The Lifesaver

By Jasmine D. Adkins

Many entrepreneurs like to say they're out to change the world. Holmes is staying true to her promise. At the age of 20, she designed a device with the goal of saving the estimated 100,000 people who die each year from adverse drug reactions. With the Theranos 1.0, patients prick their fingers and place a small drop of blood on a disposable cartridge, which is then inserted into a reader that analyzes the medicine within the bloodstream. The device then sends the data wirelessly to a secure database, which makes it available online to the patients' physicians.

Holmes is now marketing the product to pharmaceutical companies who will use it during their clinical trials to monitor how patients interact with new drugs -- with hopes of eventually distributing it commercially. As she describes it, "Thernos 1.0 is an external point-of-care BlackBerry."

Holmes was a chemical engineering major at Stanford, researching wireless transmission and medical analytics, when she conceived the idea to help provide data for early treatment. "When I told my professors about the device, they told me I would be crazy not to create a company," she says. She agreed -- and eventually left Stanford to pursue it. In the beginning, Holmes received a bridge loan from a VC firm and private-equity funding totaling $6 million. The company recently raised another $10 million, and Holmes remains as involved with the science as she does with raising capital, hiring employees, and the other day-to-day of running a company.

"I decided to pursue this full time and just did it," she says. "That's the way I do a lot of things in life -- when I decide something, that's it.


For more inspiration from entrepreneurs under 30:
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/inc30.html
http://www.inc.com/slideshow_INC/slideviewer.cgi?list=30under30&refresh=10&partner=yahoo

How Buffett gave a call to alms

Published: June 28 2006 01:34 | Last updated: June 28 2006 01:34

There was a mood of reverence in the New York Public Library on Monday as the world’s two wealthiest men met to announce a landmark development in charitable giving. It will soon need to be converted into much more down to earth action.

Bill Gates, whose “new economy” software business has generated him a personal fortune currently estimated at $50bn (£27bn), may not appear to have much in common with Warren Buffett, the “sage of Omaha” whose focus on “old economy” investment has made him $44bn.

But the two friends, who confirm their reputation for parsimony by placing bets of just $1 when they meet for poker games, have made a common exception in defining a new version of philanthropy that is both generous and rigorous. In bringing corporate values to the sector, they are refining charity in a way that is being closely watched by a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs.

Mr Buffett’s decision to donate shares in his company, now worth $31bn, will almost double the value of the $35bn-strong Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Add to that Mr Gates’s pledge of most of his outstanding $50bn, and their total gifts will in real terms far outstrip any other endowment in history.

But the pressure is on. Mr Buffett, famous for his hands-on style, is taking a seat on the Foundation board and requires it to double its current annual $1.4bn spending within two years to reflect the size of his annual bequests.

Mr Buffett’s contribution is all the more remarkable because it marks a shift away from the traditional desire of philanthropists to leave a personal imprint through the creation of a foundation in their own name.

“I know what I want to do, and it makes sense to get going,” he told Fortune magazine last weekend. “I came to realise that there was a terrific foundation that was already scaled up . . . and that could productively use my money now.”

Although he will also donate significant sums to other foundations controlled by his children, his surprise decision to place the bulk of his fortune in Mr Gates’s hands hints at what might be a second trend in the philanthropy of the future: a move towards consolidation.

Despite a handful of large endowments such as Mr Gates’s, most charitable giving around the world still takes place through thousands of small charities set up with far more modest means, and managed on whim and a shoestring by volunteers or tiny staffs.

The diversity of approaches that this creates is central to the innovation and range of interests in the non-profit sector. Yet it is also in many ways an inefficient means to achieving any stated goals.

Mr Buffett’s donation is important in a third way. It suggests an endorsement of an alternative approach taken by the Gates Foundation towards what some have dubbed “venture” or “strategic” philanthropy. The practice is designed to bring some of the skills of business – or specifically venture capital – to charitable giving.

Venture philanthropists actively seek out – and even create – organisations to receive funding in areas they judge useful, instead of passively processing requests for donations. They place large “bets” on those projects regarded as effective, introduce performance measurement techniques to assess their success, work with project managers to help them achieve their aims, and stop funding when failure or even long-term success results.

“The Gates Foundation has decided to take on some of the largest challenges known to mankind,” says Trevor Neilson, a former Gates Foundation staffer and now a partner in the Endeavor Group, a firm representing the philanthropic interests of a number of wealthy individuals.

“Will some of their strategies fail? Of course, but if one or two of them work they will change the course of history. They understand that risk and reward are inextricably linked and the reason they are so powerful is not the size of their bank account. It’s that they aren’t afraid to fail.”

Several of Mr Neilson’s clients, and those of similar consultancies, are embracing venture philanthropy. So is Google.org, the foundation being established by the founders of the search company and endowed with $1bn in funding.

While they do not explicitly use the “venture philanthropy” label, Mr Gates and his wife Melinda have also over the past decade built their foundation into a large organisation to put these ideas into practice. It now employs 250 staff and works with a large number of advisers, consultants and intermediary organisations.

As the only trustees, the couple have always been closely involved in key decisions, including large grants. They have brought with them a pragmatic business approach and a personal belief in the power of science and technology to change lives and reduce inequality of opportunity.

“We do have a privilege over established older foundations,” says Patty Stonesifer, their friend and the former senior Microsoft executive who runs the foundation. “Just a few years ago we were given a blank sheet to answer the question ‘what would you do today?’. We only started in this century in a big way, so we are very much of this moment.”

But in philanthropy, business methods also have their limits. As Bruce Sievers, an academic specialising in the subject, has argued, “performance” is much more difficult to measure in the non-profit world, while the hands-on approach of venture capitalists can threaten the independence of grant recipients.

Some of the Gates Foundation recipients make just such complaints, and question in particular the dominant role played by McKinsey, the strategy consultancy. The head of McKinsey’s India practice, for example, was recruited as one of its top executives to run the foundation’s HIV/Aids work from New Delhi.

While philanthropic “returns” are longer term and more complex, there is little data publicly available to judge the Foundation’s effectiveness to date in its main areas, whether in education reform or global health.

The Gates Foundation last month announced that it would create a division focused on global development. This hints at the broader social, economic and political issues that need to be tackled in order to deliver returns in global health.

Mr Buffett’s contribution raises the stakes. He will become a trustee of the Gates Foundation, bringing greater external accountability, although he stresses that his contribution will be modest, largely limited to custody if its original benefactors were to die in an accident.

Crucially, he suggests that he does not have the patience to await the longer- term returns required in philanthropy, and he is even sceptical about mixing the genres, dismissing a question on Monday about the need for ethical investment. “You need to seek out people with a talent to distribute money in the same way as you do for those to accumulate it,” he said.

As Mr Gates gears up to devote most of his time to philanthropy by 2008, he must also consider how to try to maintain the political leverage he can bring to bear in getting governments to make his pilot projects sustainable. Once no longer at Microsoft, that may prove more difficult.

It will take several years yet to determine if the Gates have been able to bridge the two worlds of business and philanthropic success. In the process, they will see how far they can deliver for Mr Buffett, themselves, other philanthropists seeking effective approaches, and above all their intended beneficiaries.

Buffett's grand and generous idea may spread

By Marshall Loeb, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:22 PM ET Jun 27, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Warren Buffett's grand gesture of turning over the bulk of his celebrated estate to philanthropy, his magnificent giveaway of Berkshire Hathaway shares with a value today of $37 billion, mostly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, drew plaudits from many Americans.
But his generosity may well be sending chills down the collective spines of the baby boomers, that we-have-it-all coming generation aged about 42 to 60.
Many of these middle-aged folks have openly expected to be America's first generation of inheritors. They have been counting on collecting a juicy payout -- someday -- from the pneumatically growing estates of their parents, who are aged roughly 65 and up.
Now along comes the shrewdest, smartest individual investor in the country to declare that the wise and just action is not to pass on accumulated wealth to one's own flesh and blood, but instead to give it away -- to total strangers. With capitalists like that, who needs socialists?
The trouble is that such notions could catch on. In the wake of Buffett's passionate advocacy, it may become highly fashionable for the rich (or merely affluent) folks to become much more charitable.
As Buffet told Fortune magazine editor-at-large Carol Loomis last week, "Frankly, I have some small hopes that what I'm doing might encourage other very rich people thinking about philanthropy to decide that they didn't necessarily have to set up their own foundations but could look around for the best of these that were up and running and available to handle their money."
Not that this general idea is totally new or revolutionary. Since the dawn of the Republic, citizens have been debating the merits and perils of leaving outsize fortunes to one's offspring. As one of those heirs, William Vanderbilt, declared in 1885, "Inherited wealth is a big handicap to happiness. It is as certain death to ambition as cocaine is to morality."
Buffett, now 75, has been preaching of these dangers for decades.
Way back in 1986 in New York, I sat across a conference room table from the Sage of Omaha and heard him argue to a friendly group of Fortune magazine editors that it is just not wise to bequeath what he calls "dynastic mega-wealth" to one's progeny.
We journalists quickly seized upon this provocative idea and produced a story featuring Buffett on the cover of the magazine, titled "Should You Leave It All to the Children?"
In answering that question, the magazine quoted him, "My kids are going to carve out their own place in this world, and they know I'm for them whatever they want to do."
But he believed that setting up his heirs with "a lifetime supply of food stamps just because they came out of the right womb" can be "harmful for them and is an anti-social act."
As it happens, Buffett has three grown children -- two sons, one daughter -- and while they are comfortably provided for, they will not have huge fortunes like, say, retailer Sam Walton's billionaire children.
To Buffett, the perfect amount to leave one's children would be "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."
This is well and good, but such philosophy could leave the expectant baby boomers high and dry when the time comes to collect from their parents' estates.
On top of that, their hopes for seeing the repeal of the onerous federal estate tax have recently been quashed in Congress. Buffett is a fierce opponent of tax repeal, and so are Bill and Melinda Gates. The next time this issue comes up for debate in Washington, we can expect them to speak up against repeal or even sharp reduction.
Meanwhile, let's give the last word to Buffett, who says, indisputably, "Love is the greatest advantage a parent can give."

Buffett gives $37 billion to Gates and other foundations

Sunday June 25, 6:25 pm ET
By Robert MacMillan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is donating a total of $37 billion -- most of his personal fortune -- to a foundation started by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and to several family foundations, making it the largest-ever individual charitable gift in the United States.
Buffett, 75, is the chief executive of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A - News). He is worth an estimated $44 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him the second-richest man behind Gates, who is worth about $50 billion.

The $37 billion comprises about 85 percent of Buffett's fortune.

In a letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Buffett, 75, said he will set aside 10 million shares of Berkshire class B common stock (NYSE:BRK-B - News) for the foundation.

Based on the stock's per-share price of $3071.01 as of Friday, the total amount for the Gates foundation comes to about $30 billion.

The amount is the largest commitment to a philanthropic cause ever made by one person in the United States, said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

"Even if you look at what (John D.) Rockefeller and (Andrew) Carnegie gave historically -- even if you do it in today's numbers, it doesn't come close to that," she said.

In a letter to the Gateses, Buffett wrote that "You have committed yourselves to a few extraordinarily important but underfunded issues, a policy that I believe offers the highest probability of your achieving goals of great consequence."

"We are awed by our friend Warren Buffett's decision to use his fortune to address the world's most challenging inequities, and we are humbled that he has chosen to direct a large portion of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation," the Gateses said in a statement on the foundation's Web site.

Buffett also pledged 1 million shares to a foundation established for his late wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, and 350,000 shares each to foundations for children Howard, Susan and Peter.

He said he will award 5 percent of the shares he has set aside on a yearly basis.

The amount going to the Gates foundation in the first year alone would be worth more than $1.5 billion.

Gates is a Berkshire director, and a bridge partner of Buffett's. Buffett, meanwhile, serves on the board of the Washington Post Co.(NYSE:WPO - News) with Melinda Gates.

The announcement comes after Gates, 50, said he would move away from his day-to-day role at the Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) to focus more on charity work.

Now worth $30 billion, the Gates foundation is one of the world's richest philanthropic organizations. It has committed millions of dollars to fighting diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries, and to education and library technology in the United States.

In letters to the recipients, he said he will award the gifts every year for the rest of his life. He is in "excellent health," he wrote to the Gates foundation, but said that he is writing a new will to ensure that the stock is distributed after his death.

The gift is contingent on one of the Gateses continuing to be involved in the foundation, Buffett said.

Berkshire Hathaway officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Google.org

About Google.org
10/11/2005 09:02:00 PM
Posted by Sheryl Sandberg, VP, Global Online Sales & Operations

When we told prospective shareholders about Google and how we wanted to do business, we said that we hoped our philanthropic efforts could some day have a greater impact than Google itself. We committed one percent of our profits and equity toward that vision. We’ve looked closely at how those resources can have the greatest impact and found that there are many creative and effective ways to make a difference. So we’ve taken time to investigate, learn and imagine. And while we are still actively engaged in the learning process, we’ve made enough progress that we thought it was a good time to give an update on our plans.

As our founders said in our 2004 annual report, we’re taking a broad approach. We’re calling the umbrella under which we’re putting all of these efforts Google.org. It will include the work of the Google Foundation, some of Google’s own projects, as well as partnerships and contributions to for-profit and non-profit entities. Here are some things we're already working on:

We established the Google Foundation, funded it with $90 million and have made a few initial commitments. We've contributed $5 million to support Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund that invests in market-based solutions to global poverty. Acumen Fund supports entrepreneurial approaches to delivering affordable goods and services for the 4 billion people in the world who live on less than $4 a day.

We’re also working with TechnoServe to build small businesses that create jobs and promote economic growth in the developing world. With TechnoServe, we are funding an entrepreneurship development program in Ghana that includes a business plan competition and seed capital for the winners to build their businesses.

In addition, we are working with Alix Zwane and Edward Miguel of UC Berkeley and Michael Kremer of Harvard University to support research in western Kenya to identify ways to prevent child deaths caused by poor water quality.

Google.org also includes projects we manage on our own, using Google talent, technology and other resources. An example is the Google Grants program, which gives free advertising to selected nonprofits. To date, Google Grants has donated $33 million in advertising to more than 850 nonprofit organizations in 10 countries.

Current Google Grants participants include:
Make-a-Wish Foundation - grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions. More than 25 percent of their online donations are made as a result of their Google ads.

Doctors Without Borders - delivers emergency medical aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, disasters, and exclusion from health care in nearly 70 countries. Google Grants has assisted them with recruiting experienced doctors and nurses for their field programs, which has helped them increase applications by 30 percent this year.

Grameen Foundation USA - uses microfinance and innovative technology to help the world's poorest people escape poverty. Google Grants has helped them attract donors and broaden their newsletter subscriber base.

With Google.org, we’ll also support entities with strong social missions which use market-based solutions for sustainable economic development. One example is our recent donation of $2 million to the One Laptop Per Child program.

While the results we get are more important than the amount of money we give, we want to be clear about how we’re going to keep our “one percent” commitments. There are two parts: equity and profit. For the one percent of equity, we have committed one percent of the outstanding shares that resulted from our initial public offering – 3 million shares. We’re going to donate and invest this amount over a period of as much as 20 years. Because it is based on stock, the dollar value of this commitment will rise and fall with our stock price

We’ll follow through on the other commitment – one percent of profit – by taking one percent of each year’s profits and donating and investing that too. Our first step in meeting these commitments includes a $90 million cash donation to the Google Foundation and a commitment of up to $175 million over three years across our other Google.org efforts. We don’t expect to make further donations to the Foundation for the foreseeable future.

As Larry and Sergey said in their Founders’ Letter, “We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the world's problems."

We feel fortunate to have the opportunity to contribute our resources, talent, energy, and passion helping to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. We will provide you with updates as our work progresses.

For more information: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/about-googleorg.html

Existing "Social entrepreneurship" venture & foundation

*The Skoll Foundation

www.skollfoundation.org

A great initiative - One Laptop per Child

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit association dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. This initiative was launched by faculty members at the MIT Media Lab. It was first announced by Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte, now chairman of OLPC, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.

Visit the $100 Laptop Website for the latest information.

Kalibrio tones

A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.
"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs . . I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."
"And after that?" asked the Mexican.

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."
"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
"And after that?"
"Afterwards? Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stock s and make millions!"
"Millions? Really? And after that?" said the Mexican.

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

And the moral is: Know where you're going in life... you may already be there

Social Entrepreneurship

Example of Omydar Network


"We believe every individual has the power to make a difference.
We exist for one single purpose: So that more and more people discover their own power to make good things happen.
We are actively building a network of participants, because we know we can't do this alone. "



Omidyar Network is a mission-based investment group committed to fostering individual self-empowerment on a global scale. Established in June 2004 by Pierre and Pam Omidyar, the Network derives its focus and values from Pierre's experience as founder of eBay.
The Network funds for-profits, nonprofits and public policy efforts that promote:
• Equal access to information, tools and opportunities
• Rich connections around shared interests
• A sense of ownership for participants

Because we believe issues are best addressed by the people who face them, we fund citizen-driven models that enable individuals to pursue what matters most to them. Therefore, our approach is to focus on the how, rather than the what.

Omidyar Network is developing a diverse portfolio that fosters individual self-empowerment across the economic, political and social realms. We invite you to learn more about the organizations we've funded.

American India Foundation
The American India Foundation is devoted to improving social and economic conditions in India by mobilizing resources in the US for impoverished Indian communities.

Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation, formed by the open source developer community it supports, provides hardware, communication, and business infrastructure for Apache software projects.

Ashoka
Ashoka helps create systemic social change by providing social entrepreneurs with funding and a global network of relationships, knowledge, and resources.

Backfence
Backfence provides highly localized Web sites that enable members of local communities to post their news, share what's happening within their own neighborhoods, and connect with others who care about the same issues.

Carter-Baker Commission
The Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform is a nonpartisan, independently funded commission assessing the effectiveness of and recommending improvements to the US electoral system and the Help America Vote Act.

Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity provides the public with the findings of its investigations and analyses of public service, government accountability and ethics-related issues.

Center for Responsive Politics
The Center for Responsive Politics seeks to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry, and a more responsive government by tracking money in politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

Creative Commons
Creative Commons breaks down barriers to sharing creative content imposed by existing copyright law, using private rights to create public goods.

Digg
Digg harnesses the collective wisdom of its online audience by allowing it to prioritize the overwhelming amount of content available on the Internet.

DonorsChoose
DonorsChoose is the online marketplace where teachers and citizens connect to give students the resources they need to learn.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation works to educate press, policymakers and the general public about civil liberties issues related to technology, and acts as a defender of those liberties.

Electronic Privacy Information Center
The Electronic Privacy Information Center works to promote the public voice and protect privacy, freedom of expression and constitutional values in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.

EVDB
EVDB (Events and Venues Data Base) is a collaborative, online information resource that helps people discover events and share their discoveries with others, allowing those who would not otherwise have connected to meet and interact.

Federated Media Publishing
Federated Media Publishing is developing a suite of publishing services that will enable a network of established, high quality, independent authors to thrive through partnerships with endemic and national advertisers.

Feedster
Feedster is an RSS search engine that enables the public to create a richer, more diverse and connected exchange of information.

FreeBSD Foundation
The FreeBSD Foundation promotes collaborative research and development involving the open source FreeBSD operating system.

GlobalGiving
GlobalGiving is an Internet-based marketplace for international philanthropy, connecting individual and institutional donors directly to locally run, social and economic development projects around the world.

Global Social Venture Competition
The Global Social Venture Competition actively supports the creation and growth of successful social ventures around the world.

Grameen Foundation USA
Grameen Foundation USA empowers the world's poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty with dignity through access to financial services and to information.

Grassroots Media
Grassroots Media is a project to apply the best practices and principles of professional journalism to the emergent fervor and knowledge of citizens, who want to bring their own voices to the journalistic process.

Hagar
Hagar's Reintegration of Trafficked Women Project helps Cambodian women and girls who are victims of human trafficking successfully begin a new life in mainstream society.

Institute for Justice
The Institute for Justice is a public interest law firm providing strategic litigation, communication and outreach to secure consitutional rights such as economic liberties, private property rights, and freedom of speech.

KaBOOM!
KaBOOM! empowers civic participation nationwide by working with communities to design, build and maintain their own playgrounds, skateparks, and athletic fields.

Keystone
Keystone aims to provide the first global reporting standards for donors in the nonprofit market, akin to what generally accepted accounting practices provide for investors in the stock market.

Kids Voting USA
Kids Voting USA fosters an informed, participating electorate by educating and actively engaging students and their families in citizenship, civic responsibility, democracy and the importance of political participation.

Linden Lab
Linden Lab is the producer of Second Life, an online world imagined, created and owned by its residents and guided by its participatory democracy.

Microcredit Summit Campaign
Through a series of regional and global events, microfinance stakeholders gather to advance the field of microfinance and, ultimately, reduce poverty among 100 million of the world's poorest families.

Microfinance Information eXchange, Inc. (The MIX)
The Microfinance Information eXchange is an online information marketplace that promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration between microfinance institutions and prospective investors and clients.

Microfinance Securities
Omidyar Network is investing in the first large US pooling of funds for microfinance, hoping to stimulate broader participation from mainstream investors.

MicroVest
MicroVest is an investment firm providing microfinance institutions with access to new sources of commercial capital, helping to build capital markets that work for the poor.

Modest Needs
Modest Needs helps keep struggling families from entering the cycle of poverty, allowing them to cover small, but unexpected expenses by pooling what others can afford to share.

Myelin Repair Foundation
The Myelin Repair Foundation is driving innovation in multiple sclerosis research by creating a collaborative environment in which disparate scientists work together on a shared research plan as a single community.

New Voters Project
The New Voters Project is a nonpartisan, grassroots campaign focused on increasing the turnout of young voters for the 2004 election.

OneWorld International
OneWorld is a global information network developed to support communication media of the people, by the people and for the people — everywhere.

Project on Government Oversight
The Project on Government Oversight strives to make the federal government accountable to its citizens by investigating, exposing, and remedying the government's abuses of power, mismanagement, and subservience to special interests.

Project Vote
Project Vote empowers low-income and minority citizens to increase voter education, registration, and turnout rates within their own communities, and helps them protect their voting rights.

Python Software Foundation
The Python Software Foundation supports the developer community devoted to advancing Python, the open source programming language easily learned within a few days.

Science Commons
Science Commons encourages scientific innovation by making it easier for scientists, universities, and enterprises to share scientific literature, data, and materials.

Secrecy News
Secrecy News aims to increase transparency and accountability of the democratic process by challenging excessive government secrecy, providing alternative channels for public access to government information, and promoting public oversight.

Socialtext
Socialtext, the leading enterprise social software provider, makes it easy for workgroups to communicate effectively and build group memory, social capital and trust.

Solar Electric Light Fund
Solar Electric Light Fund works with rural communities in the developing world to establish solar-powered electric infrastructure, laying the foundation for economic development and an improved quality of life.

SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net is the world's largest open source software development website, offering the most comprehensive repository of open source code and applications for free.

SpikeSource
SpikeSource makes open source software safe for the enterprise by providing testing, certification and support services.

United Villages
United Villages enables people in underserved, rural areas of developing countries to communicate by email and voicemail through cost-effective, "store-and-forward" wireless networks.

Unitus
Unitus works to accelerate the growth of the highest-potential microfinance institutions in developing countries, demonstrating that MFIs can be operated as large-scale, commercially funded, regulated financial institutions.

Votewatch.us
Votewatch.us is a nonpartisan organization working toward a fully transparent and accountable election system to ensure all votes are counted as they were cast.

Voxiva
Voxiva's information applications leverage the existing communications infrastructure of developing countries to help organizations and their field staffs to track diseases, monitor patients, manage projects and respond to disasters in real time, significantly reducing response times and ultimately saving lives.

WITNESS
WITNESS helps local human rights defenders in the U.S. and around the globe use video to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice.

World of Good
World of Good brings ethically sourced, handcrafted gifts and accessories into the US market under one brand, providing microentrepreneurship and a sustainable living for thousands of individual artisans from developing countries.

YackPack
YackPack combines the richness of voice communication with the convenience and simplicity of email, allowing even non-technical people to strengthen connections with those closest to them.

YouthBuild
YouthBuild works to unleash the intelligence and positive energy of low-income youth to rebuild their communities and their lives.


For more information about Omidyar Network:
http://www.omidyar.net/



PIERRE OMIDYAR
Ebay founder & Omidyar founder

On Labor Day 1995, Pierre launched eBay as an experiment. He wondered, "What would happen within a marketplace if everyone had equal access to information and tools? Would a level playing field enable individuals to compete alongside big businesses? What if members managed their own transactions and accountability?" At the time, Pierre didn't know the answers to his own questions. Today, his experiment continues to prove the benefits of an open and honest environment. Hundreds of thousands of members make their living entirely on eBay and enjoy the freedom of owning a business. More than 150 million people trust strangers with every transaction. Strangers find common ground where none seemed to exist before.
After eBay's success and its IPO in 1998, Pierre, along with his wife, Pam, co-founded the Omidyar Foundation to fund nonprofits. Yet eBay's tremendous social impact as a for-profit company demonstrated that business could also be an effective tool for making the world a better place. In response, they broadened their scope in June 2004 and formed a new entity, Omidyar Network, to invest in for-profit, nonprofit and public policy efforts. To date, the Network has funded a number of areas that leverage transparent, collaborative and bottom-up approaches so that "more and more people discover their own power to make good things happen." Those areas include microfinance, citizen journalism, open source, representative government and elections, and intellectual property commons, among others. Over the next five years, the organization plans to invest $400 million across sectors and seek out financially self-sustaining models that can only be successful by having a social impact.

Pierre graduated from Tufts in 1988 with a B.S. in computer science. He then joined Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, as a consumer software engineer. Next, he co-founded Ink Development Corp., later renamed eShop and acquired by Microsoft. Today, Pierre serves as a Trustee of Tufts University and Santa Fe Institute, a Director of Meetup Inc., Chairman of
eBay Inc., and CEO of Omidyar Network.

Also, for more information about Pierre:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/omi0int-2

Collaborate: Work with others to make your vision a reality.

Social Entrepreneurship
November 27, 2005
eBay founder Pierre Omidyar donates $100 million for microfinancing

According to USA Today, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar will be donating $100 million to a Tufts University program that will generate small loans to finance entrepreneurs in India, Bangladesh, and other poor countries. The goal is to ease poverty in these poor countries.
He's donating $100 million to a university ; Today's tech execs seek to change the world with their own form of philanthropy: Social entrepreneurship
SAN FRANCISCO -- Entrepreneurship turned eBay founder Pierre Omidyar into one of the world's richest men. Now, he's betting it can ease one of the world's most daunting problems: poverty.

Omidyar, who started eBay 10 years ago, will announce today that he is donating $100 million for a new Tufts University program to generate millions of tiny loans, some as small as $40, to finance entrepreneurs trying to escape poverty in India, Bangladesh and other poor countries.
The gift is a big endorsement of social entrepreneurship -- a field of growing interest for the new generation of technology entrepreneurs. The shift could recast traditional philanthropy dominated by non-profits such as the Ford Foundation built on Old Economy wealth.
The new entrepreneurs, impatient to resolve global problems more quickly, are applying the very business models that made them rich at eBay, Microsoft, Google and America Online to battle the most vexing issues, from poverty to childhood disease. "We ought to be looking at business as a force for good," Omidyar said in an interview.

Other tech entrepreneurs are making similar moves. Microsoft's Bill Gates just announced $258 million to help drug giant GlaxoSmithKline and others defeat malaria, a disease killing 2,000 African children daily.

Google's founders last month said their planned $1 billion in philanthropy would include backing entrepreneurs in places such as western Africa. On a smaller scale, America Online co-founder Steve Case in August said he hoped to reduce urban pollution by investing in a novel U.S. car-rental start-up.

Yet the $100 million from eBay Chairman Omidyar and his wife, Pam, both 38, stands out for several reasons. It's a record dollar commitment by an individual to the microfinance industry, he says.

The industry began about 30 years ago in rural Bangladesh when economics professor Muhammad Yunus launched what is now Grameen Bank. It has 3.7 million borrowers, virtually all women, relying on the bank's nearly 1,300 branches covering 46,000 villages. Repayment rates are 95% to 98%, says Grameen Foundation USA, the bank's U.S. affiliate.
Since Grameen's launch, a network of other microlenders -- as many as 10,000 -- has sprung up worldwide, lending about $24 billion annually, says the Microcredit Summit Campaign, funded partly by Omidyar. Over the next 10 years, he expects the Omidyar- Tufts Microfinance Fund could unleash $1 billion in loans, many to women, as capital is repaid, then lent again. That could attract billions more from Wall Street.

It is the biggest -- though not the last -- such gift from a man with very deep pockets: Omidyar, with $10 billion, ranks No. 18 on Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans.
Omidyar's capitalist approach to philanthropy could encourage other wealthy entrepreneurs from his generation to follow a similar trail, says Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a charity trade group whose members include stalwarts such as the American Red Cross. "These guys broke the business mold and, in a way, they are trying to break the social-compact mold as well," Aviv says.

Omidyar's gambit is not guaranteed. For decades, do-gooders have thrown billions at programs meant to raise living standards for the world's 3 billion poor, many living on far less than $1 a day. "We're talking about deep, intractable problems," says Gene Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

While Grameen Bank has been successful, few have tried what Omidyar seeks on such a big scale: luring risk-averse Wall Street to invest in entrepreneurs such as Bhagyamma Vadla, 26, in the Andhra Pradesh province of southern India.

She started a buffalo-milk dairy and clothes-making business with four loans totaling $674 over the past four years, says Grameen Foundation USA. She now earns $2.44 a day, nearly four times what she earned before the loans.



Driving social good

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are prime examples of the newly minted billionaires who also believe entrepreneurship can drive social good. Both 32, their wealth has soared to $14 billion each in little more than a year. At the launch of the online giant's initial public offering last year, they said the Google Foundation might someday "eclipse Google itself" in world impact. Last month, they poured $90 million into the newly launched foundation to be given to groups such as TechnoServe in Norwalk, Conn. Among its ventures, TechnoServe will sponsor a contest in Ghana whose winners will get start-up financing.
Microsoft's Gates is taking a different approach, investing money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation into partnerships with pharmaceutical firms that otherwise might not pursue cures with little profit potential. This week's $258 million in grants follow $3.6 billion for global research and development and other efforts since the foundation's launch in 2000.
Social entrepreneurship is also taking place in smaller ways.

Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen launched a $5 million venture philanthropy arm in 2000 that's financing New England start-ups to boost the state's rural economy. The Barred Rock Fund's investments include Vermont Mystic Pie in Chester, Vt., a baker creating a market for Vermont apples, and jobs producing them.

In Nashville, retired biotech entrepreneur Joseph Cook created Mountain Group Capital in 2003, a venture fund that invests in U.S. manufacturers with hopes of preserving good jobs in the USA. Cook started the fund with more than $5 million of the money he made as former CEO of Amylin Pharmaceuticals in San Diego.

Calling it "business philanthropy," Cook aims for market-rate profits without cutting employee benefits. "We think a health care plan is an important component of a stable environment where people want to work," he says.


AOL co-founder Case, to be sure, wants to profit from buying majority control of Flexcar in Seattle. It rents cars, many gas- electric hybrids, for a few hours at a time in congested urban areas such as Washington and Los Angeles.
Flexcar could make it possible for city dwellers to give up car ownership, Case says, turning the once "fringy" environmental movement into something more mainstream.
Case says others investing alongside his new $500 million Revolution investment fund include Carly Fiorina, the entrepreneurial former CEO of tech giant Hewlett-Packard.
More Revolution investments are likely; this week, Case resigned as a board member of AOL owner Time Warner to focus on Revolution.


The power of tiny transactions

How did French-born Omidyar, uneasy with sudden wealth and now living in a quiet Las Vegas suburb, decide to become a high-profile champion of microfinance's role in social entrepreneurship?
Omidyar (pronounced "oh-MID-ee-ar") says it was a natural outcome of eBay, the online auctioneer that's become the world's biggest 24- hour garage sale. The Silicon Valley icon, with 168 million registered users worldwide, proved that an enterprise built around millions of tiny transactions can prosper.
EBay, with a $55 billion market capitalization, says more than 700,000 users now support themselves part time or full time as online merchants -- a prime example, Omidyar says, of "economic self- empowerment."
About 18 months ago, after learning about microfinance, the Omidyars revamped their philanthropic operation, the Omidyar Network, to invest in for-profit ventures alongside traditional grants to non-profit groups.
The Omidyars have not abandoned traditional philanthropy -- giving to charities such as the Red Cross. "I just think the largest potential is in thinking about business as having a social impact," he says.
Housed in Silicon Valley's Redwood City, the Omidyar Network has $400 million in assets and 37 full-time staffers. Before today's announcement, it had plowed $15 million into microfinance ventures, including Grameen.
Omidyar figured microfinance needed a big push to prove its profitability and attract really big bucks from Wall Street. "In order to get a large-scale global effort, you need a lot of capital," he says. In other words, "microcredit needs IPO-level capital to demonstrate its true potential as a business," says David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.
And that, of course, is Omidyar's aim with his $100 million gift.
"Who says philanthropy has a monopoly on making the world a better place?" he says. "There are lots and lots of businesses that make the world a better place by their very existence."
Now, with today's announcement, he hopes to prove it.



Example of project – ventures & foundation related

The judges awarded an Honorable Mention to a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a public-health organization in Nepal for a low-tech, relatively low-cost home water-filtration system for use in developing countries. The team, led by MIT research engineer and lecturer Susan Murcott, sought to address one of the most pressing public-health problems in developing countries: the lack of clean drinking water, especially for those living in rural areas or urban slums. Millions of people die every year from water-related illnesses, with many of the victims young children.
The MIT team's water-filtering system won in the environmental technology category. Though decidedly a low-tech solution, it was praised by judges for addressing an important problem in an original fashion. However, they also cautioned that even at $20, the price may be too high for the poor households it's targeted for.
"Clean water is not sexy, and $20 a year won't make anyone rich," says Robert Drost, a scientist at Sun Microsystems Inc. and leader of the team that won last year's Gold award. "But third-world challenges in water, food, shelter, and basic medical care are much more important than innovations in first-world entertainment."
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