I love this. The idea that businesses might actually provide what we need—clean water, air, or energy—and investors would deploy capital to said businesses, that is a novel concept. For anyone that has ever put together a portfolio for fun or played in a fantasy league, this post is for you. I have often dreamed of having the money to invest in my favorite social enterprises and here it is; The Substance I (Fantasy) Fund focused on waste. Why waste? Waste is abundant, it’s everywhere and the cost of goods sold – $0 (sometimes). The market for waste to energy is also projected to grow significantly in coming years.

Here are some prospects I would draft to the Substance I (Fantasy) Fund:

• AdaptiveARC – Great Scott! Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads… Yep AdaptiveARC is turning garbage (organic waste) into power through “Cool Plasma” Gasification. They don’t claim to be the first to attempt gasification, but according to a deck from the end of 2009, they projected $8M in revenue and 33% operating income margins (seems to good to be true).
• Eco Scraps – according to the Eco Scraps web site, Americans toss 30 million tons of food waste a year. These scrappy young gents from Utah participated in the SF program Sparkseed and, according to Inc Magazine, will hit $1.5M in sales in 2011.
• Husk Power Systems – I’ve been reading a little bit on this ambitious project that translates discarded rice husks into electricity for rural Indians. They seem to be getting a lot of (well deserved attention). From their web site:

Husk Power Systems (“HPS”) lighted the first village from its first 100% biomass based power plant that uses discarded rice husks to generate electricity in August 2007 and today it has installed 60 mini-power plants that power ~ 25,000 households in more than 250 villages and hamlets and impact lives of approximately 150,000 people in rural India.

• Back to the Roots – these dudes sell mushroom kits that grow gourmet oyster mushrooms out of Pete’s Coffee grounds and sell them in Whole Foods. They have cool branding and a great creation myth story involving school at UC Berkeley and food guru Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. They put on their site that they are aiming to help people grow 250,000 lbs of shrooms in 2011. At 1.5 lbs per package and $20 a pop, that would be over $3M in revenue. I would have to taste them first before drafting to the waste dream team though—I find oysters kind of slimy and prefer the portobello.
• Sanergy – not a ton of info on these guys, but a crew of MIT brains aiming to bring sanitation to Kenyan slums. The human waste would be collected and turned into energy that can be supplied to the grid. If anyone can bring home the waste to energy hardware in Kenya, this team probably could.

Just a sample for now… Who’s on your social enterprise fantasy squad?

The OpenIDEO project kicked off with celebrity chef and TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver’s challenge of “How might we help kids realize the importance of fresh food.” Now, one a current OpenIDEO challenges is around raising the profile of bone marrow donation, and getting people signed up for the bone marrow registry.

Why is this important? Well, good question – often a bone marrow match can save the life of someone suffering from leukemia. Word is the registry is lacking bone marrow matches from people of South Asian descent in particular.

Sign up for the registry here, but don’t take it from me, listen to Shaq “slam it down big man” as Bill Walton would say…

Wanna start playing around with these more? Here’s an article that rates the top QR scanners for the iPhone.

As more and more marketers move away from print in droves and opt for the more measurable ROI that comes with online advertising, it will be interesting to see if this technology gains any momentum. It certainly seems like there is potential to give life to the printed page. We’ll see if advertisers and editors make creative use of this opportunity.

But what does it take to close the deal now? It takes a Win-Win mentality. I am not going to dwell too much on this because, like too many business books, you can boil the concept down to a principle: be scrappy. What can you do that differentiates yourself from your competitor, is a benefit to the customer, but may not cost you much time or resources to execute? How can you inspire someone to care about what you do? Chances are, the answer may be right in front of your face. Maybe it isn’t more—it could be less—for example less waste or less packaging.

I feel like we see opportunities for win-wins everyday. Yet everyone is surprised when they actually get executed. Recently we held the first annual Substance Summit in San Sebastian, Spain (Justin & I took a vacation for a friend’s wedding). While there we took a bike ride through the world’s longest bicycle commuter tunnel.

Courtesy: Copenhagenize

According to the pro bike blog Copehagenize the San Sebastian Mayor, Odon Elorza, called the tunnel “a symbol of progress, sustainability and personal health.”

While this win-win was an obvious large investment – not all need to be. Sometimes I wonder what holds organizations back from executing on ideas that seem to reap enormous benefits on multiple fronts….

Thanks everyone for sharing. It was nice to see such an interesting group of people committed to social change. Best of luck to Santiago as he launches Senda-Athletics. Keep in touch!

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As I imagine everybody else must be, I find myself absorbed with the sheer chaos and destruction stemming from the 7.0 in Port-au-Prince.

For the month of January, Substance will be directing 15% of revenue towards Partners in Health (PIH). The reason is simple, we work not only for the opportunity to advance ourselves and our clients, but we also work for the privilege of getting to help out the people we care about as well.

Our own Justin Brandon spent time in Haiti creating the documentary film, “The Road to Fondwa” And we hope you’ll join us to donate or take part. Give what you can to groups like PIH or contact Justin direct if you’d like to host a screening of the film as a fundraiser.

From PIH:

“Since Tuesday evening, PIH staff has been working around the clock to bring relief to the people of Haiti who are suffering immensely in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake. You have seen the images on the news, read the updates on the web, and responded in a profoundly generous way to our calls for help – we are indebted to you for your quick mobilization and generous contributions.

Our team, because of our deep roots in Haiti, was able to be among the first to respond with emergency medical services. Since the first days, our staff has stepped up to take on the challenge of serving the most vulnerable in Port-au-Prince and of providing comprehensive care ranging from basic primary care to complicated surgical services at our sites in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley. Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer wrote yesterday, “We find that years of investment in building a strong local partner organization mean that we are again in the position of responding effectively to a natural disaster. We are very proud of our team.”

All of this work-our years of investment and our ability to respond is made possible because of people like you who do not become paralyzed in the face of suffering but rather stand up and help serve.

Yesterday, Dr. Farmer arrived in Port-au-Prince to check in with our team and to meet with Government and UN officials. Since his visit, we have already seen the tide begin to change – this morning, the PIH/Zanmi Lasante team was designated by the World Health Organization to serve as the coordinators of the public hospital, Hopital de l’ Universite d’Etat d’Haiti (HUEH), where thousands are suffering in need of medicines and surgeries. In this new role, we will be supporting the administration and staff and recruiting other NGOs to help restore services, particularly triage, nursing, and surgical, at the city’s central hospital. Our priority is to increase stock of medicines and supplies, ensure steadily functioning operating rooms, and guarantee sufficient medical staff is available, particularly for nursing care to help with post-op recovery, iv management, and other care that has had to be self managed over the past three days.

With supply chains in place and flights arriving more consistently in Port-au-Prince since the air traffic control has been reinstated, today has already been a turning point in our ability to respond to the enormity of the devastation and really get the field hospitals and public hospitals up and running. We have two planes of surgeons and surgical supplies arriving within hours, we have fuel on its way to Haiti through the DR, and we are reallocating supplies from our ten sites to where they are needed most on a regular basis.

It is clear to us all that relief for Haiti must rely on our collective immediate response and our sustained long-term commitment to building back better. Our approach to health care delivery in resource-poor settings-partnering with the public sector, employing locally, and investing for the long-term-is a key part of the solution for Haiti now and in the future. We hope that you will continue to stand with Haiti now and in the months and years to come.

Thank you for your solidarity during this crisis,

Ophelia Dahl
Executive Director

Read our ongoing updates from the field at www.standwithhaiti.org.

Consider recruiting your friends and family and others to support Partners In Health.”

It was great to meet fellow Hubsters and learn how they want to affect change in the world. The Hub exudes positive energy—I can’t wait see what social innovations emerge from its down to earth members.

For anybody who wants the presentation, you can download it here.

But now that we’ve cleared the air and set the tone of honesty, here’s another question: how do we sell ideas that mean like the aforementioned?