Your Mark On The World

October 9, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/10RGfzi. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. What if you could simultaneously reduce health care costs by 40 percent and increase a population’s life expectancy? You’d say you’d found the Fountain of Youth! Dan Buettner, author of the New York Times bestseller Blue Zones, did it. No, he didn’t actually find the Fountain of Youth, he says he reduced health care costs by 40 percent and extended the life expectancy of the people living in Albert Lea, Minnesota. Partnering with AARP in 2009, he implemented the lifestyle lessons he’d learned from hundreds of centenarians around the world who were discovered living in “Blue Zones,” communities with unusually high numbers of people over 100. Buettner explains the multifaceted approach to extending life, noting, “There’s no silver bullet to keep death and the disease

September 29, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1CzjNJ0. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. People who do not have access to the mainstream financial system are subject to a variety of fees for services that the rest of us either get for free or at negligible prices. According to Jonathan Mintz, founding President and CEO of Cities for Financial Empowerment (often called the CFE Fund) and the former Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs for New York says, “Using a traditional low-cost bank account could potentially save a full-time worker $40,000 over the course of his or her career.” Mintz, who was recently featured in the documentary film Spent: Looking for Change, has attracted $16.2 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies to provide free one-on-one financial counseling. Additionally, the CFE Fund has received grants from JP Morgan Chase a

September 30, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1rDUpyn. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Frank Shankwitz, a former highway patrol officer, seems like an unlikely person to have launched one of the most culturally significant nonprofit organizations in the country. The Make-a-Wish Foundation grew out of Shankwitz’s effort to grant the wish of seven-year-old boy with leukemia who wanted to be a Highway Patrol Motorcycle Officer. Shankwitz is now working on a second act, launching Ripple Effect, a crowdfunding platform, to help anyone become a hero. He notes, “As a founder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, I’ve seen an amazing phenomenon when people rally around a worthy cause. Perhaps the best thing about Ripple Effect will be that anyone can come up with an idea to benefit an important cause: Anyone can be a hero.” Back in 1980, Shankwitz used his motor

September 30, 2014 - Read the full GoodCrowd.info article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1rDYjqY. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Dale Nirvani Pfeifer has a plan to change the world: enable people to donate to a cause right from Twitter or Facebook with a simple hashtag: #donate. By radically reducing the effort required to give to charity, Dale hopes her Good World, LLC can increase giving in parallel.

September 30, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1CzzQ9L. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. At the first Social Enterprise and Crowdfunding Conference, GoodCrowd13, I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of Heroes Economy, Leesa Hubbard. Our meeting proved strategic. Shortly after the conference, we began collaboration on a course to help startup social entrepreneurs learn the basics so they can have more impact sooner in the life cycle. Our effort required a year to produce, but the course is now live on Udemy (https://www.udemy.com/get-started-in-social-entrepreneurship/?couponCode=LIVE%21). In fact, if you use the code “LIVE!” you’ll get over 50 percent off the regular price!

September 24, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1qrrCrf. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Social entrepreneurs have been mimicking the tech accelerator model in recent years with great success. Invest2Innovate, a Pakistan-based accelerator for social entrepreneurs just launched its most recent class of seven entrepreneurs working in five companies. i2i, as Invest2Innovate is known, is working to accelerate innovative products that support the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem in Pakistan.

September 24, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/ZJoB0a. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Polio is an insidious disease that paralyzes children. Many people in developed countries are under the mistaken impression that polio, like small pox, has been eradicated. Polio remains endemic in only three countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. The number of cases globally has declined 99.9 percent over the last 30 years largely due to the efforts of Rotary International, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and, more recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Despite the progress, our children are just a plane ride away from contracting the disease, so every child in the world continues to be immunized. Now there is a new face in the war against polio. Susanne Rea, a retired teacher from Australia a

September 24, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1qrl1Np. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. More and more people are beginning to appreciate that investors can earn returns at the same time they drive social impact and solve social problems. Increasingly, people understand that solving a world problem like hunger not only presents a challenge, but also an opportunity. Stuart Rudick is helping to lead this effort. Founder of the venture fund Mindfull Investors, he is now launching Mindfull Crowd, to bring more accredited investors into the impact investing movement. Rudick notes, “Today, the most brilliant minds have access to innovative low cost technologies to build profitable businesses making our world a better place.”

September 24, 2014 - Read the full GoodCrowd.info article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/Y4rU0P. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Academics are just as interested in understanding crowdfunding as anyone who has ever attempted to raise money through crowdfunding. Dr. Anindya Ghose from NYU’s Stern School, has been focusing time and attention on crowdfunding for some time now. His most recent research in the field deals with the question of privacy. Some donors don’t want to be recognized on the crowdfunding site and/or don’t want the size of their donations to be visible to others. Anindya’s research unravels the impact of privacy options on the number of donations and the average size of donations to help fundraisers figure out which strategy is best.

September 18, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1uS1om5. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. The world is awaking to impact investing. Finally. More and more we are seeing institutional investors allocating substantial sums to impact. Audrey Choi, CEO of Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing explains the underlying drivers as a confluence of circumstances, “While the concept of adapting one’s investment philosophy to align with institutional or individual values has been around for centuries, today, a number of powerful political, economic and societal mega-trends are combining to produce a global investment landscape that increasingly demands more transparency, more accountability and more integration of beliefs and values into all spheres of activity. Taken together, these factors help accelerate the development of sustainable investing.

September 18, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/XwkeUL. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Ann Cotton is one of the most recognized social entrepreneurs in the world for her work educating over three million children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her organization, Camfed, the Campaign for Female Education, has demonstrated that educating girls and young women has a significant, positive impact on a country by reducing the spread of AIDS and improving both infant and maternal mortality and increasing household incomes. Camfed approaches its work built on the foundation of the following three value statements: Focus on the Girl: All of our programs begin with an individual girl in rural Africa. By looking at the world from her perspective, we work to dismantle the hurdles in her way to obtaining an education and living a healthy adult life. We’re answerable fi

September 18, 2014 - Read the full GoodCrowd.info article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1uRR0e7. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Sourabh Sharma is the founder of Milaap, India’s own Kiva—a crowdfunding site for micro loans to poor women. The site provides lenders from around the world the opportunity to lend money to struggling people in India, to help them gain access to things we in the developed world consider necessities: water, sanitation (yes, lots of opportunities to lend money to families to install toilets), solar power and much more. There are people looking for shockingly small amounts of money to complete their education. The site works such that, like Kiva, the loan you make is repaid and the money comes back to you so that you can lend it again and again.

September 18, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1o4AAv2. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. The Prodigy Network, led by Rodrigo Nino, is a real estate crowdfunding site that has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Since Title II of the JOBS Act was implemented one year ago on September 23, 2013, much of the money the company has raised in the U.S. has been under these new rules. Title II of the JOBS Act allows “General Solicitation,” that is advertising, of private offerings with certain restrictions, most notably that the actual sale of securities under such an offering be limited exclusively to accredited investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission rules under Regulation D, 506c limit define the conduct of a general solicitation for a private offering. Best practices in the industry are still developing.

September 10, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1qDuVjM. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Joshua Williams became an advocate for the poor at age 4. No kidding. He’s the real deal. Now, at age 13, Joshua runs Joshua’s Heart Foundation, a nonprofit with 1,200 volunteers around the country working to feed the poor, delivering 650,000 pounds of food, having raised over $350,000 and having helped over 30,000 people. Joshua says, “I say to kids in most of my speeches that you’re never too young to make a difference."

September 10, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1pN9Xdi. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Katelyn Lohr is not your typical teenager. At age 13, she launched her own company, Freetoes Brand, Inc., to sell her invention: socks without toes, which are now sold across North America in stores like Toys R Us, Hallmark and Learning Express. What really makes Katelyn special is her passion for giving back. She has donated hundreds of pairs of her socks to Project Aftershock, supporting the recovery in Haiti.

September 10, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1qJnjeD. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. On April 4, 2012, President Obama signed the JOBS Act, authorizing a variety of significant changes to securities laws, including the enabling legislation for crowdfunding under Title III of the Act. Two-and-one-half years later, the rules to implement the law remain in draft form, pending action by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. Ron Miller, CEO and founder of an equity crowdfunding site focused on operating under the rules of Title III of the JOBS Act called StartEngine, has launched a grassroots effort to pressure the SEC to issue final rules under the act. The campaign features the hashtag #VoteOnCrowdfunding for use on social media. Sara Hanks, a securities lawyer, launched a site, CrowdCheck, to provide regulatory support services to inves

September 10, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1pQbQGc. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Kohl Crecelius is a social entrepreneur with his eye focused on impact. He established his company, KK, Intl, better known as Krochet Kids, as a nonprofit so that consumers would recognize that the sole focus of the business is to have impact. Kohl is working to empower people to rise above poverty by providing them with gainful employment crocheting and otherwise manufacturing headwear and other accessories.

September 10, 2014 - Read the full Your Mark on the World article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1qD9S0N. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Paige Chapel is all about community investing. Her goal as the head of Aeris “is to help position CDFI loan funds over the next decade as part of a recognized investment class in mainstream financial markets.” Aeris is an information provider for investors interested in social impact through their investments. Aeris provides the proprietary CDFI rating tool CARS® or CDFI Assessment and Ratings System.

September 10, 2014 - Read the full GoodCrowd.info article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/1qD84oF. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Alexia’s bio: Alexia teaches filmmakers how to raise money using crowdfunding and spread their message so that they can make a difference in the world. Alexia is an artist, actress, filmmaker and Dream Funding Coach. She was featured in HBO’s Bored to Death, VH1 “If you like…” commercial and Vetiver “Everyday” music video. Her feature film work includes: Editor of Vampira: The Movie Associate Producer of The Wild World of Ted V. Mikels Co-producer of Beyond the Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey Director of Adventures in Plymptoons! documentary on Oscar nominated animator Bill Plympton Creator of documentary Ginger Girls: The Secret Lives of Redheads Creator of narrative feature Little Fishes When not creating features, Alexia enjoys teaching her o

September 4, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1nVaoTa. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. A new collaboration between the American Heart Association (AHA, for brevity’s sake) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (similarly, RWJF) aims to build a culture of health in America. The initiative assumes a broader need for change than simply tweaking the healthcare system, massive as that task would be, in order to create an environment where Americans not only have access to healthcare, but also to healthy food and where people support one another in making healthy choices. Together, the AHA and RWJF are working to accomplish several objectives: Abundant access to healthy food Safe access to opportunities for physical activity Environments for eating, shopping and working that are smoke-free Support from peers for making healthy choices Greater access t