About Us - Social Innovation Strategies
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About Us

Hello. We’re glad you stopped by.

We are Social Innovation Strategies, a social enterprise consulting firm of sorts.
That said, we prefer to think of ourselves as a social enterprise firestarter.

Our Focus

We are social enterprise experts that help changemakers integrate social enterprise concepts into their ideas, translate those ideas into action, and sustain that action over time by using innovative funding tools. In a nutshell, we provide services to start and scale for-profit, mission-first social ventures. And we hope to upset a few conventions about social changemaking strategies along the way.

Our focus is on crafting what we like to call non-nonprofits—entities and projects formed first and foremost to target a deep-rooted social issue, with the ability to thrive outside of a nonprofit model.

The thought process goes something like this:

We are founded on the belief that nonprofit restrictions in many cases inhibit large-scale progress, and that the world stands to benefit from a shift in the way we think about solving social problems. The nonprofit can be traced back to the Colonial era, when citizens felt they were fulfilling their calling by giving away excess earnings and possessions to the needy (our modern day concept of charity). In today’s world, where a new breed of social innovators is thinking bigger and seeking to target the root of social problems rather than bandage the symptoms, our historical go-to model doesn’t fit the bill. We’re here to change that.

The first step on this journey (and yes, we realize we’re making some waves here) is to be honest with ourselves about the limitations of the nonprofit sector’s current paradigm. The second is to start thinking differently about how to impact the issues we care about. With nonprofit restrictions removed, organizations have more freedom to take risks on new solutions, to create a culture of high-performance, and to enlist and retain the best people over time to work zealously until problems are solved. (A much better state of affairs for all parties involved.)

… Enter social enterprise.

Hello. We’re glad you stopped by.

We are Social Innovation Strategies, a social enterprise consulting firm of sorts.
That said, we prefer to think of ourselves as a social enterprise firestarter.

Our Focus

We are social enterprise experts that help changemakers integrate social enterprise concepts into their ideas, translate those ideas into action, and sustain that action over time by using innovative funding tools. In a nutshell, we provide services to start and scale for-profit, mission-first social ventures. And we hope to upset a few conventions about social changemaking strategies along the way.

Our focus is on crafting what we like to call non-nonprofits—entities and projects formed first and foremost to target a deep-rooted social issue, with the ability to thrive outside of a nonprofit model.

The thought process goes something like this:

That’s where we come in.

We are founded on the belief that nonprofit restrictions in many cases inhibit large-scale progress, and that the world stands to benefit from a shift in the way we think about solving social problems. The nonprofit can be traced back to the Colonial era, when citizens felt they were fulfilling their calling by giving away excess earnings and possessions to the needy (our modern day concept of charity). In today’s world, where a new breed of social innovators is thinking bigger and seeking to target the root of social problems rather than bandage the symptoms, our historical go-to model doesn’t fit the bill. We’re here to change that.

The first step on this journey (and yes, we realize we’re making some waves here) is to be honest with ourselves about the limitations of the nonprofit sector’s current paradigm. The second is to start thinking differently about how to impact the issues we care about. With nonprofit restrictions removed, organizations have more freedom to take risks on new solutions, to create a culture of high-performance, and to enlist and retain the best people over time to work zealously until problems are solved. (A much better state of affairs for all parties involved.)

… Enter social enterprise.

Our Story

bio-photo

Community and youth development professional.
Turned idealist – lawyer – business guru.
Turned social innovation strategist.

Quite a mouthful, eh? Interestingly enough though, it’s the truth. Our founder’s vision for this work is unique because the path that brought her here is unique.

Nicole Motter is the founder of Social Innovation Strategies. She’s always had a passion for large-scale social change and a desire to help others (cross her heart and hope to die, that’s what it says next to “career goals” in her 8th grade yearbook).

Actual 8th Grade Yearbook

Listening to "We Are the World"See also: Obsession with the song
“We are the World” at the age of 2.

So she did what any young, budding social changemaker does and, after spending her educational years weeding through the complexities of her social problem of choice, she went to work for a nonprofit to tackle them. Several, actually. Over a period of roughly ten years. And ultimately she realized one of the biggest barriers to making headway on our most deeply-rooted social problems is the structure, ideology, and culture of nonprofits themselves.

Fork in the road. She went to law school to figure out how to make bigger change happen on a larger scale. And somewhere along the way found a groove with the emerging field of social enterprise.

With a decade of experience in the nonprofit sector, and several years more in corporate law under her belt (selectively immersed in business and investing strategies useful to social entrepreneurs and social investors), she is now channeling her diverse experience to help people redefine how they think about solving social problems—and then to do something about it.

Nicole hopes one day to live in world where socially-minded brilliance, drive, and innovation are viewed with the same high regard as their sister qualities in the traditional for-profit sector. She is an accomplished grassroots changemaker, lawyer, writer, advocate, and master of making stuff happen. And she wants nothing more than for her vision to empower your vision.

What Makes Us Different

We don’t do what traditional consultants do.

Which is why, if you have to put us in a box, we prefer a different one: social enterprise firestarter. Yes, we kind of made that up. But this trailblazing stuff gets a little tricky when you realize there aren’t any existing labels that concisely convey what you do.

Let us explain.

While we are experts in our field and offer professional advice on a specific subject area (the generic definition of consultant, if you wanted to go there), the terms “consultant” and “consulting firm” have come to refer to a specific kind of service in the eyes of many. It’s these preconceptions from which we think it’s useful to distinguish ourselves.

Broadly speaking, traditional consulting-style firms help mature companies iron out management and performance issues, generally helping them do what they’re already doing better or more efficiently. There are only a very small subset of these types of consulting companies (think 2 or 3 total) that work specifically with social enterprises. And the ones that do only work with the big guys (the really big guys—and often those who only fit a very loose definition of social enterprise). There are a couple reasons for this: 1) their clients have to be big enough to need this kind of comprehensive, high-level management services, and 2) they have to be able to pay big bucks for it.

That’s not our cup of tea.

Our goal is much simpler.

Our goal—point blank—is to make more social enterprise happen.

And we want to work with the little guys. And the big guys. (We’ve got a little bit of something for everyone.)

We are propelled by the idea that there aren’t enough social enterprises out there directly targeting the root of social problems (which, side note, is why the few traditional social enterprise consulting firms out there have to work with the big guys that don’t fit our more narrow social enterprise non-nonprofit definition). The reason for this is that the little guys with the big ideas aren’t being met with the proper forward-thinking support or resources.

And that, my friends, is the basis for our company. We take ideas that might otherwise only have been envisioned as nonprofit concepts, and turn them into non-nonprofit social enterprises. And we help scale those social enterprises by securing and facilitating funding they would otherwise have a tough time finding. We build a new niche.

Innovative ways to start them, and innovative ways to fund them.

Because the way we see it, the more social enterprises out there thinking bigger with the ability to scale = more social change.

Faster.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
Pablo Picasso