Modern Do-Gooders
March 21st, 2008
David Brooks presents a spot-on description of the modern social entrepreneur in “Thouroughly Modern Do-Gooders”, painting an accurate picture of the backgrounds, methodologies, and drive behind today’s new breed of social activist…
“The people who fit into this category tend to have plenty of résumé bling. Bill Drayton, the godfather of this movement, went to Harvard, Yale, Oxford and McKinsey before founding Ashoka, a global change network. Those who follow him typically went to some fancy school and then did a stint with Teach for America or AmeriCorps before graduate school. Then, they worked for a software firm before deciding to use what they’d learned in business to help the less fortunate.
Earlier generations of benefactors thought that social service should be like sainthood or socialism. But this one thinks it should be like venture capital…
The venture-capital ethos means instead that these social entrepreneurs are almost willfully blind to ideological issues. They will tell you, even before you have a chance to ask, that they are data-driven and accountability-oriented. They’re always showing you multivariate regressions or explaining why some promising idea “didn’t pencil out.”
In classic Brook’s Bobos in Paradise fashion, he also calls out a more restrained sense of external identification amongst this new generation of social entrepreneurs…
These thoroughly modern do-gooders dress like venture capitalists. They talk like them. They even think like them. That means that aside from the occasional passion for heirloom vegetables, they are not particularly crunchy. They don’t wear ponytails, tattoos or Birkenstocks. They don’t devote any energy to countercultural personal style, unless you consider excessive niceness a subversive fashion statement.
Brooks portrait is in many ways inspiring and the power of bringing market oriented solutions to global problems is undeniable, yet I do wonder if we will be doing so by sacrificing passion. When he depicts the generation as “willfully blind to ideological issues” he does so as a compliment to our practicality, but by trading the irrational and helpful commitment that comes only from ideological drive do we risk burning out when our quantitatively and economically derived solutions do not pan out fast enough? I certainly do not have the answer, but I believe it is important question for us to ask ourselves.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:22 am
Interesting question. I think it depends. From my experience, there are at least two brands of Brooks’ modern do-gooder. There’s the young idealist who in the past would have gone to work for a non-profit, likely become frustrated and disillusioned and ultimately feel ineffective and move to the private sector. A growing number of these young idealists are realizing the power of business and science to address social problems and they are bypassing the traditional nonprofit career and forging their own path - going to work for hybrid non/for-profit organizations or creating their own. Because the intersection of business and traditionally nonprofit endeavors is still in its incipient stage, it remains to be seen whether the idealistic do-gooder will forge on. But my hunch is that they know what they are in for and are much less likely to abandon their passion and give up if results don’t come quick enough. They are determined, entrepreneurial and offer the greatest hope to effectively marry passion and common sense.
I would say the second brand of modern do-gooder is the mid-level or senior executive (or wealthy individual who’s made their money . . . in technology) who, after achieving success in their chosen profession, decides to commit their money, time and business acumen to solving social ills. I suspect there’s a greater risk that this brand of do-gooder would burn out. They are so used to success that when they begin tackling problems where success is difficult to achieve (and even more difficult to measure) they may quickly become frustrated.
But perhaps this is just a biased perspective of someone who considers herself part of the first brand.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Interesting!
I think there is actually a third brand as well that is a class of young entrepreneurs who see societal problems as massive market opportunities. These are folks who are driven to put large amounts of capital to work, to profit (perhaps substantially), and who view the reform of sectors like education, healthcare, and energy as both altruistic and highly profitable. In my opinion, the success of this brand of entrepreneur will be the most telling in terms of whether traditional aid and development models can really be broken on a large scale in favor of market-based mechanisms.