Author Archives: Guest Author

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar on “How to Design Democratic Management.” View the full webinar here.

Anj Talley: In our bylaws [at Mandela Grocery Cooperative], we have one vote that is required to be unanimous, and that is the vote to hire, Whether or not we’re hiring a new member into the group needs to be a unanimous decision. Everything else is by consensus, which to us is 75 percent, or three out of four. Generally, the way we approach votes is that everyone be in agreement. We’re having a full discussion, where you’re fleshing out every part, every side as much as possible of this decision that needs to be made, and the goal is for everyone to be in agreement. So, very rarely is there major conflict happening in those conversations, because it’s really more of a discovery type of conversation: are we thinking about all sides of this? If there are questions, sometimes we do have to pause it and bring it back the next month at the next meeting, where the expectation is that there’s research that was done, there are answers to the questions that you’re coming with.

When we take a vote, you kind of have a sense, before we even vote, of how this is going to go, because of the types of questions that everyone had the opportunity to ask. But it is important…when we are having a consensus or a vote conversation, that we make space for every single voice to be heard. Even if this is someone who maybe usually is more quiet or less vocal, the expectation is still that you say something, you ask something, because that is how we define participating. Everyone has to participate in these decision-making conversations. So, say something! Then when it comes time for us to vote, everybody either gives a thumbs up or thumbs down, and we do [a super] majority [of] 75 percent.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar on “How to Design Democratic Management.” View the full webinar here.

Nicole Koch: This is really about sharing power and money. In order to share that power, the information has to be there, so that people know how to get involved and what the levers are that make change. For us [at Technicians for Sustainability], that access to information is essential. We talk a lot about rights and responsibilities…if people have a responsibility to make informed decisions, they need that good info— and they have that corresponding right to adequate information to support it.

So, how we do that? We do it in a few ways. We do use open book management; it’s really our own flavor, our own in-house style of that. We have a version for all employees that happens on a weekly basis through our email newsletter. We have some critical numbers we look at each week and keep an eye on, and those are meant to be a quick check-in for people, no matter where they are in the company or what their role is. Whether they started Monday, like one of [our] new staff members, or if they’ve been with us for 16 years, they can get a sense of where the company is and how they’re doing each week. Then we do a deeper dive version for owners once a month, which is looking at the financials. There’s a lot of education that happens in that. For some folks, even a couple of years into their ownership process, people are still learning and wrapping their heads around all the different aspects of our very complicated profit and loss balance sheet. We also work to build an understanding of strategic decisions as they’re made. If they’re made at the ownership level, those go out as cascading messages to all employees so that they can inquire about it, so they can learn about it, so they can sort of see behind the curtain as to how decisions are getting made, what the rationale is for decisions. [We do this] so that we can bring everyone along in that process of sort of learning the business, of doing our business.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

We want to support and amplify our communities, so how do you find the balance as a global market brand and maintain integrity as a Native person?         

Bethany Yellowtail, Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2018

As the quote from Yellowtail—a Northern Cheyenne fashion designer—attests, Indigenous artists routinely face tensions between the stories they want to tell on the one hand and the demands of a white-dominated US arts marketplace on the other. A new study by the First People’s Fund, which has supported Native artists for over 25 years, and NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago, and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, highlights these Native American stories and analyzes such tensions. Titled Brightening the Spotlight: The Practices and Needs of Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaskan Native Creators in the Performing Arts, the 100-page report features 39 qualitative interviews of Indigenous storytellers.

The report’s authors focused on the performing arts because “comparatively little research has focused on the practices and impacts of Native creators who engage in performance-based forms of expression” (11). Most interviewees were from the fields of dance, music, or theater. The authors organized the report around three sets of questions:

• What performance-based practices do Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native creators engage in?
• Why and how do Native creators engage in their practices?
• What resources and systemic changes do Native creators identify as high-priority needs? (22)

Art as Telling Intergenerational Stories

Some of the tensions that Indigenous artists face in the white-dominated American art world are linguistic ones. As the report’s authors point out, many Indigenous artists prefer to call themselves storytellers rather than artists. For instance, Yellowtail, the fashion designer cited above, describes herself as a “storyteller in fashion.” Even the phrase “artist” or “performing artist” is seen by many Native creators as antithetical to Indigenous values, which identify creative practices or art, not as a separate sphere of activity, but rather as inseparable from beauty, form, spirit, culture, and life itself. Of the 39 Indigenous creators interviewed for the study, only about a third were comfortable with using the term “artist” to describe themselves.

That said, the economics of the art world requires the other two thirds to also describe themselves as “artists” in some contexts. Within their own Indigenous communities, these creators might describe their work as storytelling or education—externally, they call themselves musicians, dancers, or artists, because their compensation depends on doing so.

As one person interviewed for the report noted, “’I’ve had to tease and pull out certain parts of myself and leave others behind to fit into a type of box, a binary, for getting resources for a particular kind of project.” Framing the work as storytelling, noted one respondent, helps to disrupt “settler modes of containment and logics of assimilation” and creates “space for us to be ourselves.”

Another tension people interviewed for the study identified was pressure to define their work as either “traditional” or “contemporary.” Not surprisingly, more than half of those interviewed described their work as a blend of both. Back in 2018, Gerald Clarke Jr., a Coahuila artist and professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, noted the contradiction to the Los Angeles Times: “The mainstream wants to commodify the object and have it as part of the overall art market, but they don’t really want to know what we think. Who decides what’s authentic? Is it the academic, the art historian, or is it the community?”

In the report, the authors noted that several interviewees saw their work as building on both traditional and contemporary influences. The authors add that several respondents described their work as drawing on a “lifetime of wisdom and knowledge—and not just one lifetime, but many lifetimes, because it’s intergenerational.”

Indigenous Creators’ Goals

In the second section of the report, the authors discuss the motivations of the Indigenous creators they interviewed, which were wide-ranging. In terms of individual motives, a third of the interviewees told the authors that their creative work was integral to their mental health and well-being. Many interviewees described their work as part of their healing or therapy. One person told the authors, ““[t]heater is my number one way of expressing and being in the world” (40).

Many respondents mentioned that their creative work was helpful in negotiating their own identity among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds. As one respondent explained, “[a] lot of my work is concerned with kind of this idea of existing in between. I’m Native, I’m also a German American, I’m also gay, I’m also like gender queer, so I feel like I failed to fit into a lot of boxes successfully. And so a lot of my work is about that and creating…experiences that sort of undo our preconceived notions of the world, and how we’re told it exists” (41).

Another important motivation was economic. As the authors point out, being able to support one’s family is an important part of self-care. Several interview respondents told the report’s authors that ““supporting a family” was a “main goal” of their work (40).

In terms of community motivations, again there were a mixed set of concerns. Many of those interviewed emphasized the importance of serving their own Indigenous communities. One person explained, “I try to remind people that 1978 was the year that we actually regained the right to practice our culture.” The person added that this created a sense of duty to serve the “generation who was taken away from their families” and for whom “a lot of the culture was lost” (42).  Many noted that the stories they share through creative works serve as “good medicine.”

As Edgar Villanueva (Lumbee) has detailed, “In Native traditions, however, medicine is a way of achieving balance.…In the Indigenous worldview, many kinds of things can be medicine…for something or someone to serve as medicine, it only needs to be filled with or granted a kind of mystical or spiritual power.” In the report, one respondent explains that stories can “uplift our minds, uplift our spirits, not just on a personal level, but on a communal, on a community level.…the stories [are] the medicine” (44).

About a fifth of respondents named career advancement of fellow Indigenous creators as a major motivator. Collaboration through paid work is perhaps the most direct means to achieve this end. The report cites many examples. A musician notes that “for every [music] video we’ve ever done, we have a Native director, or Native producers, or the on-set people are Native people.” A playwright emphasized prioritizing the employment of Native actors. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, an elder creator put together an online show featuring Native storytellers “to highlight more artists and to uplift more artists” (48). One producer created a music studio on their home reservation that is free and open for other Native musicians to use. Several of the respondents work with Native youth, often sharing their practice in schools—generating modest income for themselves while training the next generation.

Although much of the discussion of community focuses on Indigenous communities, roughly half of the people interviewed also “described engaging in performance-based practices meant to be shared with ‘non-Native,’ ‘mixed,’ or ‘global’ audiences” (52). In addition to the economic benefits of such interactions, the people interviewed saw in their engagements with non-Indigenous people opportunities to “challenge racism against and stereotypes of Native people, increasing Native representation in Western-dominant culture, and connecting people and imparting empathy on the most fundamental, human level” (52). As one dancer explained to the authors, when performing for non-Native audiences “our big goal is to tell our stories through dance, but also to show the beauty of our culture” (53).

Resource Needs

The final section of the report is directed primarily at the performing arts funder community. A few of its recommendations are as follows:

• Increase access to supports that can help Indigenous creators earn a living, such as professional grant writers and professional development courses in fields like marketing.
• Expand the kinds of training and support that are considered valuable, so that arts degrees from Ivy League colleges and the like are less critical and Indigenous cultural training receives greater consideration.
• Be more accepting of non-elite venues. One respondent noted that “the further you get from your [Native] community, the more rewarded you are for it” (70). Another interviewee commented that just because “you might not be selling out a stadium…doesn’t mean you’re not having an impact” (71).
• Offer Indigenous artists more creative license. As to what that might mean, the report highlights the case of an Indigenous theater producer who “was able to negotiate the hiring of Native individuals to fill a broad spectrum of roles on the production, including actors, visual artists, producers, and even caterers” (75). It was also noted that making provisions to keep some seats open so that Indigenous audience members can attend productions is important.
• Change the structure of funding. Six reforms in particular were recommended: 1) streamline grant applications (such as using universal forms across institutions); 2) make forms more culturally responsive (such as by allowing others to write about the creator’s contributions rather than insisting applicants do so); 3) incorporate Native communities into the grant evaluation process; 4) increase grantee autonomy in how funds are spent; 5) allow grants to support a fuller range of Native creators’ life needs (e.g., food, housing, healthcare, family care, and community-building); and 6) increase support for Indigenous community collaboration and community creative production spaces.

Building Indigenous Community Infrastructure

The need for infrastructure appears often in the report. One interviewee told the report’s authors that there are “so many artists from my era” who didn’t “succeed” creatively or continue to pursue their creative practices, “and it’s not because they didn’t try; it’s not because they didn’t do a good promo game; it’s because the community wasn’t built to [support their practice]. And so, ultimately, I want to see communities celebrate themselves a bit more, and I feel like the way to change that is through building…[community] art spaces” (87).

In fact, one quarter of interview respondents called for more supports for Native-led organizations doing community-based work. Many interviewees expressed their frustration that predominantly white institutions get funding to diversify, which may lead to two days of Native programming a year, even as many Native-led organizations “are doing 365 days of Native programming” yet receive far less support (86).

“There’s a level of invisibility there that needs combating,” one interviewee noted. A good first step for funders, this Indigenous creator suggested, would be to identify and work with existing Indigenous organizations to build out the infrastructure that could support creative voices throughout Indian Country.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Social enterprises are for-profit businesses that claim to offer the types of social benefits generally associated with charities, fostering a socially conscious image while making a profit. Familiar examples include TOMS and Warby Parker, but they are not alone: conventional businesses like Amazon and Toyota also strive to project a socially conscious image. Often unnoticed is that the social good coming from such businesses doesn’t necessarily benefit the communities receiving it. Indeed, thanks  to social entrepreneurs’ unfamiliarity with the communities they purport to be helping, the work of social enterprises frequently produces a mix of ineffectual and harmful efforts.

The appealing images fostered by social enterprises obscure information that socially conscious consumers need when trying to make informed purchasing (and social media posting) choices. While business models are based on evidence, rarely are the social aspects of business models closely examined. As a result, the effects of the social aspects of social enterprises are often unquestioned. Businesses seldom evaluate or share whether their donations are usable or even needed by the recipient, culturally appropriate, or worse, contribute to problems in the recipient’s community. Meanwhile, social ratings systems such as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings generally evaluate investment risk, rather than rigorously measured social benefits.

This lack of meaningful information collection and sharing begins with businesses’ planning research. As a business librarian at a university, I work with students who are developing their own business plans and projects. I have clearly seen the frustration of (would-be) social entrepreneurs who lack guidance and structure when conducting in-depth research on businesses’ concrete contributions to society. In response, I developed a research framework for such students. Capable of helping entrepreneurs build truly social businesses, this framework can also help the public— including consumers, journalists, social advocates, entrepreneurs—investigate and evaluate businesses and make evidence-based consumer and media choices.

Competition and the Diminishment of Social Aspects of Social Entrepreneurship

Ethics-based marketing encourages people to buy, brand, post, and flag purchases to signal their beliefs, opening new avenues of neoliberal consumerism enabled by social media. Social enterprises have become lucrative enough that conventional businesses market their products and services as socially responsible. In the past few years, such marketing has become ubiquitous among large corporations. Consumers are now unable to determine which businesses significantly benefit society, while social enterprises are forced to choose between minimizing their social and green initiatives or losing out to large competitors who appear to offer the same benefits with less expense.

ME to WE is an extreme example of a social enterprise, and while it is not representative of all social enterprises, it shows just how far social enterprises can stray from their stated mission. WE Charity and its social enterprise, ME to WE, have been accused of multiple acts of corruption, including corruption involving Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, hiding child labor in their supply chain, and financial backwash (when an organization’s charity arm funds the business/social enterprise arm instead of the other way around). They are also embroiled in cases of intentional falsification of use of donations, including large scale falsification of the number of charitable works completed (such as schools and boreholes built in Kenya).

How do some social enterprises travel so far from their supposed missions? One problem is competition with conventional businesses, which can cause small, community-based, committed social enterprises to either fail or compromise their social mission, mimicking businesses that offer meager Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives instead of working toward transformative, community-focused change. For those that succeed, the next question is: Does the “social good” actually help? Social enterprises often lack essential research that would help answer this question.

The Research Gap of Social Enterprises

There isn’t a recognized process for evaluating the social or environmental benefits that social enterprises offer. As such, while social enterprises build their business models on data, they build their social models on assumptions and empty narratives. Without thorough, ongoing research, they do not have the data to determine if they are providing the benefits they claim or if the benefits are offset by unforeseen negative community impacts, such as economic disruption caused by inappropriate donations or donation targets. This is an issue for people interested in investigating a business operating in their community, and it is a problem for current and aspiring social entrepreneurs who want to develop businesses that produce social benefits.

There are ethical business ratings and measures, but their lack of transparency and their function and aim are at odds with the development or assessment of social enterprises. ESG ratings are assigned by different analytics and financial companies such as Refinitiv, S&P Global, Morningstar, and others. They do not measure a social enterprise’s positive and negative impacts but rather ESG investment risk, focusing on the likelihood of a PR problem related to environmental sustainability, social responsibility, fair management, or labor practices, so that shareholders and other stakeholders can make decisions about their financial involvement with a company.

B Corp certification, for example, is a measurement of a business’s responsibility to the community, environment, workers, and more. The certification process is opaque and difficult to understand from the outside, especially considering that businesses notorious for unethical practices, like ME to WE, continue to be certified and even win awards.

Such ethical business ratings use tools based on data analytics and publicly available information, but social enterprises (as well as conventional businesses) collect and share data that are convenient and impressive. They can easily demonstrate, for example, that they donated one pair of shoes for each pair sold, providing a total number of donated shoes the previous year.

A Social Entrepreneurship Research Framework

The social entrepreneurship research framework that I developed includes seven steps. Though designed for student entrepreneurs, it can also serve social advocates, consumers, and journalists.

1. Assess the initial issue(s)

• What social issue or need is the business trying to solve?
• What is the history of the problem?
• Where are its structural roots? Social enterprises should aim to address structural or root problems rather than providing stop-gap measures.

2. Assess the enterprise

• Is the social enterprise embedded in the community it’s serving? Social enterprises act on problems their founders understand and are committed to fixing because they are part of the affected community.
• Is the social benefit an essential part of the business’ model? If the business could be separated from the social part of the enterprise, this indicates a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, rather than a social enterprise. Embedded within the business model, social aspects of a social enterprise are indistinguishable from the business itself.

3. Evaluate social enterprise/business models

• What models exist that might help structurally solve the issue(s) at hand? Do the models have community or historical roots or empirical research showing they can help? Social enterprises are designed using models that have historical roots in community or are otherwise evidence-based to predict the effects of the enterprise’s involvement in the community and beyond.
• Find examples of when each model has been used. Have there been unforeseen consequences? Why? Why were they unforeseen? What would you do to prevent these or other unforeseen consequences?

4. Compare solutions

• What solutions have been considered beyond business models? Other types of solutions to community problems could include new or existing advocacy groups, nonprofit organizations, community groups, or other solutions. Failing to consider these possibilities limits the type of community involvement primarily to consumer relationships.

5. Investigate similar situations

• Examine situations that are comparable in relation to the structural issues or problems the enterprise is trying to solve.
• Find examples of models of progress, attempted or completed. Investigate their strengths, weaknesses, and the evidence these determinations are based on.

6. Develop and evaluate ongoing assessment tools

• Assessment tools should be used at regular intervals.
• How do the assessment tools provide feedback to prevent diminishment of the business’ social benefits?

7. Critically examine the company’s research framework

• Examine the research framework as it pertains to this particular enterprise. What is missing?

Using the Social Entrepreneurship Research Framework

While it helps to have access to a university library’s electronic databases to do this research, it’s not necessary. Many public libraries offer access to company databases and to expert librarian knowledge on company and academic research. There are also free resources online, including:

• Investor and CSR pages of company websites (read with a critical eye)
• Open journal collections that include research on specific companies and industries, the problems with common social enterprise business practices (such as Buy One Give One), as well as social issues and solutions/attempted solutions
• NGO and government websites about social issues

While few of us have the time or inclination to complete a seven-step research evaluation before deciding whether or not to purchase a cup of social enterprise coffee, the following are some populations who could use this research framework:

Social Advocates: Social advocates are involved in campaigns and information-sharing about unjust company practices. They could use this framework to systematically evaluate problematic enterprises and share their findings with the public, to demonstrate the benefits of and true social capacity of social enterprises, and to investigate other solutions to social problems outside of existing business models. 

Journalists: Journalists who investigate social issues and/or questionable business practices can use this framework to structure how they approach deep investigative research into social enterprises.

Entrepreneurs and Supporters: Entrepreneurs would ideally use this framework while developing a new business or business idea, but the framework can also be used to assess an existing venture. Supporters, potential investors, and collaborators who are joining entrepreneurs in their early stages can also use this framework to inform themselves about ethical business elements they can support and weaknesses they can manage.

Consumers and Consumer Advocacy Groups: While this framework isn’t designed for consumers to use for every item they buy, it is an approach that could be taken for larger purchasing decisions. A consumer advocacy group, for example, could organize to crowdsource and share research on social enterprises undertaken by individuals, as well as highlight social ventures in need of evaluation.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.