Tag Archives | Failure & Perseverance

Mining Gold in E-Waste and Ex-Cons

By on April 2, 2013 in Building a Social Venture, Social Entrepreneurship, Stories of Impact

Kabira Stokes is YOXI’s newest Social Innovation Rockstar (SIR) — Yoxi’s term for entrepreneurs who are rocking the social innovation Casbah.  We were inspired by Kabira’s unique ability to realize how seemingly unrelated problems can be linked together to form a systemic solution. Stokes’ triple-bottom-line social enterprise was built on the realization that hundreds of [...]

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Need a Break?

By on April 1, 2013 in Building a Social Venture, Impact Assessment, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

If you’re like me, chances are you sat and made a business plan that was based off the idea that you’d raise upwards of $50,000 the first year your organization was registered. You likely visited DoSomething and applied for some starter grants and checked out the DoSomething Award winners. Then, at some point, somebody told you [...]

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Founder’s Syndrome vs. Organizational Sustainability

By on March 8, 2013 in Social Entrepreneurship, Social Intrapreneurship

Starting a social change organization is often hard for the same reasons that make it feel easy. For instance, if you’re an entrepreneur, working for yourself is much more fun than doing what someone else says. But working for yourself has at least one very serious side effect that must be managed: Often without the [...]

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What’s Luck Got To Do With It?

By on February 4, 2013 in Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

Over fifty percent of all new businesses fail within the first year. After almost three semesters of studying business in college, I’m still not really sure whether professors share the statistic with intentions of intimidation or inspiration. It seems to me that many students are actually comforted by this percentage, it reassures them of the [...]

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The Way of Failing

By on November 30, 2012 in Building a Social Venture

I have had the luxury of failing at something that I cared deeply about in my life, but I have refused to let it define me as a person. Rather, the act of failing is a blessing. For those of you tirelessly and thanklessly working to make an impact in the lives of others, I [...]

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Social Changers: Sometimes Alone but Always in Good Company

By on November 14, 2012 in Education, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

Recently people have given me compliments that genuinely make me feel uncomfortable. I am not doing anything that anyone else cannot do. I am no genius, I am not a doctor, nor a teacher, nor a mother. I’m just a girl trying to figure out the balance between passion, human capacity, and the needs that [...]

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