list one of the Goodwill centers in Cupertino, which was on my way to the office. I had an address, no phone number, but with my trusty GPS, I was able to find the address. The problem was, there was no Goodwill store at this address. Who know, perhaps it was an old list. In any case, there I was again, with a stuffed truck, and no one to take our donations.

I then drove my stuffed truck to my trusty Goodwill office, the one near my house, that I had visited many times. The location wasn't exactly convenient, but it had the advantage of existing. When I arrived, a very nice Goodwill staff member helped me unload our ABI donations. Finally the truck was empty.

Who knew that trying to be helpful could be so hard.

High School Education Welcomes Computing

Jane Margolis and Joanna Goode, recently wrote a remarkable new book called Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing, where Jane and Joanna, as well as other researchers, investigated the education offerings of three high schools in Los Angeles. Here is the overview

The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in Computer Science is disproportionately low, according to recent surveys. In Stuck in the Shallow End, Jane Margolis looks at the daily experiences of students and teachers in three Los Angeles public high schools: an overcrowded urban high school, a math and science magnet school, and a well-funded school in an affluent neighborhood. She finds an insidious "virtual segregation" that maintains inequality.

I read this book recently. It was an easy read, but thoughtful and compelling. It has trampled my ideas of education and technology. In particular, the booked talked about a school that was technology rich (they had been given many computers through a grant), and was held up as a model for succesful technology schools. But the high school did not have the curriculum that went with the computers, and student left only able to go into many of the low end jobs where they used computers, but had not learned much about Computer Science

I loved the part where Jane talks about how the reseachers decided to throw down their outside researcher status, and create new programs that achieved remarkable changes in these schools.

This research study and the results were covered last week in the LA Times.

Joanna Goode, as well as my friend Bobby Schnabel, and others provided a well received briefing to Congress. Excerpts from the article follow

Reporting from Washington -- With President Obama calling math and science education the key to good jobs in our future economy, Congress was told Wednesday that a pilot program in Los Angeles schools has started to show promising results in computer science....
Computer science is the iPhone. It is social networking and downloading MP3s," [Joanna Goode] said. If schools approach the subject as a way to study how technology powers "the things they already do for fun, it is much more effective." ....
The first hurdle was enticing students who traditionally viewed computer science as a profession for "geeky white guys with pocket protectors" or "people in lab coats," she said. And the key to changing those perspectives was to show them how they already use technology.

It is truly exciting to me to see results as significant as what Jane describes in her book, and to see these ideas listened to in Washington. We have an administration that seems to be interested in changing our Math, Computing and Technology education. I am beginning to be optimistic about the future.