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November 28, 2007

Free Rice: Feed the Hungry, Spruce Up Your English

On one of my more lethargic post-lunch procrastination sessions recently, after a particularly soporific curry, I stumbled upon Free Rice, a site that a friend had sent me a while ago but I hadn't really taken the time to look at.

Half an hour later my food coma had lifted but I was still clicking away. Talk about addictive… The thing was I didn't really feel all that guilty.

A sister site of Poverty.com, Free Rice aims to help people improve their English while simultaneously using the process by which they do to provide food to hungry people. A laudable goal (or two depending how you look at it.) How it works is the site provides a word and then provides you with options from which you have to pick the correct one.

Urbane
a) Lackluster
b) Suave
c) Wrathful
d) Bear-like

There's a mix of words so that the site appeals to people who have a very basic grasp of English as well as to the more erudite. The program keeps track of each word one gets right or wrong and then adjusts the difficulty level accordingly, hence keeping you interested.

Until yesterday, for every word you got right, Free Rice donated 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. As of today, it has started donating 20 grains. Pretty cool…

I sent the site to a whole bunch of people I know and the overwhelmingly positive reactions it elicited got me thinking about how remarkable it is that something this simple can be so effective.

What can other non-profits learn? First and most importantly, if you can make doing good fun, there's nothing like it. People like to feel good about themselves, like they're responsible citizens of the world who care about more than shopping and football. But at the same time, if a good deed takes away from other parts of their lives, or is boring and tedious, the likelihood that people will do good decreases drastically.

Which leads me to my next point: simplicity is key. The great part about Free Rice is just how simple giving is -- no long and annoying forms, no credit card numbers, no billing addresses, no trawling through lines of disclaimers. Just a lazy click of a button and you can pat yourself on the back. Sounds a bit dodgy admittedly, but the site makes money off advertising.

Continue reading "Free Rice: Feed the Hungry, Spruce Up Your English"

Posted by Saabira Chaudhuri at 4:51 PM | 5 Comments

September 19, 2007

Innovation Wednesday: Unique Social Networking Site helps Iraq War Veterans Find Work

Some returning Iraq war veterans are facing another battle at home: The fight to find a job. In fact, unemployment among young veterans is significantly higher than non-veterans in the same age group, mostly 22-24, and dramatically higher than the general population at large. This is frustrating from a moral standpoint, but also troubling from a practical one: Why aren't the skills taught in the military translating more easily into the private sector?

Continue reading "Innovation Wednesday: Unique Social Networking Site helps Iraq War Veterans Find Work"

Posted by Ellen McGirt at 2:10 PM | Add Comment

April 16, 2007

Ideas that Change the World

Remember being a kid and wishing that you could change the world or solve world-hunger? Well, there are adults out there who still believe it is possible and who get together to make it happen in the form of Pop!Tech.

Pop!Tech is a non-profit organization that believes in progress, even if that progress is made by a small group of people one baby step at a time. For the last decade, the company has been holding its annual conference in Camden, Maine where change-agents from all over the world gather in a non-formal setting to make the world a better place. You can get the inside scoop on Pop!Tech 2006 right here at Fast Company.

But if that is just not enough, you can check out a new series of podcasts by Pop!Tech called Pop!Casts, showcasing the great minds of last year's conference.

**Fast Company is a media partner of Pop!Tech

Posted by Lisa LaMotta at 3:31 PM | 2 Comments

March 13, 2007

Thursday is Careday

This Thurday marks the launch of Caredays, a monthlong service-stravaganza facilitated by the Center for Companies that Care. Caredays is an annual, national initiative to engage individuals and employers in activities that foster great work environments—and to collaboratively address a challenging social issue.

So last year, employers collected funds to purchase athletic equipment for five Mississippi school districts that had been hit by Hurricane Katrina. (Participating companies went on a "Care-a-van" to visit the schools they had connected with.)

This year, the plan is to provide medical supplies to three non-profit community health clinics. Individual employees can participate by following a handy calendar of activities—and donating accordingly. Employers can register their plan for company-wide fundraising programs.

It’s a neat program: an opportunity for a small act of charity—and better, a national commitment to service.

Posted by Keith Hammonds at 9:37 AM | Add Comment

December 12, 2006

The Season for Giving

It's that time of year. The time when folks start focusing on loved ones -- and, well, giving. Some of us are even thinking about the charitable contributions that we can make by year's end.

This year, the Case Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Steve Case (of AOL) and his wife Jean, decided to highlight simple ways individuals can give their time or money to improve their communities and the world.

In this Holiday Giving spotlight, the Case Foundation rounds up a series of helpful articles: a guide to Charitable Gift Giving, an interview with Ben Goldhirsh, founder of GOOD magazine, and a piece on online giving contributed by Network for Good reviews how new technologies are responding to the giving demands of younger philanthropists.

While you're in the spirit of giving, be sure to check out the 43 Entrepreneurs profiled in the 2007 Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards. Each profile features a "make a donation" link, so that you can donate to the charity of your choice.

Posted by Lynne d Johnson at 8:07 PM | Add Comment

October 26, 2006

Credit For All

For Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, access to credit is a human right. Providing credit to the world’s poor, Yunus believes, clashes with the profit-maximizing goal of conventional banks. However, entrepreneurs, such as eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar, are looking to transform microfinance institutions into revenue-driven businesses that raise money in the capital markets instead of depending on donations.

That conflict – between "pure do-gooders and profit-minded do-gooders" – is the focus of Connie Bruck’s article “Millions for Millions” in the latest issue of The New Yorker.

There’s nothing wrong with the desire to both help the poor and make money doing it. However, as Bruck’s article points out, the microfinance debate transcends the question of motivation and comes down to whether the core mission of microfinance institutions -- alleviating poverty -- can be distorted by the pursuit of higher profits. “The Yunus faction worries about “mission drift,” saying that, as the drive for profitability increases, only the so-called “less poor” (as opposed to the very poor) will qualify for loans,” Bruck wrote.

When Yunus started giving out credit to the poor, he didn’t discriminate between the “very poor” and those “less poor.” The bank he founded serves everyone, beggars included. And it’s essential for microfinance institutions, whether commercial or nonprofit, to make that same commitment and never default on it.

Posted by Polya Lesova at 2:41 PM | 1 Comment

September 1, 2005

Blogging Hurricane Relief

The devastation Hurricane Katrina has wrought has been overwhelming and difficult to process. I'm sure many of you out there feel powerless to do anything to help.

Kudos then to Strengthen the Good for its efforts to harness the passion of the blogosphere and its many devoted readers to do something positive to ameliorate the suffering and destruction of the hurricane's wake. As Alan posted:

Matching programs are wonderful because of their obvious multiplier effect. And in the absence of a general matching fund for Katrina where any citizen can contribute, I've decided to create one of my own: Matching the Good, where bloggers act as their own matching fund for victims of the disaster.

Here's what I suggest: Bloggers, rather than just making a donation to their charity of choice, challenge their readers to match the level of the donation by Midnight of next Monday (that allows five days for donations).

I'll go first: Strengthen The Good will make a matching donation to the Red Cross 2005 Hurricane relief fund up to a total of $1,000.

I don't know what we here at FC Now can do to join this effort; I'll look into that after hitting save here. But I didn't want to wait in encouraging our readers to enlist their own blogs or authors of their favorites to join this effort.

Posted by David Lidsky at 1:40 PM | 7 Comments

August 9, 2005

How Innovative Leadership Impacts Customer Experience: Part 2

This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke: What do you get when you combine:

• A nuclear engineer
• A rap artist
• An FBI agent
• An AOL / Time Warner executive
• A professional stand-up comedian

How about a church leadership team? As an experience architect, I've been exploring ways that innovative leadership is imprinted on customer experience. New Life Christian Church is a great case study. It's one of those unique places where the customer experience definitely reflects the drive and innovation of its leaders... and there's something to be learned for all.

Continue reading "How Innovative Leadership Impacts Customer Experience: Part 2"

Posted by Leigh from LivePath.net at 7:39 PM | Add Comment

August 8, 2005

How Innovative Leadership Impacts Customer Experience - Part 1

We've talked a lot about innovative leadership. As an experience architect, I'm also interested in how innovative leadership is reflected in customer experience. Let me hear from you on this one.

I'll start us off by contributing some information about a company called Honest Tea, which relates to Peter Rees' post on Social Impact and Profit.

Honest Tea's Co-Founder Seth Goldman's passion for quality, community, culture and socially responsible trade is reflected in the products he makes. As an innovative tea aficionado, Seth introduced high quality, less sweet teas, bottled with social conscience to the market in 1998. His teas and newly launched lemonades are now sold at national retailers and health food stores around the country.

Continue reading "How Innovative Leadership Impacts Customer Experience - Part 1"

Posted by Leigh from LivePath.net at 10:57 PM | 2 Comments

Pay It Forward

Have you received important support in your professional (or personal) life from an unlikely source, beyond family and close friends? I have... and it has committed me to "paying it forward."

Continue reading "Pay It Forward"

Posted by Mike Docherty at 10:57 PM | 3 Comments

May 6, 2005

Skip Lunch, Fight Hunger

When I arrived at work this morning, I had a brown paper bag at my desk that I've been instructed to put money into. No, there's nothing untoward taking place here, just a great idea to give something back. Monday is Skip Lunch, Fight Hunger day. The idea is for us overfed office workers to forego lunch one day and take what we would've spent and donate it to City Harvest to help feed New York City children in need.

New York is a great place for this to happen, because lunch can get pretty darn expensive around here. A takeout sandwich, small bag of chips, a drink, and a piece of fruit at a deli is almost certain to exceed $10, and if you dare go to a "tablecloth" restaurant, you're almost certainly looking at $25 a person minimum.

But this idea could be done anywhere, not just in places with outrageous prices. The Skip Lunch idea was hatched by the editor of Food & Wine Magazine, so you don't have to be a social capitalist either to devise a program where you live to help people in need.

I'll be stuffing the dollar equivalent of a froufrou lunch in this bag (maybe I'll even pretend that I got a rice krispy treat (two dollars!) for dessert), and I hope all my colleagues and anyone reading this does the same. To learn more about the program and to donate, follow this link.

Posted by David Lidsky at 10:47 AM | 1 Comment