PF Whiteboard

In Summer of 2008 I was one of Ashoka U’s first interns. At that time Ashoka U was basically a bunch of half formed concepts and ideas on Post It notes on an Ashoka office wall in Rosslyn. Over the last 4 years I’ve had the privilege of seeing Ashoka U develop in to a thriving network of university campuses, each actively and strategically building social entrepreneurship on their campus. Collectively the network is pushing the current limitations of SE experiential learning, curriculum and research development, and they come together once a year to share all the insights and lessons they learn in doing so. The annual Ashoka U ‘Exchange’ was last weekend. Representatives from 100 campuses (inc. Stanford, Marquette, USD, Harvard, Thunderbird, BYU, Brown, NYU, to name just a few) met at ASU in Tempe, AZ for two days of deep discussion on the very niche subject of social entrepreneurship and higher education.

Despite being at least loosely connected to Ashoka U since its inception, I’m still surprised by the order of magnitude that the gathering grows by each year. This time around representation from several of the attending campuses included university presidents, provosts and deans. And in addition to faculty, admin, students and social entrepreneurs, there was representation from the US Dept of Education, Innosight, and IDEO. The community is flourishing. People are paying attention to what’s being shared at the Ashoka U Exchange and want to be part of the dialogue.

Coming from the even more niche position of working for a foundation funding and building a SE program, I liked what I began to see in terms of practical information sharing. There were other individuals there in very similar positions to me, as well as those who hold similar perspectives on how SE education should and could work in the future -normally finding those people would be akin to a needle in a haystack situation. I’d love to see the Exchange facilitate truly efficient knowledge sharing. This is a problem most conference models find challenging.

One of the most marvelous moments of the weekend went unnoticed by almost everyone. I saw a young student coyly approach one of the social entrepreneurs who had presented at the TEDx the evening before. She had noticed a quiet moment when he wasn’t engaged in discussion and looked approachable. I overheard pieces of the conversation as she complimented his TEDx talk, expressed admiration for his work, asked a couple of questions and asked to share information to get in contact later on. The beauty of this interchange was that it was incredibly real and important to her at that moment. It was clear she had just chosen herself a new, and carefully selected, role model. Her new role model was excited enough about her education and potential as a social innovator to respond warmly and genuinely. I have no doubt that that moment is one that will shape her future, because I’ve had one or two just like it that shaped mine.

In all honestly, in past years the Ashoka U Exchange has been something that was a ‘nice to attend’ rather than a ‘must attend’. After this year it’s going to be one of the very few conferences I will put on my 2013 calendar as soon as they announce the Exchange dates. I’m going back next year for the practical knowledge sharing and genuine relationship building it is beginning to effectively provide for those involved in this niche but growing arena. However, a core reason I will be attending again is I know wonderfully important inflection points of all sizes will be created; points which strengthen our collective belief and ability to create and support social innovators of the future.

We decided to try out Pinterest.

There’s so much ‘stuff’ that comes across our desks and inboxes that could be useful to someone, so we’ve been looking for a good way to share cool things we find and see. Enter Pinterest.

Most people use Pinterest to share food, interior design ideas, or clothing and styling they like. It’s a great way for a person to build a comprehensive picture of their personality, taste, and their own individual brand… Perhaps also for an organisation like the PF.

So what are we sharing? Well, we love insightful commentary and articles on SE and philanthropy, genius products for society, and great short films. So that’s what we’re pinning. As well as social innovation job postings, volunteer opportunities and a bunch of other stuff.

Like our dabbling with Twitter and other social media, there’s no big strategic plan here. It seems like a good, useful thing to do, so we’ll give it a try for a while and see if you like it and find it useful. And hopefully it’ll also be a good way for people to get to know us at the PF.

See you on Pinterest!

Ten minutes ago, a man just walked in to our office. He was wearing a slightly weathered Panama hat and kind of looked like he’d stepped right off a sailing boat in the Caribbean. He pulled out a bright blue padded envelope. ‘This is for Dave Peery’.

Dave was sitting opposite me at the time, so the guy swiftly handed Dave the envelope and hotfooted it out the door. The blue envelope had snowflakes on it and was marked with a black sharpie: ‘Private and Confidential’. Given the unusual drop-off and the intriguing presentation we were both pretty anxious to see what was inside. It was a printed slide deck pitch for a youth organisation seeking funding. We can only assume the anonymous delivery man was the founder of the org.

I’m not suggesting this is how everyone get in touch with us, but this definitely wins the award for most mysterious first impression. And we will, of course, get back to them.

I realised today that we never blogged about our impact investing -or social investing. A new tab appeared on our website a few months ago, which we still need to populate with some descriptive text, and that was about all we did to announce the beginning of our impact investing. There was a little bit more to it than that, but still not any intense planning or strategising. We’re not aiming to build a big portfolio, and if anything our impact investments may just merge with our other portfolios.

Here’s a little more on our decision to start impact investing, from a recent blog post with Social Velocity:

“Nell: The Peery Foundation is one of few foundations that do mission-related investments. How did you decide to move into that realm and what do you think holds other foundation back from MRIs?

We’re still at an early stage in developing our capacity to provide debt and other funding outside of philanthropy. In our philanthropic funding we’re not paper heavy and our agreements are very trust-based. It was definitely daunting to explore this new realm of traditional investment due diligence and contractual agreements. So far we’ve found the kind of support we need to help us make the leap fairly painlessly through the Toniic Network, and from sources such as Silicon Valley Community Foundation and University Impact Fund, and still feel like we’re able to retain our low-paper, trust based partnership approach to the extent that makes sense.”

Here is the full interview on the Social Velocity website, which covers a few other topics too, like social media and transparency.

We’ve been using Salesforce for a while now. Some days it fills me with hope for a future filled with cool useful stuff our organised data will help us discover. Others it makes me want to throw my computer out the window. More often than not it’s been the latter.

Today was one of those rare hopeful days with Salesforce (Sf). Lanee and I just got off the phone with our new Sf consultant who is about to do a second round of Sf configuration for us. And after talking with him I am hopeful about reversing the Sf love-hate ratio.

We will know more in the new year.