EPCON 2011: How to Solve the World’s Biggest Problems

A different version of this essay ran in The Line’s July 13th 2011 issue.
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What does “Better Together” mean to you? That was the door question asked of attendees arriving at EPCON 2011: the fourth annual Engaged Philanthropy Conference in downtown Minneapolis. If that quick catechism is reminiscent of anything, it’s that there isn’t any time to waste to reach a critical mass of all-encompassing participatory collective impact.

“The problem is bigger than any one of us,” says Brad Brown, president of Social Venture Partners Minnesota. “But, together we are bigger than any problem.”

Big issues need to be addressed.  Now.  Minnesota (and the world) is in a time of transition, and conference organizer Social Venture Partners Minnesota won’t allow us to sit idly by as spectators.  This year’s theme is Better Together Ideas2Action, and the focus is how we can effectively collaborate to tackle Minnesota’s biggest problems. The predicament that we are currently in isn’t because we lack resources.  We have the resources.  The challenge is that non-profits and for-profits, the poor and the rich, the insiders and outsiders need to take a place at the table, bringing together what we have for the common good.

And then we need to up the ante.

Rethinking the way we currently address issues is imperative. Social Venture Partners International, a network of over 2,000 engaged philanthropists in 26 metro areas, including Minnesota, takes a new approach. These philanthropists go beyond a feel-good donation.  Each one of them takes an active role in the social ventures in which they invest.  Since 2003, Social Venture Partners Minnesota alone has awarded over $845,000 to eighteen early-stage, high potential organizations, with whom their partners have donated countless hours consulting, mentoring, and applying effective business strategies.

“Social Venture Partners Minnesota opened up a whole new world that I didn’t even know existed,” says 2011 Investee Matt Tennant, founder of Full Cycle, a nonprofit bike shop employing and training homeless youth in south Minneapolis.

Building The Networked Approach
The networked approach being advocated by Social Venture Partners has promise to move beyond the besetting challenges of the sector.  Those hurdles include debilitating competition for resources, ego-centric pursuit of brand recognition, paranoid lack of transparency, and myopic focus on organization rather than mission.  No one can explain this better than David Haskell, EPCON keynote speaker and founder of Dreams InDeed International.

“What is the dream?” Haskell asked the crowd after walking on stage.

He then described the example set by civil engineer Yousry Makar.  Makar launched and directs Habitat for Humanity Egypt, the first program of its kind in the Middle East.  The barriers to entry were daunting: foreign stigma, minority status, an unknown brand, no legal registration.  But Makar was compelled by a dream: to solve the problem of poverty housing in Egypt.  He then signed on with Habitat for Humanity Egypt.

Now twelve years later, over 17,000 families have secured decent housing, and their mortgage repayment rate is an astonishing 99.84 percent on time.  The most encouraging outcome is that their rapid, sustained impact is not driven by growth of a single organization, but by the dynamism of an expanding network of collaborators.  Habitat for Humanity Egypt serves as a catalytic node in the network, alongside 26 other dream-inspired and values-aligned counterparts.

In 2006, community collaborators identified a gap in the system: not everyone could afford to repay a house loan.  Makar listened to voices that until then had been unable to make themselves heard.  The result?  Collaboration with the poorest of the poor to increase awareness, involvement, and collaboration while providing housing to those without the financial means.  That’s collective impact.

Haskell also emphasized that mere success in growth of nonprofit growth is a sorely inadequate strategy to address desperate social issues.  He quoted researcher and Stanford and Berkeley professor Jane Wei-Skillern, “Because most social issues dwarf even the most well-resourced, well-managed nonprofit […] it is wrongheaded for nonprofit leaders simply to build their organizations.”

The Inclusion Circle: Draw Carefully
“We are a circle. Not a straight line,” sang vocalist Robert Robinson and spoken-word artist Desdamona in the opening musical address. It sounds simple, but this interpretation of a shape represents an important ideal: lines are drawn every day in the nonprofit and social entrepreneurial world.  Many are drawn with good intentions, but often inadvertently exclude the most important of stakeholders: the people in greatest need.  Before we can help, we need to draw a circle that includes those whose voices need to be heard.  And while that circle may include those with whom we may not be comfortable, it sets us all up to learn.

And to change. Collaboration is the key to unlock previously unimagined solutions.  Listening is the Robin to collaboration’s Batman.

As Haskell concluded, he shared the story of one of his friends and colleagues in the international development sector.  That friend had a long career as a no-nonsense, hard-boiled soldier.  During the famines in the Horn of Africa, this soldier and his comrades were riding shotgun on relief convoys, charged with protecting food supplies from the armed militias that otherwise hijacked them before they reached the desperate and hungry in refugee camps.

As their trucks rolled into a remote, dusty camp, he noticed the strongest refugees forced their way to the head of the line.  The weaker ones tried to scramble forward in the chaos.  Left on the fringes at the end of the line were the small, the weak, the sick. He noticed one tiny girl was last.  As the food was handed out, it became obvious there wouldn’t be enough for everyone.

The food ran out.  The tiny girl turned away, walking back toward the shade of a thin tree, under which her two little brothers had waited, too weak to even try to get in line.  Suddenly, the soldier remembered he had a banana leftover from breakfast in his rucksack.  He got it out, walked over, and handed it to the girl.  She took it quietly and returned to the tree that shaded her brothers.  He watched as she peeled the banana, broke it in two, and gave each half to her brothers.

Then, she ate the peel.

“The smallest and weakest must be included when you draw your circle.” Haskell asserts. “What will you do with your banana?”