The Social Age

I’m constantly amazed at the human desire for stasis. The slow-burn growth of the world’s acceptance of the “social entrepreneurship” movement (in the media, academia and business-world) is in direct opposition to the actual growth in the amount of work and money being dedicated to the work of these incredible agents of change.

Perhaps today is a break-through day.

New York Times Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks today wrote a piece on social entrepreneurs. This is a great sign for the field and will hopefully help encourage continued dialog about this important kind of work. You can read the article, “Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders” here.

I went to an event recently where there was a lovely spread of cheeses, breads, dips and other yummy hors d’oeuvres. At the end of the reception, the staff started cleaning up and I asked what they did with all of the left over food. The answer, as most of you already know, is horrifying… it is thrown away.

I’ve been trying to figure the logic of this one out. You see, according to America’s Second Harvest, if we could recover just 5% of the food wasted each year, we could help feed 14 million people. But it turns out that food that has been left out at a reception must be chucked because of… liability reasons. So if I’m to understand this correctly, companies are worried about donating perfectly good food to shelters and the homeless because they are worried about being sued.

Doesn’t it seem like there is something terrible wrong here? I mean people, can’t we use some common sense? Leftover bread, crackers, hard cheeses, chips, veggies and other perfectly good food certainly have a shelf-life outside of the refrigerator long enough that it can be recovered. Unless it has been baking in the sun all day, it just seems that we should be able to do something about it.

An organization called “Rock and Wrap it Up” is taking on this issue directly. With over 150 bands participating “Rock and Wrap it Up” collects performers’ backstage edible leftover food in every arena or stadium where they perform and bring it to local kitchens and shelters. Current and recent tours contracting food recovery with Rock and Wrap it Up! in their rider include Tom Petty, Phil and Friends, Allman Brothers Band, The Dave Matthews Band, Nickelback, Kenny Chesney, Christina Aquilera ,Martina McBride and The Indigo Girls. The clincher is that all donors are protected from liability by The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act of 1996.

So I’m going to go back to the place where I went to this lovely event and talk to them about signing up for a food recovery program to help those in need and steer clear from fear of litigation. You can learn more about donating surplus food and find resources from the EPA by clicking here.

I recently returned from The Gathering of Leaders, an event by and for social entrepreneurs hosted by New Profit Inc. It is truly an honor to be included in this event. For three days, from 7:30am - 10pm, I was in the presence of really amazing agents of change. Folks from CityYear, CitizenSchools, YearUp, Prison Entrepreneurship Program, RARE, Echoing Green and 1Sky were among the 160 people gathered in sunny Miami.

It was an inspiring and exhausting few days, filled with true action-tank type of interactions as we worked together to make social enterprise and social entrepreneurship into a recognized, appreciated and adopted field of work.

The roster of speakers and panelists was inspiring and the stories awesome. In fact, it is my intention to conduct and post a few interviews with some of the remarkable changemakers that I met. But perhaps the best part of the Gathering was to be engaged in a community of kindred spirits — people whose personal missions include making the world a better place. Every conversation compelled me to want to work harder, try harder and be better. Around so many accomplished individuals, it’s easy to feel insignificant or lost. But this was a community of people where everyone friendly and everyone was game. It was so refreshing

One interesting thing I learned from the Gathering is about group dynamics. I observed that in every group, there are “the seekers” and “the sought after”. Those who are sought after, like Greg Dees from Duke or David Gergen from Harvard, are the gurus of the field and enjoy a certain amount of celebrity status at conferences like these. These “sought afters” are able to focus all of their energies on engaging in conversation because they are not using any of their energies to find people to speak with; others “seek them out.”

It was such an interesting perspective to gain. I was able to objectively see how much I have grown in the field. The measure? My “seeker to sought after” ratio. As a sophomore attendee, I knew more people this year, knew more organizations this year and had more to say this year. It made me a happier, more engaged, and more “sought after” participant. It also taught me that in my field of work — that of social change — the balance of power between the “seekers” and the “sought after” sits at a really good equilibrium. There is a general understanding that all of us are equal, that we’re all doing great work, and that we can all benefit from the knowledge of others, no matter their level of expertise.

So the question is, what is your seeker to sought after ratio? Do you “seek” 100 times for every 1 time you are “sought after”? A high seeker/sought after ratio like 100:1 tells you that you have an opportunity to become better known in your field, your work, or your community. A low ratio, 1:100 like that of David Gergen, who seeks 1 person for every 100 hundred that seek him out, means that as an expert in your field, you might not be surrounding yourself with people who can positively contribute to your continued learning and personal growth. I posit that the right ratio is 50:50. Half the time you are being sought. Half the time you are seeking. This way, you are constantly helping others with your knowledge and learning from others and their knowledge. So that’s what I’m going to focus on for a while. How to bring my seeker/sought after ratio into balance.

So what’s your seeker/sought after ratio? How does it make you feel? Do you want to increase it? How can you increase it? I look forward to your comments and answers.

Tomorrow I’m heading to Miami for The Gathering of Leaders, an annual event put on by New Profit Inc., that brings social entrepreneurs and leaders from the private, public and nonprofit sectors together for 3 days of brainstorming and action planning about how to accelerate widespread social change in the world. One of the things we will be focused on is an initiative that came out of work from the last two Gatherings — a project called America Forward.

America Forward is “a coalition of social entrepreneurs who have come together to present presidential candidates and policymakers with a new and transformative way to solve the difficult social problems facing our nation. The America Forward coalition is promoting a set of policy ideas designed to scale the impact social entrepreneurs can have on seemingly intractable social issues”. America Forward policy proposals including:

• Growing Human Capital through National Service
• Fostering Innovation and Results in the Nonprofit Sector
• Establishing a Social Investment Fund Network
• Founding a Small Business Administration for the Nonprofit Sector

I look forward to participating in the discussion about America Forward at this year’s Gathering and encourage you to. You can read more at AmericanForward.org.

I was recently asked to write a piece for the upcoming WeMedia conference in Miami on how media can help us move beyond click-and-go advocacy to real and meaningful change. For me, the Internet has provided me with a platform to share my ideas with the world. Here’s the piece I submitted — you thoughts are welcome.

For a long time, I’d known that I was one of those people who had something to say. I just hadn’t been able to figure out what it was. That was until April 2007 when I was watching American Idol. For the first time, everything crystallized in my head. No, I hadn’t suddenly decided to sing out loud to save the world. But I had found my voice.

On that night in April, I was one of 30 million people who tuned in to watch a special episode of American Idol called IdolGivesBack. In the two-part show, Fox utilized American Idol’s massive influence to make the world a better place. Introducing viewers to the plights of underprivileged children in the US and Africa, Idol provided a chance for the average American to engage in changing the world. For every vote cast in that night’s contest, News Corp (the parent company of Fox, which airs Idol) donated 10 cents to the Charity Projects Entertainment Fund (up to $5m). An additional $55 million was raised through call-in donations by viewers. This was a stunning event. Never before had I witnessed a popular TV show using its influence for any purpose greater than generating thousands of dollars in ad revenues. And here was American Idol doing just that. I was moved, compelled and excited. And in a flash of inspiration, one huge leap and an armful of chutzpah, I conceived of “The Social Age”.

The Social Age (www.thesocialage.com) is more than my personal blog. It has become my own personal movement. What Idol helped crystallize for me was that thing that I’ve known I wanted to say. That the world is changing. That people and companies and governments are starting to realize that the world is not just flat (to quote Tom Freidman), but that it is interconnected in a way that we’ve never witnessed before. That consumers are discovering that the shoes I buy here might really cause harm to a child in Bangladesh. That the skies we pollute here, cause problems for people over there. And that collectively, we can do something about this.

The Social Age is about this “doing”. If The Information Age showed us that economies could exist beyond trade in physical product through the increased production, transmission, consumption of and reliance on information, then The Social Age might be characterized by the incorporation of social values into everything we do – work, play, think, live. Every decision we make, from how we conduct business to how we treat the homeless is viewed differently in The Social Age. By being conscious and curios, we make different, more informed decisions. We understand the collective outcomes of our actions and hopefully, yes hopefully, we behave differently. At least, this is my hope.

As so, I launched The Social Age, and in doing so started my own movement. With the power of the Internet at my disposal, I, sitting from my apartment in downtown Boston, have been able to educate, appeal to and move people to think differently about their place in the world and the next era of human development. My readership is organically growing. As I continue to write about topics that are currently floating about in the universal consciousness, I have found a following. Small, but a following none-the-less. And I am stunned. I have people write to me about looking for a more “social age” job. I’ve had people blasting an Internet scammer who isn’t very “social age”. And I’ve had people express their desire to find their own personal money versus mission balance in life.

And so I continue to build my movement. From my tiny corner of the world, I have harnessed the power of the Internet to make my movement come true. And as people join me on this journey, I realize there is nothing we, together, can’t do.

My dream? It’s lofty, I’ll admit. I dream that someday the history books will refer to the period in time after The Information Age as The Social Age – a period of collective consciousness, interconnectedness and community. Perhaps someone will note that it was coined by me at the beginning of the 21^st century. Hopefully, it will be embraced by all.