Archive for the 'Making A Difference' Category

After the dismal economic news today, it’s time to see if we can make a difference by helping ourselves. Our “fearless leaders” seem to have no clue about how to do this, so it’s time for ordinary Americans to do the best we can to help one another. I’m not saying to pay DOUBLE or [...]

Cricket Lee Takes On The Fashion Industry is about how one intrepid entrepreneur can have an impact on an entire messed up problem that resists change in an established industry. For entrepreneurs with a big ambition, Ms. Lee’s story holds lots of lessons. For one thing, raw persistence can open doors. Even without name recognition, [...]

100 Women Who Care chapters sound like a great way for women entrepreneurs to get together locally in a context where they can not only network but also help the community. Just a thought. An open Letter from Karen F. Dunigan 100(+) Women Who Care Founder It started with Baby Beds. Who would have ever thought [...]

More power to them… From Business Daily Africa February 21, 2008: For a long time, models for ending extreme poverty in Africa have been laden with hand-outs. Development activists however have strongly opposed giving free money, goods or services to the poor because the cycle of poverty starts as soon as the free part of [...]

Alpine Access – one of the premier home based call center firms nationwide – was recently recognized for going “above and beyond” to help the Army National Guard and Reserve. It’s nice to see companies offering work at home job opportunities being recognized in favorable ways after decades on nothing but hearing how MLM’s were [...]

In a town ravaged by AIDs, widows, single moms, and needy moms unite in a microenterprise to survive. Several years into the project they find themselves thriving. Their product? Recycling plastic grocery bags into pocketbooks. From WORLD The bags: colorful crocheted pocketbooks fashioned from recycled plastic grocery bags. Half of the revenue from each pocketbook [...]

I wondered if any of these caterers was a home based business when I saw the headline about this program. If you live in a city with an NFL franchise, maybe there’s other help to be found? NFL Helps Locals Women and Minority Owned Businesses Score Super Bowl Business  The food is courtesy of local [...]

This caught my eye as a very clever marketing idea. Many marketers use “Free Online Books” to promote their business or, in this case, their causes. We know that blogs can score well in search rankings, so how do you combine the allure of a free online book with the potential search results of a [...]

Yesterday I wrote about KIVA and I’ve mentioned “One Laptop Per Child” before too on several occaisions. Here’s an interesting story by Christian Science Monitor on “Nonprofit slips in race for cheap laptop for world’s poor kids Problems at One Laptop Per Child show how social entrepreneurs can blaze trails but miss the payoff.” Microlending [...]

I love Kiva.org don’t get me wrong. But they’re a case where their popularity may exact a price. I went there the other day to recirculate some money that had been paid back and all the businesses were funded! That’s a bit like going to Starbucks to learn they’re out of coffee. Fortunately they had [...]