The Key to Making a Difference Long-Term is Finding Your Tribe
Social Entrepreneurs: Assemble!
Do you believe we can use entrepreneurship to create a better future for all of us?
Are you committed to developing and using your ideas, talents and capabilities to make a difference?
Are you working towards launching a new endeavour, or deep in the trenches of something already launched?
Are you creating something not everyone “gets” because it’s too new, too innovative, or your industry is reluctant to change?
Do you sometimes feel worn out, stressed out, uncertain if you can go on? But other times you’re on fire! Full of energy, ready to shout your cause from the rooftops?
Are you passionate about social enterprise and its power to make a positive impact? But sometimes you aren’t sure what the right next step is or how you can really get to where you want to go?
Then guess what?
You’re on the Social Entrepreneurial Journey.
Making change happen and leading community projects requires a long-term commitment and a lot of resilience and energy to see through. All too often we have seen social entrepreneurs and community leaders burn out or run out of steam due to lack of progress or a sense of isolation.
We dream of a linear journey towards world-changing success but the reality is almost always more complicated, convoluted and complex than that.
To make change in the long-run you need two key things:
- To be constantly learning. Learning from those who have gone before you, learning from other stakeholders and beneficiaries, learning from peers. If you stop learning you stop innovating, which is death in a rapidly-changing world. AND
- To find your tribe. Entrepreneurship is stressful. It just is. You’ll fail and fall and need to pick yourself up. But it can be hard to reveal our fears when you’re leading a team and trying to inspire partners, funders and customers to back you. You need a peer community who get it, because they are living it to.
INTRODUCING: The Starting Good Network
The Starting Good Network (SGN) is an exclusive community for those committed to changing the world.
It will give you access to the full StartSomeGood ecosystem and provide discounts to relevant products, services, courses and media from our partners. Most importantly, it will give you access to your peers; those who, like you, are committed to taking an entrepreneurial approach and using their talents to make a difference.
Membership also gives access to two to three exclusive live calls with experienced social entrepreneurs each month, discounts to all public ticketed events we host, monthly coaching calls with StartSomeGood CEO Tom Dawkins and access to an exclusive online peer-learning platform. And, as they say, there’s more! See the full list of member benefits below.
It’s designed to be light-weight but high-impact, requiring only a small financial (as little as $5 USD/month) or time commitment, but gives you access to resources, insights, educational opportunities and coaching you won’t find anywhere else.
Who Are We?
The Starting Good Network is a new initiative of StartSomeGood, the creators of this here very platform we’re on, and will be personally hosted by StartSomeGood co-founder and CEO Tom Dawkins and StartSomeGood’s Head of Learning Programs and founder of The Human Connection Movement, Igor Kreyman.
StartSomeGood is an award-winning crowdfunding platform and innovation agency dedicated to increasing the pace of innovation for social change. We do this by helping social entrepreneurs and community leaders design, test, launch and grow social impact projects.
Our mission is to create a world where “everyone can be a changemaker.”
A world where every person has access to the information, inspiration and tools to make a difference, and where great social change ideas can emerge from anywhere and communities can create the future they seek.
Over the last 6 years, we:
- Have enabled more than 1000 projects to raise over $12 million to make a positive impact in the world, with the best project success rates in the industry;
- Run the Good Hustle social enterprise design course, a ten-week program to design a launch or growth-ready social enterprise;
- Run the world’s biggest online event for social enterprise, the #StartingGood Virtual Summit, with 6,000 participants this year;
- Provide crowdfunding infrastructure to partner sites Dreamstarter, Young Change Agents and Impact Seed via our API;
- Have powered social enterprise accelerator programs for Optus, ING, the United Nations Development Program and the Cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Parramatta and Perth amongst others;
- Currently run the Future Makers and Seafood for Good Accelerators;
- Are a certified B Corp, placing in the top 10% in the world for our certification score.
Through our Good Hustle program, which has graduated over 100 early-stage social entrepreneurs so far, we have been teaching the five core building blocks of a launch or growth ready social enterprise, and one of the crucial ones is the Find Your Community.
We have seen the impact of the exposure the participants get to experienced entrepreneurs in the live Q and A and mastermind sessions as well as the power of peer-learning, of sharing experiences with others with similar values on a similar trajectory of mission. These learnings have inspired us to want to offer these benefits to social entrepreneurs beyond the Good Hustle program, at a low cost and without a finish point, to support the ongoing journey of creating change we are all on.
Members of The Starting Good Network will gain access to many of the same exclusive live sessions and be part of the same peer community as participants in Good Hustle while graduates from our accelerators like Optus Future Makers, Seafood for Good and Parramatch will be part of the Network.
Some feedback from Good Hustle participants:
"Inspired with the Business Models session, we analysed over 50 real-world existing business models and landed with one that had real-world precedent, that we could confidently go out and test."
- Matthew Haren, Tablehood
"The storytelling module helped me understand how to tell my story in a way that really highlights why I do what I do. It helped explain my work much more clearly and in a much more engaging way of connecting with people."
- Julia Schneider, Alive With Possibility
"Thanks to the Good Hustle program, I have implemented thorough step by step planning for each idea that has potential, allowing me to estimate what is needed in order to make the idea a reality and what type of data I need to collect to improve on my assumptions."
- Melissa Moxey, Arah Body
"One of the key learning from the program was simply getting clarity on what my idea was. I had so many different ideas I could implement but I needed the direction and guidance to know which one to start with and why."
- Mel Kenny, Made of Substance
Meet Your Host
Tom Dawkins - Co-founder and CEO of StartSomeGood
- Founder or co-founder of five non-profits and social enterprises;
- Director of the Centre for Social Impact and Deputy Chair of the Social Enterprise Council of NSW and the ACT (SECNA);
- A globally recognized speaker and leader in the social enterprise sector;
- Has spoken at leading conference globally including SXSW, SOCAP, Social Enterprise World Forum, Purpose, Crowdsourcing Week and Asian Venture Philanthropy Network.
"Tom Dawkins is, without a doubt, one of leading thinkers-and-doers in the emerging social entrepreneur space. He is a constant source of inspiration, engagement and ideas. Australia is lucky to have him." -Eddie Harran, Deloitte Centre for the Edge Australia
Tom will be hosting many of the live Q and A’s and a monthly mastermind session for all members.
Who Is This For?
This is for anyone committed to the journey of changing the world through entrepreneurship. This means you are focused on creating something new, something better than the status quo. It could be a new social enterprise, a breakthrough invention, a community or advocacy group making an impact in a new way or telling stories that need to be told.
We know how hard this is! Since 2011 StartSomeGood has been helping people like you refine their ideas, build their confidence and their capacity and rally the community and support they need to create change.
We launched StartSomeGood.com in 2011, the #StartingGood Virtual Summit in 2016, the Good Hustle Social Enterprise Design course in 2019 and now, in this year of great change 2020, we want to help in a new way. Not just when you are ready to invest in a ten-week course. Not just when you need to raise money. Not just 10 days a year during the #StartingGood Virtual Summit, but day by day as we all work towards building a better world together.
If you are:
- Still refining your ideas and preparing your plans to launch something new;
- Working inside an existing organisation trying to push it in a direction of greater innovation;
- In the trenches of an impact business, delivering value to customers and community every day, but aspiring to grow and do more;
- Making an impact as a volunteer or pro bono but you want to do impact work full time and make it sustainable;
- A student studying or simply passionate about social entrepreneurship; or
- Simply looking to learn from inspiring examples of successful social entrepreneurs and connect with other people who share your passions
The Starting Good Network is designed for you.
By joining the Network you will:
- Be part of a peer community of changemakers;
- Get to learn from experienced successful social entrepreneurs;
- Have low-cost access to additional training and workshops;
- Get exclusive coaching, mastermind and meditation sessions
- And more.
Ultimately, it’s about helping you find your purpose, sharpen your skills, share your story and make an impact!
If that’s what you’re about, please join us.
What’s Included:
A new community-based peer learning platform where we all connect, share, and grow together
Access to all #StartingGood Summit Content (Over 140 interviews with successful Social Entrepreneurial Founders) and the library of Good Hustle interviews (20 and growing);
2 Live Webinar Sessions + Q&A with leading social entrepreneurs each month:
A monthly mastermind session with Tom Dawkins, CEO and Co-founder of StartSomeGood;
A match-making service for mastermind groups, which will connect you with 4-5 people at a similar stage and teach you how to run these sessions;
Discounted access to all StartSomeGood courses and services, including free access to our Online Crowdfunding Course (usually $50 USD) and half-price access to the Pivot on Purpose course (save $50 USD) and “Early-bird anytime” pricing for our Good Hustle ten-week course (save $250 USD);
Discounts to a range of relevant courses and opportunities with our partners, such as discounted membership to Social Change Central, Dumbofeather, JBMedia Group, to the Moving Worlds Institute, to co-working spaces, courses, coaching and publications.
Upcoming Events:
The following great speakers are confirmed for the upcoming months:
Tom Szaky, Co-founder and CEO, Terracycle, the world’s fastest growing and most innovative recycling company;
Jess Scully, Deputy Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney and author, Glimpses of Utopia;
Pete Ceglinski, CEO & Co-Founder, Seabin Project, a very cool startup changing how we manage water pollution;
Amy Orange, founder, Fourth Sector Solutions, former founder, Harvest Fair, speaker, consultant and coach on impact businesses;
Mikey Leung, cofounder, Digital Storytellers, brilliant storytellers for change who have worked on many successful campaigns;
Luke Terry, Cofounder of Whitebox Enterprises and Founder of Vanguard Laundry, driving the growth of some of Australia’s most significant social enterprises;
Christine Chun, Former Founder of 1Scope, now Commercial Director Year13, both Edutech startups;
Nick Savaidis, Founder of Etiko, a fair-trade fashion enterprise;
Drew Chafetz, founder, Love Futbol, a great US-based organization using soccer to create change worldwide.
All these live calls will be exclusively available to Starting Good Network members (and participants in Good Hustle or one of our accelerators).
There will also be free or discounted workshops on Crowdfunding, Storytelling, the Social Enterprise Formula and more.
