My op-ed in the new Chronicle of Philanthropy

Bookmarked. Great food for thought.

"Rather, what made social enterprise compelling was its promise of creating higher meaning out of the mundane. In this respect, social enterprise is much more than a fad. It is profoundly human."

Yes. I do a lot of work with rebuilding local networks for food, business, and culture. This has been on my mind. For instance, last weekend some other volunteers and I assisted at a winter farmers' market, a new, grassroots production that is the fruit of a couple years' cultivation of consumer and producer. There are numbers of people now rushing to embrace local food sourcing; but I can't get over the thought that, if we are just asking them to shift consumption from one source to another, the gains from this effort will be narrow and limited - we have simply replaced one producer of goods with another. There are some important things that can result from that - environmental and security benefits - but we are still essentially just shifting market pressure and benefit from one production location to another.

If, instead, we are asking ourselves to build new and richer identities and communities, aiming to be more human while we do business that is very tightly integrated with values and relationships, *then* we're on to something.

Bookmarked. Great food for thought.

"Rather, what made social enterprise compelling was its promise of creating higher meaning out of the mundane. In this respect, social enterprise is much more than a fad. It is profoundly human."

Yes. I do a lot of work with rebuilding local networks for food, business, and culture. This has been on my mind. For instance, last weekend some other volunteers and I assisted at a winter farmers' market, a new, grassroots production that is the fruit of a couple years' cultivation of consumer and producer. There are numbers of people now rushing to embrace local food sourcing; but I can't get over the thought that, if we are just asking them to shift consumption from one source to another, the gains from this effort will be narrow and limited - we have simply replaced one producer of goods with another. There are some important things that can result from that - environmental and security benefits - but we are still essentially just shifting market pressure and benefit from one production location to another.

If, instead, we are asking ourselves to build new and richer identities and communities, aiming to be more human while we do business that is very tightly integrated with values and relationships, *then* we're on to something.

Bookmarked. Great food for thought.

"Rather, what made social enterprise compelling was its promise of creating higher meaning out of the mundane. In this respect, social enterprise is much more than a fad. It is profoundly human."

Yes. I do a lot of work with rebuilding local networks for food, business, and culture. This has been on my mind. For instance, last weekend some other volunteers and I assisted at a winter farmers' market, a new, grassroots production that is the fruit of a couple years' cultivation of consumer and producer. There are numbers of people now rushing to embrace local food sourcing; but I can't get over the thought that, if we are just asking them to shift consumption from one source to another, the gains from this effort will be narrow and limited - we have simply replaced one producer of goods with another. There are some important things that can result from that - environmental and security benefits - but we are still essentially just shifting market pressure and benefit from one production location to another.

If, instead, we are asking ourselves to build new and richer identities and communities, aiming to be more human while we do business that is very tightly integrated with values and relationships, *then* we're on to something.

egad. Sorry about my internet connection...