Ask Echoing Green

With people leaving their careers to become entrepreneurs, there has been a lot of buzz in the news recently about the field of entrepreneurship. Take a look at the articles and blog posts below for more information:

What it feels like to be an Entrepreneur: A unique interpretation of what it feels like to be an entrepreneur.

An Entrepreneurial Life: A man reflects over the past 30 years of his life as a husband, father, brother – and an entrepreneur.

Why Don’t All Entrepreneurs Write Business Plans?: If you’re thinking about skipping the business plan writing, think again.

M.B.A.’s Guide Socially Concerned Entrepreneurs: A special report on providing support to social entrepreneurs.

If I applied for the application last year, may I reapply?
If you applied for an Echoing Green Fellowship in the past, you’re welcome to reapply - as long as your organization still fits our Selection Criteria. Remember that organizations must be in a start-up phase. To be considered a start-up, the applicant may have been running the organization full-time for approximately two years and Echoing Green’s financial support should qualify it as a major/primary early funder. Read here to learn more about our definition of start-ups.

I can’t upload my resume as a Word Doc. How do I turn my resume into a PDF?
Try one of these two websites: PDF Converter or Doc2PDF Online

Is my organization eligible?
You will always know more about your organization than what you tell the Echoing Green staff. If you have any questions or concerns, refer to our Selection Criteria. Feel free to contact us if you’re still unclear or have further questions.

I don’t understand a certain question on the application. Can you explain in more detail?
If you have any questions about our applications, there is a small link under each text box with help text. Don’t forget to check them out!

When is the deadline for applications? Is there any advantage to submitting early?
The deadline for applications is Wednesday December 2, 2009 at 5PM Eastern Standard Time. We are unable to accept any submissions after the deadline. If you are worried about internet traffic and the potential for difficulties, we encourage you to submit your application early. There’s no competitive advantage to submitting applications before the deadline, but it does save you from rushing at the last minute!

Contact apply@echoinggreen.org if you have any additional questions.

Last week, Peter Haas, founder of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), a 2006 Echoing Green Fellow and a 2009 TED Fellow, wrote a blog post on Social Enterprise. There’s a lot of interesting information in his post, and I highly encourage everyone to check it out:

In Social Enterprise force yourself to be an entrepreneur first

Echoing Green fellows are some of the smartest and wisest people we know. Therefore, when we were seeking to publish answers to questions that emerging social change leaders frequently ask Echoing Green about the experience of applying for an Echoing Green fellowship and the life of a social entrepreneur, we turned our video camera on a group of our fellows for answers.

To watch the video interviews click here or visit http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellowship/apply/fellow-interviews/. We strongly urge applicants to heed the fellows’ advice provided in response to the final two questions where they share insights and tips on completing the Echoing Green application and the three most important things every emerging social entrepreneur should keep in mind.

By necessity, Echoing Green must limit the length of the initial application for our fellowship program. The average initial application is three pages plus a two-page resume (or 2 two-page resumes if submitted by a partnership). Each year, we receive between 700 and 1,400 applications. That means that in the month of December, Echoing Green must read and evaluate grant applications representing between 3,500 and 6,000 pages. Because we must impose stringent character limits on the applicants’ answers, it is very common for applicants to initially draft much longer answers and then edit those answers down to fit within our limitations. That is a perfectly logical approach and one, frankly, that we would recommend. The danger, however, is that as you, the applicant, go through the process you are likely mentally filling in the words, sentences and background information that you deleted during the editing process. It will become impossible for you, as the author, to be able to objectively review your application after you have made several rounds of edits.

By working with a coach or by setting up your own review committee, you can prevent common pitfalls, such as clichés, overuse of industry specific jargon that means nothing to anyone outside of your field, or the inadvertent deletion of a critical word or phrase, without which your response doesn’t make any sense. Echoing Green has coaching tools and an application review checklist on our website. If you don’t have time to work through these tools, we strongly suggest that at the very least you recruit two friends who are unfamiliar with your idea to review your application. After they have read the application once, at the most twice, have them tell you, in their own words, what they think you are proposing and why. If they have misunderstood what your proposed organization will do or your argument for why this organization is needed, chances are that the Echoing Green staff will misunderstand it as well.

We understand the temptation to keep your proposal under wraps and to fiercely protect it until you are ready for the big reveal. We urge you to fight that temptation. While you may be reluctant to expose your dream to anyone who may criticize it or will tell you the 100 reasons it will never work, sharing it with others and really truly listening to their feedback will only make your idea stronger and significantly increase your chances of success. Every year after we select our new class, Echoing Green polls our new fellows on a number of different things. One area where our fellows are absolutely consistent is that they all engaged friends, families and advisers in the development of their Echoing Green proposal and they all report that the coaching and feedback from their “advisory board” was enormously helpful, not just for the Echoing Green application but for preparing to talk with a broad group of potential supporters and constituents.

Now that you know why and how Echoing Green invests in start ups, how do we define the start up phase? A general rule of thumb is that the organization cannot be up and running with full time staff longer than two years and still be considered “start up.” Is two years a hard and fast rule? Absolutely not. Some organizations spend much more time on research and development of their program model. They may have operated for quite some in research mode or the management team may have only been able to commit to working on their program part time while holding down another full time job. If it isn’t a hard and fast rule, h ow did we select two years as the cut off? Any organization that is being built to thrive, and not merely to survive, within two years of launching should have a well defined program model (and possibly piloted it), a initial strategic plan, basic organizational infrastructure, a staffing plan, initial funding sources, and an established and functioning board of directors If your organization already has all of those things in place, congratulations! You have survived the start up phase and are poised for growth. If you do not yet have those things in place, you may still be in your start up phase and eligible to apply for Echoing Green.

One of the most frequently asked questions that Echoing Green gets is about our use of the term “start up.” Before we define how Echoing Green uses that term, a little explanation on why we focus our fellowship program exclusively on social change start up organizations. The social sector, unlike the private sector, is very risk averse when it comes to investing in innovative ideas and solutions. Private sector investors wrestle their way to the front of the line to invest in an interesting untested idea that could ultimately redefine the market place and deliver huge profits, the way that iPod changed how we buy, share and play music, driving up Apple’s stock price. Investors are much more cautious about their philanthropic dollars, however. Individual donors and foundations tend to shy away from unproven ideas in favor of investing in ideas that have a good track record, even when that track record is good vs great and barely making a dent in the problem. While there are many innovative and create organizations working on social challenges, often well meaning board members and executives also get a bit skittish about investing in new and untested solutions. But the social challenges that face us today are enormous and in need of audacious ideas that can be executed without fear of offending or losing long standing funding sources committed to existing models for change. Often times, the only place that this kind of bold and innovative action can be tested and proven to work (or can fail and be retooled and tried again) is in a start up environment. Echoing Green believes that to create the kind of big, bold, transformative social change that we believe is possible, the social sector needs the freedom and exploratory laboratory space that is unique to the start up environment. Please note, we believe the start up environment is necessary to foster creativity and innovation, not because we think the world needs more nonprofits. Sadly, according to the Foundation Center, less than 2% of Foundation dollars are invested in start up organizations.

Echoing Green’s program model is designed around supporting early phase, innovative social change leaders. Our fellow conferences and support tools are specifically designed for organizations that are very early in their organizational evolution and leaders who may not have ever taken on a challenge like this before. If you are running a well established organization, our programming will not align with your needs, both as a leader and as an organization. If you are running a project within a larger, established organization, you will find that our programs are not really designed for you either. While Echoing Green absolutely believes that existing organizations can be highly innovative, it simply requires very different skills to drive change when you have a track record and a known brand than when you are starting from scratch. Therefore, we look for those leaders launching new organizations whose needs for training and support align with the tools that Echoing Green provides.

A couple of weeks ago, my boss found an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the surge in business school applicants as a result of current economic conditions. With thousands of people losing their jobs and even more in fear that they may lose their job in the near future, deciding to go back to school for an advanced degree doesn’t sound like a bad idea. As the article describes, many people still in finance jobs are leaving their positions and heading back to school for a degree in a different field. In the two or three years it takes to obtain an MBA or Master’s degree, many people are hoping they’ll be able to ride out the current economic crisis and come out unscathed.

But what does this have to do with you, an individual dedicated to social change?

Some of you may be thinking that now is a great time to start your own social venture, especially if you’re recently out of a job or looking for a way to earn additional funds. Or maybe you’re debating to yourself whether you’d rather launch your own organization or apply to graduate school. I just want to give a cautionary warning for those who are unsure of which path they want to take next. Starting your own organization is not a good idea if you’re not willing to put 100% of your efforts into ensuring its success. It’s difficult enough to find foundations and individual donors willing to invest in your idea, but with the current state of the global economy, convincing people to help fund your program will be significantly harder. The challenge of securing those donations will be time consuming and extremely challenging. Without complete dedication to your social endeavor, you may lose hope before launching your program and give up your efforts. Make sure you’re willing to take on the grueling challenge of fundraising for your organization before applying for fellowships and grants.

Since the application website opened on September 17th, I’ve been receiving several emails per day about the fellowship and the application process – which is expected, of course. Some questions are more popular than others, so for this entry, I want to highlight five frequent questions:

Q: Must organizations be nonprofits in order to be eligible for the Echoing Green Fellowship?
A: Absolutely not! Program ideas and organizations can be nonprofits, for-profits, or even a hybrid of the two.

Click here to read a blog post about the for-profit/non-profit hybrid model – posted on Social Edge.

A number of our fellows have launched for-profit organizations, including (from our latest class of fellows):

• Nathan Sigworth and Taylor Thompson - PharmaSecure
• Will Bradshaw and Reuben Teague – Green Coast Enterprises
• Yasmina McCarty and Nandini Narula – GreenMango
• Adarsh Kumar – Livelihoods Equity Connect
• Mubuso Zamchiya – School Invest

Q: What does the eligibility statement “I am proposing a research project or research organization” mean? Do you not want us to do research on our program areas?
A: We expect anyone starting their own organization to do EXTENSIVE research on their program area and the target population before designing a social change program. Rather, we do not fund organizations or projects designed SOLELY for research – similar to organizations like RAND or the Brookings Institute.

Q: Are there any requirements on how the fellowship award money must be used?
A: Once the money is distributed, fellows may use the money however they wish (for start-up capital or employee salaries, for example)to support the launch of their organization. We do require fellows to send us status reports on their progress.

Q: Can candidates apply for the fellowship if they plan on working at another job at the same time?
A: Based on our selection criteria, we request that if a candidate is selected as an Echoing Green Fellow, they resign from their current job position and take on the responsibilities of starting their new social venture. If candidates are unable to do so, they are not eligible for our fellowship.

Q: What types of organizations are eligible for the Echoing Green Fellowship? Are you looking for specific program ideas?
A: If you’ve taken a look at our past fellows, you have seen that Echoing Green has funded a wide variety of organizations over the past twenty-one years. We’re not in search of nonprofit or for-profit (or hybrid) organizations within certain fields; we’re interested in finding program ideas and organizations with innovative ideas and solutions that break the mold, and really transform communities in today’s environment. We support organizations domestically and internationally. Our fellows work in all areas including but not limited to education, youth development, health, housing, environmental justice, civil and human rights, economic development, social justice, the arts, and immigration.

I hope you find these responses helpful! If you have any questions or comments about these answers or anything related to the fellowship – shoot me an email at deva@echoinggreen.org.