You're Invited! NYWSE "How she does it" Dinner Series - Featuring Adelaide Lancaster, Co-Author "The Big Enough Company"

Register online: http://nywsedinneradelaidelancaster-eivtefrnd.eventbrite.com/

EVENT DETAILS
Date: Monday, November 7, 2011
Time: 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. (ET)
Location: Crepes du Nord, 17 South William Street

New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) invites you to the NYWSE "How she does it" Dinner Series featuring guest speaker Adelaide Lancaster, co-author of The Big Enough Company: Creating a business that works for you and co-founder of In Good Company in NYC.

Join us for this evening of dinner and conversation as Adelaide helps us explore "how to grow your enterprise in a way that sustains your own personal goals and needs, not someone else's standards." We are happy to announce that Adelaide will be giving away signed copies of her new book to all who attend!

About Adelaide Lancaster

Adelaide Lancaster is a small business expert and successful entrepreneur who excels at making business ideas a reality and helping businesses grow to their potential. She has dedicated her professional career to helping women find work that is rewarding and achieve success on their own terms. In 2007, Adelaide, co-founded In Good Company, a first of its kind community and co-working space where women go to learn the business of building their business. In addition to professional work and meeting space, IGC offers up to twenty five classes and workshops each month. Over the years, thousands of women have connected through IGC to become more confident and successful as entrepreneurs.

Prior to In Good Company, Adelaide was co-founder and Principal Partner of Berkman Fives a consulting firm that helped women professionals with career development and advancement and women entrepreneurs with business growth and efficiency. She earned a M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology and a M.A. in Organizational Psychology, both from Teachers College, Columbia University. She also earned her B.A. degree in Sociology and Anthropology, Educational Studies, from Colgate University.

Adelaide has been featured in numerous press outlets including The New York Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Fortune.com, and Inc.com. She was also featured in the book Upstarts!, as one of 60 Gen-Y entrepreneurs who are rocking the world of business. She is also currently a contributor to The Huffington Post and The Daily Muse and writes The Big Enough Company column on Forbes.com.

Adelaide’s first book, The Big Enough Company: Creating a business that works for you, was published by Portfolio/Penguin in September 2011.

You can follow Adelaide on twitter at @ingoodcmpny and @adelaidenyc and at www.facebook.com/ingoodcompanyworkplaces

Building High Impact Organizations: Creating Financial Sustainability for Social Enterprises and Nonprofits

by Hannah Jang, Chief Blogger 

Are you finally ready to tackle the question of financial sustainability for your nonprofit or social enterprise? If you’ve been putting it off, here’s your golden opportunity to work on one of the key elements in building a successful enterprise with a group of game-changing professionals in the social good space. Join the “Green Breakfast Club” and "Social Innovators Collective" for their 5-part workshop series. We speak with Danielle Lanyard, Founder of Third Rail Ventures and the Green Breakfast Club, to hear about the successful kick-off meeting as she lays the groundwork for the entire series.

Why is it important to address financial sustainability?

Addressing financial sustainability is important for a few good reasons. The first is that most startups of any kind fail, whether they are nonprofits or for profit ventures. The second is that mission driven organizations often focus on the social and ecological bottom line while ignoring the financial bottom line. The last reason is that one needs to be financially sustainable in order to carry out one’s mission.

What are the factors influencing the financial sustainability of social entrepreneurs and nonprofit founders?

I think the factors are many, the approaches varied, but the key components identical for achieving financial sustainability. These include a clear knowledge and usage of available support resources, a strong brand and awareness in how to actively tell the story of this brand, and then an understanding of the best options to support and execute your business model. These can be anything from what corporate structure to use, what design thinking can do for your brand and prototyping, and how to craft the art of the pitch and the funding strategy to generate revenue or raise capital or donations for your venture.

How do you avoid the challenges you may encounter?

I read as much as I can about other people’s mistakes, lessons learned and domain expertise, whether it is Fred Wilson’s AVC.com blog to the tweets coming out of FailFaire and industry conferences that offer knowledge transfer. I’m a klutz, both in life and in business, so I assume I’m going to trip up a bit. So, I read the success stories of others, and pay attention at events and conferences when keynote speakers tell you their stories, for these are the real gems that help you not make the same mistakes.

Which specific resources do you recommend?

I recommend spending as little as you can to make as much as you can, as leanly as you can while you are developing your idea into a clearly developed, financially sustainable, mission driven organization. I recommend taking free entrepreneurial training classes like Fast Trac, or applying to business incubators that provide mentorship and support services for founders. I’d also shamelessly promote the set of resources I outlined in the first part of our workshop series:

            bit.ly/GBCSICGAWorkshop

What kinds of impact do you seek to have with this workshop series?

I’d like to see more ventures succeed, more founders launch well thought out mission driven organizations, and more people applying these principles within their existing organizations. I’d like to see attendees helping each other and supporting each other's initiatives, and I’d to like to hear from these attendees on what gaps they think need filling in this innovation ecosystem. Lastly, I’d like to start thinking of better ways we can measure the impact of mission driven organizations themselves, and how this can improve their financial sustainability.

 

Danielle Lanyard's life and work experience blends environmental study, community action, and business development. Her work began as a child and spans two decades and four continents, including early coursework in Environmental Studies at The Evergreen State College and a B.A. in Psychology from UC, Santa Cruz. Rather than enter the workplace, Danielle chose to travel, living out a lifelong dream to see the rest of the world, where she bartered her way around the globe and got the first inklings for the idea of a barter as a business. Back in the US, she became a serial social entrepreneur, launching startups, Travelcology and Open Venture Society, small businesses still in business today.  She is the founder of Third Rail Ventures, an organization to support and seed startups for social and ecological change, including these events and a documentary film project on electronic waste, E-Wasted. When not running around town getting these ventures going, you can find her tweeting away at @ecoblips.

5 Ways Socially Responsible Living Saves Me Money

by Jessica Marati, Guest Blogger

The one excuse I always hear from friends is that it’s just too damn expensive to live in a way that is kind to people and the environment. After living like this for the past several months in the heart of Manhattan, I have to disagree. Here are five ways living more consciously has actually saved me money, while improving my quality of life.

1. SHOPPING

In a former life, I’d spend weekend afternoons strolling around SoHo, shopping for trendy, cheap seasonal items I’d wear for a few months before they’d go out of style and I’d have to dispose of them. Because I’m conscious of the way fast fashion is transforming the product lifecycle — and the environment — I’ve abandoned shopping sprees. Instead, I invest much less frequently in items I truly love, and I spend my weekends doing much more interesting things, like attending food festivals and reading in the park. My closet and Google Calendar thank me. Estimated cost savings per month: $100

2. DRINK

Because I’m conscious about wasting plastic, I refrain from buying plastic water bottles while on the go. Instead, I tote around an aluminum water bottle, and refill when I find a spout. Helps that New York City tap water is among the best in the world. Estimated cost savings per month: $40 (five $2 bottles of water per week)

3. HOME

This one’s easy. Because I am more conscious of the global energy crisis, I finally adhere to the rules that teachers attempted to drill into our heads in elementary school: Turn off the light when you leave the room. Don’t leave the TV/computer on when it’s not in use. Use air conditioning only when you really need it. You know the rest. Estimated cost savings per month: $10 (but only because I live in a super-tiny apartment)

4. WELLNESS

Because I’m conscious of the massive amounts of energy consumed by fitness centers, I let my local gym membership expire without renewing. Why do you need a treadmill, air conditioning, and a closed circuit television when you have the streets of New York? Estimated cost savings per month: $65

5. TRANSPORT

Because I’m conscious of my carbon footprint, I have significantly cut down on my bad cab habit. Cost savings per month: $200 (five $15 cab rides per week, minus the $100 cost of an unlimited Metrocard) (holy crap, did I really spend that much?)

Total monthly cost savings from these five moves: $415.

That wasn’t too bad, was it?

 

Jessica Marati is a freelance writer, multimedia storyteller, and media consultant specializing in ethical fashion, sustainable design, eco-friendly living, cultural exploration, and travel. As a writer, she has journeyed to nearly fifty countries and reported on subjects ranging from meditation in Thailand to fashion weeks in New York, Paris, and Milan. Jessica also has a keen interest in start-ups and socially responsible business, and most recently headed up content, online community management and social media at Quirky, a New York-based product development company. Currently based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, she stays busy hailing mototaxis, trying odd foods, and exploring ethical fashion projects across Southeast Asia on her blog, Tout Le Monde (http://toutlemon.de). Say hi on Twitter at @jessmarati or by e-mail at [email protected].

Social Networking At Its Best: Urban Girl Squad

by Hannah Jang, Chief Blogger

“What should I do with my life?” It’s a question many of us have pondered with frequency. Amanda Hofman, founder and CEO of social networking group Urban Girl Squad, was asking herself that very question three years ago after quitting her job as a data analyst for Columbia Business School.

With an intimate gathering of eleven women at the French-Scandinavian Crepes du Nord, the Barnard grad shares her personal trajectory and those crucible moments in her life that pointed the direction to greater awareness about her passion for networking. However, Hofman emphasizes that this is not the type of networking “where you can get lost in the crowd.” Attendance is capped at 30 to 40 for most events and they immediately sell out, especially for events such as cigar lesson and tasting.   

Urban Girl Squad began as a small knitting group with Hofman and her close friends. Given that she had always loved organizing events and meeting like-minded women who are “go-getters,” it is no surprise that the organization has grown to over 10,000 members. With free membership, women like Clare Ondrey, an Urban Girl Squad member and event leader, have been able to gain access to the city’s hottest spots while building a network of friends. As Ondrey explains, "Urban Girl Squad is a place to meet amazing women in a setting that can be both informal and professional at the same time."

As evident from Hofman’s story, the most powerful catalyst for change involves asking the difficult questions. Luckily, you are not alone and have a whole Squad ready to help you answer them!

 

This is the first of NYWSE's "How She Does It" Dinner Series, featuring guest speaker Amanda Hofman, Founder and CEO of Urban Girl Squad in NYC. Before founding Urban Girl Squad in 2008, Amanda used her degree in economics to land jobs with Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions and Columbia Business School as a data analyst and market researcher. Data mining and event planning are more similar than they appear: instead of minding minutia like decimal points and commas, she now learns the names and faces of all the women she meets -- and organizes pitch perfect events to help them develop a network of new friends in the city.