Social Enterprise Alliance selects five winners at Earned Income Showcase

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Minneapolis, MN, December 10, 2002: The Social Enterprise Alliance today announced the award of $5000 in cash prizes to five nonprofits with exemplary “earned income” projects designed to lessen dependence on grant or government funding. Winners were selected from among candidates in an “Earned Income Showcase” and included Aquilla Wheelchair Partners (Highland Park, IL), Bookshare.org (Palo Alto, CA), The Enterprising Kitchen (Chicago, IL), Greyston Bakery (Yonkers, NY), and Harbor City Services, Inc. (Baltimore, MD).

Winning projects were selected by a panel of more than two dozen grantmakers gathered in Minneapolis as part of the 4th National Gathering for Social Entrepreneurs, an annual meeting of 400 nonprofits, funders, and consultants interested in promoting earned income strategies to support social concerns. Projects were evaluated on the basis of clarity of presentation, market demand, social impact, creativity-innovation, management track record, and income potential. Each winner received a check for $1,000 and feedback on their business idea from funders and experienced practitioners in the field.

The Social Enterprise Alliance is a nonprofit membership organization with nearly 600 members from around the world, primarily US and Canada. The rapidly growing organization reflects an emerging trend in the nonprofit community to leverage assets and create multiple streams of revenue to support social initiatives.

Admission to the Earned Income Showcase was open to social entrepreneurs who wanted an opportunity to display new or expanded earned income projects to potential social investors participating in a special forum co-hosted by the Social Enterprise Alliance and GEO - Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. Showcase participants had the opportunity to discuss their projects with grant makers and social investors who may become future supporters.

The Showcase winners and other projects reviewed at the conference demonstrate the creativity of the nonprofit community but most importantly dispel the myth that nonprofits cannot operate as good businesses. Nonprofit social enterprises pursue a “double bottom line” of social impact and net revenues, and the generation of new and diverse income streams offers long-term sustainability to their charitable missions.

For example, Bookshare.org, a project of the Benetech Initiative, provides an extensive online library of accessible digital books for people who have significant reading print-related disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia, or mobility impairments. Already, more than 11,000 books are available to subscribers through the efforts of a nationwide group of 250 volunteers. By creating a technology infrastructure that allows scanned books to be submitted and processed by volunteers across the nation, the Bookshare.org model allows a larger number of books to be made available more quickly and at low per-unit cost.

About Benetech

The Benetech Initiative is a Silicon Valley nonprofit that develops sustainable, technology-based solutions to address pressing social challenges in areas such as disability, human rights, education and literacy. Many beneficial technologies have compelling social applications that are not developed because such efforts do not meet for-profit investors’ financial expectations. Benetech specifically pursues endeavors with a strong social, rather than financial, rate of return on investment, bringing commercial technology and private sector management techniques to bear in creating innovative, non-traditional solutions to challenging social issues. More information on Benetech and its projects can be found at www.benetech.org or by calling (650) 475-5440.

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