Third Thursdays

Thursday, May 17, 2007
7:00-9:15pm
Japanese Cultural & Community Center
1840 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

rsvp now
event link

What? Should more of my charitable donation pay Unicef’s managers rather than help the starving children? Preposterous! Or is it?

Sometimes innovation is not about reinventing the wheel but about using existing knowledge in one area and applying it to another when appropriate. In recent years, best finance, marketing and operational practices traditionally used by large corporations, venture capitalists, and management consultants have gradually seeped into the mainstream of nonprofit leadership.

At the forefront of this shift are venture philanthropy funds, earned income organizations, nonprofit consulting firms and other innovative social enterprises that promise to deliver on their missions to not just improve our society, but to do so truly more effectively. But are these Nonprofit 2.0 firms a real solution or just another fad? How do they hope to measure the elusive notion of “Social Return on Investment”?

For some answers, come join us for this month’s Third Thursdays panel discussion to get a flavor of what some current nonprofit practitioners and recent business school graduates are doing to take social innovation to the next level!

Panelists include:

• Esther Kim
  Portfolio Manager
  REDF
• Nelson Layag
  Silicon Valley Director
  CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
• Diana Lee
  Broad Resident
  Oakland Unified School District
• Ted Ko
  Director of Products
  GreenDimes

Moderated by

Thien Nguyen-Trung
Organizer
Third Thursdays