My friend, Pang, and I showing off our donor bandages.

I have written about ARUP Blood Services numerous times as this is my favorite volunteer experience.  You can read some of my previous posts here, here and here.  I will put in yet another plug, though, that they are always looking for blood and platelet donors as they are the sole providers for many of the local hospitals (including Huntsman Cancer Institute).  You can get more information from their site.

The University Venture Fund is another great organization, a student ran venture capital firm with $18m to invest.  (You can read a previous post of mine here.) If you are a student based in Utah, this is an excellent opportunity and I would greatly urge you to get involved.  If you are an investor, consider partnering with this group.  They provide free due diligence with the hopes of piggy-backing on investments.

Have any of you readers volunteered this week?  If so, with what organizations?

The University Venture Fund is a student ran venture capital firm that has raised $18m from outside limited partners and has a current portfolio of 17 investments.  The organization has partnered with numerous private equity partners, providing free due diligence in return for the real life due diligence experience.  In return, the private equity firms often carve out an investment piece, allowing UVF to piggyback if interested.  All investments are decided by the students, but must be approved by their investment committee, compromised of local private equity investors.

My volunteer work with UVF consists of document review, ensuring that all research points are considered during the due diligence process, and providing additional insight into the role of a VC analyst.

If you are a student at the University of Utah, BYU, or Utah State University, and are interested in venture capital (no matter your field of study) I would urge you to get involved with this organization.

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, with one out of 5 men and women seriously considering taking his/her life.  In the past, economic recessions have increased this count, a result being seen again in today’s economic environment.

Yukio Shige, a retired policeman, has spent the last 5 years patrolling the Tojinbo cliffs, a place where many desperate folks come to commit suicide by jumping the 82 feet into the Sea of Japan.  Since 2004 he has roamed the cliffs 2 or 3 times a day in hopes of finding these people in need, trying to dissuade them from the act.  When successful, he takes them back to his counseling office, offers them tea, listens to their troubles, and then proceeds to help them resolve the issues including personally going with them to confront people.  He has been funding his work through donations and his retirement funds, saving over 180 lives to date.

Inspirational!

What can we do to help others in these rough economic waters?  Many of us obviously do not have the time or money to make an impact like Shige, but we definitely can do smaller acts. How about freely opening up the rolodex to make an introduction for a job seeking friend?  Perhaps take time to visit with someone over lunch?  Volunteer to help those in greater need? Try to better understand the depression others could be feeling and the best ways to respond? Inquire how you can be of assistance?

What are your thoughts?

To be honest, it ended up being a weird volunteer experience for personal reasons irrelevant to this blog.  However, I still wanted to briefly highlight KCPW as I truly enjoy their news coverage, have volunteered with them numerous times, and donated many times in the past.

KCPW, acquired by Wasatch Media last year, is a public radio station serving the Salt Lake Metropolitan and is supported mainly by donations.  They provide an excellent line-up of programs, with my top favorites being the BBC, Morning Edition, and (of course) Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. =)  

They have a website, handful of blogs, twitter presence, and radio coverage at the frequencies of 88.3 and 105.3.  If interested in volunteering, fill out this form and they will get in touch with upcoming activities.

Utah Blood (also known as ARUP Blood Services) is the sole provider of  blood to Huntsman Cancer, Primary Children’s Hospital, Shriner’s Hospital for Children and University of Utah Hospital and Clinics.  These four (out of the total of 43) Utah hospitals represent 25% of the needed blood in Utah with any donations made directly helping someone within the SLC community.

Utah Blood is constantly trying to expand their platelet donor base as they need 25 people a day to fulfill the platelet needs within these four hospitals.  A platelet donation can be a bit more time consuming than a blood donation, taking anywhere from 80 minutes to 2 hours, but donors are constantly needed due to the short shelf life, a mere 5 days, of platelets.

For more information visit their site, subscribe to their Blood Blog, join their Facebook page or follow their twitter stream.  Or to make an appointment at their Research Park or Murray location, call 801-584-5272.

This Week’s Service

This week I worked with the organization No More Homeless Pets in Utah, this being my first time to volunteer with this group.  No More Homeless Pets in Utah’s  mission is to end the euthanasia of dogs and cats in Utah and to promote humane alternatives for feral cats. They have a no kill policy, sheltering the animals until adoption. I was introduced to the group by my friend Melissa, a strong advocate for animal rights who regularly helps out NMHPU and has fostered pets.

Each week No More Homeless Pets brings the animals to either the West Valley or Taylorsville PetSmart (PetSmart has partnered with NMHPU) to try and find them a home with a shopper.  NMHPU showcases their pets for the whole day, therefore needing volunteers to help walk and play with them.  I showed up at 10:30am and stayed until 1:30pm, walking and playing with each animal as my friend and other volunteers (who had worked with this non-profit previously) spoke with customers about the pets.  It was yet another fabulous volunteer experience.

Hanging out with my friend Melissa and Sparky, one of the dogs up for adoption.  Sparky is a 9-month-old pit bull and a fabulous dog.  He is completely mellow, a snuggler and great with other animals.

Interested in Helping?

There are many ways to help No More Homeless Pets in Utah.

1. Adopt a Pet – The animals in this program are excellent animals, many of which have been pulled off of euthanasia lists due to their high likelihood for adoption.  Adopting a pet through this program saves an animal from unnecessary euthanasia and gives another animal a second chance.  You can view the available animals on Petfinder.  Petfinder and the NMHPU also list which PetSmart the animals will be at that week so that you can meet and play with them in person.
2. Volunteer – No More Homeless Pets is always in need of volunteers and lists their current needs on their site.
3. Foster a Pet – With the no kill policy, No More Homeless Pets is often in need of additional temporary homes for dogs.  Fostering a pet opens up more room for NMHPU to bring on additional animals. If interested in fostering a pet, visit this link.
4. Donate to the Cause – Like many organizations, donations are needed to keep the organization going.  The organization gladly accepts non-monetary donations such as toys, pet food, leashes and cleaning supplies.
5. Vote for NMHPU to Receive A Grant – Rescue Site gives out grants to shelters. You can vote for No More Homeless Pets in Utah, using these instructions.

Staying Informed

If you want to stay up to date with the progress of NMHPU, you can read about their current events on their site, subscribe to their newsletter, or follow them on Twitter.

This simple campaign made me ponder how a good sum of money could be raised over such a short period of time and if it was a model that could be used in the non-profit realm. Looking back on the Chip In Widget, it seemed to be have such an impact for four main reasons.

1. It Hit A Pain Point – many of us probably know someone who has been diagnosed with cancer. But the pain point in Serenity’s case is that she is young, being diagnosed at the age of 22 months. An age that shouldn’t have to endure pain or a terrible disease.
2. It was Personal – often with non-profits you see a picture of a child or a family but you don’t personally know that family. I don’t know the exact distribution of the widget, but it seemed that many of us personally knew Phil.
3. It was Targeted – The widget was distributed through the technology community with which Phil is a member.
4. There was a Deadline – It is human nature (or at least in my case) to procrastinate. The creation of a deadline made people respond.

Would this be able to work in a non-profit scenario if they had an online presence and following? Seems like the targeted and deadline points could easily be achieved, but hitting a main pain point and making It personal are the tricky aspects. What do you readers think?

Numerous posts and tweets have been hitting the Utah scene lately concerning Phil Burn’s daughter, Serenity, being diagnosed with Leukemia. I blogged a couple days ago about the new Chip In Widget, created by Jesse Stay, that thankfully has been distributed amongst a handful of bloggers and is seeing a good up-tick in donations.

However, there is another way to help out.

I truly try to volunteer on a weekly basis (often posting about my experiences on the Cragbaby here, here and here), with my very favorite volunteer activity being donating platelets at ARUP. I have been donating platelets since last summer, trying to give every other week, health permitting. I find it to be the easiest form of service because by sitting and watching a movie (albeit with a needle in my arm) I can directly impact a life.

I choose to donate at ARUP because all donations are used at the local hospitals, helping cancer, transplant and traumatic injury patients. Platelets only have a shelf life of a five days resulting in a continual need. To date I have only been at the ARUP lab on one occasion where I was told they were finally catching up with demand, though they expected to be behind within the next couple days.

The UtahBlood site shows where units of blood are being used. (I am not quite sure if this includes platelet distribution.)

If interested in the Serenity cause or are looking for a fantastic volunteer activity, consider platelet donation. An appointment with ARUP can be made by calling 801-524-5272.

First, I post about Ten Thousand Villages as the Salt Lake location has recently moved. Due to the unfortunate Sugarhouse development, Ten Thousand Villages had to re-locate and as of today is open in its new location at 1941 South 1100 East (two store fronts north of the Sugarhouse post office). I would urge all readers to go and check out the new store as there is lots of new merchandise.

Second, the business model of this non-profit is interesting. Ten Thousand Villages was formed in 1946 and has grown from a grassroots organization (in the back of Edna Ruth Byler’s car trunk) to a very well established company with 160 branches dispersed throughout the United States. The company’s mission is fair trade and partners with more than 100 artisans overseas, providing them a fair wage in advance for the merchandise they supply. The materials are shipped to the United States and are sold at branch locations that are managed by (at least in the case of the Salt Lake store) two full time paid employees and one part time paid employee. The rest of the work (running the cash register, checking in merchandise, assisting customers, stocking the store, etc.) is done strictly by volunteers. Not only has this organization succeeded in running a retail store based around volunteer employees, but it has grown in the process.

I find the model to be interesting because:

1. The payment of artisans in advance provides the necessary capital for the artisans to work without needing to take out a loan or boot strap their operations
2. The default rate of artisans not providing merchandise (though unknown to me) must be low for the organization to continue payment upfront in environments with very little legal protection
3. Prices of merchandise are still reasonable even with the higher cost of goods, most likely being offset by not needing to pay volunteer wages
4. People will volunteer their time, enough to operate a retail operation, if they believe there is a good cause backing the organization.
5. The company has found a way to combat a social ill on a on-going basis.

To circle this back around to the venture capital perspective, there are a handful of successful for-profit organizations that are focusing on social issues (i.e. Tom’s Shoes which has been bootstrapped to date). Financing such start-ups are a number of foundations and social venture capital firms, a handful of which are listed below:

• Social Venture Capitalist: Acumen Fund, Benentech, NESsT Venture Fund, New Profit, Calvert Social Venture Capital Funds, VentureSome
• Foundations: Echoing Green, Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, Ashoka, Google.org, Equity for Africa, Charitable Venture Foundation, Social Venture Capital Foundation, Entrepreneurs Foundation , Village Enterprise Fund
• Microfinance shops: Unitus, DrishTree, SKS Microfinance
• Other: Enterprise Works Business Development, SocialVC Business Plan Competition, Yale Business Plan Competition

The concept was conceived as Blake was traveling through poor villages in Argentina and realized that he could create a difference by forming a shoe company. He decided to fashion the shoe after the local alpargatas but with bold colors and artistic styles. He spent two months seeking Argentina fabric and shoe makers and debuted a collection of 15 styles in June 2006. By fall of 2006 he had sold 10,000 pairs of shoes and gave away 10,000 pairs with a handful of volunteers alongside 2,200 miles of Argentinan countryside.

As of February of this year the self-financed company had orders from 300 stores and was turning a profit. On top of that, 240 customers had offered to pay to go volunteer resulting in Mycoskie starting to create a sister company that will offer $2,000 vacations consisting of two days of sightseeing and 4 days of volunteering.