Part of the fun of VolunteerSpot is that it's a business we're building with the primary goal of making the world a better place by making volunteering easier. We figure if all those awesome volunteer organizers could spend more of their time helping people (instead of trading emails and phone calls with volunteers) they would be happier and stick around longer -- and help even more people, communities, schools, etc. We project that we'll be able to bring volunteer organizations the equivalent of $8+ million in annual productivity savings by 2011, and we're pretty excited about that.
For the people who want to make a difference in their communities, the volunteers, we've built VolunteerSpot to make it easy to say YES, stay on track and enjoy the experience. At VolunteerSpot-powered activities, more people are showing up and coming back because our tool makes it a little bit (or a lot) easier. (Nationally, 1/3 of all volunteers drop out annually -- most frequently attributed to poor coordination.) And of course, we'll need to make money, or else we can't provide these great tools, and we have a plan to get there.
Making a profit AND helping others defines what's known in business circles as a Social Venture; the doing good part of a company's results is called the Double Bottom Line. VolunteerSpot is thrilled to be among 21 Social Ventures that have been invited to present our business to the Investors' Circle Spring San Francisco Conference.
We will be presenting on April 20th, 2009 along with twenty other mission-driven
companies focused on solving environmental and social problems facing our
world. Investors’ Circle brings together a great community of investors,
entrepreneurs and other professionals looking to accelerate the development of
a sustainable economy.
We think the other companies presenting are doing some pretty cool things to help in the world, too, and we wanted to highlight some of them here:
Peacekeeper Causemetics - This cosmetics company donates ALL its after tax profits from sales of its organic lipsticks, gloss, nail polish and polish remover to organizations helping women around the world. The mineral-based products have not been tested on animals, and care has been taken to avoid use of any chemicals deemed as dangerous.
TerraFusion has created an enzyme-based additive to use in road bed construction that's friendlier to the earth, speeds construction time, saves money and makes paved and unpaved roads last longer. Can we have some of that, now?!
AlterEco works with farmers in developing countries to produce high quality, varietal rice, quinoa, chocolate, coffee, tea, olive oil and sugar using sustainable farming methods and fair trade pricing so the farmers get a greater share of the profits from the food they produce. As a fan of the native grain quinoa, I was excited to see these guys sell black quinoa (which I've never seen before) and I hope I can buy from them next week! Save me a box!
It's gratifying in a world full of conflicts and concern that there is hope and progress in business. We can't wait to meet all our fellow presenters and continue working to boost both sets of bottom lines.
Love what you're doing for the volunteer sector! I hope you get a chance to see what we're up to in Vancouver, BC to try and come up with better ways for Non-profits to engage their community in volunteerism. http://urbantastic.com
Posted by: Ben | April 13, 2009 at 08:32 PM