Archive for category: Georgia Social Impact Collaborative

By: Ben Haynes, Daymaker Giving

 

“Food education should be a cornerstone of every child’s education.”
– Erin Croom, founder of Small Bites Adventure Club in Atlanta, Georgia

Daymaker believes that everyone should have access to healthy, wholesome meals, and that humans are happier when they have a connection to their food and its source. It’s also important to acknowledge that there are systems in place that prevent marginalized communities from having access and developing connections to nutritious food.

The Daymaker model is centered around the Receiver’s Journey; a three-year commitment they’ve made to serve their nonprofit partners and the kids in their programming. During the outset of the pandemic, Daymaker asked nonprofits how they could be most helpful, and co-created the ‘Daymaker Discovery Bundle’ – a monthly curiosity box with a theme, physical items like puzzles or board games associated with that theme, and a celebration of diverse heroes in a related field.

Supporting kids monthly in-between back-to-school and Holiday giving campaigns has become a staple of how they hope to serve. As a natural next step in this process (pun intended!), Daymaker is partnering with Small Bites Adventure Club to offer Farm-to-Home Explorer Kits!

 

Small Bites Adventure Club’s Story

Small Bites was founded in 2018 by a group of women seeking to bring more fruits & vegetables to kids. During the early days, founder Erin Croom was packing “Taste Test Boxes” on her dining room table to create a prototype. The first boxes contained ingredients, a recipe, and a paired activity. Erin remembers being uncertain and having questions: ‘Would teachers find it intuitive to teach the lesson? Would kids be able to make this recipe? Are kids even going to eat the recipe?’

She brought the boxes to a local preschool in Atlanta, and after that day she knew that Small Bites was onto something. The teachers were able to lead the lesson with very little instruction from her, the four-year-olds were able to make kale pesto, and the kids ate it and loved it! That night, the preschool teacher received emails and calls from parents saying “What’s this about my kid eating Kale?! How did you get them to do that?!”

 

About the Daymaker Farm-to-Home Explorer Kits

Small Bites’ new Farm-to-Home kits will “help kids follow this magical journey from seed to plate,” Erin said. For the first six months of 2021, the kids will receive a monthly kit with a theme that contains: a recipe, an activity booklet, a ‘Meet the Farmer and Veggie/Fruit Card,’ and extras like family conversation cards, a snack bar, stickers, magnets, and videos. The activities within these kits focus on issues at the root of food: community, diversity, health & nature.

One component of these kits is a Meet The Farmer card (see below). This card tells the story of a farmer, where they are and what their life is like. “Most kids we talk to think food comes from the grocery store or Mom’s car,” said Erin. “We feel that it’s a very important part of a child’s education that food comes from farmers, and farms and the soil.”

Importantly, Small Bites recognizes the structural problems of a lack of representation in the farming community and in agricultural careers: they feature farmers of color on many of the Meet Your Farmer cards, and they purchase over 50% of the food in the kits from farmers of color. “I love the way that Small Bites elevates the voices of brown farmers, black farmers and women farmers,” said Wande Okunoren-Meadows from The Hand, Heart & Soul Project, a Daymaker nonprofit that also works with Small Bites in Atlanta.

 

Small Bites has been sending kids from The Hand, Heart & Soul Project their Taste Test Boxes for classrooms during the pandemic. “Small Bites helps kids appreciate where their food comes from. So often kids grow up to only have appreciation for their Nike shoes, but these kits help kids have appreciation for the soil and where their food comes from. It really engages families and kids on a different level.”

The US food system marginalizes and negatively impacts those growing up in poverty. “People eat what they have access to” as Laura Phillips, from I Grow Chicago, a Daymaker nonprofit partner said. More than 23.5 million Americans, including 6.5 million children live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than one mile from a supermarket with fresh produce. And the pandemic has shown the ways higher rates of infection from COVID-19 within black and brown communities in the United States stems from structural inequality within our neighborhoods and our food system.

Laura believes that these Farm-to-Home kits will be powerful for the kids that she works with everyday: “Kids want to play a part in the creation process. Having these kits will give kids agency in the creation process of the food that they are making. That will change a lot.”

Looking ahead

Just as Small Bites is fostering deeper relationships between kids, seeds, farmers and the earth, Daymaker hopes to foster connections between those giving and those receiving. If you donate a Farm-to-Home kit to a special kid on Daymaker this holiday season, you’ll get an update on how the Spring is going for that child during 2021, and you’ll have an opportunity to help the same child again during their back-to-school campaign. Daymaker is so excited to launch these kits as a way to help generate compassionate connections — connections between you, the children you’re supporting, and the seeds of life that can help lead to a healthy and flourishing future.

“You can’t educate to the head unless the body, the soul & the stomach are also taken care of”
Wande Okunoren-Meadows, Hand, Heart and Soul Project

Entrepreneur Name: Reginald Maisonneuve

Venture Name: Aegis LLC

Impact Focus Area(s): Financial & Economic Transformation for the consumer, enterprise & government.

Core areas include:

• Financial Health
• Affordable Housing
• Access to Capital: Consumer & micro & SMB
• Under/Un-banked
• Employee Financial Wellness

Business Stage: Startup

Year Venture Established: 2018

Business Type: LLC, a GA Corp., Haitian-American & US Veteran-owned.

The Issue

Social entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Tell us about the challenge you are focused on addressing and why it is critical that we make progress.

Increasing economic inequality and distress make clear that people across the globe lack the basic means to understand and navigate effectively through their economic landscapes. Enterprise and government are challenged by a lack of robust, high quality data and tools to drive deeper insights, stronger outcomes and higher performance. 

Our platform, Stance, was conceived and designed from inception to address this problem through innovation in visualization, economic modeling, and technology to serve people across the socio-economic, educational & cultural spectrum and enable responsible enterprise and government to serve them better and strengthen their own organizations through new service and business intelligence capabilities. Civil & democratic societies depend on addressing this problem to thrive.  That has never been clearer.

 

 

Your Journey

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires connections and support from a wide array of stakeholders across the ecosystem to help successfully identify, start, and grow a social enterprise.

As a businessperson and entrepreneur, I remain an engineer at heart. I like solving complex problems, bringing structure to chaos, and working with diverse individuals and organizations to make a meaningful and lasting impact. It’s been a theme in my career to be brought in to solve complex problems – sometime in extreme situations (like a coup d’état).  I’ve shown success in doing so.

I believe that if you’re creative, pragmatic and engaging enough, complex problems and challenges can be overcome. Being from Haiti, living and working in developed and developing countries, I want to demonstrate that businesses that help individuals and communities thrive, can also thrive. Achieving this would be deeply rewarding. It is core to Aegis’ genesis.

 

 

Why Georgia’s Social Impact Ecosystem Matters

Being an entrepreneur is hard and it’s even more challenging when you are a social entrepreneur as your business model and / or structure doesn’t follow the same path as traditional start-ups.

The challenge we have is in creating a new product category. Most products attack a symptom or one area impacting financial health, often times at the expense of another. We avoid this problem by clearly defining and quantifying the principal objective: advancing the financial health (i.e., the economic viability & strength of a consumer, household or community) and giving people and serving organizations the means to put it effectively to use. This approach allows us to tackle problems of increasing urgency in our society and of strategic importance to enterprise and government … using the same platform.

We have found that much of the ecosystem is focused on one element of the puzzle. Our platform, Stance, serves as an integrating fabric. Stance, coupled to our expertise in enterprise transformation, enables innovation in services, new levels of service and operating performance, while giving consumers new means to get and stay ahead. We are seeking and need partners and investors to fulfill our mission.

 

Interested in learning more, please visit:

• Twitter: @AegisStance
• Website: www.aegisllc.io
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginaldmaisonneuve

 

Your business looks beyond a P&L statement for this week, this month and even this quarter, because you know that the social impact evolves and pays back over the long term. You know you and your business are doing the right thing for the right reason. Kind of like financial karma.  

Imagine if that holistic wisdom and company culture you have for your finances were applied to healthcare.

Yes, the healthcare system is terribly broken. It’s expensive. It’s complex. It’s not transparent. It’s enraging. It’s hard to know who to trust. You know financial incentives aren’t aligned when it’s cheaper to buy a medication with cash than with your insurance plan’s discount, and when it’s cheaper and faster to have a 3-minute conversation with you doctor but you’re told you must drive to and sit in the doctor’s office to have that 3-minute conversation.

You don’t have to imagine such a holistic solution. It exists, and a few brokers and agencies are on the forefront of enabling the transformation.

And isn’t the reason you don’t know about this holistic solution the same reason more people don’t know about B Corp and B Local Georgia? Too many people believe “you either make money or you can do good.” In healthcare, you either spend less money or provide better access and better care. Both of these, however, are false dichotomies.

To have your company and your employees’ best interest in mind, look for health plans with the following cost-containment strategies

• Return premiums if the employees have a healthy year
  • You can use returned funds to help your company and/or return it to the employees
• Encourage price transparency, similar to nearly all other consumer transactions
  • Help your employees make better decisions
• Reward behaviors that lead to price stability
• Consider the role of primary care
  • It’s called “primary” for a reason. While your plan should not require a referral from a primary care physician for specialist care or imaging, 24/7 access to primary care reduces the dependence on Urgent Care and expensive Emergency Room/Emergency Department visits.
• Don’t be restricted by in- and out-of-network doctors and facilities
  • Again, the idea is to let you and your employees be responsible consumers instead of accepting an opaque system of costs. You select your doctor. Your doctor may have advice. Your family and friends may have advice. There is online information. Shouldn’t you be allowed to decide who takes care of you instead of a team of profit-oriented insurance administrators creating a limited network of providers?

It can be that simple.

Yes, but while the concept of price transparency and having the doctor/patient control the care instead of the insurance carrier is simple, the execution is not.  

What if people have pre-existing conditions? What’s considered affordable? Can I keep our same pediatrician? What if I have an emergency out-of-town? Prescription medications seem really, really expensive without a “Cadillac insurance plan?” BTW: Why is a “wellness exam” only once a year when my dentist does preventative care twice or thrice a year?

That’s what we do. We educate, we expose, and we guide you. Your decision making then becomes simple.

To take control:

• Define your requirements for a good solution, including: 
  • What you like about your current (or past) plans and what you don’t like
  • Who is included (employees, dependents, 1099 contractors)
  • What you can afford monthly
  • What your employees can afford monthly
  • Your level of acceptance for innovation and change
• Invite an initial consultation to review your requirements
  • Compare to what you have
• Obtain initial proposals (the plans’ features and rates)
  • Tweak the benefits to your budget
• If you make the shift, then monitor with your broker at least quarterly your actual costs and employee engagement

Intentionally different healthcare. Are you and your budget ready for better and smarter?

 

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Intentionally different. Because the healthcare system is horribly broken, we help you explore options that shift the control from the insurance carrier to you (and your doctors). We educate. We guide. We incentivize. We simplify. We stabilize. We integrate.  And we provide ongoing support. Your result is lower premiums, lower out-of-pocket annual spending, better access to healthcare, and happier and more productive employees.

Decided you’ve had enough and want something better? Let’s talk about our “I’ve Had Enough” plans. Contact Hal Schlenger at [email protected], 770-335-0077, www.GreatSouthBenefits.com

 

September 2, 2020

August 27, 2020

By: Brent Macon, Chief Partnerships Officer

 

At its heart, Daymaker is a compassion platform. We believe that giving expands our capacity to love one another while transferring resources so that every kid can develop into a life of physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. 

Our product has historically helped companies run seasonal giving campaigns like Back to School and Holidays that enable employees to empower kids in their local communities by donating gifts and much needed supplies. We fulfill those gifts in partnership with high-impact 501(c)3 nonprofit partners serving children who lack access to resources. The hallmark of Daymaker is that it is personally connective. Donors give to a specific child whose story they get to learn about, developing a sense of kinship as they share love and resources. 

We believe we are all connected in our shared humanity, and our team has been looking for ways to deepen the support we offer to the wonderful children on our platform. These kids often lack access to the tools and experiences needed to thrive, through no fault of their own. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) compound the developmental challenges. The pain and tragedy of systemic racism and the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on marginalized communities have made the need for equity conversations more clear and more pressing. 

Starting with our back-to-school campaign that is currently live, Daymaker is announcing the ‘Receiver’s Journey’ element of our platform – a shift towards making a long-term commitment to the kids and nonprofits on our platform, with expanded ways for donors to support and empower the children they give to. 

We’ve asked our nonprofit partners to make a commitment to have kids on the platform for 3 or more years. Donors will still give during seasonal giving campaigns, but they’ll see expanded wishlist items and the opportunity to help with more holistic interventions in addition to one-off gifts and supplies. For our back to school campaign, that means we have standard school supply kits, but have also added face masks, books celebrating diverse heroes, and ‘Daymaker Discover Bundles’ that come once a month over the course of the fall and keep kids engaged and inspired. Longer-term, we plan to help with things like consistent access to counseling and healthy meal kits.  

See below for example of current wishlist:

Givers will be able to support the same kid over multiple campaigns, donating alongside their teammates and creating a sense of longitudinal connection.  This shift will offer children more sustainable, consistent, and reliable support from people in their community, fostering a more inclusive and cohesive space for them to develop and grow as human beings.  

To make this change, we’ve worked with each of our nonprofit partners to identify fit with this new model and determine the unique needs of each community during this 2020 back to school season.  During one of those conversations, a nonprofit leader said something that has resonated with us ever since: “Sustained support from outside the home would’ve changed the whole story that it was me against the world.”

We are hopeful that these changes to the Daymaker product will bring more light and love into both the giver and the receiver’s experience, because the shared journey of giving is the foundation for a healthy, vibrant community.  We know there are challenges in every community, but together, we can help tell a new story. 

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Daymaker is a benefit corporation with central operations in Atlanta; to participate in the current ‘Hope at Home’ campaign, please visit our Daymaker ‘Friends and Family’ campaign page.  If you are interested in turning on a giving page for your company for the Holiday campaign, please reach out to Brent Macon, [email protected].