Norris F. Krueger, Jr., Ph.D.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Ian Fisk < ian.fisk@williamjamesfoundation.org > Date: Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 1:03 PM
Subject: William James Foundation Seeks Sustainable Start-Ups to Support
Dear Respected Professors:
My name is Ian Fisk, and I manage socially responsible business plan competitions for the William James Foundation. I've asked one of my associates to compile a list of professors around the world working in the area of sustainable business and/or social enterprise so that I might send you this email, which contains both offers and requests from our foundation. Unless I have another connection to you, this will be a one-time email. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.
What We Do : The William James Foundation manages socially responsible business plan competitions, working with those who want to find, support, and reward the best new financially viable plans for for-profit businesses that have a defined social and/or environmental goal. Over the past seven years, we have created multiple competitions that share entry deadlines and criteria to make it easier on the entrepreneurs. More details at
www.williamjamesfoundation.org .
What We're Offering : The Foundation has assembled a pool of more than 300 reading judges, who are financial experts, practitioners, senior mission-driven CEOs, academics, and "still-in-the-thick-of-it" multiple bottom line driven entrepreneurs. Through the efforts of this pool, we can assign five to ten readers to each plan, which means that 95% of the business plans entered into our competition should receive an average of ten pages of feedback per round. We also have more than $100,000 worth of cash and in-kind prizes to be divided amongst the top teams.
If you or any of your students are currently writing business plans that fit the criteria listed below, we encourage you to have them submitted to our competition.
* For-Profit: L3C and other variants accepted -- basically any structure that has to file taxes.
* Start Up: Not started yet, or less than 1 year from 1st revenue or expense.
* Has a defined social or environmental goal: We don't care (too much) what that goal is. We just care that you have one.
* Written in English: We'll get rid of this one eventually, but don't have the logistical ability to do so right now.
There are no restrictions on age, student status, or country of origin. Our entrants range from community organizers to people with multiple doctorates. Examples of past entrants include:
www.sproxil.com ,
www.atayne.com , and
www.powermundo.com .
The deadline for the executive summary (up to 5 pages) round is December 4th. The details for entering are at
www.williamjamesfoundation.org/criteria . (I apologize for the short notice – my associate was delayed because he had to present his business for the finals of another competition. In Brazil.) Hopefully this isn't too much of a problem, since we're looking for folks who should have already put something to paper. We do not have an defined entry format (Except for requiring a cash flow statement) so they should not have to re-write anything. However, to make up for the short notice
, I will waive the $50 processing fee for any entrant who uses the code "Acad1B" and copies a professor [that would be Norris, lol] who received this email on their entry. The teams should receive feedback and notification if they are invited to our second (full-plan) round in mid-January.
What we're seeking :
Resource Suggestions : If you can suggest a good book, article, or online resource for aspiring social / sustainable entrepreneurs, we're putting together a guide for our current and past entrants.
Reading Judges : As a world-wide competition, we do (almost) everything by e-mail. If you have a couple of hours between December 14th and January 12th, and would like to help the next generation of social / sustainable entrepreneurs, please consider being one of our readers. We'll send you a couple of plans and accompanying scorecards. We take our judge's volunteer time very seriously, and you won't be dragged into any more than the (up to 5) summaries that you sign up to read. Most judges report that it takes them between 3 and 5 hours over the course of the month to read, comment on, and score the plans. More details at
www.williamjamesfoundation.org/judge .
Our Competitors : Since we are so feedback-heavy, our contest is deliberately a bit earlier that other similar competitions, as many of our entrants enter our competition, take the feedback, and then enter other competitions at their school or elsewhere. We keep a list of socially / sustainable focused business plan competitions that accept for-profit entries at
www.williamjamesfoundation.org/competitions . If you've got one we should add to that list, please let us know.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you for your time.
Ian T. Fisk
Executive Director
The William James Foundation
p.s. Here's what our judges and sponsors say about our competition:
- "Your process and scorecard are truly first rate, better than other competitions I am involved with. Very well done!" -- Mark Albion, a co-founder of SVN and Net Impact, and Director of Social Entrepreneurship at Babson College.
- "We very much enjoyed working with the foundation team. They run a high-quality competition that truly attracted and assisted the businesses we wanted to support." -- Berit Oskey, President of the Affinity Lab, the oldest co-working space in the USA and the lead sponsor of the DC Prize.
- "The competition successfully defined the rules of the funding opportunity, matched qualified judges with the appropriate business plan, and provided constructive feedback. [They] set a good example for other social business plan competitions to follow." -- Michael Callahan, who entered his company, PowerMundo, in more than 30 similar business plan competitions last year.
Also, from the entrants:
- "Thank you very much for this candid feedback from the judges. "
- "The entire process is organized and logical; the feedback was most what I was looking forward to--and was not disappointed!! The caliber of your judges is also quite impressive. "
- "The feedback was definitely helpful...in fact, invaluable. It was great to get someone else's hands on it:) ...the [Judge's] backgrounds were extremely relevant."
- "Thanks for allowing us to participate. This feedback is SO valuable. We really appreciate the competition!"
- "I can honestly say that this is the first "real" feedback I've been given on a business plan in the last 10 years. ...I plan on putting all of it to good use!"
- "When I did some research on who the reviewers were, I must say that I'm really pleased and honored to be getting such detailed feedback from high-level players in the CDFI, mission-related investment and social enterprise worlds."
- "I want to thank you for your willingness to provide advice for this vision I have. One great unexpected bonus of this competition has been observing what others have accomplished. The energy and passion for solutions with a social impact is quite inspiring."
- Absolutely! Having so many different outside perspectives is critical to developing a solid plan. It is very easy to get tunnel vision when you are in the trenches everyday. The fresh eyes and thoughts really help to eliminate or at least address holes in the plan. The reviewers spend a tremendous amount of time preparing the feedback. Instead of just saying this is good or bad, they give specifics."
- "Feedback was great! It helped me realize that the business I was pursuing was not the right one for me."
- "As the Owner, going through the scrutiny of having our business plan critiqued in all business areas and having to revise the plan in order to make it to the finals was an invaluable experience. The judges were world-class and gave great feedback which can set anyone up for success if they have the drive to follow through. I got to the point where I felt comfortable about writing a socially responsible business plan. I learned to quantify and tell a story."
- "Our judging feedback was useful because it became very apparent what areas were misunderstood when an investor was reading our plan. The feedback led to us rewriting parts of the plan before presenting it to actual investors."
- "The feedback was helpful. I realize that my business plan needed reworking with more details, research, numbers, etc. "
- "The feedback was very helpful...it gave me the confidence to go out there and JUST DO IT!"