Attached is a graphic for the event on March 27. Please circulate among your networks and help to get a good turnout! Or just point people to the Eventbrite page at: http://msusocialinnovators.eventbrite.com.

 

TL; DR

Desiree and I spent about an hour today with the team from optiMize to map out a strategy for the next academic year. Their guidance is that we should find 3-4 student leaders who are really passionate about social change, and let them launch a student organization whose primary mission will be to manage the optiMize program at MSU next year. The goal of the meeting on the 27^th will be to see if any students step forward willing to take a leadership role. If you know of any students who might fit this role, please send them person invitations (or email me their names and I’ll do it). They won’t have to focus on this until after finals, but we don’t want anyone to miss the talk either.

 

 

 

Toward our objective of creating a culture of entrepreneurship at MSU, we need more organized programs for those students who see themselves as social change agents but don’t self-identify as entrepreneurs. As you all know, we’ve collectively been talking for a while about how to jumpstart a social entrepreneurship program at MSU. My intuition is that there’s strong student interest, but it’s not the same students that we’re currently reaching with our outreach about entrepreneurship.

 

Recently I met the two young men behind the optiMize program at the University of Michigan. See: https://www.optimizemi.org/. They started the program as students, with the support of several deans in their College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts (LSA), and then were hired by UMich to grow it after they graduated. It began as an initiative completely distinct from the established eship programs in the College of Engineering, in the Ross School of Business, etc. They’re received great donor and sponsor support along the way. What captivated me about their story was the incredible student participation they’ve gotten (something like 90 teams when they first started, about 130 this semester). After I volunteered to be a mentor in their program, one thing led to another and now we’re exploring bringing the optiMize program to MSU. They just tried this at Wayne State, a successful experiment from what I understand, and what’s brewing is the notion of a statewide initiative around social innovation. Social impact is boundary less and it’s not a zero-sum game. The idea of teaming up with UMich and Wayne State was immediately embraced by MSU’s team of entrepreneurship leaders when I brought this up for discussion last week. I’m very enthusiastic about this because it gives us the playbook for how to do this right, and I think there is more gravitas to the program if it’s promoted regionally.

 

One of the key lessons I learned from talking to them is they said for the program to be successful it needs to start as a grass roots movement of the students. And they said to call it social innovation instead of social entrepreneurship. Fortunately, our unit at MSU is called Undergraduate Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

 

We’ve invited Jeff Sorensen, one of their organizers, to speak here on campus specifically with the goal of inspiring MSU students to launch a social innovation student organization that can hit the ground running in the fall. I’ve heard from some of you that you already have students eager to participate—please let them know about this event. We’re hoping that some student leaders at MSU will emerge following Jeff’s talk.

 

We’re developing the event marketing materials right now, and should have them ready for circulation hopefully by tomorrow. In the meantime please consider how you might help promote the event to ensure good turnout and to use it as a catalyzing event. The event highlights are below, and we will circulate materials that you can forward to students sometime shortly.

 

As always, comments, questions and suggestions are most welcome.

 

Date: Monday, March 27, 2017

 

Time: 5:30-7:30pm

 

Location: The Hive (in Wilson Hall)

 

Title

Sustainable Social Impact: Stop Waiting For Someone Else To Change The World: A Conversation With Jeff Sorensen - Forbes 30 Under 30

Bio

As a senior at University of Michigan in 2012, Jeff Sorensen co-founded optiMize as a student-led community for students and alumni to work together to create startups and nonprofits that tackle pressing social issues. Michigan later hired him to create and direct the university's first department for Social Innovation, which now works in tandem with the still student-led optiMize. Since then, optiMize has raised $2 million to support 1,200 students and their startups, companies like Jessica Alba's Honest Co have joined as partners, and optiMize has begun expanding to campuses across the state. Jeff also teaches classes at Michigan and UCLA.

 

 

Neil Kane

Director of Undergraduate Entrepreneurship

Michigan State University

632 Bogue Street, Room N120

East Lansing, MI 48824

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Cell: 312-404-3507

 

Entrepreneurship Portal:  http://entrepreneurship.msu.edu

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/MSUEship/  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSU_Eship

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkane

 

Going from “Why I can’t” to “Why can’t I?”