May 30, 2013 | Businesses, Social Impact
Are you a newly-minted social entrepreneur? You have a great idea. You want to have a social impact. You want to operate as a business, not a charity. You’ve reached the point where you need to incorporate but don’t know where to begin. You’ve done some...
May 16, 2013 | engageSPARK Platform, Social Impact, Technology
Our dream at engageSPARK – the first product under the Opportunity Labs umbrella – is to make it very easy to use the mobile phone for social good. We have identified some neat ways to achieve this and we can’t wait to share engageSPARK with everyone once...
May 9, 2013 | Announcements, Humanitarian Agencies, Social Impact
“You are not the user.” This is the first lesson a designer is taught in school when learning how to design a product whether it is a toothbrush, a flight navigation system or a simple website. To design an easy-to-use product, a designer must be a user...
May 2, 2013 | engageSPARK Platform, Social Impact, Uncategorized
Choosing a legal form (or structure) for your new U.S.-based social enterprise seems like it would be a piece of cake: (1) call a lawyer; (2) tell the lawyer what you want to do; (3) the lawyer takes care of everything. Actually, it’s not so simple – especially when...
Apr 24, 2013 | Humanitarian Agencies, Social Impact
Last week, I read an interesting blog post from Linda Raftree about an NYC and London Technology Salon session on how mobile phones are improving the reach and impact of women empowerment initiatives. In the Tech Salon, they quote a GSMA estimate that mobile...
Apr 17, 2013 | Announcements, SMS, Social Impact
A small, poor village in Niger has 100 adults, 50 men, and 50 women. Women are the engines of change. They work hard. They save money for their families. They make sure that their children go to school. But – they can’t read. The overall literacy rate in Niger is only...
