For the sake of streamlining our discussion tomorrow, a few of us concentrated our group presentations down to a few bullet points – please review for class so we know what we’re working with. See below.

Group A

Fewer projects, but higher quality projects

Finding experts and developing ideas of the projects to their highest, most cost effective potential.

Education:

·      Annual lecture series

·      Workshops

o      Finding entrepreneurs who may want to share their failures.

·      Incorporating social entrepreneurship into classrooms

Projects:

·      Application process

o      Presentation/ interview process

o      Budget required

·      Advising board to supervise projects

·      Rolling deadlines

Financing:

·      Applying as a non-profit:

·      Starting small w/ focus on advising projects and providing grants

·      Gradual expansion of endowment plugged into lecture series

·      Pursuing grants outside campus

·      Finding donors

o      Potentially meeting w/ trustees to allocate a small portion of the endowment to the center

Group B

• Involve students in every feasible way into the Center
  • Use interns for much of planning on conferences, summer school, day-to-day labor
  • Involve students in decision-making process on grants and center activity
• Offer 8 large grants annually averaging $20-$30K
• Offer 8 smaller grants annually averaging $5-$10K
• Annual conference in September emphasizing the work of grant recipients
• 4-week School for Social Entrepreneurship for recent college graduates – liberal-arts focused
  • Part I: Developing necessary skills
  • Part II: In-depth critique of each student’s proposals
• Integrate social entrepreneurship into the curriculum, scaling up to a minor
• Create a VP of Creativity and Innovation

Group C

• Intramiddlebury networking to facilitate the awareness of interconnectedness of Middlebury’s on-campus resources
• Incubator in the form of idea tables, seminars, and a library to foster creative thinking
• Year-long theme to focus campus initiatives and lectures
• Idea competition, including but not limited to Middlebury students,
• Summer program to empower emerging entrepreneurs with necessary skill sand techniques

Group D

Education
Lectures are crucial, especially a “Pathways to Peace” oriented annual lecture.

Grant Competition
Big grants awarded in various categories (e.g. Environment, Poverty, Hunger, etc.). Limit to 3-5 categories

Small Grants awarded throughout the year, quarterly basis perhaps?

·      Documentation

Grant donors need to know if their money is being well utilized. Blogs, pictures, and videos will serve an educational purpose as it can be incorporated into the curriculum of lectures, as well as particular departments such as the Film Department where film majors can earn credit based on their roles in documenting the projects of the social entrepreneurs.

Essentially, it all ties back to the FLOW OF IDEAS: Creation, Development, Grants, Implementation/Documentation, Fundraising, and then back to Creation.

Group E

• select a program area / community through a demand-driven soliciting process, and community wide selection process
• conduct data-driven, sustainable social entrepreneurship projects / initiatives (incorporating both the Middlebury and non-Middlebury universes)
• engage in thorough data-driven evaluations of undertaken projects
• scale up successes through leveraged finance / relationships with larger NGO’s operating in the area

Role of sports in social entrepreneurship:

• ACCESS: We have the opportunity to access large communities of students through sports – it unites students in a way that simply being at Middlebury does not.

• Neither he nor Dan believe that athletes are inherently superior.

• Dan Doyle sees Midd as a community with a lot of involved athletes.

• Erin’s suggestion: include the Athletic Director as a member of whatever advisory board we create. This should be sufficient to address Dan Doyle’s preference for athletes.

His view of the proposal

• It is all negotiable. Securing $5M from the trustees is not a requirement, per se.

• Erin sees the potential place of such a building as not at the top of any pyramid, but not alone either — there are synergies that can be created between this center and the existing organizations on campus.

• We should pay attention to the Project on Creativity and Innovation. Ron and Jessica Liebowitz started this so, politically speaking, we need to respect this as we go forward and even seek out ways to improve it with our proposal.

• He thinks we should  create a Vice President of Creativity and Innovation position that would oversee the Center as well as everything under Education in Action (ACE, MiddCORE, Fellowships, CSO, Proj. on Creativity and Innovation). This would be an additional title for an existing faculty/staff member.

• This would assure the Hassenfelts that we are giving the Center a central position at the College, also the other Education in Action groups would probably get behind this.

• We would then create a Director position for the Center who would work with this VP. Perhaps an administrative support staff would work for this director as well.

• He doesn’t believe we should have a building quite yet but perhaps we could reorganize to include it with “Education in Action”

Stuff about Dan Doyle

• Dan Doyle is a big NESCAC guy (went to Bates, coached at Trinity) and sees Midd as a place with a huge amount of TALENT and a strong athletic program. He is a believer in the liberal arts.

• Dan is an unbelievable organizer of people. He is expecting 25,000 people for this Youth Peace Summit this summer.

People we may want to talk to

• Dave Donahue, Special Assistant to Liebowitz – has talked some with Erin and Jon about this proposal, he is an expert on local and state economic development and has something to say about each of these. He’s a good ally to have.
• Alex Wolf – senior sports writer at Sports Illustrated, currently finishing a long feature article on Sports and Social Entrepreneurship (small world). He lives in Cornwall and is close with several people at the athletic department, we could get in touch with him through Jon.
• Mike Morgan, womens’ tennis coach – he is responsible for this event Jan. 20-22. Also he is the brother in law of Tommy Clark who started Grassroots Soccer. He would be an amazing contact to have for this center.

That’s pretty much it. Hope that’s helpful.