Starting Up: Nonprofits Launch Social Sidelines

“…A new generation of changemakers is emerging that sees for-profit ventures as intrinsically more scalable than nonprofit entities.” – John Elkington, co-author of The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World     

…Consider Rubicon Programs, a Richmond, Calif., nonprofit that provides jobs, housing, and life skills to poverty-stricken, formerly incarcerated and disabled individuals. The organization, which was founded in 1973, has started two businesses and helped more than 40,000 individuals find jobs and live independently… [and] helped Rubicon build 200 units of affordable housing and operate mental health and workforce services in a dozen cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area … 

 Thinking outside the box?  Now is the time to disregard the box, and start thinking creatively and practically. Nonprofits are in a great position to create small enterprises (tax-free, with low break-even), take limited risks, and create jobs.

This entry was posted on April 28, 2009 at 19:37 and is filed under stimulus, affordable housing, jobs, ventures, finance, Linkedin, philanthropy, investing, nonprofit, development, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.