See below for the exciting projects currently underway through the IEC and how you can get involved. The IEC is always open for folks who want to help out with an existing project or to kick off a new one. Don’t forget to check back regularly for updates as new projects are added!
Project Lead: Maggie Miland
Focus Area: Support Systems
For-profit social impact organizations have a unique challenge where they need to evaluate both the effectiveness of their commercial operations and impact on communities they are serving. This can be especially challenging for start-ups and small companies, because they are also focusing on building a viable business, and cannot usually prioritize M&E&L (measure, evaluation, and learning.) This project is exploring how Social Enterprise MSP can provide a service in an a-la-carte style, giving social entrepreneurs the opportunity to access impact evaluation services that fit their needs and help tell their unique stories with data-driven context.
Learn more here.
Project Lead: Vasiliki Papanikolopoulos
Focus Area: Support Systems
Through an innovative approach to storytelling, this project creates experiences that simultaneously provide financial support and promotion to social enterprises and expose the broader community to the services social enterprises provide. This is an experiential marketing campaign where IEC members visit and purchase from social enterprises with a provided stipend, and share their experience with their personal and professional networks through the storytelling medium of their choice.
Learn more here.
Project Lead: Jeff Ochs and Erin Martin
Focus Area: Funding
Minnesota Afterschool Advance (MAA) is a collaboration between Venn Foundation and Youthprise that helps low-income Minnesota families statewide take advantage of the underused Minnesota Education Tax Credit (METC).
The METC offers eligible families a reimbursement of up to $1,000 per child per year for eligible after-school services like tutoring, music lessons, academic enrichment, and driver’s ed. If every eligible family in Minnesota used the full amount for their students in grades K-12, it would equate to $275 million annually. However, less than $12 million is used each year because families must pay for services up front and then wait to be repaid until they get their tax refund, sometimes more than a year later. Many low-income families do not have the cash flow for this model to work. MAA eliminates this barrier by creating a loan pool to issue 0%, no-fee PRI loans to the families allowing them to pay for the activities. The family assigns this portion of their tax refund back to Venn to use again with new students.
Learn more here.
Project Lead: You!
Interested in getting involved with an existing project? Have an idea for a new project? Let us know! Reach out to learn more about how to get involved in the IEC: info@socialenterprisemsp.org.
