Foundation:Planning:HybridSummit
Vision: 30 hybrid organizations -- social enterprises born from the culture of the web -- gather for two days to tell stories, share skills and figure out how to do what we do better. Hosted by Mozilla.
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 not-for-profits that:
- Operate as a social enterprise, using market strategies both 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 what they produce and how they operate.
- Put mission ahead of shareholder value in decision making in some structural way. Incorporating as a nonprofit is one way to do this.
Mozilla is an organization like this. We know there are others. It's likely we've got something to learn from each other.
[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.
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?
The current plan is for a two day event in San Francisco during the first week of March 2009. Suggestions welcome, especially on good venue options. Other location options: London or Toronto.
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:
- AspirationTech
- Benetech
- Centre for Social Innovation
- Compumentor
- Democracy in Action
- The Hub
- Kiva.org
- Mahiti
- Mozilla (host organization)
- Participatory Culture Foundation
- NPR / Public Radio International?
- <who else, especially from outside N America?> ...
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?>