Posted by dantec on May 4, 2012 under Uncategorized | 
Over the past year, Net Impact has developed a partnership with BUILD. In their words, BUILD’s mission is “to use entrepreneurship to excite and propel disengaged, low-income students through high school to college success.”
Over the past year, MIT Net Impact hosted three events with BUILD designed to inform and inspire the students. The first was a Pitch Skills Workshop where the BUILD students came to the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and learned from Net Impact members how to effectively talk about and pitch their business ideas. The second, was an Idea Storm where project teams spend time generating new ideas for how to refine and improve their businesses. The last was an entrepreneurial skills workshop where different students on product teams attended workshops to help them take their business to the next level. For example, the project CEO learned about making powerpoint presentations, while the VP of product development learned about designing products.
The partnership with BUILD has been a rich experience for Net Impact members and students alike. We’re looking forward to continuing the partnership!
Posted by dantec on November 14, 2011 under Uncategorized |
A record-breaking 100 Sloanies & SOs participated in OneSloan Service Day on October 21. They spread out across the metro Boston area to share their time and lend a hand at five fantastic nonprofit organizations: The Esplanade Association, Cradles to Crayons, The Greater Boston Food Bank, Fenway Public High School and Haley House.
Many Sloan students and clubs were involved in making this event a success. Net Impact, SWIM and the Senate co-sponsored the event. Lunch was provided on campus by Sloan Fellow Sal Lupoli’s well-loved establishment Sal’s Pizza. Organizers Dante Cassanego, Renu Ravilla and Ali Lynch won a Peer Recognition Award for their efforts in making this the best-attended Service Day in Sloan history.
We look forward to another fabulous Service Day next year!
Posted by dantec on October 3, 2011 under Uncategorized |
This post is by Net Impact CoPresident, Sarah Meyers
For three days in May and for 24 hours in September, MIT Net Impact had the honor of hosting the 2011 EDF Climate Corps fellows on our campus. In the spring, almost 60 MBA students from business school across the country gathered in E62 for three days to participate in EDF Climate Corps training. Fellows were charged with a mandate for the summer: to search for energy efficiency opportunities in corporate buildings in order to decrease costs ($), electricity usage (kwh) and greenhouse gas emissions (tons). The harvesting of “low hanging fruit” is something that is often overlooked by companies because of barriers such as high upfront capital costs, split incentives, lack of confidence in projected energy savings and long payback periods vs. corporate focus on short-term profits (see Kapur, N. Hiller, J. Langdon, R. & Abramson, A. (July 2011) Show Me The Money: How Energy Efficiency Financing Makes Dollars And Sense. Retrieved from http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/11860_EnergyEfficiencyFinancingBarriersandOpportunities_July%202011.pdf).
Three MIT Sloan Net Impact-ers from the class of 2012 were among the Climate Corps fellows: Jef Benbanaste, Greg Zielinski and Sarah Meyers. Each of us
were placed in different companies: Jef with Kettle Cuisine in Boston, MA; Greg with Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, NE; and Sarah with CA Technologies in
Framingham, MA. Though the industries could not have been more different from one another, we shared many of the same experiences. To see what we were up to this summer, read our published blogs:
“A Soup Company and a Sporting Goods Manufacturer Walk into a Bar…” by Jef Benbanaste
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/08/soup-company-sporting-goods-manufacturer-walk-bar/
“Getting a Green Team Up and Running” by Sarah Meyers
http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/08/30/climate-corps-2011-getting-green-team-and-running-ca
In September, EDF reassembled a subset group of fellows and representatives from the companies at which they worked. This time we were able to meet at MIT Sloan’s Faculty Club in E52 and were lead by MIT Sloan faculty members Peter Senge and Jason Jay. The workshop started with a hopeful announcement. During the course of their internships, Climate Corps fellows had identified projects that could cumulatively result in
- $650 million dollars of savings in operational costs,
- a decrease of 600 million kwh of electricity and 27 million therms of natural gas usage, and
- avoid 440,000 metric tons of GHG emissions!
The calculated savings in energy is equivalent to the energy needed to power 38,000 homes per year, and the reduction in GHG emissions is equivalent to taking 87,000 cars off the road!
Our Net Impact chapter is proud to have been in partnership with EDF, and Jef, Greg and I hope to see the cross-pollination between our school, our summer employer and our club continue. For Jef, Greg and I, this summer was a powerful experience and a rewarding internship opportunity. If you’d like to learn more about EDF Climate Corps, feel free to reach out to one of us, or (here comes the shameless plug) come to the National Net Impact National Convention in Portland, Oregon this October!
Posted by dantec on December 30, 2010 under Uncategorized |
This is a post written by Molly Bodell describing an event featuring Peter Capozucca from Deloitte addressing consumer behavior and purchasing characteristics of people who buy sustainable products.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) enlisted Deloitte to conduct a study to examine the behavior of consumers related to the purchase of sustainable products. Deloitte conducted a direct study of more than 6,000 shopper experiences in 11 major retailers of varying formats to understand the characteristics of the green shopper and to examine their shopping responses to sustainability issues. Deloitte is planning to examine the characteristics and the behaviors of this shopper in greater detail to understand the emerging green shopper and the market opportunity to serve them.
To an audience of more than 30 Sloanies, Capozucca shared the key characteristcs that the study revealed about the green shopper. Two points struck me in particular: 1) that the data revealed a shopper profile that is somewhat contradictory to what I had assumed and 2) the green shopper is of incredible value to retailers and consumer products companies. First, the profile of the “green shopper” was older, highly educated, and concentrated in the Midwest. From my own personal observations, I see this trend among my generation, in more liberal states (like California and Massachusetts) rather than baby boomers in the midwest. Capozucca explained that the disconnect could be that while the younger generation’s attitude is green, at the end of the day, they are more price sensitive (and therefore look at cost over sustainability when purchasing). Furthermore, the green shopper is more loyal, less price sensitive, and not only shops more frequently, but spends more money on each trip. Companies should pay attention to this population and look to increase its appeal to such a valuable audience. It did not go without noticing though that if this population is purchasing so much, doesn’t that go against the whole concept of sustainability?
All-in-all, it was interesting to see how data can be useful in debunking our thoughts about sustainability as well as enforcing the importance of the green shopper to a company’s bottom line.
Date: Friday 12/3
Sponsored by Net Impact, CPG, Retail & Luxury Goods Club, and Marketing Club.
Posted by dantec on November 19, 2010 under Uncategorized |
This post was written by Lindsay Stradley
This evening, Net Impact and the Progressive Business Leaders Network (PBLN) welcomed Boston-area professionals and students from Babson, Bentley, Boston College, Boston University, and Harvard to the new MIT Sloan building for “Lessons Learned in For-Profit Social Entrepreneurship: Battle Stories from Two Veterans.”
As PBLN Co-Founder and Executive Director Andy Tarsy noted, companies have three primary avenues of innovation: the products you make, the practices you employ in your business, and your relationship to public policy. While the PBLN urges its members to play a vocal role in policy, the two battle-tested veterans’ success is a testament to the innovative impact they’ve already made through their products and practices.
Jon Carson, former founder of the Family Education Network (bought by Pearson) and current founder and CEO of BiddingForGood, shared the lessons he has learned from his four successful start-ups. In particular, he focused on striking a balance in your conversations with potential investors on pitching your product and your practices vs. their social good.
Jules Pieri, founder and CEO of Daily Grommet, described how “citizen commerce” empowers consumers to play an active role in discovering and sharing high-quality products. While Groupon creates daily events around discounts, Daily Grommet creates daily events around stories, building “a selective marketplace with a conscience.”
Posted by dantec on November 12, 2010 under Uncategorized |
Last weekend, an intrepid group of Sloanies traveled to Ann Arbor Michigan to attend the national Net Impact Conference. I think all would agree that it was an inspiring and informative weekend. Below are a few of our thoughts and impressions from the conference:
Lindsay Stradley
The first session I attended at the national conference demonstrated Net Impact’s empowering network of people and information. At “Engaging the BOP: A Closer Look at Business in Africa,” Chris Librie, Director – Global Sustainability for SC Johnson & Son, presented the current challenges his company is facing with two of its business ventures in Africa. One of those ventures, Community Cleaning Services (CCS), is a current supplier for Sanergy, a Nairobi sanitation start-up founded by current MIT Sloan students!
CCS trains teams of entrepreneurs to spotlessly clean public toilets, a critical asset in these slum neighborhoods, and sells them the necessary cleaning products. Librie told a packed room of conference attendees that, although CCS is successfully providing a stable income to its entrepreneurial teams, it is not yet covering its own fixed costs. SC Johnson was looking for guidance from Net Impact on how it could scale more quickly at its current location and in future replications.
As I discussed with my break-out group, Sanergy could be the perfect solution to SC Johnson’s challenge. Sanergy is building toilets in the slums, and it is already purchasing its cleaning supplies from CCS. If SC Johnson invests in Sanergy, the two businesses could form a partnership that would significantly benefit not only each company but also the entrepreneurs and residents of the communities where they’re working.
Alex Fallon
At the session “Engaging the BOP: A Closer Look at Business in Africa” Chris Librie, the Director of Global Sustainability at for S.C. Johnson, presented a challenging business case and asked audience for solutions. S.C. Johnson, the maker of the well-known cleaning product Mr. Muscle, is experimenting with a program to sell their products to community cleaning teams in Nairobi slums. They seek to find a new market for their product, while generating new employment opportunities in the community and improving sanitation. At this point in the pilot, S.C. Johnson needs to sell 200 times more in order to break-even at the discounted BOP price. After brainstorming in groups, the audience generated a diversity of suggestions for how to address this conundrum. These spanned from lowering the cost of production, targeting different market segments, partnering with public toilet providers to increase demand, developing a more strategic marketing strategy, and refining the product to be more attractive to the key market segment. This panel was my first time seeing a practical application of business skills that I am learning in the Core being used for the social good – and it was awesome.
Tara Thomas
Net Impact is a tremendous opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals and students across the country and around the world. It was amazing the number of deeply moving and inspiring conversations I had in just two days. Now being back at MIT Sloan, it is exciting to think about how I will apply the knowledge and discussions I have had to my academic and co-curricular involvement here. In addition, it was great to get to know the Sloan attendees better. Being an Ann Arbor native (the site of this year’s conference), it was a fun opportunity to show Sloanies my hometown. One night we even broke out old photo albums at my parent’s house and sat up chatting about our wonderful teenage years. This mix of personal development and Net Impact bonding made the conference an experience that will stay with me for years to come.
Megan Wilbur
The location of last week’s Net Impact conference, Ann Arbor, was one of my favorite aspects of the weekend. Not only was I able to stay at my parents house (thanks Mom and Dad!), but I was also able to turn my attention to the city 40 miles down the road, Detroit. The revitalization of Detroit is something I am passionate about and at the conference I was able to attend panels on the subject, as well as participate in a unique brainstorm session with other attendees. Conference organizers decided they wanted to add a component of the conference that allowed Net Impact members to come together and have an immediate impact on organizations working in Detroit. Using the design firm, Ideo’s, brainstorming model, they developed Detroit Impact: Design Thinking for Social Innovation. My particular brainstorm session generated ideas for the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, a group that is working to “develop a strategy to take advantage of the logistics, distribution, and transportation assets in the region”. My session was productive and fun, and seemed to generate a few actionable recommendations. For more information on the Detroit Impact brainstorm sessions, check out this link.
Kerrie Lenhart
One the highlights of our trip to Ann Arbor for the Net Impact National Conference was a quick visit to the famous Zingerman’s Delicatessen, which is one of the eight independently operated businesses that comprise Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. The company has been lauded as a model of how to scale operations while maintaining their key principles and values, remaining local, and avoiding franchises. 
Paul Saginaw, one of the co-founders, sat on one of the conference’s featured sessions: Restoring the Inner City Through Business. Before the second day of the conference, we stopped at the impressive deli to taste cheeses (many of them made at the nearby Zingerman’s Creamery) and eat a delicious breakfast. It is easy to support a local enterprise that offers such amazing bacon, egg and cheddar sandwiches!
Dante Cassanego
In “Social Entrepreneurship: Examples in Education” a panel of four social entrepreneurs talked about their goals and motivations for starting a companies in the education space. The CEO of Michigan Virtual University was particularly passionate about the work that his company does to enable K-12 students who live in remote areas of Michigan to get a quality education. I found it inspiring how this group of individuals are able to blend their life’s passion with the work that they do every day.
On a broader scale, I came away from the Net Impact conference with a much stronger sense of what is possible to accomplish in the social sector. I feel that there is a growing community of young entrepreneurs looking for new ways to address some of the most troubling aspects of society.
Posted by dantec on October 24, 2010 under Uncategorized |
This article appeared News@MITSloan and was written by Sarah Foote
Women Entrepreneurs Around The Globe
By Sarah Foote
Three MIT Sloan clubs worked together to bring guest speaker Gayle Tzemach Lemmon to the School to talk about women-owned businesses to Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Bosnia. The Net Impact, Sloan Entrepreneurs for International Development, and Sloan Women in Management clubs worked together to bring the researcher, journalist, and author to speak to students about women-owned businesses in countries fraught with strife.
Photo by Sarah Foote
While a student at Harvard Business School, Lemmon wanted to write a case study about women entrepreneurs in developing countries. She visited Rwanda and began to research and write about women entrepreneurs in various war zones. Lemmon found that women who lived in conflict zones started their own businesses out of sheer necessity—they needed to provide for their families because often their husbands, fathers, and brothers were at war. “If you can reach out to women you can reach out to children – both boys and girls, and the number one way to prevent poverty is through education. And they way to educate children in these countries is when you have enough money to send them to school. Small businesses help fight poverty. Small businesses are often underappreciated tool for building the economy,” she noted.
Lemmon later visited Afghanistan and met more women who had started their own small businesses out of need for money as well. “I met some of the strongest women that you could meet anywhere in the world. I met women who started businesses during the Taliban regime. These women were doing the best they could to create more stable communities. They did so without loans – because they could not afford them and they were often too hard to obtain. They became entrepreneurs because that was all they had left,” she said.
When her travels were over, Lemmon realized that these women she met were real entrepreneurs who were able to get their families through tough economic times, political collapse, and even war, and they were not getting enough credit for doing so. She wanted to give them the credit they dually deserved, and she has done so by writing a book called The Dress Maker of Khair Khana, which will be available next March.
Posted by admin on September 22, 2010 under Uncategorized |
1. The Net Impact National Conference, Vision for a Sustainable Decade, is being held at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan on October 28-30. Early registration for the Net Impact National Conference ends Thursday, 9/23! Check out the conference site for more information and to register. Once you’ve registered, please let us know so that we can coordinate housing, meals, transportation, etc.
2. MIT Sloan Net Impact has several First Year Leadership Positions available. Please read more and apply by Saturday, 9/25.
3. MIT Sloan Net Impact Membership dues should be paid by Monday, 9/27. Membership dues are $35 and good for two years. (Members of the class of 2011 can become members for $20). After signing up, please make a check payable to “MIT Sloan Net Impact” and either hand it to Brian Jones or drop it off in his folder in E52.
Our chapter membership also includes a $10 subsidy of the national membership. After you sign up to become a member of the Net Impact national organization (graduate student rate of $30), forward Brian (brian.jones@sloan.mit.edu) the electronic receipt from your membership payment to receive your $10 reimbursement.
Posted by admin on September 19, 2010 under Uncategorized |
Last week, Net Impact brought Jonathan Lewis, founder of Opportunity Collaboration and MicroCredit Enterprises and blogger at I on Poverty, to speak about the meaning of social entrepreneurship and fighting poverty. His talk emphasized that although good intentions are necessary for fighting poverty, they are not sufficient for making lasting changes.
Beyond having good intentions, he outlined six rules:
- For any endeavor, make sure to form strong partnerships with local community leaders.
- Make sure to check your ego at the door. Anti-poverty work is not about you, it is about the people you are trying to serve.
- Although it would be nice to have change in the short term, keep the vision focused on long term solutions and strategies.
- Results, not ideology, matter. An individual who is drowning never asks who paid for the life preserver.
- Surround yourself with people who know more than you do.
- Money matters. However, have money in your head and not your heart.
Jonathan’s high-energy and enlightening talk inspired MIT Sloan Net Impact’s members to focus on using our business education as a tool for the greater good.
Posted by admin on September 15, 2010 under Uncategorized |
In coordination with the MIT Sloan Senate and the Career Development Office, Net Impact hosted an “Understanding Industry” career panel on Monday.
The event featured four second-year MBA students who interned social impact jobs this past summer:
- Brian Jones applied his Wall Street background to development finance as a Summer Associate for Lapiluz Advisory Services, focusing on an investment opportunity in the mango supply chain in West Africa.
- Lily Russell explored her operations interests on the Worldwide Supply Chain and CSR teams at McDonald’s, creating a unified global animal welfare business case and analyzing the supply chain carbon footprint presenting mitigation options.
- Monique Tucker, a LEED AP, worked in real estate investment, helping Beacon Capital Partners increase its green building portfolio.
- Jeff Zira, a former Kiva Fellow, worked at Habitat for Humanity International, performing need finding with customers and contributing to the concept development of a new Kiva-like social media program.
We look forward to offering career programming throughout the coming school year, particularly focusing on helping 2012s in their internship search. And, of course, the Net Impact national organization offers wonderful internship, full-time, and ongoing career development resources through their website and frequent newsletters.
