Читать книгу The Mission-Driven Venture - Lane Marc J. - Страница 8

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, too many of us are living on the outskirts of hope. As public companies boast about record profits and the Dow sets all-time highs, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that more than one out of seven Americans lives in poverty. More than seventeen million American children – 23.5 percent of all the nation's children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty line, $23,550 a year for a family of four. The National Center for Children in Poverty reports that, on average, families need an income of about twice that amount just to cover the necessities of life.

No less alarming, a survey commissioned by the Associated Press in 2013 found that four out of five American adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty, or reliance on welfare for at least some of their lives. They are collateral damage in any increasingly global economy that rewards the rich at the expense of the poor and no longer supports a robust manufacturing sector.

The tragedy of impoverished “sacrifice zones” – the post-industrial cities of Detroit, Michigan, and Camden, New Jersey, southern West Virginia's coal fields, and those native American reservations where the twin evils of unfettered expansion and unchecked exploitation keep old wounds unhealed – is spreading at an alarming pace throughout the nation.

But those who are born poor or fall into poverty needn't stay poor.

Breaking the cycle of poverty was once the exclusive domain of governments and charities. But, in recent years, “mission-driven ventures,” those organized specifically to do good work, have taken it upon themselves to rescue the poor, the sick, and the undereducated. Occupying the intersection of money and meaning, they use the power of the marketplace to advance their agendas without forcing their managers to make decisions solely to maximize profits, opting instead to be transparently accountable to all the ventures' stakeholders, society first among them. On an ever-greater scale, mission-driven ventures are helping to restore our fraying social fabric and to repair the world.

Take Juma Ventures, a model for entrepreneurial non-profits everywhere, whose visionary CEO, Dr. Marc Spencer, was selected in 2012 by the San Francisco Business Times as the Bay Area's most admired non-profit chief executive.

Juma's approach is elegant in its simplicity. The organization provides life-changing employment and educational opportunities to local youth who might otherwise remain forever disadvantaged. They grew up in the inner city, surrounded by violence, drugs, and dysfunction, and they see little reason for optimism. Eighteen percent of Juma's students have been arrested, 30 percent have a family member in jail, 20 percent are foster youth, and 61 percent are from single-parent households. The deck is heavily stacked against them in a society in which competition is everything and birthright too often dictates destiny.

Juma runs for-profit enterprises, not only to help fund its activities but also to improve the lives of the young people it serves. They are on the front lines of Juma's businesses. They work concessions selling hot dogs and ice cream at major sports arenas and ball parks in San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, New Orleans, and Seattle. And, along the way, they gain a work ethic and see that all things are possible.

Juma's mission is to empower those they serve and to encourage their pursuit of a college education and the ticket it represents. In 2013, according to Juma, 685 young people who participated in Juma's programs worked shifts at 464 events, collectively earning $1,000,000 in wages and saving $238,000 for college, while learning money management, sales techniques, and communications skills. Through its Individual Development Account program, the first of its kind in the nation, Juma multiplies every dollar its beneficiaries save for college by a factor of two, three, or four, using funds from government grants and private donations. Those funds can be used only for college-related costs and are usually paid directly to colleges. Since the program was established in 1999, its participants have saved more than $783,000 in their Individual Development Accounts and earned nearly $960,000 in matching funds. What's more, Juma gives them critical financial literacy training, including budgeting and credit building. Without this knowledge, knowledge they might never have gained without Juma, they might never escape the cycle of poverty into which they were born.

Beyond helping young people earn money, learn how to manage it, and save for college, Juma helps them get into college and succeed once they're enrolled. The organization leads campus tours and helps its beneficiaries define their career paths, study for college entrance exams like the ACT and SAT, and complete applications for financial aid to cover expenses beyond the funds they receive from scholarships and their Individual Development Accounts. Juma also continues to support its students throughout the first two years of their college education by helping them navigate the student financial-aid system, meet their budgeting goals for college expenses, secure the academic advice they need, and, perhaps most important, know they have gained the support of an entire community of people who want nothing more than for them to succeed.

As Juma grad Cruz Ramirez, class of 2008, recounts, “Not only did I get into the university of my dreams, but I was also able to get it all together financially and emotionally and finally go. Juma staff was with me every step of the way.” Cruz's story is not unique, or even unusual. In 2011, every one of Juma's young people in the Bay Area graduated from high school. Ninety percent of those high school graduates went on to enroll in college, almost twice the national average of low-income high school graduates who move on to college. As this book goes to press, 83 percent of Juma graduates who started college three years ago are on track to graduate in four years. These numbers are a cause for celebration and a reason for emulation.

We begin with the story of Juma Ventures, not just because it is a mission-driven venture that has achieved enviable – and measurable – success, but also because Juma is a striking example for anyone who sees a problem – whether in his or her own community or in a community across the globe – and wants to take action to help solve it by attacking the problem at its source.

Since it began in 1993 by opening a single Ben and Jerry's Scoop Shop in San Francisco and hiring low-income young people to run it, Juma Ventures has been gnawing away at the root of poverty in America by helping young people from low-income families get a financial and college education and develop transferable job skills by running a profitable small business. All of these things will help them make better life decisions, keep them employed in good-paying jobs, and prevent them from slipping back into poverty. If they don't slip back into poverty, they won't depend for survival on government subsidy or private philanthropy.

This is not to suggest that traditional non-profit organizations – or social enterprises – should attack the source of the world's most challenging social problems, but ignore their symptoms. One million American children go to bed hungry, and fifty million Americans are unable to buy the food they need to stay healthy. So, clearly, traditional non-profits that focus on alleviating the symptoms of social problems (for example, by running soup kitchens or pay-what-you-can restaurants) are more important than ever.

What's so exciting about mission-driven ventures is that their potential is transformational. Organizations like Juma Ventures are game-changers. They do not make the condition of the disadvantaged more tolerable, but innovate and disrupt in ways that governments, philanthropies, and traditional non-profits simply cannot, given the challenges of public budget austerity and declining charitable giving. Juma's approach to combat the scourge of poverty is irresistible: give young people the tools they need to succeed in life and, when they do, encourage them to support Juma's programs by paying forward the life-changing kindness Juma showed them at a critical juncture in their development.

Now, for the first time, a Juma graduate sits on the organization's board of directors, and several other graduates help run Juma. The organization's goal is to have a graduate serve as its CEO within the next twenty years. If Juma and mission-driven ventures like it are able to continue to grow and replicate their tremendous success, they will significantly contribute to solving the world's most intractable social problems.

Juma's experience is a reflection of social and commercial enterprises' growing commitment to social accountability, environmental stewardship, and financial performance, the elusive new social compact that has been dubbed the “triple bottom line.”