Hey there goodnik;

Just a reminder that there are still some spots available for tomorrow's event, Staffing Social Enterprise. This is going to be a very interesting event, the first of Goodnik's "core business" workshops focusing on skills that everyone needs to understand to start or run a social enterprise (or even a for-profit venture). The speakers will cover topics such as how to think ahead about hiring, how to identify and recruit key team members, how small companies can provide benefits without spending a fortune, and how to think ahead about trimming the team when someone's not working out. We're really excited about the speaker line-up and we hope you are too!

Speakers for Staffing Social Startups - Hiring and Firing for Social Enterprise:

Linda Paul is the former Director of Team Development of Meetup where she spent 6 years building the HR infrastructure and growing the team. Prior to that she spent 5 years as Sr. HR Manager at Scholastic, the children’s publishing and media company, where she supported many divisions including eScholastic, the internet group. In 2000, Linda received the Women of Achievement Award from the office of Mayor Giuliani for the work she did in successfully providing more than 50 women on welfare the opportunity to turn their lives around with jobs at Morgan Stanley. Linda recently left Meetup to consult and help other startups with their HR initiatives. She is also a Certified Stepfamily Coach, helping families navigate what she calls "the maze of step."

Georges Janin - Georges is an Account Executive at Dave Partners. During his tenure he has placed candidates across numerous NYC startups, from junior engineers to VP-level executives. He is an avid teacher of sales, and teaches The Art of the Cold Call, one of the most popular classes on cold calling in the country. He holds a BS in Economics from New York University.

Derek Blumke - Social Entrepreneur, Air Force Veteran and the Executive Vice President of Hire Purpose. Before joining Hire Purpose, Derek oversaw one of the Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary’s“21st Century Transformation Initiatives”, the Veterans Integration to Academic Leadership Initiative (VITAL Initiative). Prior to joining the VA, Derek co-founded the national student Veteran organization, Student Veterans of America (SVA). Derek served six year enlistment in the Air Force, and an additional six-years in the Michigan Air National Guard as a military photographer, while also earning his BA in Psychology and Political Science from The University of Michigan.

Dania Ramos is a Senior Human Capital Consultant with TriNet, focused on providing outsourced HR to small companies in New York.  Dania has specialized in recruiting, hiring, and talent management for several years, and enjoys partnering with her clients in these strategic areas. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hamilton College.

RSVP for Staffing Social Enterprise: $5 in advance, $10 at the door

Goodnik Projects In Need of Help

Recently Goodnik has had some requests from members for some help getting some social ventures off the ground. We are currently developing a system to handle these kinds of requests, which we hope to roll out in the next couple of months, but in the meantime below are two projects that need some technical help. If you are interested in working on these projects, please contact me and I'll get you in touch with the organizations.

• Java Mountain Coffee: A group in Java, Indonesia is starting a fair-trade coffee farm collective specifically to support women in the region. The coffee will be grown and sold on a global market through traditional distributors (not ecommerce) and the proceeds will go towards fair-trade certification and practices, and supporting a nursery program that will buy coffee and shade trees to be distributed to local women farmers. The need for this project is a branding website built on a CMS that can be edited locally without the need for additional development. The site will include pages of information about the brand, about initiatives, about fair-trade practices and other information. The site will also include stories of women helped by the program and media related to those stories (images, audio, video). Ecommerce is not part of the project at this point, though appropriate links to places to buy this fair-trade coffee (including Amazon) would be included. There is a possibility that additional donations to support specific initiatives (similar to Charity Water) could be within the scope of the project, if possible.
• Super Wonder Kids: A nonprofit based in the UK has a vision to create an e-learning platform for kids to teach other kids. The basic concept is that kids can upload videos of themselves doing some kind of project such as crafting, cooking, environmental, exercise, etc to inspire other kids to do the same. The first version of the website is static (weebly?) and in need of porting to a CMS that allows more flexibility. The site will allow kids to upload links to youtube videos in to one of several categories, which will then be accessible to users to browse and search. The site would include basic functionality such as commenting, submission forms, contact information and contact forms and admin features such as notification/approval for videos, etc.
• Goodnik Match: Finally, if you're interested in helping to work on the Goodnik volunteer/mentor matching system we're looking for a couple of people to help both in terms of design and coding. The platform is built on a RoR project that came out of our Helping Hacks hackathon, and I'd estimate that it's probably 70-80% done, but needs some extra hands to finalize the project. So if you're a Ruby coder or web designer who can spare some time to help out, we would really appreciate it.

Feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or ideas.

-Nate

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