Tag Archives | Starting the Journey

10 Tips for Aspiring Social Entrepreneurs

By on March 11, 2013 in Building a Social Venture, Fundraising, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

We’d all like to think that beyond the warm and fuzzy feeling we get from donating or volunteering, our efforts lead to some form of sustainable change. But how can we measure our impact amidst all the negative news about wasted aid and futility? We certainly don’t profess to know the answers, but in the [...]

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Why You Should NOT Start a Nonprofit Organization

By on March 4, 2013 in Non-Profit Management, Non-Profits, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

There seems to be a trend in starting nonprofit organizations. Everyone wants to do it, and I’ve had several 19-22 year-olds ask me how it’s done. The first thing I ask them is why they want to start a nonprofit. Why not collaborate with another program or project that is already in existence? Most tell [...]

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I Am Only One But Still I Am One…Lesson Learned.

By on February 6, 2013 in Building a Social Venture, Education, Poverty, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey, Women's Empowerment

Helen Keller once said “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do”.  This has been the most challenging concept I have yet to face and accept in [...]

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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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Haiti, Fierce Hope, and Social Enterprise

By on November 21, 2012 in Starting the Journey

“What the heck am I doing?” I’ve asked myself that question countless times in the year and a half since starting my own social venture.  From marketing and pricing to web design and hiring, half the time I feel like I’m just making things up as I go along and the other half of the [...]

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It All Started in a Dorm Room.

By on November 16, 2012 in Featured, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey, Women's Empowerment, Youth Development

When people ask me how on earth I ended up starting my non-profit Women LEAD at the age of 20, I often don’t know what to respond. The process of starting Women LEAD is full of moments of luck meeting opportunity.  If you had told me 4 years ago that I would be co-founding a [...]

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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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Changing the World: One Minute at a Time

By on November 12, 2012 in Arts & Culture, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been involved in some kind of social good.  My parents were big supporters of giving back and helping out in our communities.  I don’t remember a time when we didn’t think about donating things or including people. Then when I entered school, community service became part of [...]

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Launching a Successful Non-Profit: Four Crucial Lessons

By on November 2, 2012 in Education, Non-Profits, Social Entrepreneurship

In the 8 months it took to launch our tech non-profit, StudentDonate.com, my team and I learned a ton of critical lessons along the way.  Below are the top 4 lessons we’ve learned that will help any burgeoning or even established social entrepreneur. Your Website Needs to Rock – Face it, in the 21st century [...]

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SocialChange.is About the Journey

By on October 30, 2012 in Featured, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

It’s 3:55 in the morning on Wednesday, August 8, 2012 – launch day for SocialChange.is. As I type this post in bed, I know I won’t be getting any more sleep tonight. I woke up about an hour ago and have been thinking about everything that needs to happen today. All the emails I need [...]

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An Unexpected Passion for High-Tech Social Entrepreneurship

By on October 26, 2012 in Education, Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

It started over dinner in San Francisco with an old friend named Ryan I hadn’t seen in a few years.  Somehow, the topic of the student loan debt crisis came up and while discussing it Ryan admitted he had a ton of debt from paying for his education.  Ryan’s passion was teaching and he was [...]

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Black Girls Rock! 2011

Fueled by Naivete & Idealism: My Road to Social Entrepreneurship (part 3)

By on October 12, 2012 in Starting the Journey, Stories of Impact

Going back to the drawing board basically meant going back to Google. I needed to restructure. We needed a new approach. Our mission was the same: eradicate poverty through education using university students, but how did we do that in an innovative way that could actually provide some lasting change. After a few weeks of [...]

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Fueled by Naivete & Idealism: My Road to Social Entrepreneurship (Part 1)

By on September 28, 2012 in Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

It was 1:00am on the second day of Spring Break 2010 when I decided to create “Bookbags With the Basics.” For about two years (after seeing Invisible Children for the second time) I had been trying to find my place in the world of philanthropy. I’d joined Habitat for Humanity and Amnesty International chapters at the [...]

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Lessons on and for the Journey

By on September 21, 2012 in Social Entrepreneurship, Starting the Journey

I find social entrepreneurs so inspiring. So many of them (us) have had other careers, and then a light clicked – enabling us to let go of our prescribed futures that no longer fit our ideals and chase what some call idealistic dreams, but what we all consider our true life path. It makes me [...]

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