Once a year, we get the extreme pleasure of gathering some of our nearest and dearest together for a few days of training on some of the key principles and practices of running and sustaining a social enterprise. Think marketing, finance, legal, governance, etc.

The theme of this year's gathering is Leveraging Network(s): A Pathway Toward Sustainability. Our goal is to emphasize the power of networks and intentional collaborations to help build markets and greater social return on investment.

You may have heard the buzz about social enterprises. Those are the businesses that earn a profit while generating good outcomes for communities, i.e. TOMS Shoes. What’s unique about the companies that we work with in this space is that they are all nonprofits created with the sole purpose of making the world a better place. But in order to sustain their operations, they have integrated (or are interested in doing so) social enterprise, or revenue generating, components into their organizations.

That’s why we call this program our Community Enterprise program. Community came first and profit, or because these are nonprofits, earned-income to support programmatic efforts, second. For the organizations in this group, in addition to training, we provide seed funding and help them leverage community, philanthropic and corporate partnerships. By helping them become more self-sustaining, they are able to achieve greater levels of social impact.

This year, we are doubling our pleasure by including another branch of our community, the organizations in our Generation ZD program, into the training, or convening, as we like to call it.

Our Generation ZD program, funded through the Federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), is a training and broadband access program for low-income youth in urban and rural settings that increases participants’ digital literacy skills, educational achievement and job opportunities. The project is conducted in partnership with seven youth media and community media nonprofits in California, Hawaii, Oregon, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington.

As the availability of federal dollars winds down for Generation ZD, the participating organizations are looking to the examples set by our Community Enterprise grantees. And, so they will spend the next few days with us learning best practices for creating self-sustaining revenue streams.

You can follow the convening action via our hashtag, #zdc12. We kick off around 9 a.m. tomorrow and will wrap up around 5 p.m. on Thursday, September 13th.

Special thanks to all those involved in the convening. We’re looking forward to an amazing couple of days!

Community Enterprise Program

Change Agent Productions
The Center for Multicultural Cooperation
Women's Audio Mission (WAM)
Youth Radio

Generation ZD Program

Access Humboldt
Akaku: Maui Community Television
Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Fe (BGCSF)
Community Media Access Partnership (CMAP)
Portland Community Media (PCM)
Reel Grrls
Spy Hop Productions

Convening Speakers & Trainers

Mary Murphy, MEM consulting
Amy Luckey, ZeroDivide consultant
Vidya Drego, formerly Principal Analyst, Customer Experience at Forrester Research
Antonio Aguilera, President, Social Enterprise Alliance San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
Villy Wang, ED BAYCAT
Curtis Chang, Consulting within Reach
Amy Jones, Alliance for Technology Access
Jennifer Kawar, Director of Capital and Strategic Partnership Development, Nonprofit Finance Fund
David Camp, DWC group
Elana Yonah,  cofounder, Rise
Lawrence Ellis, consultant, Paths to Change
David Deryyk, Principle, Social Enterprise Impact
Leila Janah, CEO, SamaSource