SE @ Work

An Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Making an International Impact
by Pamela Hawley, Executive Director, GivingGlobal

It's always a pleasure to write about social entrepreneurship from the perspective of lessons learned. It's our second time around as social entrepreneurs at GivingGlobal.

GivingGlobal is an entrepreneurial nonprofit that helps donors and volunteers find the right opportunity, in the right country, right now! The process of social entrepreneurship is always striving for higher levels of excellence in creating new systems, increasing scalability and maximizing leverage. Our team finds it is a fine balance between having confidence and purpose and being humble and open. You have to draw on knowledge of past experiences so that you attain higher levels of excellence and take advantage of lessons learned. And then we balance that with being open and receptive -- new information is always coming! The marketplace and your clients' needs are always changing.

One of the most critical areas for GivingGlobal is quality. We're serving international donors, volunteers and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations). In order to get people involved in giving and volunteering internationally, we must create a system of trust. We actually have a Six Step process in our Quality Control Model which will be executed over the next 5 years. It's a model we will actively shape for the next 50 years. In creating this model, we began by looking at evaluating nonprofits as a venture capitalist would. If a vc read a business plan and liked the idea, what is the next thing he or she would do? He or she would say, "I want to meet the management team." Venture capitalists don't only invest in ideas - they also invest in the right people to bring the idea to fruition. They invest in external and internal leadership as a necessity for building a successful business.

GivingGlobal takes a similar approach. We have an NGO Management Team that
has met with nearly 70% of our organizations, which are U.S.-based and operate programs abroad. We have also been able to visit some projects on the ground internationally. But what we are really looking at is leadership. What are the leaders' track record? Their future plan? Their results? Successful leadership translates into successful execution.

The second step we take includes 'qualifying' an organization by looking at who else
is involved. We identify organizations who have had not just one, but MULTIPLE levels of due diligence performed. Therefore, the donor feels secure that vetting on numerous levels has occurred.

As a third step, we have developed an international board of advisors who help us evaluate and determine the best organizations. This endeavor is a never ending process of gathering trusted, experienced recommendations. In essence, GivingGlobal doesn't look only inside to determine our Quality Model. We bring in experts to help us succeed.

In the coming years, Steps 4-6 will attack more specific quality issues for each organization and project. These steps are representative of a critical piece of our vision for serving our communities: our team is committed to adapting and refining our six step process with a focus on improving our approach and the ultimate social outcomes for all of our partners, donors, and volunteers. We can't rest on a defined Quality Model and let it go. We have to constantly address how we can improve it. And with these new experiences, GivingGlobal will look forward to sharing our lessons learned. Everytime we learn, we see it as value add for the social entrepreneurship community. We strive to be open in relating our experiences so we can help and encourage other social entrepreneurs, and receive new ideas from them, too.

We look forward to hearing your feedback! Please feel free to email me with any insights or questions: phawley@givingglobal.org

About Giving Global
GivingGlobal is a social entrepreneurship nonprofit which matches donors and volunteers with quality, international nonprofits.

GivingGlobal's first service is a web-based marketplace promoting NGOs' (nongovernmental organizations) international work through a customized, searchable website. Donors and volunteers access the GivingGlobal website (www.GivingGlobal.org) and search for organizations, projects and volunteer opportunities according to their specific interests and a geographic area. GivingGlobal provides the only service with a Quality Affiliation Model allowing donors and volunteers to find trusted organizations who are affiliated with critical international interest groups and experts. No other organization offers this Multiple Vetting Process.

GivingGlobal provides a customized service for corporations and their community involvement programs, which provides sustainability for it as nonprofit organization. Corporations use GivingGlobal Corporate to manage their international volunteering and giving programs. GivingGlobal's model also serves high networth donors and investments banks.

About Pamela Hawley
Pamela Hawley is founder and president of GivingGlobal, a social entrepreneurship nonprofit organization whose mission is to match donors and volunteers with quality, international organizations. www.GivingGlobal.org. Ms. Hawley was a co-founder of VolunteerMatch in 1996, a nonprofit which has matched more than one million volunteers with nonprofits through its web-based marketplace. In 1999 she launched VolunteerMatch Corporate (VMC), a customized version of the website for corporations and their employee volunteer programs. More than 20 Fortune 500 companies became clients of the service under her management, which generated more than $ 1 million and contributed to 43% of the organization's sustainability. Companies include Baxter, Charles Schwab, Coca-Cola, Dell, Duke Energy, Gap, Levi's, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Nike and Verizon.

Her international experience includes work and volunteering abroad in the areas of microfinance in remote villages of India; crisis relief work in the 2000 El Salvador earthquake; digital divide training in the Killing Fields of Cambodia; and sustainable farming in the countryside of Guatemala. Her studies include a political science degree cum laude at Duke University and scholarship in international/communications masters at The Annenberg School of Communications, USC. She is now a guest lecturer at USC School of Business and has spoken at Business for Social Responsibility, Ethical Corporation, Forbes' Conference for Women and Stanford Business School on numerous topics including Corporate Social Responsibility; International Strategy and Expansion; Philanthropy and Volunteerism; Management, Communications and Sales; Social Entrepreneurship; and the Web.