Making Lemonade

I recently met Dan Jacobs, the young entrepreneur who started Everywun. Everywun operates on the conviction that doing good is good business. Everywun enlists businesses willing to donate a certain amount of money to a worthy cause, then ties them with a web 'badge' that anyone can put on a website or blog. For every hit on that page, the business makes a donation. And what the business gets out of it is consumer recognition, goodwill and more business. Jacobs says he has studies that prove a customer is more likely to buy from a company it sees as socially responsible. He's a social entrepreneur. He's part of a growing group.

Ode Magazine, my favorite magazine on the planet at the moment, recently did a long feature on social entrepreneurs. They're not starry eyed idealists, though they're certainly idealists.

They're taking advantage of the increasing sense that we're all in this together - as each of us feels the pinch from the economy in lesser or greater degrees, we also are aware that everyone else is feeling it, too. We can curl up in a corner and cry, we can pull the covers over our heads and wait for it to be over, or we can help. That last one seems to feel the best, doesn't it?

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/61/social-entrepreneurs-mainstream/