Meeting Recap for March 3, 2014

Charley Ansbach was the Rotary Club of Sacramento Speaker for the March 3^rd meeting. Ansbach, an adjunct professor in social entrepreneurship at the Eberhard School of Business at University of the Pacific who also teaches social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility at the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis, spoke about the concepts of social entrepreneurship and Corporate Social Responsibility.   In Ansbach’s view, nonprofit community service is taking on new meaning and moving center stage as the global business market shifts toward the integration of economic and social priorities as a basis for creating value.

Ansbach spoke about “impact investing” when businesses invest in non-profit organizations but expect to see a Return on Investment (ROI) in terms of social problems addressed by non-profits, and susainability – non-profits making a product that improves the world, and improves the bottom-line of the non-profit organization. Ansbach called this form of investment – “Triple Bottom Line” – improving people, the planet, and profit simultaneously. Ansbach had a great example of a non-profit in India doing just that.  Many subsidence level workers in India were unable to work after suffering injuries that resulted in the loss of a leg. Most were unable to return to work or train for another job after such injuries because of the prohibitive cost – as much as $15,000 (U.S.) of prosthetic devices to aid with walking.  An entrepreneurial Indian non-profit organization filled this need, testing and manufacturing workable prostheses from PVC pipe costing less than $30 dollars (U.S.). Word quickly spread and the non-profit now fills thousands of orders worldwide for the low cost highly effective prostheses.

Ansbach argues that the world will see far more of this kind of socially responsible non-profit social entrepreneurship in the next five years as Millenials and their combined buying power produce a “Tipping Point” potentially changing markets. Millenials, he notes, want products available quickly - when they want it, how they want it, for a price that they want, and they want it to do no harm to society in the process.  Ansbach pointed to Dell, Unilever and other large corporations that he thinks are on the cutting edge of this new social responsible “Tipping Point” market shift.

Member recognitions were given out this Monday to the following:

Eddie Mulligan Awards

Skip Lawrence – 8^th

Rick Davis – 3^rd

Dan McVeigh – 3^rd

Chris Ann Bachtel – 3^rd

Dave Murphy – 3^rd

Dan Guth – 1^st

Paul Harris Awards

Skip Lawrence – 8^th

Horace Wulff – 7^th

Rick Davis – 4^th

Barbara Arnold – 3^rd

Judy Payne – 1^st