Impress Bill and Melinda Gates With Your Idea, Win $1 Million

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a message that they want to get out; “foreign aid really works.” And the foundation, in conjunction with the Cannes Lions Festival is funding a million-dollar contest to see who can best get that message out.

The submission is pretty straightforward and is limited to just two pages. The entry deadline is 15 May 2012.

What might the judges base their decision on? The rules list the following as a start:

• “New ways to collect and share first-person stories from those impacted by aid in the developing world;
• “Data collection and visualization that demonstrates the “how” and “what” of aid, e.g. where funding goes and how it impacts people and communities; money spent on development relative to other areas; measurable progress against the Millennium Development Goals. (The foundation is particularly interested in MDGs 1,4,5,and 6.);
• “Creative distribution mechanisms to deliver stories, data, and information to key audiences;
• “Concepts that spark active engagement and collaborative problem-solving, e.g. games, crowdsourcing, and other projects that move the field from one-way communications towards authentic engagement;
• “Revolutionary ways to humanize the challenge and the solutions and to connect communities receiving aid to those who provide it.”

As many as 10 ten semifinalists will get $100,000 to develop their ideas. They will be flown to Seattle to confab with the “Cannes Chimera,” a panel of super-creatives in a learning environment. The winner will get a $1 million to execute their idea.

Judging will be based primarily on two things: How well it lines up with the topic and how innovative or creative it is. Approaches like lobbying public officials are specifically disallowed.

Contests of this sort have a fantastic history.

A way for ships to get a fix on their longitude while at sea came about thanks to a contest sponsored by the British admiralty. Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in part to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize. The splendid British aircraft the ‘Spitfire’ was inspired by a contest. The Ansari X Prize opened up near-earth space flight to non governmental entities. Qualcomm is sponsoring a $10 million ‘tricorder’ prize to get to a version of the Star Trek medical tricorder. There’s a half-dozen more such contests organized under the aegis of the X Prize.

Such contests create a multiplier effect, inspiring many people and organizations to spend their time and treasure on winning the prize.

Good luck! And if you win, remember who told you about it.

A Plan For Succession - Short Term and Not Strategic

The New York Times The Beginnings of a Succession Plan  got me thinking about “succession” which is a term that gets tossed about by many,  without deeper thought as to what it means.

 

What is Succession?

Succession can be short term… meaning insuring short term business viability due to sudden and unforeseen circumstances. Although what many people view as unpredictable is really what family business transition specialists call predictable transitions and clearly one of those is death of the founder. 

However for many family businesses, succession means passing the baton to the next generation. The definition of generation gets “muddy” but the consensus is 20 to 25 years. So when dealing with succession,  core strategic issues come into play which unfortunately many do not want to deal with.

Shouldn't a major goal for succession be the determination of the viability of the business for the next generation… out 20 plus years? 

 

Family Businesses are Not Perpetually Viable

We now have what I call structural ambiguity present in the economy and the business environment. Assumptions that were prudent in planning and forecast in the past probably are now mostly irrelevant. And most of those in the helping professions, accountants, financial planners and attorneys get stuck in the tools of legal and financial succession. 

Far too many family members and their advisers assume “perpetual business viability” and the next generation simply cannot assume business viability for another 20 years. So just because the business may have been family owned for several generations past, I say… so what? 

 

The Overlap of Family and Business

The above is most difficult to do since the Family-Business overlap is so strong and the “family” component is highly emotionally charged. I hope to see more discussion on succession that addresses the strategic viability of family owned enterprises for this is the responsible thing to do for that next generation so they are not saddled with businesses where the window of opportunity may be closing or has already closed.

Is the window of opportunity closing at your family business?

You may enjoy reading The Most Important Family Business Goals .

All the best!

Dom Celentano

New Jersey Family Business Advisor

DIY Charity Walk

The first two things I can remember doing for causes as a kid was to sell Scout-A-Rama tickets and walk in the March of Dimes’ WalkAmerica, now called March for Babies. (Back then, I kid you not, the walk was 20 miles!) Plenty of causes have borrowed liberally from the March of Dimes walk events. March of Dimes, in turn, owes a debt of gratitude to the German Volksmarsch. Now a group called KindWalk enables you to create a DIY… ‘do it yourself’… walk for the cause of your choice.

Here’s how KindWalk works. You sign up for an individual membership at the website for $18 a year. You get a pedometer plus a raft of other benefits. They also have a second membership level for $51 that includes a pedometer with a USB port so you can download walk data directly to your account. Membership benefits include:

• Interactive Fitness and Nutrition Planner
• Weekly Recipes and Grocery Lists
• Monthly Wellness Newsletters
• Interactive Weight Tracker
• Smoking Cessation Resources
• Health Risk Assessments
• Wellness Calculators
• Vitals Tracking
• Health Coaching
• Rewards Program

There’s also corporate and group membership options that include a branded website. No word on what corporate or group membership options cost per capita.

The website has a pledge section and an internal social media network, among other things.

Once you’re a member you can join a team or create a team. That is, you could create your own ‘walk’ to benefit the cause of your choice.

Kindwalk has a lot of features, but if you visit the site I think you’ll agree that the marketing and branding is still as we say on the Continent, naissant. I also wonder why they don’t engage in some kind of cause marketing to drive membership. As in, “sign up now and we’ll be the first donor to your walk!” Also, Kindwalk doesn’t seem to offer any help on route planning, city permit issues or sponsorship.

Still, this is a very interesting option for charities or even sponsors that want something close to a turnkey solution for a cause walk.

(The photo at the left comes from a German Volksmarsch association).

Family Business Goals - the MOST Important to Consider

Note: Reposted in response to the NY Times Article Making a Plan for Succession.

Consider the question "Are you a family business OR a business family"?

I was attending a seminar recently on Family Business issues and goal setting, resolutions and succession were major topics. The goals discussed were those that would be apparent to others… family member engagement, focusing on the big picture, etc.

Here is the most Important Goal to Consider

The next generation is best served by setting a more important goal that has generational time frame impacts. So the question - Shouldn't a major goal of the next generation be to determine the viability of the business for the next generation? We now have what I call structural ambiguity present in the economy and the business environment. Assumptions that were prudent in planning and forecast in the past probably are now irrelevant.

Are You Assuming Perpetual Business Viability?

The younger generation simply cannot assume business viability for another 20 years, just because the business may have been family owned for several generations past.This is most difficult to do since the Family-Business overlap is so strong and the “family” component is highly emotionally charged.

As the moderators said and as I always say, sometimes the sale of the business is the best decision for the next generation. A business in the Maturity stage of a business’s cycle or in the early stage of declination may not be the best asset for the family.

Consider Becoming a Business Family

A Family Business is construct, a “container” so to speak that provides value in many aspects to the family. However if the family thinks of themselves as a “business family” or what is called an enterprise family, it is not narrowly defining a business sector where it can invest it’s Human, Social and Economic capital.

Do you like to work together? Does your family have a great mix of skill sets? Are you great at articulating a vision and strategy? If yes… then you can apply all of that valuable family capital to new enterprises that will be born now and last for several generations into the future.

For a deeper dive into this subject, you may want to read The Route to Finding the best Family Business Adviser.

Also you can read my response to a NY Times blog post on Succession Planning.

All the best!

Dom Celentano

NJ Family Business

Million-Dollar Nonprofit Writing

Not quite 10 years ago I wrote 25 words that helped generate more than $32 million for the nonprofit I worked for at the time.

The nonprofit… a children’s charity… was trying to develop a long-term income stream by buying (using nonprofit bonds) three assisted living facilities that would spin off extra cash flow. It was the most complicated deal I’ve ever been involved with.

Children’s charities and assisted living facilities don’t exactly line up and so we needed compelling and rational language that explained why the deal made sense.

I can’t find the exact key sentence, but it made reference to helping people at their most vulnerable stages of life; near birth and near death.

The bond issuance required an unbiased opinion letter from an unaffiliated lawyer who was an expert in nonprofit bonding. He identified my 25 words… among the thousands around them… as the underpinning for his positive opinion. Each of those 25 words turned out to be worth more than $1 million apiece.

The right words really can be invaluable to a cause. Used to be you could pawn off on the marketing-communications staff all the marketing, PR, and internal communications responsibilities.But with the rise of social media, which remains overwhelmingly tilted towards the word, everyone is now a writer.

A pity that everyone isn’t a skilled writer.

To brush up on your writing skills here are seven tips from an article published recently in the online version of the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Seek feedback.
Professional writers and writing students have both formal and informal groups to review their work while it’s in process. Such groups all but demand that you have thick skin. However, chances are ‘workshopping’ your writing with others will help you improve faster than you could on your own.

Write down helpful tips.
Keep a journal of ideas and record them as they come to you. This will go a long way in helping you avoid the dreaded ‘writer’s block.’

Write to an audience of one.
This*is an old writer’s trick that is more effective than you might guess. It works because most of us are talkers first and writers second. If committing your idea to the written word seems impossible, hold in your mind a single person and explain it to him or her. Then write it the way you’ve explained it.

Avoid complicated language.
When I was a kid I had a friend named Roy who was a terrific companion. But at age 9, 10, and 11, he was a little dim. When my writing gets too highfalutin or jargony, I try to strip out all the excess baggage such that someone like Roy could easily understand me. (What are the chances that Roy is now a rocket scientist or judge?)

Don’t tell readers what they already know.
Remember how much time the third Indiana Jones movie spends explaining what happened in the first two movies? The correct answer is almost no time is spent on backstory in the Indiana Jones movies. Instead, Indy’s adventures start from the first frame. Your writing should start fast, too.

Break it up.
Big blocks of text online are like death on burnt toast. Nobody wants any part of it. Even in print we use subheads, bullet points, pull quotes, graphics, pictures and the like to keep the text from turning into one big undifferentiated mess. Do at least that much online as well then add some meaningful links.

Keep it brief.
The Chronicle’s article says to be brief. But you should strive for more than brevity. You should strive to be concise. Remember what the Strunk and White wrote in their estimable book, Elements of Style? “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”