It’s been exactly two years since we launched dotherightthing.com to connect people with the companies they care about. This time has gone by quickly but looking back now it was all part of the journey that made this latest re-launch possible. Once again I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by extremely talented people most of whom went above and beyond to make the impossible possible… isn’t that always the case? (particularly Loren Baxter, Ryan Daigle, Ryan Mickle, Carsten Lindstedt, Peyman Pakzad, Robert Hoekman Jr., Jarkko Laine, all our clients and partners, and support from the original dotherightthing.com community)

Here are some key “notes to self” I discovered personally and professionally the last two years, I will undoubtedly refer to and stay mindful of these going forward:

1. Passion and momentum are the only requirements – when the unknowns mount and things get out of hand (which is standard for most entrepreneurial endeavors) it is key to continually communicate passion for what you are trying to solve or deliver and encourage the same from those around you, this builds the momentum required to stay motivated and stay in motion; it’s not enough to set goals, product requirements, and agendas (although these are important) but rather to keep telling yourself and the world around you what you are driving toward regardless of the perceived risks at the time
2. Help others take on new responsibilities and be true to your own – when taking on an audacious project it’s important to let those around you step up and be accountable for things outside their comfort zones, of course you should do the same but always stay accountable and get it done, experiment and draw outside the lines but always find a way to deliver
3. When you think it’s easy enough make it easier – creating good products is about solving real-world problems in innovative and elegant ways. The original dotherightthing.com for example was innovative but intimidating for companies and the community at large… the expectations were tough to overcome for most people, making it difficult to get started let alone get engaged; stripping everything to the core components not only ensures a solid user experience but it can also be very empowering and the more empowering it is the more engaging it will be (twitter is a good example of simple yet empowering)
4. Stay lean but not mean – stay lean but, more importantly, stay compassionate; things will likely unfold naturally and there will be many tough decisions that need to be made but do this without being shrewd or losing focus
5. Cultivate patience and persistence, it’s best done together – things will never get done fast enough but staying persistent ensures that things will happen and there will be movement toward the objectives, don’t sweat the small stuff but push on and remember it’s all small stuff (from this great book)
6. Engage the world openly and transparently – in many ways this is what dotherightthing.com is all about, transparent and genuine discussions with the companies/organizations you care about

New changes that are worth noting:

1. more empowerment with less of that activist edge – dotherightthing.com now focuses on what can and should be done, not on the good or bad; this new focus creates an environment that encourages action from the community and participation from companies/organizations; the flower metaphor helps visualize this
2. the community can engage directly – we’ve added a basic follow feature that allows community members to follow the activities of others (thanks Robert; there is also mention of it in his new book)
3. smart email notifications – you will now be notified of activities on the site through email notifications that are delivered more or less frequently based on your clicks and interest, you can disable these anytime but we think you will find them useful
4. new extra usable and sexy design – as always we did a good deal of research, prototyping, and design to ensure that this latest release is both functional and extra sexy

We look forward to implementing your ideas too. Please don’t hesitate to post them here. We would like to empower the community to help shape dotherightthing.com’s future. What do you think?

Go post an idea!

As you may have already heard, in January, Echoing Green selected dotherightthing to advance into the second phase of evaluation for their prestigious annual fellowship. Although the second phase is where our journey ended, it was an honor to have been selected and a valuable exercise for our team.

I congratulate this year’s Echoing Green Fellowship Finalists. This is a seriously accomplished group of socially motivated individuals. I can’t wait to hear more about what they will accomplish with Echoing Green’s network of support and resources.

After requesting additional feedback from Echoing Green, today I received an e-mail with some of the notes from the second phase evaluators.

In hopes that it may be helpful for others, I have included the most interesting bits (quoted straight up) below:

“Clearly, Rod and Ryan are social entrepreneurs. They are passionate and determined and I believe will be successful at what they set out to do. Yet, I don’t know that I believe the project itself fits with EG’s model for social change. For example, they say that their one population that best fits their constituency is “economically disadvantaged”, and yet their website will in no way directly impact the economically disadvantaged nor do they ever mention again that target audience in either their outcomes or impact statements.

“I find the idea interesting and applaud them for having a functioning site up and working. That said, I think their budget is unrealistic. Seems like a conflict of interest to take money from sponsoring companies that the site is evaluating. And I doubt if companies would pay as much as they are estimating. Also seems like users of the site are limited up till now. And, unlike evaluating hotel rooms, I am not sure that everyday people have the knowledge and skills to evaluate the degree to which companies are being responsible. That may need to be a job done by analysts and/or experienced NGOs.

“Great use of the emerging social networking technology. The use of an expert driven evaluation metric will be instrumental to the validity of the results. The development of the business model is critical — they are following a failed build it and people will come approach without a clear understanding who the customer of the model will be and how to involve the customer in the development and design. As I see it the most likely custom will be foundations that have this as an interest or business wanting evaluatory data — either way, those voices need to br brought to the to be sooner rather then later or dotherightthing will be another abandoned facade on the internet landscape.

“
Their applications reads much more like a business plan, which isn’t necessarily a problem if they are an overt social purpose business and yet neither their language nor their budget says that in a transparent way. The one indication you have is that they anticipate significant earned income (although given what a high percentage of their revenue they are anticipating from that revenue, I would want a much clearer explanation of those earned income streams).

“I also don’t understand why they are positioning their budget as only having expenses in the first year that are covered by the EG fellowship. Why don’t they believe they can raise philanthropic support, corporate support, etc? It also is implied but not clear that they are putting their own resources into the project (e.g. to supplement their income or to develop the website?), and yet that is not listed. So…lots of questions!

“Project is approaching an extremely difficult problem with an approach worthy of trial. Though it appears to be operationally doable, questions remain on whether it will be able to drive the change desired.

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth — not going all the way, and not starting.”
Buddha

Most would agree, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is an extraordinarily innovative company. In the May 14th issue of The New Yorker (”The Innovators Issue”) there is an excellent piece on Branson which outlines this personal and professional passion for innovation. When he isn’t at the center of attention, he is experimenting with new ideas.

A high school teacher once told Branson that he would either end up in jail or become a millionaire. Branson managed to fulfill both her expectations. No wonder, innovation is at the core of everything he does. And innovation requires non-traditional thinking and lots of experimentation. Trial and error is the name of the game. Be sure he has made almost every mistake in the book while revolutionizing several industries along the way.

After meeting Al Gore, Branson took the lead on what he humbly refers to as the upcoming “green revolution”. He has since taken on global warming in the only way he knows how: media and money.

I am confident that this is only the beginning. This type of non-traditional thinking will continue to pay significant social and financial dividends.

Today, Jessica Guynn of the SF Chronicle discussed this last commonality in her article “Responsibility is in their sites“. Thank you Jessica for picking up on this trend. I look forward to one day catching up live with Pierre and the other visionary social entrepreneurs from the article.

This fantasy has now become a reality.

On March 26th, the dotherightthing community will be announcing the social performance rankings of Starbucks, Whole Foods Market and Wal-Mart. This is just the beginning of an effort to rank hundreds of others and allow people to collaborate with the companies they care about.

In the next few months, we will be facilitating more dialogue as companies continue to show interest and participate with us (pioneers like Whole Foods Market have already taken an active role). Of course, none of this would have been possible without the support and participation of the dotherightthing community. Thank you and have fun.

These catch phrases may be cliche today but they are bound to be the standard practices of tomorrow. The bottom line, or rather double bottom line, that builds a real case for socially focused ventures is that people are willing to pay more for products and services that do the right thing. There are exciting times ahead.

It’s an exciting time that will undoubtedly yield interesting results as the community “finds itself”. Until then, I will be working hard alongside the dtrt team to keep up with you, continue to explore new opportunities for growth, improve the application using your insightful feedback and put our scalable infrastructure on a shoestring to the test. So far so good.

Thank you for your support and continued patience as we grow the site.

If you haven’t checked out the site yet, do it now! Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly with your suggestions or concerns.

With media and corporate interest building, we hope to empower an extraordinary community of people and make a significant positive social impact together in the months to come.

Thank you to everyone who was a part of making this project a reality. It was your hard work that brought dotherightthing to life. The list of revolutionary thinkers who helped make it happen includes, but is definitely not limited to, Ryan Mickle, Jarkko Laine, Matt Olson, Dylan Bruce, Robert Hoekman, each of the innovative business school students who participated during the exclusive launch and many others.

Below is a snapshot of where we were just 10 months ago

Echoing Green awards two-year fellowships to emerging social innovators. Annually, we award fellowships to individuals with innovative ideas for creating new models for tackling seemingly unsolvable social challenges. These fellowships offer them the opportunity to develop and test their ideas.

Here is the first half of a lengthy email they sent me earlier this week:

Dear Rod,

Congratulations! Echoing Green has selected your project, dotherightthing.com, to advance to the second phase of our selection process. This year, Echoing Green received close to 900 applications for our 2007 Fellowship Program. Based on these initial submissions, we have invited close to 300 projects to submit Phase 2 applications (approximately 33%).

Being selected as a Phase 2 applicant is quite an accomplishment. However, this is not the time to rest on your laurels! The competition will only become more intense in this next phase of our process. After we receive the Phase 2 submissions, every submission will be reviewed by both internal and external reading committees. Based on the recommendations from our internal and external readers, we will select no more than 30 finalists to come to travel to New York City for personal interviews in May. Of the 30 finalists, up to 20 will be selected as our Fellows class of 2007. We are not giving you these statistics simply to scare you; rather we want you to understand how competitive the process is and how important it is to put forth a carefully thought out, articulate submission.

More information is also available at our new blog: the dotherightthing blog. This is particularly great news in light of our upcoming launch. Congratulations to the team and thank you to everyone else for their generous support.

If you are interested in a non-traditional way to give back this year, try microfinance lending using kiva.

Why I’m addicted to kiva’s concept:

1. it empowers poor entrepreneurs in developing countries
2. it has clear social benefits
3. it leverages Internet technology to help address a complex social problem
4. it is a transparent platform – allowing you to follow your investments
5. it’s fun

There is a lot of potential here…