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Today we're hearing from Sarah Lin, Co-Founder and Chief Blankie Crafter, of Ellie Fun Day. Ellie Fun Day is a business committed to working with women artisans in India to create organic baby blankets.

What is your role in the business?

I am the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer

Is Ellie Fun Day in business?

Yes, we started in March of 2012.

Where are you located?

We are located in San Jose but our artisans are in India.

How many people do you employ?

Right now it's two people: my husband and myself.

Who are you customers?

Our customers are two main groups. The first group is mothers between 29-40 with small children who are socially and environmentally conscious consumers. Our second type of customers are family and friends of a family with a newborn. All of these people are looking to make more sustainable consumer choices. They are also willing to pay the premium of exceptional quality and environmental and social benefits the blanket helps create.

What problem are you trying to solve?

I think that, simply put, we’re trying to solve the problem of lack of fair wages for marginalized women in India. We are working to empower these women who don’t have another opportunity to leverage themselves out of poverty.

How did you become interested in this problem?

Three years ago my husband and I went to India and worked with a mission dedicated to empowering and creating opportunities for the untouchables. It was there when I saw that the only way to empower and help them improve their lives was through creating a way for them to earn a fair wage. On top of realizing this I saw the need to create self sustainability through a business or livelihood rather than a band aid approach.  

I have also been a designer in the field for a long time and so after my time in India I saw that there was an opportunity to have design be a form of empowerment. I saw a number of NGOs that were producing handicrafts but that they weren’t at a level that was ready for the US market. So began thinking about how to bring the work I saw to a US market. Using my marketing and design skills I went to work on Ellie Fun Day to cater to a global market and help really create change and empower our women artisans to become sustainable.

What do you see as the solution to the problem?

I see the work being done with Ellie Fun Day as a way to provide a particular group of talented and hardworking women with a safe and positive work environment. Through their work they earn a livable fare wage. I also see our model as having the potential to incorporate other sewing centers in the area as we scale.

What are your major challenges?

Our biggest challenge has been sourcing. Organic fabric is very hard to find and because we are a small manufacturer we have to compete with bigger companies who can get a better price for fabric.

Another challenge comes from the cultural differences and communication barrier. For example in the US we take for granted that everything is high quality or that we get what we’re expecting. In India that isn’t the case so we have to work with our artisans to make sure that no subpar products go out. Its really important for us to have good quality management on the ground..

How has your time with the William James Foundation helped you?

It was just incredibly valuable to get the information from the reviewers. They gave us really good feedback that we could incorporate into our business model and practices.

We are also in the process of scheduling some meetings with readers.

What other resources have you found to be helpful?

We have found very useful information from the Skoll Foundation, Stanford Social Edge and other ethical clothing networks.

Your role with that company

I am the CEO and I focus on business strategy, partnerships and funding.

Is Juabar in business?

Yes, we launched commercially a few weeks ago, in the first week of July at the biggest trade show in East Africa. My co-founder, Sachi DeCou, and I have been working on Juabar full time for the past year.

Leading up to our launch we co-designed our first prototype with our Tanzanian colleagues then made a few iterations of our prototypes prior to launching a 9-month pilot to test the business case of the product for our end users/operators.

How many people does Juabar employ.

We currently have five employees. This includes myself, my two co-founders and two partners on the ground in Tanzania.

Where is Juabar based?

Juabar is based both in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and in Oakland, California. My co-founders and I split our time evenly between the two places and our operations are primarily in Tanzania.

Who are your customers?

Our customers are business-minded individuals in Tanzania. The ideal customer is a community leader, organization or someone who has multiple income streams and can understand how to optimize Juabar as business opportunity and community resource.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

Providing a reliable and consistent energy source to charge devices, like mobile phones, and save individuals time and money using other options. Right now people are spending money and time traveling to a charging location, we come in to provide a local alternative. We are also working in the economic development sphere on a broader level as we are providing energy access as a service for a business-minded individual. As a franchisee, we want to make it easy for these individuals to continue to grow their business.

How did you become interested in this problem?

I was involved in development work in Mozambique early in my career and had an opportunity to go back to Africa during the summer of 2011 as part of my MBA. My colleagues and I went to Tanzania to research solar energy and better understand the energy energy experience of Tanzanians at different socio-economic levels. This trip reinvigorated my interested in working in Africa. After I completed my MBA we had an opportunity to prototype the concept we developed from our research, which was the early idea of a Juabar charging kiosk, and just never stopped. Juabar is centered in Tanzania because of our networks, both professional and personal, as well as the favorable conditions of promoting solar energy adoption in that market.

What is your solution to the problem?

Our solution is an electrified pop-up charging kiosk and service distribution point designed to be run as a local business. As a product it is a charging and connectivity hub for off-grid communities, as a service it provides reliable local charging and energy access and as a business it is a leased franchise that sells not only the service of charging but other products as a distribution hub.

What are your major challenges?

On the ground our main challenges is not having a firm grasp of Swahili. When using a translator, on the spot communication is a bit difficult and some things get lost in translation. We are learning the language, but unfortunately there’s no way to just enter a chip into our brains. Also, we are hopeful that we can use local manufacturing for our kiosks but exploring and sourcing materials is a laborious task that can be very time and resource consuming.

Has the William James Foundation helped you?

The WIlliam James Foundation has been really helpful with the feedback. I don't think we realized in the first round how thoughtful and high quality the reviewers would be and we were blown away by the extent of the feedback. After reviewing our first round feedback we really stepped up our game for the second round and cleaned up our business plan to represent it as best as we could. The plan competition also acted as a timestamp to show where we were and how far we've come in our company’s evolution.

The competition has been the best review process that we've been apart of because of the quality and accessibility of reviewers, who have been generous enough to provide contact information for further follow up.

What other resources have you found that are particularly useful for social entrepreneurs?

Since we won the Stiefel Family Foundation prize I'm excited about the pro-bono consulting services we will be receiving. As we recently pivoted our business model, its will be nice to access consultants who specialize in sales, financing and business plan development.

For readers who want to know more about what you're up to, where can we send them?

Website - www.juabar.com,

twitter - @JuabarDesign,

Instagram - @juabar,

Today we have the opportunity to learn more about Next Step NewCo. from Stacey Epperson, President and CEO. Based in Louisville Kentucky, they are working to provide low income and first time home buyers with quality affordable prefabricated homes. 

What is your role in  the company?

I am the president and CEO.

Where is Next Step NewCo based?

We are based in Louisville Kentucky but we have other contract employees in Delaware and California. Our customers are in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Who are your customers?

Next Step NewCo’s customers are nonprofits who are members of our network. We supply the home that they then provide to the consumer. So in the end our customers are low to middle income families who are mostly first time home buyers.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

There is a large problem concerning the lack of affordable housing solutions. We are trying to create a more efficient, scaleable solution that provides energy efficient housing units. We are also working to help nonprofits minimize their costs and save funds through our reliable and affordable distribution channels and breakdown barriers to entry in the prefab housing markets. Next Step NewCo is also working to help replace earlier model mobile home units that are not energy efficient with affordable energy efficient units.  

How did you become interested in this problem?

I'm from rural Kentucky and I have also worked the last 10 years in Appalachian Kentucky providing manufactured houses. While doing this work I saw that there were no high quality affordable homes on the market and that my, then, position was contributing to that. So I started looking at what it would take to not have this problem persist and instead deliver these homes to the families that need them. In doing this I thought about what it would take to deliver this service right for these families. This led to the development of Next Step’s principles:

Homebuyers prepared and supported through certified homebuyer education programs;

ENERGY STAR homes on FHA Title II permanent foundations;

Life-cycle pricing that is transparent to the nonprofit and to the homebuyer;

Mortgages with fair terms that enable families to earn wealth and/or preserve assets; and,

“A Home is a Home” policy commitment advocating that owners of manufactured homes have the same rights as owners of site-built homes.

What are your annual revenues?

They are between $100k -$1mm. And as far as making a net profit we have been generating a surplus but as a nonprofit it's different how we deal with the excess.  

(Primavera Foundation Staff on site of Next Step Home set in Arizona, November 2011.)

What are your major challenges?

Globally the nonprofit sector has a black eye with affordable housing sectors, and are incredibly skeptical of the prefab housing industry.

For us personally as a startup there is always the challenge of raising capital, and for our customers it is finding the most appropriate mortgages for the consumer.

How has WJF helped you?

I would say that the recognition we've received has been a great asset. It will help us combat the challenge of raising capital.

Are there any other resources that you've found to be helpful?

I'm an Ashoka Fellow and they have been great in identifying resources and providing a network. Another great resource has just been having discussion with other social entrepreneurs.

How can people connection with Next Step NewCo?         

Today we're talking with Mitra Ardron, CEO and Co-Founder of, second round finalists Lumeter Networks. Mitra shared with us the new technology his team has developed to provide affordable off grid electricity to NGOs and consumers.

  Where are you located?

We are based out of San Francisco but we operate in various markets, including India, Zambia and Peru.

How many people do you employ?

We’re a pretty small team with three to four employees at one time. Currently its three full time employees, two engineers who work for a separate company, and then two people working part time in India.

Are you currently in business?

Yes, we just completed a trial run with four of our units in Peru. Eight shipped to Zambia earlier this month and we’ve just received an order for 77 from an Indian social enterprise.

Who are your customers?

Our customers are renewable energy companies who serve BOP markets. In our philosophy, we're a second generation socent, in that we build a service for companies in the field (who are themselves Social Enterprises) to deliver to a customer base which they are familiar with. Our customers are the companies themselves because it is through this model that we feel our impact will be the largest. This way we can impact multiple regions and cultures where if we were distributing the products we could only work in one or two regions.

  What is the problem you are trying to solve?

We are aiming to provide answers to three main problems:

-How do you collect small amounts of money from lots of poor people on a weekly basis? Right now you can’t send a paper bill, this market doesn’t have access to a bank or mobile money account.

-How do you deal with management of small electricity grids, through security and providing the lowest prices.

-Where does the finance come,though we don't directly provide finance we're talking with partners who do. who's gonna make a loan if you not gonna get.

How did you become interested in this problem?

I was running an incubator that was helping people solve problems in developing countries and I saw this as a repeated problem that I knew how to solve.

What is your solution to the problem?

Lumeter Networks’ solution are the meter and sms enabled cloud system that we’ve developed.

What are you major challenges?

I would say the the biggest challenge is raising capital from investors who don't understand the technological innovation that we have. Many impact investors simply don’t understand the whole process of technology development.

Our non investment related challenge is that this is concept of mini grids is a new technology in a sub market and so its hard to explain to people why it is so small at this point.

(Customer making a mobile payment)

  How has your time with the William James Foundation helped you?

I have been a judge with WJF before and its been a useful to interact with people who are solving these types of problems. With that experience it was really interesting to come in as an entrant. I know that this experience will affect my judging and give me a better idea of how to relate to entrants. Its difficult to fit your idea into the page limits so now that I know that I will be more tolerant of missing information.

What other resources did you find to be particularly useful?

We're in GSBI which has been great. I have also found  the SOCAP, Sankalp (India) and IIX is great.

For readers who want to know more about what you're up to, where can we send them?

www.lumeter.net and especially sign up for our newsletter, or

This past weekend we had our 10th annual Gathering. Over the course of three days we were able to see top notch entrepreneurs present their businesses, hear two wonderful keynote speakers, and connect with people with a common passion.

Our Gathering kicked off on Thursday night at Arent Fox with our DC/Affinity Lab finalists presenting. Triea Systems and Clovest both gave thoughtful and well-crafted pitches. While the judges deliberated to select the winner we were joined by Allison Shapira on the guitar at our evening reception. During this time we were able to listen to wonderful music, speak with others in our field and meet some true legends like Barbara Pyle, co-Creator of Captain Planet. Our evening came to a close with the exciting announcement of the judges awarding Triea Systems first place for our DC/Affinity Lab prize.

 Friday built upon the excitement and momentum created on Thursday as we heard updates from former WJF entrants Mitra Ardron of Lumeter Networks and Ali Cherry of Snack Packers.  our two keynote speakers and watched our Green Grab presenters pitch for actual investments. Seth Goldman, T-EO and co-Founder of Honest Tea, and Jigar Shah, Founder of Sun Edison and former CEO of Carbon War Room, spoke back to back about their exciting careers in the social enterprise sphere. Seth shared about how to navigate the grey area faced by social entrepreneurs, like Honest Tea's work as being a social enterprise owned by Coca Cola. Jigar challenged us to work towards truly systemic change when starting a social enterprise. With Seth and Jigar's words we took a break to discuss their ideas over lunch and Honest Tea. Friday's lunch also featured a meeting of the Impact Accelerator Network.

 Friday afternoon was centered on a very exciting and educational Green Grab event. Green Grab featured three companies, Juabar, Sun Edge, and Greenbean Recycle, who pitched to investors for on the spot investment. During each presentation the presenter had a time to pitch and then received feedback from judges who either gave or denied investment on the spot. Through out Green Grab we were fueled by some green snacks from Peeled Snacks and Snack Packers. Following Green Grab we enjoyed an evening at the home of longtime WJF supporter, judge, and friend Dr. Wayne Curtis and his wife Dina Curtis. This was a great way to create more connections and continue the discussions started throughout the day.

Saturday morning we transitioned to the World Resource Institute offices to see our Idea and Venture Phase finalists present as well as engage in a number of workshops. Our Idea Phase finalists, First Access , Colectivo 1050, and MoWoza, took the stage first. Each of their presentations were well executed and centered on very different businesses. While we waited for our judges to announce the winner Tami Kesselman gave a thought provoking talk about the negative implications of scale for social entrepreneurs. With the exciting announcement from our judges who named First Access the winner of our Idea Phase category we enjoyed some tasty Runa Tea and a discussion filled lunch. During lunch we were also joined by William James Foundation's co-Founder, Chuck Dell. Mr. Dell, at 95, shared many stories about the history of the William James Foundation and his lifelong passion for changing the traditional business landscape.

Following lunch we watched our three Venture Phase finalists, Morale Fashion Group, Access Afya, and Wecyclers, present. All three of their presentations were excellent and opened up a great dialog between the presenter, the judges, and the audience. With their comments made and questions answered our judges went to begin the difficult process of selecting the winner while the rest of us took part in a variety of workshops and practitioner gatherings ranging from: 'career paths in impact investing' with Mrim Boulta, to a discussion about the many support networks available to social entrepreneurs called 'Who are our friends?' led by Ian Fisk. Taking a break from our discussions on these topics our judges called our attention to announce Access Afya as the winner of the Venture Phase category.

Despite the fact that our official events concluded with the announcement of our Venture Phase category winner many of us continued our dialogues and created more connections until late into the evening. This passion for working together to solve problems and a real interest in forging genuine connections with those in our field is an amazing thing to witness. The WJF team is honored to have provided a space to encourage these connections and conversations and would like to thank everyone who attended and our in kind sponsors. We would also like to thank Arrent Fox and the World Resource Institute for giving us the wonderful meeting spaces that helped facilitate important discussions and connections.

There is a current distinction between social enterprise and social innovation. It is a slight, but important one. Social enterprises seek to generate income to support social missions, whereas social innovation is more about applying improvements to the way social problems and needs are addressed. To me, this separation is untenable. We need more of a focus on generating income to sustain the socially innovative solutions created each day around the world. This is the only way to scale up these solutions enough to tackle our most pressing problems.

But how can social enterprises thrive in the long run? I think they can do so by focusing in on a few concrete areas:

Promotion

First, it is important that social enterprises are promoted in the same way mainstream ventures and entrepreneurship promote traditional enterprises. For example, leveraging social media to promote the mission component of the enterprise should prove effective.  Also, highlighting noteworthy outcomes goes a long way in positioning the enterprise’s effectiveness. The absence of self-promotion by social enterprises is partly to blame for their lack of familiarity. A heightened awareness of social enterprises will enable more financial resources to be directed toward businesses that carries the social enterprise label. 

Data

An important tool that will aid the future success of social enterprises is its ability to take advantage of the large amount of data, from a wide variety of sources that can be mined to make the delivery of goods and services more effective.  Mining the various data sources will enable the enterprise to have a laser-like focus on the best way to target resources.  Specifically, if you know that a large percentage of your customers are college students, then you would target your marketing plan to campuses where you do not already have a presence.  The amount of data collected, and more importantly how it is dissected and analyzed is critical to the success of an enterprise, social or otherwise. 

Education

Another sign of near certain long-term future of success is the increasing number of major academic institutions that have curriculums, certificate programs, undergraduate and graduate degrees dedicated to social enterprise.  Oxford and Stanford have the Social Innovation School.  American University’s School of International Service graduated its first Masters of Social Enterprise class in May 2013 (although its first student, Kerri Murphy—also the COO of the William James Foundation—graduated in December 2012).  I am told that American University’s decided to house its social enterprise degree in the international versus the business school because they wanted to emphasize an international development versus a business focus. This debate of how business-like must social enterprises must be (and therefore, how business-like the education must be) rages on.

The Facilitators

In the long run, it will be useful for social enterprise to become more of the norm and no longer be viewed as an outlier strategy. We need facilitators and industry-builders to get there. Organizations like the Social Venture Network (SVN), the Social Enterprise Alliance (SEA) and the Omidyar Network will be critical to shaping the future and ensuring long-term viability of social enterprises. The William James Foundation is doing an admirable job by hosting global competition for impact entrepreneurs and their social enterprises, which exposes a lot of creative talent to audiences they might not otherwise have access to. Finally, the academic and practitioner worlds also need to work more closely together to improve the awareness and viability of the social enterprise sector.   

About the Author

Dr. Wayne R. Curtis worked with two money center bank investment houses and a GSE structuring billions of dollars of transactions with bonds, debt and equity. Dr. Curtis is particularly proud of the creative debt product created for the Public Housing Sector, which resulted in a commitment of over a billion dollars of leveraged financing for capital grant financing. Curtis Concepts LLC was established in 2007.

Curtis Concepts, LLC is a full service advisory firm. Curtis Concepts provides financial advice for real estate deals, including structured finance, management consulting, and professional customer relations. Curtis Concepts has a leadership team with over 45 years of experience in financial services, economic development, and relationship partnering in both the public and private sectors.

Dr. Curtis has been an advisor to the Mayors of New York and Philadelphia on matters of economic development as one of the most fulfilling opportunities of his career. In both instances, Dr. Curtis worked with new initiatives that sought to retain and recruit businesses, and expand the effectiveness of the central economic development agency.

Dr. Curtis earned his PhD of Philosophy from Antioch University, in Leadership and Change. His research focused on social entrepreneurship and wealth building strategies for working class Americans, seeking alternative was to build and accumulate wealth. He earned a Master of Science in Urban Planning, with an emphasis on economic development, from Columbia University, and a BA, with honors, from Harvard University. He currently sits on the board of a privately held financial institution. In addition, Dr. Curtis is an Adjunct Professor with the University of the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia Community College.

Dr. Curtis is an avid gardener and cook, and lives with his wife Dina in Washington, D.C. and has three sons, Dylan, Robert, and Talon.

If you asked a social entrepreneur about sustainability, chances are they would say that it means a creative solution to a social problem that can be replicated and endures over time.  They may also say that sustainability involves generating enough income to at least break even.  Sustainability can also be thought of as a situation where people are empowered to take ownership for solving the social problems that affect them.  Finally, there’s the more common definition of sustainability, which is the conservation of natural resources.

What these ideas have in common is a perspective of sustainability as something that takes place beyond the social enterprise.  As social entrepreneurs tend to be strong visionaries who have groundbreaking ideas for making the world a better place, they tend to focus their attention on what is going on outside their doors.  While an external focus is needed to scale up their innovative solution and assess its impact, it’s just as important for social entrepreneurs to pay attention to what is going on inside of their venture.

Like traditional entrepreneurs, developing a robust business model that can support your venture in getting off the ground and grow over time is paramount.  Regardless of how innovative a solution, it is unlikely to succeed without a viable market that appreciates the value of a particular product or service enough to pay for it.  For example, a couple of African-based social enterprises I consulted with have had success marketing their services to the private sector by addressing companies’ needs for knowledge of cutting edge business practices and executive leadership development.  Beyond the ability to cover expenses (and possibly also generate a profit), there are other factors that contribute to the organizational sustainability of a social enterprise, such as having a social impact strategy in place to guide its operations.  In the case of one social entrepreneur I worked with, the process of developing a social impact strategy started out as a “check the box” for obtaining seed funding and evolved into a rewarding experience that enabled him to think through the organizational and social impact elements of his venture.

In addition to the value of a business model, you also need to focus on your team. Recently, I was brought on to manage the launch of a crowdfunding campaign for expanding a company’s operations.  Although the newly formed group I joined reflected a diversity of backgrounds and skills sets, the main commonalities among the team were a connection to the owner and a commitment to his vision of creating economic and social value.  It became evident early on that bringing a group of committed strangers into the same room was not enough.  What they need was to transition from a group to a team.  To facilitate the change from a state of independence to interdependence, I facilitated a team-building session where we agreed upon our mission, worked together to sort out roles, tasks, responsibilities and deadlines, and established conditions for working together.  By investing the time up front on forming a team instead of leaping straight into tasks, we are now better prepared to launch a successful campaign.      

Similar to this internal focus on the enterprises, the social enterprise sector can sustain itself by looking inward and developing an ecosystem.  A robust social enterprise ecosystem includes various types of support, such as professionals interested in working in the social enterprise sector, donors, impact investors, policymakers, vendors and consultants that cater to the needs of social enterprises, and consumers that make triple bottom line purchasing decisions.

As this ecosystem continues to take shape, how can these actors work together to sustain themselves and the social enterprise sector?

  About the Author

Kimberley Jutze is Chief Change Architect for Shifting Patterns Consulting, which is a socially responsible business that facilitates social change by helping social entrepreneurs access funding and strengthen their people and organizational capabilities.  Kimberley has over 15 years experience as a resource and organization development professional.  She has worked for nonprofits in the United States and overseas, in such sectors as international humanitarian aid and development, public policy, and peace and conflict resolution.  Drawing upon her strengths, which include a strong work ethic, commitment to producing quality results, and cross-cultural communications, Kimberley has consulted with organizations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America to help them achieve positive results.  She has a Master of Science in Organization Development and a Master of Arts in International Politics.

How Do We Sustain Social Enterprise?

The WJF team is proud to be partnering with UnSectored to explore this and other questions that relate to the field of social entrepreneurship. Each week we'll be inviting experienced members of the social entrepreneurship community to shed insight on how to cut through the hype and sustain social enterprise for the long run, both the industry as a whole and the myriad entrepreneurs trying to make a difference. The series will be posted weekly here as well as on UnSectored.

Join us for this exciting discussion series as we lead up to our 10th Annual Gathering!