Tony J. Wang
I am a Taiwanese American currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I graduated from Stanford University in 2007, where I studied philosophy and economics and wrote my honors thesis within the Ethics in Society program. I currently work for Blueprint Research & Design, a strategy consulting firm in the field of philanthropy. Previously, I was a research assistant at the Hewlett Foundation.
I believe that both philanthropy and capitalism are about to change rather dramatically in the next twenty years. I believe foundations will increasingly leverage investments in addition to grants as part of their philanthropic strategy while businesses will find ever more creative ways of addressing social problems while earning profit for their employees and investors. At the root of poverty and inequality, I believe that education and efficient markets are the keys to improving the position of the least well off in society.
This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
October 13, 2008 at 6:34 am
Dear Tony, I have been most interested in your postings on social edge and here on your own blog.
In the work that you have done so far, have you looked in to the non profit distributing arts and cultural sector at all? I ask this as my work here in the UK is focusing on helping non-profit distributing arts and cultural organisations evolve their business model. In the next stage of our work we will be looking at exploring the evolution of some kind of new/adapted metrics around cultural return on investment as we don’t really feel that SROI as currently presented is quite doing the trick for us. There are very few economists remotely interested in this topic here in the UK so I’m keen to see if there is anyone out there who is!
With best wishes
Clare
October 13, 2008 at 8:19 am
Hi Clare,
Thanks for the comment! I personally haven’t done any arts and cultural work, but Stephanie Gillis, another consultant at the consulting firm that I work for, Blueprint Research and Design (http://www.blueprintrd.com), has done a lot of consulting work for arts and cultural organizations. Her email is stephanie AT blueprintrd DOT com and she probably knows a lot more about the topic than I do – though I imagine few economists/metrics people in the US, like in the UK, have done a lot of work in the area.
Cheers,
Tony
October 29, 2008 at 3:58 am
Tony, I very much enjoyed your comments on http://www.socialedge.com about Perseverance vs Stubborness .
I would like to invite you to my thrice weekly motivational quotes on the Pure Moxie du Jour, http://www.PMdJ.com
I am inviting, entrepreneurial, motivated, and thinking people to the list. I have been doing this for 3 years now, and have about 183 readers worldwide, and best of all I have had about a 95% retention rate.
Consider yourself invited.
Thank you,
Steve T.
March 9, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Hello Tony,
I just attended a fascinating social entrepreneur conference at Brown this past weekend, which got me to thinking about the possibilities of communal sourcing via Twitter and Blogging. This led me to searching for social enterprise blogs on-line, and subsequently to your blog. I found your reflections on letting go of well-intended projects to be insightful. I also appreciated your comments regarding non-profit compensation. In my work at Artists For Humanity (AFH’s site: http://www.afhboston.com), I’ve considered many of the questions and issues you blog about. AFH is a social entrepreneur group, focusing on sustainable, youth arts programs that offers paid apprenticeships to teens in the Boston area. I am also myself an artist/entrepreneur with socially-conscious intent, and would like to be in touch about further ideas regarding the field of social enterprise. Cheers!
March 11, 2009 at 4:35 am
Dear Tony,
I found you on socialedge’s blog this evening and have since read your entire blog. I think maybe we should talk…
I am the Founder of a start-up organization called The Ayllu Initiative. The second paragraph of your bio caught my breath, because it is so in line with what we do.
Ayllu targets the emerging social enterprise market, seeking to substantiate it within the larger economy. We aspire to work with East African young adults to start social enterprises in their communities. We aim to tip local social enterprise markets through access to global information, capital, and networks. To achieve this we aim to work with young adults (under age 30), who make up the majority of most developing country populations, but are mostly unemployed. We will work with them run or work for social enterprises that address social or environmental problems. Our criteria is that the product or service has to add social value: examples are selling water purification technologies, solar-powered lights, or starting tree farms for reforestation.
If this is something that interests you, please be in touch!
- Melissa
March 12, 2009 at 12:42 am
Hi Quyen,
It’s amazing to hear that Brown recently had a social entrepreneurship conference – it wasn’t so long ago when there were only a few universities with enough critical mass to support social entrepreneurship – and now, you’d have to have been asleep at the wheel to have never have heard the term.
Would love to hear more about what you’re up to and what you’re thinking about doing in the future. Let’s chat more via email.
Cheers,
Tony
March 12, 2009 at 1:07 am
Hi Melissa,
I am quite impressed and find it remarkable that you’ve read my entire blog (and found it through socialedge no less!). The Internet has done a lot to bring about more interconnectedness in the world and I wonder if Kevin Bacon’s theory of six degrees has maybe shrunk to five..
Let’s talk more via e-mail – it’s hard for me to evaluate the merits of The Ayllu Initiative from just your website but I’m always happy to help when I can.
Cheers,
Tony