Carol hails from Taiwan(left) while Maria (right) is from Hong Kong.

Carol Chyau and Maria So started social enterprise Shokay long before the term became a buzzword in recent years.

Shokay, which is the Tibetan word for yak, is a lifestyle brand that designs stylish products made from soft yak down. By sourcing from Tibetan herders in Qinghai and employing women in rural areas, it helps promote sustainable income in rural China.

Shokay’s work allows indigenous herders to generate more direct income, preserve local culture, promote sustainable usage of the environment and promote community development work.

Carol was in Singapore the past November for TEDxKRP to share her experience.

From inspiration to execution

While doing their Masters in Public Administration at Harvard, the duo decided to put the business concepts they learnt into action. The pair went seeking for inspiration on two weeklong trips in Yunnan, China in January 2006.

While there, they saw a need for poverty alleviation and stumbled upon an opportunity. China has an abundance in yak fiber, which is highly comparable to cashmere. Yet, because of its inaccessibility and lack of visibility in the fashion industry, its great potential was left untapped.

With an idea in mind, Carol and Maria went back to Harvard and entered the Harvard Business Plan Competition with a few friends, coming in first under the Social Enterprise Track. With the money they won, they returned to China and set their hearts on following the Yaks.

Items from Shokay

Right from the start, the cofounders had little knowledge about yak fiber and the textiles industry. Undeterred, they kept going to experts for help and formally founded Shokay in November 2006. Today, the social enterprise has come a long way with over 100 stores in ten countries.

Carol shared with us a few important stories on how her team got the business going with little prior industry and product knowledge.

1) Be a sponge and absorb as much as possible

While they knew that they were risking it with zero industry experience and had no background in fashion or textiles, Carol and Maria never gave up. Instead, they went out of their way to visit a lot to factories and gathered feedback from professionals. They weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty doing research and talked to as many industry experts as possible.

2) Be a detective

Carol likens this process to solving a mystery. “Sometimes all you have are clues. When you don’t understand something you have to ask why. For us, we managed to gather useful information about yak fiber by reading up on Google. For example, while yak fiber is comparable to cashmere, few people know about it.” This market gap was their opportunity.

3) Be an inventor

Carol and Maria spent the last five years experimenting with several business models, figuring out the best way to create their product and bring value to the market. They initially sold only knitting yarns, but decided to move on to the bigger market of scarfs and shawls. They’re continuing to innovate and re-invent their model. “We’re shifting from being a fashion label to ultimately being an ingredient brand. Kind of how the Intel chip is an integral part to a Lenovo laptop,” she explained.

4) Have a perspective of an eagle

Social entrepreneurs have to think about two bottom lines. Sometimes you might get lost along the way, but it’s important for an entrepreneur to have the perspective of an eagle. “When you find yourself misaligned with your original goal, it’s important to recollect your thoughts,” she says.

5) Be yourself

After all the hard work, you have to figure out how to pull everything together and make it work. You have to believe and love what you do.

As Carol puts it, “I’m not doing this because I am more philanthropic than other people out there, nor because I’m particularly altruistic. For me, it’s about a sense of responsibility. I just believe that as lucky as we are to have so much, we should give back even more.”

Closing thoughts

Carol and Maria’s philosophy and sheer determination have paid off in Shokay’s progress. Now, sourcing yak fiber from more than 800 families and having used approximately 2,000 tonnes of yak fiber, it’s plain to see how privileged ones like us can give back so much more if we just took the first step to try.

By creating a market for luxury yak, they hope to generate income for nomadic herders.

This is in addition to the existing ComCare Enterprise Fund (CEF), which has been providing seed funding for startup social enterprises that provide employment and training for poor Singaporeans.

According to Halimah Yacob, Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS), about S$10M (US$7.7M) has been granted to support 80 social enterprises so far. About 1,600 Singaporeans have benefited from the work of these social enterprises.

MCYS will also introduce a new category of CEF funding next year for schools to educate students on social entrepreneurship. The money, which will target 70 schools in three years, would be used to fund youth-initiated social entrepreneurship projects.

A study of Singapore youths in 2009 has found that they are increasingly more willing to contribute to society.

Vincent is the founder and international coordinator for Citizens for Social Business (CSB), an NGO started in July 2011 that aims to promote social entrepreneurship around the world.

Photo: Vincent (left) at the first CSB meeting in Paris. Courtesy of CSB

They have about 260 members now, and within Asia, they have representatives in Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Japan. 

Inspiration for his current pursuit started when he read ‘Creating a World Without Poverty’, a book by Grameen Bank founder Professor Muhammad Yunus. Motivated to do something about poverty, he was deeply involved in policy-making in Europe, and even helped successfully push through a non-binding resolution to recognize social entrepreneurship within the European Union.

With that achieved, his next step was to promote social entrepreneurship globally. He actually met Prof Yunus to talk about it, and he gave his blessings.

“Our purpose is to become the Greenpeace of social entrepreneurship,” he said. Greenpeace? I asked. You mean the organisation that sends ships in to disrupt whaling fleets?

“Oh, we’re not planning to do any of that stuff. We’re much milder,” he clarified. But there’s no doubt they are equally as passionate about their pet causes.

CSB has a two-pronged approach towards promoting social business. Firstly, they want to encourage governments to recognize social enterprises as a separate legal entity with a separate regulatory framework. And secondly, they hope to get governments to reserve five percent of their international aid fund for social enterprises.

I asked him about how he’s going to make his case.

On the first approach, social enterprises are fundamentally different from other corporate entities, he said. While the latter only has one bottom line to think about, social enterprises have two — profitability and societal benefits. And it goes without saying, social enterprises are largely different from charities — which rely mostly on donations.

Yet, he added that despite the differences, social enterprises are not given a separate legal status that addresses their unique objectives and methods. In Singapore, for example, social enterprises are essentially treated the same as commercial entities, and they have to register themselves as such.

“It’s like how a car is not meant to be driven backwards all the time,” he said, “it may technically work, but its not built to be driven this way.”

On the second approach, he says pouring funds into social enterprises promises better returns. When money is donated to charity, it’s gone. But when funds are poured into a social enterprise, it isn’t a donation; rather, it’s an investment.

He emphasized that both measures does not cost much for the government to implement: There’s no need to raise taxes or generate more revenue. All that’s needed is political willpower.

But while Vincent would no doubt love to directly appeal to government officials about this, he does not believe that it will work. Instead, CSB’s job is to create a network of citizens in various countries who believe in the cause. “They are the best people to appeal to their own government.”

Public education plays an important role in Vincent’s activism, since public awareness about social entrepreneurship is still low. A survey conducted by Singapore’s Social Entrepreneurship Association on 2,000 respondents in February 2010 found that only 13 percent of Singaporeans and PRs are aware of the existence of social enterprises.

In addition, 45 percent incorrectly stated that one of the aims of social enterprises was “raising donations.”

Vincent’s unwavering belief in social entrepreneurship is actually rooted in some realpolitik. Governments, he says, are becoming stymied by political division, economic uncertainty, and mounting debt. As a result, the government’s ability to alleviate poverty and fund social programs will be cut.

“People have to realize that they are powerful. They might have forgotten about it,” he said, adding that social enterprises not only lessen suffering, but boosts the economy by providing jobs and promoting spending.

However, for social enterprises to prosper and succeed, the right environment must be present.

“If you go to the supermarket and you see two different brands of orange juice, one produced by a purely commercial entity and another by a social enterprise, and if the price and quality are the same, which would you choose?” he asked.

The answer, to me at least, was obvious.

I will also provide some interesting case studies, for example, the Aravind Eye Centre for social entrepreneurship. This series is based on the “MPS 812: Entrepreneurship” course I have been teaching in the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. This post is republished from my blog.

Author’s Preface: I will include elements of a previous course which I have taught in Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre as well as some advice which I used to dispense via my role as an entrepreneur-in-residence for INSEAD Business School. I have refined the presentation slides and notes after teaching that course for four semesters over the past two years. Note that the content I have done up for this course is under Creative Commons – No Commercial, Share-alike and Attribution.

One important thing that I want to stress even though I have worked as an academic in the past: Entrepreneurship is a contact sport, and it’s easier to teach as a practitioner because you encounter a lot of challenges and issues from starting a company to managing, maintaining, growing and exiting from the company. My original intention is to change the course name to “Technology & Business” (and it’s not possible) as I am not a fan of teaching entrepreneurship but more of providing a toolkit for the students to use whether they are advancing their career or starting their own businesses. Do bookmark this post as I will update it from time to time.

My Course Slides:

Talking Points

• Course objective: My aim is not to teach anyone to become entrepreneurs. The success rate of any start-up from an investor’s viewpoint is 1 out of 10 based on anecdotal evidence, which means that 9 other start-up ventures will fail. So trying to convert you to become an entrepreneur is not the wise thing to do. The important thing I want to dispense through the course is to help you understand and learn the process of building startups and companies. The business plan assignment will provide you some basic understanding on various aspects of a business: Marketing, business strategy, financials and intellectual property (specifically for technology companies). The best takeaway is that you should learn to make all the mistakes about something as fast as possible. Simply put: Learn to fail fast.

• What defines an entrepreneur?: Different people have different perspectives of what an entrepreneur should be. In some cases, they are defined by the success of their businesses, and in other cases, they are defined by how their products or services have added value to everybody’s lives. Entrepreneurs also accept the inherent risks of their enterprise and are accountable for their success or failure. Unfortunately, some people do call themselves “entrepreneurs” but are totally off the mark, for example, companies who use Ponzi and pyramid marketing schemes to cheat consumers or lend money illegally (loan sharks) do not add any real value.

• Window of Opportunity and First Mover is not an advantage: While most investors like to emphasize on the first mover advantage of technology companies, note that many successful technology companies are not first movers. For example, Google was preceded in the search business by AltaVista and Inktomi (which was acquired by Yahoo! for US$20M instead of buying google for US$1M). Similarly, Facebook was not the first in the business of social networking. Before Facebook, there was Friendster (which was acquired by MOL Malaysia) and MySpace (which was acquired by News Corp). What made these businesses successful was that they learnt from the first mover’s failures and innovated to deliver greater value.

Videos

Video 1: Michael Pritchard’s LifeSaver in TED 2009

Lessons learnt from this video:

• Articulation of the problem and opportunity: The speaker discussed the problem of clean drinking water and used examples of a developing and developed country to illustrate that there was no good solution when a calamity struck. He also described how existing solutions have not achieved what they were meant to do.

• Describing technology simply: While the LifeSaver bottle solution has many features, the speaker only focused on one aspect of the technology: the 15nm pore. He explained it simply, describing how the filter is small enough to stop bacteria and viruses from entering. He could have explained how the entire bottle works but he chose to condense the solution to a simple feature so that the audience could understand him.

• Explain why his solution is better than traditional solutions: The speaker made a comparison with traditional solutions of delivering clean water, for example, people within the disaster area would make long trips to carry jerry cans filled with water from one location to another. He focused on how his solution made people’s lives easier.

• Product Demo and Authority: He was able to do a demo with the solution (as seen in the video). What’s more, he drank the water from the bottle and also passed it to Chris Anderson, the organizer of TED who is a well-known personality and got his endorsement that it’s safe.

• Provide vision on how to implement the idea and exact amount to fund the solution: He gave a plan of how the solution can be scaled and the amount of money required to solve the world’s drinking water problem. The amount was stated as 20 billion for worldwide implementation, but it was very clear to the audience what he was asking for.

Video 2: Thulasiraj Ravilla: How low-cost eye care can be world-class in TEDIndia 2009 – Aravind Eye Care Center

Lessons learnt from this video:

• Aravind Eye Care Hospital was founded in 1976 by Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy. The existing management has laid out a vision of what the Aravind Eye Hospital aspires to become in the future.
• The hospital evolved itself not just as a healthcare service giver but also as a social enterprise that deals with the blindness problem in India. It treated 2.4 million poor Indians over 30 years.
• Interesting Features: Eye Surgery facility that runs 24 hours with doctors focusing on surgery and nurses focusing on pre and post eye care. Free surgeries for the poor and also a top class R&D centre on eye treatment.

While justifying why foreign students are needed in local institutions despite taking away places for local students, he brought up the example of BioMers, a startup with a mix of Singaporean and foreign co-founders.

Started by students from the National University of Singapore, the company’s flagship product is the SimpliClear braces system, a translucent, almost invisible braces system that is customized for each patient.

“You can look beautiful or handsome even while they are straightening your teeth,” said the premier in his national sales pitch.

When the Prime Minister moved on to talk about how citizens can take initiative to support community causes, he mentioned Joan Bowen Cafe, located in Jalan Wangi. The social enterprise was started by Khong Yoon Kay and Jeanne Seah, parents of special needs daughter Joan Bo Wen, as a means of finding employment for her.

The place is run by a crew of 16 Autistic youths, who learn food preparation through a manual with pictures and detailed instructions. They just launched a second outlet in St Andrew’s Village.

According to Channel NewsAsia, while they’ve not made any profit since they’ve just broken even, the speech seems to be helping somewhat, with the couple receiving employment and joint venture requests following the Rally.

The journey for them has not been easy though, since they had no prior experience in F&B. The owners also feel that the Singapore government can do more to lower the barrier to starting a social enterprise.

“What the government could consider doing, on top of monetary incentives, is to help more parents or other entrepreneurs who want to start up something like this to help special needs children, by providing them tools, setting standards,” said the couple.

Photo: World Economic Forum

According to newspaper Today, they are not the first of such cultural spaces to disappear recently. Blackhole, a community space focusing on music, lifestyle, and the arts, was shut down last September. Evil Empire, an eclectic arts space which holds events like a drawing contest and faux auction, followed suit in April this year.

The main reason Post Museum has shut down was because they could not get enough funding to cover their costs. Besides crowd sourcing, they also earn from their bistro Food#03, an integral part of the venue, as well as rentals from its four studio spaces for artists. Unlike charities, social enterprises need to generate sufficient revenue in order to be self-sustaining.

The co-founders only accept money from donors who give them complete control for their projects. Jennifer Teo told Channel NewsAsia: “For a lot of spaces and…activities and events that get corporate funding, there are always compromises they need to do. We actually don’t. We’d rather not get the money. There’s always a need for people to be independent from greater influences.”

Another reason was the lack of manpower. They were unable to find someone to take over or help manage it.

But we won’t be seeing the last of Jennifer and partner Tien Wei, as they are planning to do one-off events in different venues and countries. The new initiative will be called OutPost.

Photo: An photo exhibition at Post Museum. By Aameerule

Envisage was founded by a team of five in Singapore based on a Poverty Simulation Kit from the US. It is a comprehensive program where participants will role-play various characters, in which students have the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of the less fortunate and in turn develop a greater application of their family, education and financial literacy.

Envisage was set up as an educational enterprise committed to youths’ holistic development by striving to promote empathy and compassion among youths to better prepare them for their ever-changing lives. Envisage aims to be the leading entity in working hand in hand with schools and various others partner organizations to sustainably empower youths.

Here, we are given a chance to talk more about it with Stanley Chia, Managing Director of Envisage.

Discussion During The Programmes @ U-Trust-Us National Bank

What is your background?

I am an accounting student from NTU, however, having realized the service gap in our society of having program that help students realize the importance of empathy in the rise of service learning programs, I took a sabbatical to focus on building sustainable business model for Envisage so to develop Envisage into a sustainable Social Enterprise.

Through my active involvement in NTU-SIFE, SingYouth hub, Design for Change and other social initiatives, I utilized the experiences and networks formed to build the internal capacity of Envisage, as well as form strategic partnership with various partner organizations so to rapidly develop product offerings and market reach.

How did you come upon this idea?

I first came across the program through my participation in NTU-SIFE, under the program named Eye Empathy, aimed to educate high school students the importance of financial literacy through empathy for the poor.

It was then that I realized the potential of the program in its ability to engage students to realize the importance of financial literacy. As opposed to teaching them through dull presentation slides, the simulation program allowed students to learn through role-play. This experiential learning program was much more engaging and effective in communicating the learning points we hope to achieve.

Subsequently, we were introduced to Mr Lee Kah Howe, the CEO of ST Consultancy, who brought the program back from the United States of America, and partnered with NTU-SIFE which actively marketed the program to various schools.

It was then when I was invited to build a more sustainable business model around the product, so to enable more rapid and extensive market reach.

Therefore, since October 2010, a team of 5 have been working endlessly in commercializing the product. Moving beyond the Poverty Simulation product, Envisage Social Education Limited have been working endlessly to improve our business model, developing other simulation products and actively expanding our market reach.

Participants Briefing Before The Session

How are you developing a sustainable business model?

I believe that it is of grave importance to focus on building a sustainable business model for any social enterprise at the early stage of the business. From the conducting of effective market research on business viability, to scenario analysis of the business finances these are crucial initial steps to study the SWOT of a business.

Specifically, for an education program provider, the building of a strong track record and flexibility to customers needs are key importance in capturing customers who are willing to pay for your services.

It is critically important to discover through research and experiment, which are the paying customers and how much they value your services.

In the short-run, the building of strategic partners to enhance your product offerings and market reach is cost-effective short-term strategies that enable you to rapidly develop your initial track records and brand presence.

The building of systems and SOPs are also crucial so to minimize your micro-management needs in operating the business, thus allowing you to focus on building other long-term needs of your company.

To be sustainable in the long-run, there has to be resource investments into researching on the changing needs of the market, and effective develop products or services that responds to these needs. More revenue models and sources have to be developed so to constantly create more cost-effective and profitable means of generating revenue for the company.

For a program service provider, human resource will be one of the greatest limiting factors. Therefore, leveraging on IT systems to reduce manpower requirements, leveraging on partner organizations to extend your market reach, exploring less costly human resource needs are just some strategies which can be employed to lower your resource constraints.

Nevertheless, it is important that any external partners or resources employed have to be aligned with your organization or product’s social objectives. Least, the brand of the organization or product be misrepresented by others.

What’s your expansion plan?

Our short-term (1-2 years) plan is to focus on building our track record in Singapore, as well as develop other products to first test it out in the local market.

Subsequently, in 2-3 years, we will be looking into reach out to other neighboring Asian countries through the various countries’ local partner organizations or established Singapore partners that are active in related enterprises in these countries.

If opportunity arises, we will also be willing to expand our program reach to countries beyond Asia.

With internally develop products that have market viability, we will also be looking into licensing out these products so to further extend our market reach.

What do you hope to be the biggest takeaway from your simulations?

Envisage hopes that participants will learn the importance of applying empathy and compassion in everything they do; specifically in relationship management, service-learning programs and entrepreneurship. With empathy and compassion, youths will learn to be more self-less and socially responsible.

What is on your wishlist now for Envisage?

We have been looking into developing other simulation products that will enable us to achieve other social impact and market reach, thereby enabling us to become more sustainable.

Therefore, we would hope that various program developers, computer engineers and various personnel experienced with student development programs to partner us in creating more products that can positively and holistically develop our youths into socially responsible, innovative and passionate change-makers.

Image credit: tarotastic

The Pigeonhole @ Duxton Road

Looking in through its glass panels and doors, those walking along 52 & 53 Duxton Road may be a little confused about what this place does. A creative space lovingly fitted with bookshelves, eclectic furniture and painted with a scarlet floor, the Pigeonhole is a cosy cafe that attracts visitors with more than its aromatic espressos and delectable desserts.

A place to get to know local NGOs, music, film and the arts

Ave and Rayner - Owners of The Pigeonhole

Owners Ave Chan and Rayner Lim work hard to build the Pigeonhole as a dynamic space for the arts community and civil society. They envision it to be a place to hold events for which there is no venue, to discuss issues important to Singapore and Singaporeans, to build capacity and share ideas, and to practise skills and support each other, across disciplines, across industries, and across race, language or religion.

Ave, who was employed with the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) in 2009, knew first-hand about the difficulties that local NGOs face in organizing events that raise awareness for their cause. It was especially challenging due to a lack of sustained and predictable funding.

It then became their hope to alleviate at least part of that burden, by providing an affordable events space for NGOs and by adding to the promotion and publicity of the events held at the Pigeonhole. Other than HOME, they work together with Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) and Migrant Voices in an ongoing fortnightly series of talks hosted at The Pigeonhole. They have also organized events such as an Earth Hour fundraiser for the Nature Society and the SPCA.

Local singer Inch Chua's performance during an Earth Hour event @ The Pigeonhole

Things at The Pigeonhole are always kept interesting. On top of providing local NGOs with a place for raising awareness, you might find yourself walking into the middle of an art exhibition, music performance, PowerPoint KTV session, Hackathon or even a ‘music camp’ (that is styled after Bar Camp). The Pigeonhole also gets a regular and diverse pool of clientele that range from Ave and Rayner’s own friends, friends of friends, the tech crowd, Tweeple from the Twitterverse, people who work around the area and pop by for afternoon coffee, artists and musicians. Indeed, it is a melting pot where different communities can come together and engage in fun and meaningful activities.

From idea to execution

The idea for The Pigeonhole first floated in November 2010, when Rayner was already serving notice from his previous job as a film editor. After which, the duo spent all their waking hours scheming and plotting and doing the groundwork. They found a space at Duxton Road in January this year and everything took due course.

“There need not be a Plan B because we’re also investing all our energy and efforts. We’re confident that it’ll work because we’ll do whatever it takes to make it work.”

The determined couple, who threw in all their life savings to set up the place, took a gamble and are positive that things will work out. “There need not be a Plan B because we’re also investing all our energy and efforts. We’re confident that it’ll work because we’ll do whatever it takes to make it work,” explained Ave. She shared that building a stable and sustainable business is their main focus for now. After which, they will then probably set up another shop as a magnification of one of the aspects of their current business, perhaps a bookstore or a takeaway coffee joint.

Advice for those who intend to set up shop

We asked Ave for her advice to those thinking of setting up shop. “Location is definitely important. If your budget allows for it, and walk-in traffic is integral to your business, fight for a more central location even if it takes a longer time to find. Guerilla publicity by way of social media (Facebook and Twitter, to name the more popular) can also work to your advantage provided it is well managed,” she said. The Pigeonhole itself leverages on social media to reach out to its customers through its presence on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.

Finding your niche and having good product knowledge is important too. “Similarly, if you intend to market your F&B joint as a coffee specialist, for example, you need to equip yourself with the relevant product knowledge. Simply put, find your niche and build your home within it. Don’t try to be everything to everyone.”

She further explained, “in general we think we are well-received because our concept is simply rooted in what we personally like. Our events are about topics close to our heart, our musicians are all our personal friends and associates, and our drinks are all brands that, prior to setting up the Pigeonhole, we would ourselves drink on a regular basis. I guess you can say that we appeal to an as yet undefined crowd of people who like the same things that we like. That’s our unnamed niche.”

The Pigeonhole is definitely worth visiting not only for its fragrant coffees and delicious snacks, but also for its upbeat atmosphere and interesting concept. If you’re looking for somewhere to relax and unwind, or to meet new people, drop by their location at Duxton Road.

The Pigeonhole

The Pigeonhole has quickly become a place for people to mingle, hangout, share, learn and just do cool things. One of our friends learned the accordion there when a busker made a stop. Ever wanted to build a beautiful third space? The Ultimate Start-Up Space offers you that chance; winners of the competition gets a 1400sq ft space rent-free for one year, $20,000 start up capital and an Executive Education Program from INSEAD – total prizes worth more than $170,000. Follow articles related to the competition here.

The Pigeonhole
52 and 53 Duxton Road
Tel: 9627-2586
www.thepigeonhole.com.sg

Thanks:
1. All images in this article are courtesy of the Pigeonhole.

• Video 1 – Al Gore warns on latest climate trends: At TED2009, Al Gore presents updated slides from around the globe to make the case that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted, and to make clear his stance on “clean coal.”

Why it is interesting: We have all read or watched the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” two years back. So, what’s the status of climate change two years later? Al Gore provided more data and information to back up on how we need to start and take action to ensure that our children will live in a better world.

• Video 2 – Shai Agassi’s bold plan for electric cars: Forget about the hybrid auto — Shai Agassi says it’s electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

Why it is interesting: Electric cars are a great alternative to hybrid cars which still requires the use of petroleum. Shai Agassi’s initiative give us a plan in how to set up a transition towards a electric car economy. Actually, in the context of Singapore, it will be cool to see a Tesla car in our neighbourhood soon.

• Video 3 – Yann Arthus-Bertrand captures fragile Earth in wide-angle: In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat — stunning aerial photographs in his series “The Earth From Above,” personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project “6 billion Others,” and his soon-to-be-released movie, “Home,” which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video.

Why it is interesting: I like Yann Arthus-Bertrand‘s famous photo work in “The Earth from Above” when I saw the photographs outside a museum in London. In order to help the climate change advocates to tell their side of the story, he embarked on an interesting project to show the imperative need for each one of us to combat climate change.

GIVE.sg is a social enterprise that places itself in between individuals and charities, attempting to create a better bridge that allows individuals to contribute to charitable causes easily over the web and at the same time, making it easier for charities to reach people by receiving donations on behalf of these charities.

Somewhat similar to the Causes application on Facebook, GIVE.sg allows anyone to create a page for a cause and use social media tools to bring greater awareness to that cause. One good thing about GIVE.sg is that because it focuses on local charities, those in Singapore might be more compelled to donate. There is a positive psychological slant to having their monies channeled into charities with physical presences that can be verified with a half hour drive.

Revenue Model

With a double bottom line of affecting social change and being financially sustainable, GIVE.sg takes a small cut from all donations (5% transaction fee). Apart from this 5% fee, there are no other subscription or registration charges for charities. So charities can be assured that they will only need to pay GIVE.sg when they actually get donations.

Compared to spending huge amount of time and financial resources holding a physical fundraising event, which according to GIVE.sg, typically incurs administrative costs of between 15-20% of donations raised, GIVE.sg will be a cost-effective channel to raise funds that they can add to their current means.

Consolidating charities and allowing individuals to use a single platform to browse and contribute to causes and charities they can identify with is a great way to encourage more people to give. Charities should jump onto this platform to gain more awareness. But, this not yet fundraising 2.0.

Fundraising 2.0

What is fundraising 2.0 is using people to fundraise for these charities with social media. We’ve seen the aforementioned Causes application do that, now, GIVE.sg is doing the same for local charities but with presumably more social media tools since it’s not contained to within a social network. So while this concept is nothing new, the site brings this concept into the philanthropy space in Singapore.

Now

GIVE.sg will be launching in Nov and are still working on the platform. They have already been working with 20 charities who have helped the team fine-tune the platform. These 20 or so charities are GIVE.sg’s first partners and they include Realm of Tranquility, AWWA, Club Rainbow, Assissi Hospice, Mercy Relief, Special Olympics Singapore, Action for Aids, Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association and others.

Now, their first major cause is to “Support the Taiwan Victims” where they are trying to bring clean water to victims of Typhoon Morakot. Their sponsors have set them a mission: Get 10,000 fans on Facebook before the 1st of October and New Taiwan $100,000 (approximately SGD 4.4k) will be donated to the disaster relief efforts in Taiwan. Do become a fan to help the victims.

Featured image of this piece is courtesy of dionhinchcliffe.