Foundation:Planning:HybridSummit

Vision: Representatives of 5 - 10 hybrid organizations -- social enterprises born from the culture of the web -- will gather for a one-day meeting to share perspectives, strategize, and work towards an understanding and articulation of this new approach to changing the world. Journalists and representatives from major foundations will be invited to a portion of the event, in order to advance the understanding of the hybrid model with the public and in the philanthropy world. The event will be hosted by Mozilla in California.

What's a hybrid organization?

More and more organization are mashing up public benefit missions, market strategies and web-like organizing structures. For lack of a better term, we call these 'hybrid organizations'. They're public benefit orgs that:

• Use market strategies to advance a social mission and financially sustain their organizations.

• Are born from the culture of the web, with participation, openness and networks at the core of how they operate.

• Put mission first in a structural way. Incorporating as a nonprofit is one way to do this.

Mozilla is an organization like this.

[Alternate name idea from hecker: 'participatory social enterprise' (or 'participatory social business' -- see below).]

[Should we include in this mix organizations that are not actually non-profits from a legal perspective but fit Karl Weber's definition of a "social business": "a non-loss, non-dividend business with a social objective".]

Why get together?

We're in the midst of developing a new kind of organization. This is exciting. It also means there are no road maps. We want to gather hybrid organizations to:

• Learn how each other works, and gather stories that make sense of the world we're building.

• Swap skills and techniques that are working (and aren't), from revenue models to community management to organizational structure.

• Figure out lightweight ways to share ideas and grow the hybrid org concept on an ongoing basis.

• Share our story with journalists to help them understand why this strange new type of organization is neither a company nor a traditional charity.

• Share our strategy with foundations to encourage investments in new organizations that have the potential for vast social impact and long-term sustainability.

It's pretty much guaranteed that everyone will leave with new friends and new ideas. Hopefully, we'll also get a few journalists involved who can help us write down the stories we tell.

When and where and agenda

The current plan is for a one day event on May 14th in San Francisco. (at mozilla? in the city?)

The day would be divided in half, with a closed morning meeting for representatives of the organization to strategize, present ideas and stories and discuss their work. The afternoon would be an open session with journalists and foundations.

Who should come?

If the hybrid org definition above sounds like your org, then you might want to be in the mix. Organizations we plan to reach out to include:

Yes

• Benetech
• The Hub
• Kiva.org
• Mozilla (host organization)
• Participatory Culture Foundation
• WikiMedia Foundation
• Volunteer Match

Maybe

• TechSoup
• DoSomething.org
• Democracy in Action
• AspirationTech
• Centre for Social Innovation
• Mahiti

Follow up

• Energy sector?
• Omidyar contacts?
• Skoll contacts?
• Ashoka?

If you'd like to be in the mix, email <who? and do we want an open invite like this as a way to catch people we don't know about?>