Those of us who care about society and the environment should take a similar tone.  There is no factor that bonds people more than a common goal, a unifying aspiration.

Granted, “saving the world” is an emotional rallying cry that can appeal to many, but it’s not a practical objective that we can work towards together.   There are too many ways to try that we need a more specific common mission to collectively get behind.

Choices:  The Ultimate Culprit
Governments, NGOs and Businesses often focus on unique solutions to the myriad of problems that exist in our world.  Here at Rising Pyramid we love to celebrate social businesses & innovations that are making a difference at the bottom of the economic pyramid.  These efforts are essential and non-negotiable, but at the same time they are marginal.

Ultimately we cannot rely on institutions to make decisions & improvements for us.  There are 7 billion people in this world and a far fewer # of organizations.  We’re facing a crisis of personal motivation more than anything.

In a white paper about Conscious Consumers, BBMG segmented consumers based on how EcoSocial their decisions were.  Unsurprisingly, only 10% of consumers were considered ‘Enlightened’, whereas 70% were considered either ‘Practical’ or ‘Indifferent’.  What’s worse: a full 40% fell into the Indifferent category.

If 40% of the population just doesn’t care, are we really on our way to something that is Built To Last?

Behavior Change is in the Air: What’s the Formula?
Our featured post at the moment is about the biggest challenge we face as a society right now.  Behavior change is becoming a common theme here at Rising Pyramid; without it, the pyramid cannot rise.

But how do we tackle this challenge? What’s the standard approach?

We believe that there are three primary components that Social Entrepreneurs can build on to drive choice shifts:

1. Awareness:  Consumers are currently bombarded with green & healthy claims, CSR reports and unfounded statements.  We need a centralized trusted source of EcoSocial information
2. Incentives:  Consumers are motivated by solutions that make economic sense.  It’s no surprise that energy efficient devices have made the biggest splash because they save people money later on.  Consumers who change their behavior should receive an economic reward to reinforce their decision.
   
3. Recognition: As the Wall Street Journal lays out quite clearly in this article, peer-recognition, whether it is explicit or implicit is very encouraging.  The psychology of groups demonstrates that rapid behavior change is made possible and reinforced by peer motivation.

The AIR formula is not perfect—there very well may be other components that exist—but, it is critical to achieve a balance between each of these components in order to achieve Behavior Change.  One way or another a shift in our choice distribution is needed.

‘Let’s save the world’ is not a practical rallying cry; ‘let’s change behavior, one person at a time’, is.

Behavior change—now that is built to last.

-          Bryan

The point of the suggestion is to not fall into “analysis paralysis” and focuse too much on making the perfect product. Get your efforts out there, and get them judged sooner, so that you can make adjustments and incorporate feedback to improve your product.

But what happens if your first product attempt flops and customers wont give you a second chance? As Bryan wrote last week, trust is an important factor when working between organizations. But trust between the producer and end-user is just as critical.

Consumers want to trust you, but they’ve been told every trick of the trade and have a level of suspicion about your organization without even really knowing who you are. They want to trust that your intentions are in the right place (a better product to help fill their need), but they also want to trust that you (as a company or organization) are going to value their feedback.

The mentality of “try, try, try” works, but you must complete the communication loop and not let customers believe you’re “trying, trying, trying” for the heck of it. Include them on your development; let them know what you’re aiming to build; let them be involved in the feedback; give them a roadmap.

Build the trust.

It’s okay to be wrong. Let your communication take care of the rest.

- Chris

Does this seem familiar to you? Are we all Kings?

A chess box has two kings and sixteen pawns.  Yet, if our egos had a say, there would be sixteen kings.  That’s way too many: there just isn’t enough space on the board for that!

Likewise, there isn’t enough space in the game of life for all of us to have regal egos. 

Fight the urge to treat others like you’re a king, because in all likelihood you’re on the same level with them.

This week Fast Company published an excellent piece on parables, which featured the following Italian proverb:

“At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.”

Remember this quote when you start to feel a little majestic.

Put your ego back in the box—it’s all just a game.

- Bryan

Trust is born out of something bigger than ourselves.

In the last week I’ve had at least three meetings with leaders of organizations working for social good.  If we were in a different industry, our discussions probably would have been a lot less frank and a lot less transparent.

I highly doubt that Larry Page and Mark Zuckerburg call each other up and swap stories on their strategy, approach and recent discoveries.  It just doesn’t happen.

Strictly for-profit businesses are focused on delivering growth to their bottom line, whereas social businesses are also focused on delivering the most impact.  Leaders of the for-profit social sector need to balance making money with making a difference.

Of course this doesn’t mean turning over your books and exact strategy to anyone that asks; you do have to protect your financial interests after all, but it does mean that you will be open for thought sharing, discussion and potential partnerships.

Perhaps it is obvious, but the reason that traditional businesses are guarded from each other is a lack of trust—a lack of alignment with a common goal.  Trust is often born out of something bigger than ourselves—a deeper meaning or a shared interest.

Leaders of the for-profit social enterprise (FPSE) world find themselves in a very unique group; they are often competitors on paper, but their shared values unite them in a trust that other for-profit businesses cannot benefit from.

Trust opens the door for deep collaboration and becomes a source of value unique to this industry.  Collectively, for-profit social enterprises are competing with an incredibly strong status-quo.

Alliances and partnerships born out of trust are, and will continue to be, the most critical FPSE competitive differentiation.

Together we are strong.

-          Bryan

Then came those television commercials that opted for the ‘in-your-face’ method of thrusting horribly poverty-stricken scenarios into your living room (most likely as you stuffed your face with TV dinners). They attempted to bring the images of poverty close to home in the hopes that this would drive more donations – potentially out of guilt.  As a gift for donating, you would receive a packet in the (snail) mail providing you details on your recipient.  Yet, it still felt disconnected.

As we’ve seen with many organizations like Donorschoose.org, Kiva.org, and Vittana.org, there is a new attempt at the personalization of poverty.  In today’s digitally connected world where no one in our contact book is further than a text or a tweet away, organizations have started to realize the value in connecting you to the recipient.

Kiva is testing out a new system of peer to peer lending that does not go through a Microfinance Institution, which removes yet another “impersonal” layer to microloans.  A risky play, but one that Kiva is no doubt testing its way through.

In today’s fast paced world, the inter-connectedness in the developed world and in our developed networks is incredibly powerful.  Somehow emails and re-tweets have taken on as much of a personal meaning as a phone call or face to face meeting.  If that’s the case, in what other ways can we make connecting with the developing world more personal?  With today’s tools in front of us, it doesn’t need to mean a flight halfway across the world.

-          Chris

Whether you’re playing sports, running for office or just living life, the game is never over until you can talk about it in past tense.

As humans we have a tendency to rationalize and manage expectations.  It never fails that when a long trip of mine is coming to a close, I start to feel homesick.  When we anticipate a certain result, we begin to emotionally prepare for it.  We even start to aim for it.

This is precisely why they tell you to visualize success.  There’s some weird tie in between expectations and results.  Without consciously deciding to, you will adjust your effort.

You can’t allow yourself to believe it’s over before it really is.  Once you let yourself believe it’s over, it’s going to be.

-          Bryan

Increasing access to energy-saving technologies through carbon finance

Impact Carbon (IC) is a non-profit organization that implements high quality and highly scalable emission reduction projects in developing countries.

IC develops projects that generate carbon credits from the distribution and sale of energy-saving household appliances such as the Ugastove to local communities. In addition, IC has a core team and network of partners that provide exclusive access, technology, and capabilities for the design, development, and implementation of efficient biomass cookstoves and other healthy household energy technologies in developing countries around the world.

Many improved cookstove projects reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are therefore eligible to quantify these emissions reductions and sell them on carbon markets. Revenues from the sale of emission reductions, also known as “carbon offsets,” can be reinvested to sustainably scale projects.

For example, in Uganda, IC and ClimateCare registered the first cookstove project “Efficient Cooking with Ugastoves” through the Gold Standard Foundation, which has paved the way for carbon financing in the improved cookstove sector. This framework affords organizations worldwide with the opportunity to develop carbon projects.

IC quantifies the carbon offsets created by the project according to a widely accepted international standard, The Gold Standard (GS), and leverages the returns to benefit local partners and people through increasing awareness and access to improved cookstoves, and working with local entrepreneurs to support the development of sustainable locally-based supply chains.

The VGS “seal of approval” gives a high value to carbon offsets generated through its framework: in order to qualify for carbon credits, the stoves must go through rigorous testing, thus stoves that qualify are the highest quality products.

This project undergoes meticulous monitoring and evaluation: in addition to closely monitoring stove quality, manufacturing processes, recordkeeping and business systems are also spot-checked regularly by a third party, with monitoring data provided by Berkeley Air Monitoring Group and the Centre for Integrated Research and Community Development, Uganda (CIRCODU). To date, through carbon finance, this project has distributed more than 100,000 stoves throughout Uganda.

IC is delighted to have been awarded Through the Translating Research into Action (TRAction) project, from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to support the development and evaluation of behavioral change communication strategies to tackle household air pollution that can drive purchase and use of improved, cleaner-burning wood stoves in rural Uganda. Primary partners on the project include the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and CIRCODU.

IC is also planning to expand its reach in Uganda to include water filtration, collaborating with local and global partners to create carbon projects that finance the delivery of clean water to households. The projects reduce the use and demand for fossil fuels and non-renewable biomass that would have been used to boil water as a mean of water purification. This directly leads to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and reduced presence of water-borne illnesses.

For more information or to get in touch about project opportunities or purchasing carbon offsets, please contact info@impactcarbon.org or visit http://www.impactcarbon.org.

- Aneri Patel

In the neighborhood of Makindye located in Kampala, Uganda, Florence Kibuuka is cooking matoke (mashed plantains) with an improved charcoal cookstove. Florence proudly exclaims “the Ugastove product is so great that if I had the money, I would buy them for all my friends!  This stove saves me 1000 Ugandan shillings (about 50 US cents) per day on charcoal compared to the traditional stove.”

Florence Kibuuka, with an Ugastove and her older traditional cookstove

Florence is the proud owner of a Ugastove, manufactured by Ugandan Stove Manufacturers Limited (Ugastove Ltd.), a local company that produces improved cookstoves.

These improved cookstoves burn biomass more efficiently, lower family expenditure, mitigate deforestation, curtail green-house gas emissions and can help to reduce the exposure of families and cooks to dangerous air pollutants in smoke from indoor cooking.

The stoves have a thick clay lining that retains the heat using 35-50% less charcoal, thus saving families an average of US $80 a year.  The design was developed in consultation with US cookstove experts, which help manufacturers such as Ugastove produce these technologies using local materials and labor.

The problem
More than ninety percent of Ugandans rely on charcoal or firewood as an energy source, which contributes to significant destruction of national forests. Uganda’s National Environment Authority estimates that the country has lost two-thirds of its forests in the last twenty years and would lose it all by 2050 at present rates of deforestation.

The World Wide Fund for Nature Uganda estimates that already twenty-eight districts have lost their entire forest ecosystem while another nineteen districts have forest cover lower than 1%. In addition, in poorly ventilated areas, the toxic fumes from burning wood over a three stone fire can reach 200 times the level that the EPA considers safe for breathing.

Risks include pneumonia, lung cancer, cataracts, low birth rate, and death – World Health Organization estimates about 2 million people die each year from indoor air pollution, affecting mostly women and children. This is twice the number of people dying each year from Malaria.

The cost-savings for Ugandans is also substantial – an average Ugandan family uses about a bag of charcoal a month for cooking – which is currently 100,000 Ugandan Shillings, or $42. Depending on usage, savings can be as high as 50%, leaving more income for families to spend on food, education, health, etc.

Putting the pieces together
Florence Kibuuka now prevents an estimated two tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere a year by switching to an improved cookstove. She is also saving 30,000 Ugandan Shillings (approx. USD $11) a month by using the Ugastove, which is particularly important as the price of charcoal is on the rise.

Florence now has more time to conduct other activities as the heat retained from the stoves cooks food faster and keeps the food warmer longer. As she buys less charcoal, the demand of timber needed for cooking fuel decreases through mass adoption, thus decelerating deforestation in Uganda.

- Aneri Patel

As the year goes on, I don’t anticipate these negative examples going completely away. As it becomes more commonplace for these examples to be revealed, more and more stories of usuary and MFI abuse will start to filter out. While it can be easy to view it as a black eye on the microfinance industry, I anticipate this will continue to fuel the call for more increased regulation and greater transparency into the industry.

Yet I don’t think that this will be the headline of 2012 for microfinance. As the global economy staggers through recovery from a multi-year recession – one caused in large part due to an over-extension of credit – my belief is that we will begin to see the rise of another microfinancial tool: microsavings. As RisingPyramid highlighted last year, microsavings is a quietly growing tool that is working out its kinks through field tests.

The time for emphasis on savings is now. As the world begins to pick up the financial pieces, the rightful correction from over-extension of credit is the emphasis on savings. The hurdle to increasing the popularity and adoption of savings program goes much further than financial innovation. The attractiveness of offering people access to more money than they have (credit) versus taking away and holding money (savings) is a tough sell in places where people live on day-to-day budgets. Selling credit versus savings requires a major push on the educational front to change beliefs and behaviors.

Microfinance Focus wrote a great post that gives the run down about the challenges (and potential solutions) facing microsavings. It appears that David Roodman has also written about the importance of MFIs taking savings deposits in his new book, entitled ‘Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance’.

As 2012 progresses, I (hope and) expect to see more MFIs leveraging their close relationships with clients to introduce and push microsavings tools. Not only is it a benefit to MFIs to hold more deposits, but it should improve the relationship between the two parties. Instead of the lender having to chase the borrower, the saver will have much more of a reason to interact with the MFI.

With a new microfinance tool on the horizon, one that will most likely be facilitated by MFIs, it is imperative that they learn from their ‘findings’ from their experience with microcredit loans. Research what worked in terms of communication, marketing, transparency, and education, and the learning curve will be that much less severe this time around.

- Chris

It’s as if the disappearance of Christmas marks the real kickoff to the new year.  Vacation is over, the garland is gone and we’re starting to wonder how long we can keep up with the resolutions.

Often in life the real tests begin after all the fanfare dies down. It’s easy to eat lots of tasty treats during the holidays if you’re planning to exercise more in the new year…but actually keeping up with the exercise plan can be trouble.

Now is the time when you need to dig in your heels and get started with all those changes you want to make.  Don’t give up just because your normal life routine takes over again.

Get started now! Tear down Christmas and start constructing something more permanent.  This happens to be Rising Pyramid’s 300th post; here’s to making the next 100 posts even better.

- Bryan