OneWorld.net has chosen Martin Fisher as a finalist for their Person of the Year Award. The competition is tough and the vote is open to the public, so tell your friends!
Click here to cast your vote for Martin and KickStart (to the right of the profile, you’ll see a gray box and a list of the nominees in random order). And while you are there, how about giving us a 5-star rating too? (Look for the box above Martin’s picture).
These awards are a great honor, but more importantly, they help us spread the word about the effectiveness of our innovative model for alleviating poverty.
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]]>KickStart International, a San Francisco-based organization that fights poverty in Africa by creating and selling simple tools that help poor entrepreneurs increase their income, was awarded the $35,000 first-place prize. Among its innovations is the MoneyMaker irrigation pump, which allows small-scale growers to produce high-value crops year-round and make the transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture.
]]>"Peter Drucker was among the first to articulate that innovation--change that creates a new dimension of performance--is essential for all organizations to thrive," said Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute. "This includes businesses, of course, but it's also true for nonprofits. This year's crop of winners illustrates precisely what Peter was talking about."
The Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation has been given annually since 1991 to recognize existing programs that have made a real difference in the lives of the people they serve. Cash prizes are designed to celebrate, inspire and further the work of innovative social-sector organizations based in the United States.
KickStart officials noted how pleased they were to receive the Drucker Award. "We are extremely honored," said co-founder and CEO Martin Fisher, Ph.D. "Nick Moon and I had two goals in mind when we founded KickStart: to get millions of people out of poverty and, in the process, change the way the world fights poverty. When we first started, the idea of using business models to solve social problems was considered crazy--if not complete heresy. Today social enterprise is the most vibrant sector in philanthropy. Peter Drucker's work was a real inspiration to us."
KickStart International impressed the judges, in part, because of the extraordinary results it has demonstrated. More than 66,000 profitable enterprises have been created using its MoneyMaker pumps. Farmers utilizing the pumps see, on average, a 10-fold increase in farm income. KickStart estimates that its pumps have helped lift 330,000 people out of poverty. (For more, please visit www.kickstart.org.)
"Peter taught that for any nonprofit organization, the bottom line must be measured in changed lives," Wartzman said. "KickStart's bottom line is most impressive in this regard."
The Drucker Institute will honor the winner and two runners-up on Oct. 28 in Los Angeles at a gala dinner. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, will be the keynote speaker. The dinner will be preceded by an all-day conference: "When the Bottom Line is Changed Lives: How Do We Know Whether Nonprofit Organizations are Effective?"
To attend the dinner or the conference, which will feature leading experts in the field and a keynote address by Karen Baker, California's Secretary of Service and Volunteering, you must register at www.DRUCKERinstitute.com.
About the Drucker Institute
The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University is a think tank and action tank whose purpose is to stimulate effective management and ethical leadership across all sectors of society. It does this, in large part, by advancing the ideas and ideals of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management.
The Institute acts as a hub for a worldwide network of Drucker Societies, volunteer-driven organizations that are using Drucker's teachings to affect positive change in their local communities.
In addition, the Institute maintains a digital archive of Drucker's papers; undertakes research that builds on Drucker's writings; offers a major prize for nonprofit innovation; producescurricular materialthat distills Drucker's decades of leading-edge thinking; applies Drucker's work to current events (including through a regular online column in BusinessWeek by Institute Director Rick Wartzman); presents a slide show exploring the "Responsibility Gap"--society's collective failure to be good and ethical stewards of our resources, people and institutions; and hosts visiting fellows with Drucker-like insights and values.
The Institute is a close affiliate of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. For more on the Institute and its programs, go to www.DRUCKERinstitute.com.
]]>We hope that you find it interesting and informative.
We would like to thank the Zennstrom Philanthropies for their generous grant to make this possible. And we like to thank the team at Mule Design, who really understood what we wanted to accomplish.
]]>Too often this means that giving is driven by emotion rather than by rational evaluation.
To make real progress in tackling the worlds most pressing problems, donors need to be able to distinguish between the "Real Good" and the "Feel Good."
Feel Good solutions address symptoms. Real Good solutions attack root causes. Real Good solutions often seem counter-intuitive. They may appear, at first, hard headed or hard hearted. But this is because the feel good solutions we’ve to which we have become accustomed, usually position an organization as a “rescuer” of people, animals, or habitat. Real Good solutions recognize that the world’s poorest people are able and eager to improve their own lives. They create opportunities rather than dependence.
KickStart founder Martin Fisher, and Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation put together this brief guide to help donors separate the Real Good from the Feel Good.
He sees his work at KickStart as passing on that opportunity to thousands more.
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In Eldoret, farmers Daniel Karanja Njenga his wife Nancy Gathoni see the MoneyMaker pump as their most important investment. Their home and farm were looted during Kenya’s post election violence in March 2008. Daniel saw the MoneyMaker Hip Pump demonstrated at the IDP (Internally Displaced People) camp where his family of five children were placed after their house burned and Daniel’s arm was injured. They lived in a government tent for over 5 months. The camp was where he heard about KickStart’s Imarisha Maisha promotion.
“When I saw the MoneyMaker Hip Pump demonstration and heard about it on the radio, I knew it was the answer to how we could earn an income quickly and get back to farming.”
His first purchase with the relief funds from the Kenyan government (US $130) was the MoneyMaker Hip Pump and hoses. The manually operated pump is lightweight, lower cost than other pumps and easy to use. It does not require electricity or fuel. With it, he could irrigate his small plot of 1/8th acre and grow crops during the dry season when most farms are bare. They now earn a decent living growing and selling sukuma wiki (kale), a staple food for Kenyans. They are helping hungry neighbors and friends struggling to get back on their feet again after the violence
Daniel has plans to expand his plot and grow cabbages, tomatoes and purchase a dairy cow. An average farmer can make about 9,000 - 10,000 shillings (around US $120) or more per month selling crops produced using the MoneyMaker pump.
Daniel and Nancy, like thousands of farmers in Kenya and Africa, are becoming successful businessmen and women able to feed their families, pay school fees, and medical expenses.
After Kenya’s post-election violence, escalating food prices and difficult global economic times, MoneyMaker pumps are giving hope to an otherwise desperate situation; a permanent solution that tackles the root of poverty, a way to make money.
]]>The shop was reasonably successful, but it did not generate as much income as they needed to support their family. Mr. Mwami decided to buy land to raise chickens and for Mrs. Mwami to start growing and selling vegetables. It was a good business but difficult because irrigation with a bucket took a lot of effort.
Early 2007 Mrs. Mwami heard an ad for the Super MoneyMaker on the radio. She excitedly told her husband about this new pump that was affordable and made irrigation easier and quicker. Mr. Mwami was not convinced. Mrs. Mwami insisted and since she was using her own money she would make the decision. Together they went to the Kariakoo market in Dar es Salaam to buy a Super MoneyMaker at the shop owned by Mama Songa (another KickStart Success Story).
The pump worked so well Mrs. Mwami increased her production. She expanded with another plot to increase her business. She employs her daughter (left in the picture above) and young sister (right). They have three young children and they plan to send them to good secondary schools now that they have money.
The Mwami’s have plans to build a nicer house for their family.
Mr. Mwami freely admits that his wife was right about the pump, and between their two businesses, they see a bright future for their family.
Prosperity came quickly. Before he bought his pump, he earned, at most, $50 twice a year when he harvested his rain-fed crops. But with his pump, he now grows high-value tomatoes and French Beans and earns between $250 and $500 every three months. He has rented more land to farm and now has six acres under cultivation.
His oldest son just graduated from the local technical college. Samuel was able to pay for tuition and buy his son a bike so he could get to class. His second oldest son is studying to be an electrician. The other children are in primary or secondary school. When asked about his achievement, Samuel's son points to the MoneyMaker pump and says that it he never could have gone to school if his father had not bought the MoneyMaker.
Samuel now makes enough to afford a petrol pump to irrigate his land, but he still uses his MoneyMaker on some of his land loans his pump to his brother and his aunt.
His next goal is to buy more land so he can leave each of his children a substantial plot of their own--and he is well on way to achieving it.
Standing in his field, you can see three other MoneyMaker pumps which were being used by his neighbors. Samuel said that after observing him work for a number of seasons, his neighbors were inspired by his success. They saved up their money to buy their own MoneyMaker pumps and are now enjoying prosperity as well. A few years ago, Samuel was one of the poorest men in his village. Today he is a leader and role model.
James is an eloquent speaker with a strong commanding manner. He retired last year at 55 yrs old from teaching for over 30 years. His mud brick house was built from the proceeds earned using the MoneyMaker Hip Pump he purchased October 2nd 2006. The day before, he had leased a small plot of land outside Eldoret and began a new life as a farmer. He farms a half-acre and plans to lease more land as profits from his crops increase.
After James retired, he had no savings, pension or income. Providing basics for his thirteen children, multiple grandchildren and elderly mother was very difficult. Living in the very poor and densely populated village of Vihiga in Western Kenya, poverty was high and opportunity low. Farming was not a good business.
He moved his family to Matunda in 2006, hoping to make a go of farming and create a better life for his family. His small plot was covered with grass and weeds. After seeing a MoneyMaker pump being used at his friend’s farm, he knew it was the answer. He went to the dealer and bought a MoneyMaker Hip Pump that very day. James couldn't believe how durable and easy it was to operate, and that it did not require fuel. The pump, sprinkler, seeds and hard work got him started.
Only one year later, James and his family are growing vegetables and corn continuously. He proudly showed us his tomatoes, sukuma (kale), kunde (cow peas - a delicious green leaf similar to spinach); maize (corn) and sorghum they grow for their family and also sell to a vegetable broker. He plans to lease more land the next crop cycle to expand.
"Our neighbors are very surprised that in just one year we are growing all this, as if the plot came with the vegetables," James told us. "I've decided when my next child marries, I will give a MoneyMaker pump and some spare change for seeds. I will have given them all they need."
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