Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he had ever experienced was his summer in San Francisco. Although I’m reminded of that fact daily when I don my winter coat to commute to Samasource headquarters, I’m uplifted the moment I walk into work every day.

Simply put, it’s because Samasource is red-hot. Every part of our organization—engineering, sales, and fundraising, to name a few—is reaching major milestones on a weekly, if not daily, basis. As one of the two MBA interns at Samasource this summer, I am focused on fundraising. Prior to business school, I spent five years on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, working with foundations, endowments, and family offices. I helped them invest in private equity and venture capital. The best part of my job was generating profits I knew would go to the greater good. Much of my motivation for getting an MBA was to innovate ways to merge investors’ financial and social objectives.

Of all of the Silicon Valley start-ups that I’ve encountered, Samasource stands among an elite handful about which I repeatedly ask myself, “Why isn’t everyone already doing this?” To me, Samasource represents a win-win opportunity: companies can hire capable workers to complete micro tasks at a significant cost savings. The only thing standing between these workers and a decent wage is the proverbial short straw they drew in the birth lottery that brought them into a poor part of the world. In spite of launching during tough economic times, Samasource has grown astonishingly well. Much of this success seems attributable to its hardworking Board and team, as well as the obvious value proposition Samasource offer its clients.

While at Samasource, I’ve delved into enhancing our Salesforce.com database, forging a partnership with GlobalGiving, researching grant proposals, and drafting investor presentations. I’ve also applied my finance background to helping Samasource forecast its financial growth. These efforts have led to many fascinating conversations about how Samasource intends to balance approaching profitability with maximizing social impact. While at first it was strange to think outside of simply maximizing financial return, it has been enormously gratifying building financial models that try to optimize how many jobs can be created for women, youth and refugees who simply have no other way to support their families. When thinking ahead to 2015, it’s staggering to grasp the magnitude of the impact Samasource’s employees could have on the world’s poor.

Thus far, Samasource has subsisted largely on donations and grants. It is imperative that, as a non-profit, Samasource continues to receive these gifts. That said, as a social enterprise, Samasource is also beginning to grow from its sales revenue. As a former investment manager, I feel it is imminent that Samasource attracts a material amount of capital from a socially responsible investor. In so doing, I predict Samasource will become a trailblazer for other social enterprises and socially minded investors who believe in a world in which one can simultaneously maximize profits and empower the world’s poor.

Aside from finance and fundraising, I’ve dabbled in recruiting and planning Samasource’s 2nd annual Give Work Gala. Both of these side projects have been a wonderful way to familiarize myself with Samasource’s other activities. I enjoy coming to work unclear on exactly how I’m going to spend my day, so it’s great to get pulled into so many of the new opportunities that Samasource continuously accesses. Every day, Samasource brims with excitement from the possibilities it represents. I couldn’t imagine braving the cold to spend my summer anywhere else.

Despite the challenges, I have been delighted to work with close to fifty Haitians, who show up to work dressed to impress and ready to tackle tasks at hand. Some bear ambition and drive that would trump that of even my most determined business school colleagues. I’ve also been delighted to work with an organization like Samasource that marries social benefit with sound business practices, a relationship that from my student eyes, I’m keen to explore. Working with Samasource in Haiti has afforded me a tremendous opportunity to work with a dynamite group of individuals – both my Samasource colleagues in San Francisco and the Haitian Samasource workers. It’s also allowed me to see, first hand, the challenges as well as opportunities to running an operation in a country like Haiti.

Samasource entered Haiti on the heels of the 2010 earthquake, quickly finalizing an already “in the works” partnership with its newest Haitian based Service Partner. Seizing the opportunity to provide jobs to young Haitians and help with the earthquake recovery effort, Samasource partnered with a coalition of non-profit organizations to establish an SMS short code that all Haitians could use to report their emergency needs.

One contract and some grant money later, Samasource workers in Mirebalais, Haiti, many themselves directly affected by the earthquake, translated text message after text message from Kreyol and French to English. After many tireless hours, they translated over 25,000 text messages to help with the recovery efforts.

Fortunately by April, the recovery related SMS translation work had dissipated and workers moved to new tasks like verifying URL addresses for businesses in France and translating and digitizing portions of French books. During these months, a time when the earthquake adrenalin had worn thin and it was getting back to business as usual, Samasource’s Haitian Service Partner experienced some growing pains – relying too heavily on a grant and not developing management practices with the growth of the organization – that likely plague other young NGOs.

Winning a big grant is very exciting in that it can allow an organization or a project to really grow wings and get off the ground. The hard part is planning for post grant life, and answering questions like “how will operations sustain themselves once this initial funding dries?” Samasource is currently tackling this question with its Haitian partner and has found the following to be helpful, if not necessary.

Re-visit breakeven data: In operating post-grant, it has been helpful to re-visit break-even data, evaluating which costs are on the steep side and understanding how much the operation should take in each month in revenue to be sustainable. This simple cost accounting exercise does wonders to shake the false security provided by the initial grant, one that unfortunately does not last forever.

Establish clear management guidelines and a clear management structure:
Currently, Samasource works through a partnership model, partnering with organizations in depressed economic areas. As such, in all the places Samasource operates, it works with a variety of management structures. As Samasource’s experience has proven, it is extremely important for the partner organization to have one point of contact at the partner organization, who is available to respond quickly to client and/or Samasource requests and who is empowered to make decisions. Without a clear point of communication, messages get lost in transmission and tasks are not carried out as well as they could be.

Create an incentive structure tied to the performance of the operation:
Instituting incentive structures tied to the performance of the operation benefits not only the organization but the employees as well. If employees understand the impact of their work (i.e. how it affects their paycheck, etc), then they will be more motivated. It is also helpful to create a bit of healthy competition between workers, rewarding productivity with bonuses and recognition. Taking steps like these will help increase worker’s pride in their work and will ultimately serve the organization well.

These growing pains or challenges, once addressed will allow Samasource and its Haitian Service Partner to seize the enumerable opportunities in Haiti, a country where the unemployment rate is estimated at 80%. Of the workers I interacted with the majority were university grads or currently pursuing university degrees. Many of them spoke English, French and Kreyol and in addition a few spoke Spanish. The talent in Haiti is painstakingly evident, though even for multilingual and extremely bright university grads, the job prospects were bleak. For most, their job with Samasource allowed them to support their children, wives and husbands, and sometimes parents. They appreciated the opportunity to work tremendously.

In the coming months, Samasource will scale its efforts in Haiti, exploring additional partnerships and additional forms of work for its Haitian workers. From my on the ground perspective, I think this is the right decision. I am excited to see the continued growth, the additional economic opportunities, and the hundreds more Haitian workers who will have the opportunity to put their skills to work to support themselves and their families.

Samasource is excited to have Denise ‘Roz’ Sewell, Director of Crisis Mapping for the Ushahidi Haiti Project, sharing a blog post with us from her recent travels to the 1,000 Jobs / Haiti site in Mirebalais. There she introduced the Samasource work team to several new software innovations that make pinpointing the locations of  emergencies much more accurate. This post also appeared on the Ushahidi blog.

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I am a crisis mapper. I have been mapping need in Haiti. That means that I take a message (from Twitter, Facebook, SMS), and based on information contained within the message, I place it on a map. Primarily, I have been working with the Ushahidi Haiti project and the Mission 4636 group of organizations. Through the short-code 4636 we created a picture of the evolving crisis in Haiti that was unprecedented in both its scope and timing. However, I live in Boston. I am from Atlanta. Honestly, it makes no sense for me to be the one mapping locations in Haiti when there are Haitians ready and willing to interact in the discussions of their own reconstruction.

So, I travel to Haiti. As a part of the Ushahidi Haiti project run by the Fletcher Team, one of our primary goals is to transfer skills and knowledge to the affected populations so that they can use everything we’ve learned through the 4 months we’ve spent working on this project. This means that the purpose of my trip was two-fold: 1 – asses the potential to transfer our knowledge to a single Haitian organization in Haiti and 2 – begin to transfer knowledge to any existing organizations that could use it.

Naturally, I went to Mirebalais. One of the key members of the Mission4636 group is Samasource – an organization bringing computer-based jobs to disadvantaged communities around the world. In a partnership with 1,000 Jobs they set up a computer center in Mirebalais, Haiti to translate messages coming into 4636 from Creole into English. I went to this computer center ready and willing to transfer my knowledge about crisis mapping, technology, and the Ushahidi platform.

What I have loved about my work in Haiti is that oftentimes when I feel like I have something to say or give, Haitians give it back to me ten fold. In my trip to Mirelabais I know I taught the workers how to find coordinates using Open Street Map, but I can definitely say that they taught me so much more – they taught me about Haiti.

The first day of my trip, the directors of the 1,000 Jobs site bring me to the center. Before my training, we sat in the office and talked about Haiti. We talked about their lives and ideas for the country, and how hard they’ve worked to get to where they are. I was afraid that my trip would be considered another burden or task they need to supervise. Instead, I received the resounding feedback, “No, this is the idea, we need to bring more skills to Haiti. Thank you.”

Later, I sat down with six intelligent, young Haitians eager to learn this new skill. I show them the Haiti Crisis Map and walk them through the training documents. Then, I show them the satellite imagery feature and how there is an image of this exact computer center building from the sky on the Internet. I teach them how to find their houses. They picked it up immediately and started laughing to each other, finding their parents’ or aunts’ houses once they mastered the current location. They loved it, and they turned to me and said, “I didn’t know this could exist for Haiti.”

A screenshot of the crisis mapper software in action

The next day I taught them Ushahidi, which again they understood immediately. I sat back and watched the morning shift train the night shift on creating a report, and then suddenly I felt useless – I had trained an amazing group in the morning and they understood the idea of crisis mapping so well that I could sit back and just listen. Occasionally, they would ask me a question but really I remained a quiet bystander watching Haitian crisis mapping happen the way it was suppose to happen – with Haitians.

Roz leads a training session in Haiti

Later that day, some of the 1,000 Jobs workers took me around Mirebalais. We had lunch at a small restaurant, where the typical Haitian spaghetti breakfast was served. They showed me the rest of town and talked about their lives at university before the earthquake. They asked me about Facebook and wanted to know my opinions about music. They talked about their families and their friends. They just talked about life.

Now that I am back in the US I realize the unbelievable importance of this trip, and I realize that these workers actually trained me. They showed me Haiti as not just a crisis and not just a map. They reminded me there is a country underneath all the rubble and in fact, there is a country despite the rubble. They showed me Haiti.

Social Change 2.0 – Using the Web for Good

Curious to find out more about how the web is shaping the future of the “social change” movement? Come find out on May 3! Hear from an exceptional group of speakers who are using the power of information technology to achieve social impact offline.

Date: Monday, May 3rd, 2010

I thought I’d share an Op-Ed I wrote that was published in The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, on Tuesday this week — it’s called Rethinking Outsourcing.

A positive social label could do much to change consumer perceptions of outsourcing to poor regions

IT’S a tough time for the outsourcing industry – 69% of Americans think outsourcing hurts the US economy, and President Barack Obama has publicly criticised companies that offshore American jobs.

Recent estimates hold that the market for offshore services is shrinking. As many companies re-think expansion plans and close doors, social responsibility – ranging from green initiatives to progressive labour policies – may be relegated to the back burner.

Roughly 1.4 billion people live in extreme debilitating poverty, earning less than US$1.25 a day in 2005. What’s remarkable about people in such circumstances is the great faith they place in education.

In countries like Kenya, families spend 277% of per-capita income (which averages about US$935 a year) on tertiary education. They borrow in order to send one or two children off to vocational school or college.

These young people then graduate and constitute a massive skilled labour force – over 175 million strong in rural Asia and Africa alone – that suffers from perilously high unemployment.

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly large cities surrounded by slums, unemployment rates among graduates of high school and technical and vocational colleges exceed 60%.

Jobless youth between the ages of 18 and 25 are prime recruits for rebel armies, opposition groups and crime rings.

Remote work is a term used to describe the smaller side of the outsourcing industry – the piecemeal tasks like data entry, video transcription, and personal assistance – which small businesses and individuals can seldom afford to complete with local labour.

This type of work doesn’t require much more than basic training, low-cost hardware, and bandwidth to complete.

Because the work is relatively low-risk (unlike, say, call centre services), it can be done by mom-and-pop operations in regions that lack costly infrastructure, or are sparsely populated, like much of rural Asia and Africa.

Thomas Friedman made a similar point in The World is Flat in 2005, but his analysis focused on job creation in middle- to low-income countries, rather than among the poor (while India may be considered a poor country, there’s a big difference between Bangalore and rural Bihar).

Outsourcing has created over 2.3 million office jobs in Asia, but very little of that wealth has impacted the world’s poorest people, who are off the map to most large businesses.

In 2007, Forbes announced seven billionaires who made their fortunes in outsourcing. All were American, Chinese or Indian men.

Giant companies like Accenture and IBM still dominate the outsourcing market. The latter topped The Outsourcing Global 100, a list produced by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, for the last two years.

Could small-scale outsourcing to locally-owned businesses make a bigger dent on poverty in places like Africa?

Several websites, including Elance, oDesk.com and Rentacoder, help customers connect to freelancers and small companies for projects in the under-US$1,500 range.

But they often use software or require payment methods that are out of reach for many smaller African providers. The fact is it may cost a bit more to work with a business in a remote region, and buyers don’t seem willing to swallow the cost.

I believe they would if their purchasing decisions generated positive PR or were known to impact consumer preferences.

The fair trade movement applied similar thinking to agriculture and manufacturing. Now, Fairtrade-certified goods constitute a US$2.3bil dollar industry growing at over 40% a year.

A team of researchers at Stanford found that consumers were willing to pay up to 15% more for a package of coffee with an ethical business label such as fair trade.

There are a few obstacles to making this work. First, bandwidth in Africa is costly because existing fiber optic capacity is by state monopolies that keep prices high.

But there’s hope. This year, two new submarine cables will arrive in East Africa. One of them, funded by private investors, should lower the cost of going online by 90%.

Second, buyers don’t yet benefit from working with small-scale businesses in marginalised regions because Fairtrade has no equivalent in the services sector.

A positive social label could do much to change consumer perceptions of outsourcing to poor regions.

Over the last six months, a team of students at Stanford Law School developed the first version of a social label for small services firms in poor regions.

This label includes businesses and non-profit organisations in high-poverty areas that invest a large percentage of their revenue locally on things like staff training and salaries.

Millions of skilled workers in the world’s poorest places stand to benefit if the industry responds favourably.