We are proud to announce that TechChange now runs on 100% pollution-free electricity as a Arcadia Power Clean Energy Partner. With our partnership with Arcadia Power Clean Energy, TechChange now meets the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Green Power Partnership requirements, joining businesses like Whole Foods and Google who also run on clean energy.

As a registered Certified B Corps social enterprise, our focus as a company goes beyond just creating a market-driven, financially sustainable business, but also trying to make a positive impact on the world. Since 2012, being a ‘triple bottom line’ business that measures its success in terms of “people, planet, and profit” has been an important part of what guides our business that has reached over 2500 alumni in over 100 countries to date. Every day, we’re inspired by how our community is using technology and skills training to address some of the world’s biggest challenges such as mitigating climate change, containing emerging infectious diseases like Ebola, promoting peace in conflict zones around the world, rebuilding communities struck by natural disasters, and more.

Today, we’re excited to share how we’re doing our small part to impact the environment with our partnership with Arcadia Power. While most of us at TechChange walk or bike to work, we saw an opportunity to further reduce our carbon footprint by supporting local wind and solar projects through a national clean energy provider. In doing so, we are helping to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels and support renewable power and local green jobs.

As a fellow B Corps business, Arcadia Power couldn’t have been a better partner to help us make this transition. And we are happy to learn that the feeling is mutual.

We’re excited to be partnering with a company that truly exemplifies the responsible practices we all want from businesses in our communities,” said Arcadia Power co-founder, Ryan Nesbitt. “As a fellow Certified B Corps, TechChange adheres to the highest social and environmental standards, and choosing clean energy is a great step in reducing their impact and doing their part to combat climate change.”

Have any ideas about how we could further reduce our carbon footprint? What are some of the ways your business is going green? Tweet us @TechChange or let us know in the comments.

About Arcadia Power
Arcadia Power is the first nationwide Clean Energy option. By partnering with wind and solar projects, Arcadia Power provides homes and businesses with 100% pollution-free energy via local utilities. Members support their values through their monthly energy bills, decreasing demand for fossil fuels and helping to grow American green jobs and power. Arcadia Power partners with sustainability-minded companies and organizations to combat climate change and secure a better future for our planet.

We’re excited to announce that TechChange president Nick Martin was selected as the runner-up for the 2014 Andrew E. Rice Award for Leadership and Innovation by a Young Professional in International Development.

The winner of first place for the Rice Award for 2014 was Diana Jue of Essmart, a U.S. Corporation and India Private Limited company that “brings essential, life-improving products to all people, no matter who they are or where they’re from”. Diana’s company is doing great work to create better distribution and supply channels of existing consumer goods to hard-to-reach places in the developing world.

Nick Martin 2014 SID Rice Award Honorable Mention Stage

Nick received a certificate of distinction at the 2014 SID-Washington Annual Conference, “Delivering Results in a Changing World,” on May 20th, in Washington, DC. Thanks to the team at SID-Washington for organizing the award and event.

Nick Martin SID award

Please join us in congratulating Nick!

Read more about the SID Rice Award here and consider applying next year.

Earlier this week, Georgetown University announced the launch of its brand new Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation.

This 10-million dollar center funded by Georgetown alumni, Alberto and Olga María Beeck, aims to inspire and prepare students, faculty, and global leaders with the necessary skills to generate and innovate solution-based world change. The Beeck Center actively promotes a policy-relevant, cross-disciplinary approach to research, ideas, and action. The Center’s approach hopes to challenge common assumptions and lead to ideas and actions that are creative, adaptive, and morally grounded. Planned initiatives include: workshops, speaker event series, social innovation fund, fellows program, social impact lab, and research and policy initiatives.

At the center’s opening event on February 11, the Beeck Center welcomed leading experts in the Social Innovation space such as Pam Omidyar (Co-Founder, Omidyar Network and Founder, HopeLab), Jean Case (Co-Founder and CEO, Case Foundation), and other leading experts on design and storytelling for advocacy. The reception’s closing remarks were by the Center’s Executive Director, Sonal Shah, whose brings leadership from her wealth of experiences at the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, Google.org, Goldman Sachs, the Center for Global Development, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and other organizations.

We had the chance to talk to some of the students already involved with the Beeck Center from across Georgetown University who shared their work in social innovation across the world, from the GU Impacts Fellowship program to the SIPS Fund.

A Georgetown student shares her stories from her GU Impacts program field experience in South Africa.

Georgetown sophomore, Naman Trivedi, discusses projects that have been funded through the student-run Social Innovation Public Service (SIPS) Fund; the Fund has given out grants ranging from $300 to $13,000 for projects here in DC and as far away as Nepal.

 

If you missed the Beeck Center’s launch event, you can check out the recorded webcast here.

Social innovation can come from anywhere, whether it is from individuals dedicated to public service, social entrepreneurs, or social intrapreneurs working at companies, multilateral organizations, non-profits, or government agencies. We can’t wait the see the impact on the world coming from institutions such as the Beeck Center and are very excited for this welcome addition to the social innovation community.

According to Mark Hanis, Director of the Beeck Center,

“We’re delighted to be working with TechChange, who is a prime example of the type of B Corps social enterprises that we want to foster at the Beeck Center. Like TechChange, Georgetown has always leveraged technology for social change, and Georgetown students are eager to pursue careers that involve a double bottom line business model like TechChange’s. Part of Beeck’s unconventional approach will be grounded in social intrapreneurship as an important component of the social change ecosystem because we often work with larger entities like government, NGOs, and multinational corporations. Ultimately, intrapreneurship is about teaching people how to be more effective in inspiring positive change.”

To help welcome members of Beeck Center community, we’re offering a $100 discount to Beeck affiliated organizations and individuals to join our upcoming Social Intrapreneurship course, which begins in on February 24! Use coupon code: DriveImpact before February 21 to get $100 off the course!

Social Intrapreneurship SocInt online course Ashoka Changemakers TechChangeWe’re excited to partner with Ashoka Changemakers to launch an online course on Social Intrapreneurship this February 25 – March 21, 2014! This four-week online certificate course on “Entrepreneurial Strategies for Social Innovation Within Institutions” aims to empower employees at private, public, and nonprofit institutions across the world with the tools and mindset of a lean startup entrepreneur looking to change the world by implementing socially innovative ideas within their organizations. For employers of these institutions, it discusses ways to foster a culture of innovation and staff engagement that drives social change.

What do you need to become an intrapreneur? How can employees of organizations promote social good?
TC108 will give participants experience with pitching, planning, advancing, and executing innovative and socially conscious programs within large organizations. Activities are geared to assist and inform organizations and individuals that want to cultivate and promote innovative, lean start-up, entrepreneurial approaches within their workforce to promote social good and provide an opportunity to engage with like-minded professionals. The course creates a global network of individuals who can expect an interactive learning experience to share ideas and strategies.

Social Intrapreneurship bootcamp: Changemaker competition and takeaways
Course participants will go through a customized Ashoka Changemakers concept formation and evaluation process and engage with accomplished guest experts who are leading social intrapreneurs at their companies, providing an insider’s view of what makes a good social intrapreneurial project proposal and what it takes for these ideas to stand out. By the end of the course, participants will have a two-page concept note, one page budget and powerpoint pitch for an innovative social change idea to be targeted to a specific organization. The TechChange/Ashoka Changemaker committee will review each concept note and once considered viable under the course principles, the approval will result in a TechChange Intrapreneurship Certification.

Join our learning community of Intrapreneurs
We couldn’t be more excited to be working with Ashoka, who has supported social intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship through programs such as the Ashoka Changemakers, the League of Intrapreneurs, and more for over three decades.

We’re also excited that Joe Agoada will be back to facilitate this course in February. He’s honing his intrapreneurial chops as a featured speaker at the 2013 Intrapreneurship Conference in Barcelona this week. Follow his live tweets from the conference @joeagoada and also from Jennifer Estevez @socialqgroup to follow the latest on Intrapreneurship.

Check out the syllabus and register now for the course to lock in early bird rates. Contact nancy [at] techchange [dot] org if your organization is interested in booking a group discount rate. Any questions on the course itself? Please email Jennifer [at] techchange [dot] org.

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About Ashoka Changemakers:
Changemakers convenes and connects high-potential changemakers, their ideas and resources, through the power of collaborative competitions and partner networks.
Changemakers builds on Ashoka’s three-decade history to engage a global network that embodies the Ashoka vision where “Everyone is a Changemaker”. In order to realize this vision, the world needs people to gain the skills and resources to collaborate on solving complex social problems. Visit changemakers.com to learn more.

About the Facilitator
Joseph Agoada is the Resource Mobilization Coordinator for the UNICEF New York headquarters’ Social and Civic Media Section, and founder of the mobile mapping project, UNICEF-GIS. He also implemented UNICEF’s 2010 World Cup in My Village initiative in Rwanda and Zambia. Joe is a recipient of several awards for his activism including: 2008 International Youth Foundation a Global YouthActionNet Fellow, 2009 Starbucks Shared Planet Grant Honoree, and 2012 Google Personal Democracy Forum Fellow. Joe has spearheaded the Intrapreneurship courses at TechChange, and is a featured speaker at the 2013 Intrapreneurship Conference in Barcelona. He graduated the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.