THE DREAM IN ACTION

This is a guest post by social entrepreneur Bobby Srivastava. I’ve known Bobby since college and he’s been focused on the social services since then. Bobby was the founding COO of  a KIPP school, and heavily involved in CPY4Youth, College Summit, and the Taproot Foundation. His insights to what it takes to be a successful social entrepreneur are right on. As he humbly calls himself a “fly on the wall”, he’s much more hands on as a board member and founder than he’ll admit. He’s one of the guys who are making big things happen with little resources, and making the world a better place.

Enter Bobby…

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I’ve realized after working with so many individuals within the nonprofit sector that we have encountered an unprecedented era where individuals are not waiting around anymore to start ventures that will soon change the world. Social Entrepreneurship is booming – people are putting their dreams into action, and scouring the community and the world to try and find ways to add value.  People are leveraging their skills and talents to literally reverse some of the issues that we only seem to be talking every four years around election time – poverty, hunger, education, healthcare, etc.  Social Entrepreneurs started yesterday.  How do you do it?  Throughout my exposure working with colleagues from Teach for America, KIPP, College Summit, and The Taproot Foundation, I’ve noticed several consistent trends amongst these social enterprises that will consistently validate the success and failure of future social entrepreneurs.  This is less about me “imparting wisdom”, and more about me being a fly on the wall, watching amazing people do amazing things and being a part of the movement firsthand.  All of this has been fueled by the very few drivers below.

Passion and Belief

The truly successful social entrepreneurs do not simply embark on creating organizations that ‘do some good’.  They create enterprises based on their relentless belief that what they are doing will create social value for a large cohort of individuals, and they stick to this said belief to their very bones.  For example, KIPP existed as only two charter middle schools from 1995 to 2000. For five years, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin were relentless in the belief that through more time spent in the classroom and high quality instruction in low income areas, the achievement gap could be closed. No special sauce, just get in the classroom, keep the students there until 5pm, make them come in two weekends a month, and add in another three weeks in the summer.  They didn’t get caught up in expansion, and they couldn’t tweet in 1995. They simply built out their ideal school model where students in low income communities could get on a successful path to college; they rolled up their sleeves, and got straight up filthy.  In 2000, Don and Doris Fisher, the founders of Gap, Inc., stumbled upon these two cowboys in the impoverished areas of Houston and New York City, and couldn’t believe their energy and the success their very simple model was having.  Belief is toxic, and while KIPP existed as only two schools from 1995-2000, from 2000 to present day KIPP has now become the most successful charter school movement in the nation now on the verge of opening 100 schools nationwide through the initial support of the Fishers. KIPP leaders nationwide leverage their original belief and have delivered on staggering student achievement metrics by doing nothing more than rolling up their sleeves and crushing the misconception that students in low income communities cannot become smart, educated, and successful.  I know for a fact that if the Fishers did not find KIPP, another deep pocket would have so let us not play the ‘Well they got lucky’ card.  If anything, the Fishers are lucky to have been the ones to find them first.  KIPP has reached revolutionary heights where they have now halted finding cities to solicit expansion. KIPP has defined “reverse engineering” and now through a strictly defined RFP process, communities now must put together proposals for KIPP to come serve their students.  Financially, I’ll just say that game changers, particularly Bill Gates, are consistently throwing KIPP some major coin so their impact can continue to spread whereas KIPP first started out in overcrowded, steamy classrooms in wings of public schools.  It’s amazing how a nonprofit was able to shift the game like this. Passion and belief are unstoppable. (1 2 3)

Hustle

I’m always inspired by the relentless pursuit of accomplished athletes like Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, and Michael Jordan.  These are people who multiple times over have achieved what their peers spend their entire career accomplishing once – ultimate victory. Why?  As much as you may think it is based on their talent, they will all tell you it is based on their work ethic.  It’s not enough to just believe in what you are doing and decide to work on it every now and again.  You have to hustle.  Once you determine what mission you believe in, whether its ending poverty, curing cancer, closing educational inequity, etc., hitch your wagon to the movement and hold on tight.  Social Your browser may not support display of this image. Entrepreneurship and the journey that comes with it is not going to be a bed of roses, but keep hustling. Once you decide to embark on doing more with your existence than your cubicle allows, you’ll realize that the world needs you.  While the world could definitely benefit from the intellectual contribution of people with graduate letters and certifications after their name, we really just need some hustlers with a vision.  People who are willing to work harder than ever, build relationships, share best practices, and continue to bank on their own belief, are the hustlers of the social capitalist community. At some point you have to walk out of the self-improvement section at Barnes and Noble, and start putting theory into practice.  Don’t wait until you feel like you are your ‘ideal’ self with an ‘ideal’ team behind you with ‘just the right amount of money’.  Take what tools you have, ask questions along the way, and get on with it.  Don’t waste a great idea because you didn’t feel like you possessed the resources to do it.  The community of game changers is waiting to support you.  Start yesterday.

Give Me Metrics, or Give Me Death

Read this section carefully, because this will make or break your success as a social entrepreneur.  You will never take your game to the next level if you cannot deliver on metrics. You will never secure funding, let alone community/global support if you cannot tell your story in the form of numbers.  It’s the same reason why most resumé specialists tell you to try and quantify your successes to give your previous contributions a framework.  Furthermore, if you secure some substantial cash, maybe $10,000 after some success, don’t throw the kitchen sink at your business model and add all these new nuts and bolts for the sake of having ‘infrastructure’.  Keep your Your browser may not support display of this image.organization as lean as possible and don’t wreck your model, because the only reason you may have secured money is what you WERE doing was successful and your supporters want you to enlarge your footprint.  If anything, you are in the perfect position to take advantage of this major component of SE success because unlike traditional entrepreneurs, you don’t have to rely on making the same pitch to venture capitalists and angel investors showing the one same metric that typical investors only care about – ROI.  As a social entrepreneur, you have a wealth of individuals, foundations, government entities, baby boomers, and other pockets of funding that can help your organization scale financially and strategically, and you can base it on so much more than just dollars and cents.  Show metrics in terms of individuals served, cost per individual, any achievement metrics in the value you’ve added versus your operational expenses, and people will start to hear you. You can even use web metrics to show that people are genuinely interested in your success.  If you build it, they will come. (1 2 3)

Human Capital

“You win with people.”  Woody Hayes got it right when he said this, and that’s why he won five national championships.  Google got it right when creating a work environment based only on passion that now solicits almost 1 million applications a year, and now is consistently one of the most admired companies in the world. I don’t need to spend a lot of time on this.  You can make facebook fan pages, twitter accounts, blogs, or whatever new age technical medium available to spread your word and brand your mission (albeit important tools), but if you sacrifice the development of yourself or the people around you that are indenturing themselves to the movement, this game is over. Ensure that people you are bringing on to help you are not just looking for work, but try and find those individuals:

1. Who are bringing skill sets that are better than your own in particular functions?
2. Who can be evangelists for you organization?  From jump, when you are in a position to scale your organization with additional personnel, you should want people who are drinking the Kool-Aid or at least willing to take a sip.

Make your staff/volunteers feel like they are in a place where they can not only contribute but continually have a stake in the movement.  Care about the people you bring on board just as much as you would the people whose lives you are trying to change. So the saying goes in the military, “Officers eat last.”

As much as this is not a holy grail, I can, however, say with certainty that the organizations I have been a part of have been successful from exercising these few drivers incredibly well.  Take the first step. Lives are waiting to be changed forever.

You can contact Bobby via twitter @bsrivastava, or in the comments below.

via carf