Jonathan Greenblatt, founder of Ethos™ Water and former Vice-President of Global Consumer Products at Starbucks Coffee Company, is taking the message of social entrepreneurship on the road. I spoke with Jonathan recently at the Larta Institute Venture Forum where he was moderating a panel on the trend of social venturing in technology. Click on the microphone link below to hear the interview.

The Ethos™ Water brand was acquired by Starbucks in April 2005 for $8 million, and co-founder Peter Thum and Jonathan continued to run the business, joining the Starbucks Foundation board to help manage the Ethos Water Fund within the foundation. The Fund supports programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Starbucks will donate 5 cents for every bottle of Ethos sold, with a contribution goal of US$10 million over five years to help children and their communities get clean water.

In June 2006, Starbucks and Ethos entered into an agreement, through Starbucks’ existing joint-venture partnership with PepsiCo, for the distribution of Ethos™ Water in the United States and Canada. The agreement is anticipated to increase the distribution reach of Ethos™ Water to as many as 100,000 outlets in North America.

Jonathan left Ethos in 2006 but is a convert to the power of business to create communities of like-minded activists, using mission-related products to encourage "a higher degree of consciousness among consumers about social issues." He spoke about this recently at the Social Enterprise Alliance Gathering, and was on his way to the Endeavor Summit in Miami, where he made a closing address on changing the world through profit. Jonathan also works on the X Prize Foundation and the Global Water Challenge.

I attended the Nonprofit Centers Network conference session last week on Ownership and Governance presented by Jonathan Spack of Third Sector New England in Boston, Mass.; Bob Weiss of The Meadows Foundation in Dallas, Tex.; Dmitri Belser of the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, Calif.; and Steve Oliver, with Oliver and Company in Richmond, Calif.

I was very impressed with the Meadows Foundation's work in restoring the 22-acre Wilson Historic District of Dallas where they provide rent-free space to 25 nonprofit agencies. They've spent millions of dollars to create a safe psychological place for neighborhood volunteers, and now have one of the lowest crime rates in the city. Their success, including the development of the Central Square park, has attracted visitors from around the city and real estate investors who are developing the area abutting the district.

This is just one example of how nonprofit multi-tenant centers are preserving neighborhoods and bringing new visibility and credibility to the nonprofit sector. I'll be posting articles to the SEReporter and hopefully some audio of the conference to the SEblog soon.

Youth Venture, a sister program of Ashoka, is an awesome organization that is building a global movement of young changemakers by investing in young people to have the transformative experience of launching and leading their own social ventures - basically, getting the chance to be social entrepreneurs at a young age. Youth Venture works with young people all over the world from all backgrounds to launch ventures that address social challenges in their communities or on an international scale. Check out the website: www.genv.net.

More importantly, Youth Venture is one of three finalists for the MySpace Impact Awards! The winner is determined by public voting so go to www.myspace.com/impactawards to vote for Youth Venture and help YV support young social entrepreneurs all over the world! You can vote once a day now through Friday, May 25th.

So support some world-changing work and tell your friends to check it out and vote too!

About 2,100 students graduated from Greenville Technical College on Tuesday, May 8th, in Greenville, SC and about 900 of them participated in the Commencement ceremony. Dr. Farrah Gray addressed graduates and their friends and families at the 7 p.m. graduation ceremony at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville.

A celebrity social entrepreneur, philanthropist, and bestselling author, Gray has been named one of the most influential black men in America by the National Urban League’s “Urban Influence Magazine.”

Only 22 years old, Gray was already a self-made millionaire at age 14. Raised in the impoverished South Side of Chicago, Gray’s journey from poverty to prominence has inspired people around the world.

His Farrah Gray Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on inner city, community-based entrepreneurship education, provides scholarship and grant assistance for students from at-risk backgrounds to attend Colleges and Universities and helps fund entrepreneurial endeavors.

David Dey, who founded the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship at Roberts Wesleyan College and was profiled in the SER 3-part series on campus-community partnerships, is in the planning stages of launching RiseGo(tm) a non-profit community development corporation based in Rochester, NY.

I've stayed in touch with David since he moved on from ISE to launch RiseGo and this Wednesday 5/16, RISEGO is partnering with the Rochester City Drug Court to celebrate the launch of a Social Entrepreneurial program that targets at-risk youth. The event will recognize the Drug Court Graduates in the 7th Judicial District. Said David, "The Drug Court provides us with direct access to the youth that are interested in a new path that will allow them to prosper in their lives."

For the past year, RISEGO has been successful in securing an ideal site to launch a Social Entrepreneurship Center dedicated to building the next generation of young entrepreneurs while simultaneously addressing the most critical needs in our community.

Look for an interview and article from David in SER soon about the business planning and development of the Center. David is already getting requests from other cities to bring it to their neighborhoods and it appears to be a replicable model that can benefit many other communities.

Mondofragilis network launched a unique online photo library specifically aimed at nonprofit and public interest communicators. The photos will help public interest communicators create powerful messages that cause change. In fact, the images will not be available for commercial use. Images can only be purchased by legitimate nonprofit entities or by students and other public interest users.

At mondolibrary, users will find images of Tajik migrants, Chechen combatants and AIDS orphans in the Kibera slums. The library also includes images relevant to public interest stories including photos of industry, relationships, urban life and many others.

The mondolibrary structure is based on a category tree that confers a comprehensive vision of the many facets of today’s issues including those found in the Millennium Development Goals.

Mondolibrary aims to help nonprofits by making the photos affordable. Among its likely clients, many civil society organizations, the United Nations family, educational facilities, public authorities, associations and other nonprofit entities whose goal is to cause change.

Mondolibrary is owned and operated by mondofragilis network, a media and communications company serving the United Nations family, civil society organisations, the public sector and better Earth projects. It offers a full range of public awareness, advocacy, behaviour change and fundraising analyses, strategies and services. It also offers sustainable development shifting strategies to corporations wishing to adopt a more socially responsible stance. Their slogan is: messages must cause change.

I met with Majora Carter, Executive Director and founder of Sustainable South Bronx, at the Global Social Venture Competition 2007 Social Entrepreneurship Symposium held on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Majora delivered the keynote address to the Symposium and spoke with me about integrating social enterprise with environmental justice in her work to "green the ghetto". An SEradio broadcast.

This is the first of many SEradio audioblog entries. I met Eric Weinheimer at the Opening Night Marketplace of the 8th Gathering of the Social Enterprise Alliance in Long Beach and was impressed with his presentation. Click on play and you'll be able to hear Eric speak about Cleanslate Chicago, a landscaping and neighborhood beautification enterprise of The Cara Program. Feel free to add your comments below!

The Larta Institute is hosting the 13th Annual Venture Forum today and tomorrow in San Francisco. Described as the largest event of its kind in the world, the Forum was an interesting opportunity to see how an independent nonprofit is "uncovering the fruits of innovation and serving it up."

The Forum, whose tagline is "Access the best innovation pipeline on the planet", included exhibits by a variety of IT, energy, biotech, healthcare and media entrepreneurs looking for early-stage investing. Larta has developed a training and networking program for entrepreneurs, combined with a "translational competency" that helps investors understand the needs and opportunities of early-stage companies.

Larta started in 1993 as one of several State of California-legislated regional technology alliances devoted to developing innovative companies from federally-funded research. Larta has since morphed into an "incubator without walls" offering entrepreneurs commercialization assistance programs sponsored by clients including the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.

I spoke with Jonathan Greenblatt, co-founder of Ethos Water, who was there to moderate a panel on social ventures with co-panelists from Globalgiving.com, Kiva.org. and Water Health International. Listen to my interview with Jonathan by clicking here.

Spoke with Jesse Patel, founder and CEO of Innovatorz.org, a nonprofit social enterprise incubated at the Origo Institute in San Francisco, CA. Jesse was trying to learn about world-class award-winning social entrepreneurs and hit upon the idea of using "assisted podcasting" to help leaders at social enterprises like Goodwill and Scojo to tell their stories online. This type of online resource is an great way for social entrepreneurs to get out the word about their programs.

Innovatorz was one of 21 projects that recently won the NetSquared Innovation Award for social networking technologies.