Global Water Challenge and Ashoka’s Changemakers are hosting a global competition searching for the most innovative and sustainable community-based approaches to providing universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

“Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis” is a collaborative competition to find and discuss groundbreaking approaches that are making universal access to safe water and sanitation a reality. Addressing challenges from the high cost of water in urban areas to creating access to water in rural areas can lead to critical impacts on global health, the environment, poverty, peace and conflict. The competition offers a forum for ideas projects to be shared and reviewed by investors and leaders in the field. Even if you do not offer a proposal of your own, we invite you to join the dialogue. Your experience and insights are invaluable in the creation of truly innovative approaches to providing universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Funding will be made available for the most innovative work currently being done around the world at the close of the competition.

Submit, review and comment on entries starting now through March 26, 2008. Online voting will take place April 16-30 2008 at www.changemakers.net.

As we head into the presidential election year, The Action Tank, a unit of the New Profit social investment firm, is trying to define a new role for government--one that incorporates social entrepreneurship and other innovative ways for government, business and the nonprofit sector to work together on solving public problems.

"Their success [of social entrepreneurs] challenges us to ask how we can make government an investor and catalyst rather than the entity that delivers or controls services."

The Action Tank has created a coalition of leading social entrepreneurs, called America Forward, and recently published a briefing book of the same name. The book includes short profiles of eight innovative high-impact social-sector organizations across the U.S. and proposes:

"a variety of principles and proposals that, if implemented, would help high-performance social entrepreneurs to access capital--both financial and human--and surmount barriers to scale."

Among the more interesting components of the America Forward Architecture is a government sponsored network of Social Investment Funds, a National Public Service Academy followed by five years of civilian service, a Civic Learning agenda, and the creation of a Small Business Administration for the nonprofit sector. This last agenda item has gotten a good boost from Andrew Wolk, CEO at Root Cause, who recently authored the chapter “Social Entrepreneurship and Government: A New Breed of Entrepreneurs Developing Solutions to Social Problems,” just released in The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Over at Xigi.net, Martha has posted a great blog entry, Louisiana Government Leads the Nation in Promoting Social Entrepreneurship, that has garnered some comments, in particular one from Kelly Kleiman, the Nonprofiteer, who calls into question the appropriateness of government sloughing off its duties onto the private sector.

The Hurricane Katrina disaster has shown how unprepared and disorganized our government has become in addressing catastrophes on its own shores, so it is fitting that Louisiana should take the lead in tapping social entrepreneurs to assist government with coming up with innovative approaches to solving social problems.

See the SEblog post on the America Forward coalition, who proposes that government serve as an investor and catalyst, rather than a provider/controller of services. Does social entrepreneurship naturally lead to privatization of public services?

Are you passionate about making the world a better place? Have an idea about how to make your fellow students and your school more socially responsible? Want to turn that idea into a reality?

Conscious Lifestyle is accepting applications for its 2008 venture program.

Submit an application for the chance to win:

* Up to $1,000 in start-up funding
* Web space on consciouslifestyle.org
* Monthly skill-building workshops
* Personalized support
* Access to a network of social entrepreneurs

To learn more and download an application, visit www.consciouslifestyle.org/2008ventureapp.

Application Deadline: February 15, 2008.

San Francisco-based Community Housing Partnership hosted a Launch Celebration today for a new social enterprise: CHP Enterprises. CHP-E will provide front desk staffing and maintenance services to residential housing providers in the SF Bay Area. And it will create up to 50 jobs in a supportive work environment for formerly homeless adults, many of whom are residents in CHP housing.

Executive Director Jeff Kositsky announced that CHP has just been awarded a Community Economic Development grant of $350,000 from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services' Office of Community Services to help launch the new enterprise. CHP has also received assistance from REDF, the SF-based social venture philanthropy fund, becoming a new member of its investment portfolio earlier this year.

I was struck by the level of engagement and support from both the city's Human Services Agency and Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and from other local community development agencies that have stepped up to become CHP-E's first customers. Both Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and Rhonda Simmons, from the Mayor's Office, stated that CHP-E represented a sea change in how the city plans to tackle workforce development, which has not traditionally had a central place in the city's priorities. Dan Bernal, from the Office of Congresswoman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, lauded CHP's innovative approach to providing employment opportunities for the formerly homeless.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano and Aleta Dwyer-Carpenter, from the Chinatown Community Development Center (CHP-E's first customer), spoke of the healing role of CHP-E, both in terms of helping to reclaim the spirit and economic basis of the neighborhood by preventing displacement of families, and in terms of providing an extended family and role models for other residents who will be served by CHP-E staff.

San Francisco State University Prof. Raquel Pinderhughes has completed a case study of implementing a green job corps in Berkeley, CA - GREEN COLLAR JOBS: An Analysis of the Capacity of Green Businesses to Provide High Quality Jobs for Men and Women with Barriers to Employment. The study can be used as a guide for developing Green Job Corps programs in other cities across the countries.

Dr. Pinderhughes had spoken with me earlier this year about this research as part of her work developing a green collar job corps with the Ella Baker Center's Reclaim the Future initiative. Green collar jobs are "blue collar jobs in green businesses, manual labor jobs in businesses whose products and services directly improve environmental quality."

This report shows that "preparing men and women with barriers to employment for entry level green collar jobs, and ensuring that these jobs are consistently made available to them, are very effective ways to bring the opportunities and benefits associated with green economic development to low-income residents and communities in the Bay Area."

The study addresses seven major questions:

1.To what extent are green collar jobs good jobs?
2.To what extent are green collar jobs suitable for people with barriers to employment?
3.To what extent are people with barriers to employment interested in green collar jobs?
4.Are green business owners willing to hire workers with barriers to employment for green collar jobs?
5.To what extent are the green collar job business sectors growing?
6.What strategies are needed to grow the number of green collar jobs?
7.What strategies are needed to ensure that workers with barriers to employment can gain access to green collar jobs?

The study is a great example of collaboration between city planners, academics and local environmental justice advocates and can serve as a planning tool for extending green collar workforce development to other communities across the country.

What do you do when the dreaded moment arrives?

How do you react when an employee is arrested? When reduced funding causes layoffs? When changes in the market force you to shut down beloved programs?

In other words, how do you handle bad news -- especially the kind that goes public and shakes stakeholder confidence?

My friend Chris Klose has been a crisis communications specialist for more than 30 years. Based in Washington, D.C., he's seen corporations, government agencies and nonprofits stumble badly when faced with negative situations -- usually because they disobey four cardinal rules:

• Tell the truth
• Take responsibility
• Don't delay
• Show them you care

"Your ultimate goal," says Chris, "is to preserve trust in the organization. Even though it may be painful, telling the truth is rule number one. Always. Candor can defuse the most explosive situations.

"And Truman was right. 'The buck stops here.' Any attempt to dodge responsibility will just stir things up.

"And don't delay. Things will only get worse if you stall -- it can become a feeding frenzy. Remember things never turn out as badly as you fear -- unless you delay, obfuscate and dodge." In this era of Internet blogging, when news races 'round the globe in nanoseconds, you'll never have time to catch up unless you respond immediately.

Finally, Chris emphasizes you "have to get on their side of the table. Your stakeholders are less interested in what you know or what you did -- what they want to know first is whether you care. So acknowledge their pain or concern. You can't bloviate and fake it, either. Your response has to be genuine. You have to make a personal connection.

"If you're a values-based organization," he says, "and if you have a loyal set of stakeholders, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt. They'll forgive your mistakes. The American public is eminently reasonable. Ten per cent on the left and ten per cent on the right are whacko, but those aren't the people you're speaking to. It's your neighbor over the back fence, the guy on the bus, the teacher in your kids' school. Your stakeholders aren't wolves and hounds -- they want you to get through this and maintain their confidence."

Chris recommends that the first thing you do is write down your version of the facts -- then get them out to the public as quickly, honestly and concisely as possible, "in plain English!" Boil your story down to no more than three points, then share them with all your stakeholders. Invite questions. Respond truthfully. Keep the doors of communication open 24/7.

Eventually, the din will subside, the pain will ease, and life will return to its normal hectic pace.

Until the next time.

Which argues for creating a crisis communications plan well in advance of any bad news. Try bringing together a sub-group of Board and staff members charged with trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong. Then appoint an overall crisis management team and create a detailed response mechanism for each contingency, including a primary spokesperson (typically the CEO) and, if necessary, a technical expert.

Be sure to write the plan down and put it somewhere convenient -- including somewhere outside your office . . . one of my friends failed to do so and had to scramble when the office burned down. Then, when the dreaded moment arrives, reach for the plan -- and remember the four cardinal rules . . .

* * * * *

One more thing. It may seem odd, but bad news can also be an opportunity.

To begin with, it's a chance to reach out and reinforce your relationships with key constituents. A responsible reaction to bad news frequently translates into greater loyalty and admiration. Stakeholders volunteer to help as you regroup and possibilities emerge from potential disaster.

In addition, it's an opportunity to revisit your core assumptions, freshen your values and reinvigorate your sense of purpose.

So manage the crisis -- don't let it manage you.