Bull City Forward

Vital Stats

Alison D

Durham, NC

people helped600
People Doing It 28

The Problem

1. Durham's social and environmental challenges are stronger than the current solutions we have addressing them. We need to improve upon our current models and we need to increase the innovative problem solvers in our community by investing in local talent development. 2. Successful social innovation requires diverse input, yet the sectors in Durham remain siloed. People need to come together if their solutions are to be stronger than those of the past in applicability and innovativeness. 3. Traditional support systems for entrepreneurs cater to old models of purely profit-driven companies and philanthropy-based nonprofit organizations. With the growth of organizations straddling the profit line, we need to create courses, networks, and resources for mission-driven for-profit companies and income-generating nonprofit organizations. 4. Mission-driven organizations experience more difficulties in data-driven program design and decision making than purely profit-driven businesses do because the bottom line is harder to read when it includes social outcomes like quality of life, literacy, and environmental stewardship increases. Regardless of difficulty, social ventures need to know which activities bring them closer to their desired outcomes. Appropriate metrics need to be developed and we all need to learn to use them properly. 5. There are very few social ventures who have scaled nationally or internationally. The ones that have scaled are praised. The ones that are still small, perhaps just starting out, have very few opportunities to tell their story. As a group, a social movement, we can pool opportunities to communicate the power of social innovation and entrepreneurship, leading to many more occasions to advocate on behalf of the cluster.

Plan of Action

Spring 2009 - I conducted a best practice study of community development initiatives around the world that leveraged social innovation and entrepreneurship. This was an independent study through the public policy department at Duke under the guidance of Professor Christopher Gergen. During this same period of time, a local nonprofit consultant, Suzanne Smith, mapped the community assets of Durham. Summer 2009 - We mapped the two studies (best practices and asset map) against one another to discover the gaps in our community. Fall 2009 - Christopher Gergen and I met with members of the Durham community all day every day to solicit their advice on our work and invite them to join our group and contribute to the model. Winter/Spring 2010 - We lead 8 working groups on topics that our research revealed to be potential levers for change in driving community and economic development. Each working group consisted of 10-15 Durham community members with experience in the topic (policy, talent development, investment, etc). The working groups each wrote up their recommendations of BCF activities in their topic. At the end of March 2009, we also opened a co-working space for social entrepreneurs in Durham to combat the isolation felt by entrepreneurs working on their own, to connect people from the various sectors of Durham, and to raise the profile of social innovation within our community. Summer 2010 - We incorporated the working group recommendations into our model and wrote up a 3 year strategic plan. We also hosted many summer interns from local universities in our co-working space, serving as over-flow office capacity for near by non-profit organizations. Fall 2010 - Focusing on growing the community of BCF members and increasing the services for them, we ramped up activities within the BCF co-working space with workshops, feedback sessions, lunch speakers, panels, and documentary discussions. We also applied for and received several small grants, enabling us to hire a full-time Resource Manager )to run our programming, launch a mentorship program, and remain on call to support all BCF members) and a half-time Community Manager, to reach out to more social entrepreneurs, sell memberships, and continue to grow the movement. In the fall, we developed a partnership with both B Labs and Green Plus, two organizations that develop social impact measurement tools. They are now offering their services to BCF members free of charge, a volunteer is leading impact measurement office hours on Fridays, and Green Plus is teaching workshops on sustainability.