GiveBackHack In Action - Launching Social Impact

Adam Morris: Welcome to People Helping People, the podcast help social entrepreneurs build a stronger business and have a greater impact. ⁓ your host, Adam Morris. ⁓ today I'm talking about something near and dear to my heart, GiveBackHack in action. GiveBackHack is an organization here in Columbus, that's near and to my heart because it was one of my first direct experiences of ⁓ understanding what like be a social entrepreneur. what it actually means to build a business that has a social impact. me, I showed up at weekend with an idea and I walked away with a team and a business and an approach for it to actually get a social enterprise off the ground. Something that ran for a few years until we hit the pandemic, after which, I've gotten more involved in GiveBackHack as a facilitator and organizer. And I just seen this process work to help launch new ideas into the world really well. And I want to share that process with you. GiveBackHack itself started back in 2015 the founder, Suzy Bureau And ⁓ at the she was facilitating these startup weekend events. If you haven't heard of startup weekend, it's kind of the classic weekend hackathon, right? Techies come in on Friday night, pitch an idea for an app, spend ⁓ the weekend building that and seeing how much they get done. And then getting some judging and awarding at the So, Suzy was going through that and was like, "Hey, listen, these apps aren't going anywhere. They're not really launching new business ideas." And she wanted to change the format in a way that would launch businesses that had a social impact, but actually get things off the ground and running. So, she was in a hot tech startup at the time CoverMyMeds ⁓ and wanted to apply best practice from the technology industry to the hackathon. And so they came up with this methodology of kind of applied design thinking and brought that magic in to help entrepreneurs. Now, I think design thinking is kind of a fun, sexy term, but its core, it's really taking a look at an idea that you have. And instead of just being like, all right, what's my solution? Let's go build it and then let's go test it in the world. It's changing the thinking to say, hey, here's my idea. assumptions am I making about it? And then how can I test that those assumptions are true or false? And test it by talking to people, actually having conversations, doing some customer learning. And think that's just a novel idea for a lot of budding entrepreneurs where it's like, "Hey, here's how I actually get information in order to develop products that help me develop a solid business." I think when GiveBackHack started, they really wanted to incorporate this essence that, you're not going to build an entire business in a weekend. But if you can get the right people together, then you can get the momentum to actually get off the ground and start going in the right direction. And you can do that through this process, right? So people come into an event, and there's usually a period of pitching ideas of like saying, "All right, here's the idea I want to work on." And then they form teams around those ideas and they flash out like, all right, "Here's the core essence of my idea." And they break it down. Like, you know, there's an exercise of like going in and what assumptions you're making about your idea that, you think necessary in order for it to work. And by assumptions, you're always making right? You're assuming that ⁓ one, you have problem that needs solving. Two, you're assuming that your solution is going to actually fix the problem. is that exists a customer that you can find a target that they'll actually pay you money for your solution. So you can have assumptions around the importance of your problem, around the solution that you have, around the target audience that you're trying to reach, and their willingness pay. Now with a social enterprise, you also have this whole range assumptions around the impact that you're making, right? That your idea of how you're going to deliver that impact, whether it's through money or through hiring people or through awareness, is actually going to solve the problem, right? So you have both these assumptions about your business model and these assumptions about your impact model, all woven into one. So it's kind of fun. It adds a lot of extra constraints. But throughout the weekend, once you've identified these assumptions, you spend some time on how can I validate this? For me, I talk about validating all the time and it's just like, what that means to me is, okay, you're gonna go out and get information from the real world, usually by talking to people. This usually means like, you have to go find somebody who is in the market, who is your target audience or the person that you're trying to impact. And you're gonna talk to them in a way that pulls out information that answers some of these assumptions, understanding what their problem is. whether your solution is the right ⁓ fit. Now, this year I have been going on and on about The Mom Test. I love this book ⁓ by Rob Fitzpatrick because he really lays out, here's how you can talk to customers in a way where don't just give you generic advice. And the premise of this Mom Test book is like, if you went and spoke to your mom about an entrepreneurial idea that you had, she'd probably say, "Yeah, I love it. I think that's great. It's fantastic." and it would tell you nothing about what you actually need to do. But the book lays out, "Hey, here's how you can structure conversations to understand somebody's experience." And from that experience, you can look for signals whether or not your idea lines up to that. if you think about how this GiveBackHack process works, ⁓ identify here's what their assumptions are, and then they're typically coming with surveys ⁓ or a couple people that they can talk to ⁓ that are in their target market, asking them deep ⁓ questions, and then incorporating that feedback back in. So it's this is design thinking, right? You come up with idea, you brainstorm for a bit, then you go out and you try to test it. The final piece is how do you integrate that back? How do you take the information you got and actually learn something from it and adapt what you've come up with? Because if you're not adapting and you're just "Yep, my idea is great because I talked to so-and-so", you're probably not learning. You should always be shifting your idea and changing direction of the feedback from world that you're getting. Because it's that feedback which gives you a better picture of how to show up, how to speak the language of the customer that you're trying to help. So the whole arc of the GiveBackHack experience is kind of this design thinking process. And I've seen it over and over again where teams come together like people who've never met each other before. And by the end of the weekend, ⁓ they enough to say, "Yeah, hey, here's how I could get to the next point in my business. Test the next thing. Here's what I need feedback on now after my initial start." And once that really come together on that, get businesses up and running. And we've seen it time and again. We've had a number of businesses come out. very excited to say, like, we have a very strong ecosystem for social entrepreneurship here in Columbus. ⁓ when you look at it, teams come out of GiveBackHack and they go into this 14-week accelerator that we have called SEA Change. And SEA Change a 14-week boot kind of your typical ⁓ entrepreneurship accelerator, so that it's designed for social impact businesses. So they give a lot of extra support keeping in mind, "Here's the community resources that you need to be put in touch with in order to really develop out your business model, develop out your financial model, develop out your social impact model." and get to those of first ⁓ sales that you have. ⁓ I think when you have a system where people can jump in and get support in those early stages, it's really powerful for getting people off the ground. Because it's kind of like when you plant a seed, right? Say you plant the seed of an oak tree, and it comes out, and it's this little bud that's poking through the ground. It's very easy to get trampled on or eaten by an animal. And it's really hard to keep secure. So you have to build a nice little fence around it, water it properly, give it the right support so that it can grow. At some point it keeps growing into this big, huge tree and nothing's going to knock it down because it's that momentum. But in those early stages, you really need to water it and give it that support in order for it to grow. At a recent GiveBackHack event, we a participant come through. Karen brought in this research idea. It's called Pair to Care, where she had done a lot of research with Black caregivers taking care of elderly parents or other people and needing special support. And she already had some research into this from her role. but she spent the weekend working with a team and really kind of validating it further of what a business model might look like. Now, after GiveBackHack, ⁓ typically run a mastermind in the spring for social entrepreneurs. So she came into that mastermind and was really kind of early stages, right? But going out and talking to people, having conversations with the city, looking for grant and finding other ways to actually ⁓ get her idea in practice and looking for ways where she could get her idea off the ground. And it was fun watching over the cohort of this mastermind group her going out and actually having conversations with the city, ⁓ to propose contracts, getting very positive feedback back and then also getting really feedback on grant approval. She's a nonprofit, ⁓ I would say about a third of our enterprises in GiveBackHack are nonprofits. The rest are for-profits. But she ended being in really good place to go after that. she's going into SEA Change And so I'm just really excited to see her get off the ground. But seen this kind of methodology again, where people in and they have an idea or they've done some research or, you know, they want to do something. But on their own, they really struggle. coming in to GiveBackHack, you connect with other people in the community. People with a technology background, a design background, the business background, maybe they're social workers and they're connected to a certain area of town. And it's this diverse pool of people coming together who, if you asked them on the street, are you an entrepreneur? They'd probably be like, "No, that's not for me." But together, yeah, they actually fill in the gaps and they realize, "Yeah, we can do this as a team." That's about what I look like from my own experience. So when we launched Wild Tiger Tees, I had started my podcast, People Helping People, I had an interview with Ann Bishop, who was the CEO the Star House. And when was talking to her, I really fell in love with this facility. Now, the Star House is a drop-in center for youth experiencing homelessness. given year, they get maybe 1,500 ⁓ youth through door. And one thing that Ann had expressed was this desire to build up a work program inside their facility that could give some basic experience to the youth that were coming in. And that was my idea that I went to GiveBackHack with. I was like, I want to start a company that employs youth who are experiencing homelessness. I have a partner who said they're willing to let me kind of run a test program inside their doors. By the end of the weekend, we had a team. We had an idea of running the screen printing t-shirt business where we'd go out and get community t-shirt orders, teach these how to screen print, pay them for the work that they were doing, and then... grow our business inside the Star House. And we got to the point at the end of the weekend where it's like, yeah, we had a very good idea if here's how we're going to test this. we started ⁓ ⁓ and test runs and with the youth. And we had a really diverse team, which was really fun, who had different skills graphic design and working with students in school, ⁓ understanding to ⁓ best them and nurture them and give them feedback. ⁓ It's exciting kind of seeing entrepreneurship in practice, like what it meant to actually run a business. I think quite often we don't think of ourselves as entrepreneurs life hasn't presented us that opportunity. But going through it on myself, was like, okay, no, this is what it means. And soon as I saw like, here's what you do in order to be an entrepreneur. Like ⁓ agency has stuck with me. Like now know I can go out and start a business because of ⁓ what done through GiveBackHack. Which is really exciting. It's like, hey, we're not limited to just going out and getting a job and working for somebody else. We can actually create new things, work together with our people in our community to live life in a different way that builds connection and trust and lifts everyone up. What I love about GiveBackHack is it attracts a whole wide range of people. I still feel inspired. Wesley's been coming GiveBackHack for many, many years. And ⁓ he's this technology guy knows to vibe code like crazy. Like he's been vibe coding since before that was a thing. And he has a special ability to sit down, have a gist of an idea, and spin up a prototype. He's the kind of guy that could go to a startup weekend event come with a fantastic app all on his own with his eyes closed and one hand on the keyboard. But think there's a lesson to be learned from how he shows up because it's like he makes something that's fast and scrappy and real, but it's not like designing the perfect system. It's this approach of like, how can I get something together in just a couple hours, ⁓ it in front of somebody and get their feedback? And if you talk to him, he has this great mind ⁓ looking through, "Hey, what are the assumptions I need to validate?" I do this sometimes when I'm stuck, I'll sit down with Wesley and an idea off it. And he'll make a little chart of like, all right, ⁓ know, what needs to be true in order to make this happen. And it's always humbling when it's like you teach design thinking and somebody like, you know, ⁓ you in the hot seat and you're like, okay, I need to think about this and do this. But I think having that energy of people who show up and they're like, "Yes, here's how you can look at, you know, this business idea differently." The questions that you need to ask, just from different perspectives in that group, you start to get real change that happens, real ⁓ of new ideas that come to the surface. ⁓ that's where life gets really exciting. Another participant at a recent GiveBackHack was Leah with Hunger Helper. And here an AmeriCorps volunteer. She's working in the city. Like she's doing great community work and she saw need for ⁓ the way resources being accessed by the individuals she's working with. And what I loved how showed up to GiveBackHack was like, "Hey, we know there's a problem because we're experiencing it firsthand in the work that we're doing in the community." We don't know what the right solution is. Now, the team they put together, like none of them were the people who were experiencing the problem that she serves, right? So they can have a hypothesis around like, here's the best way to solve this. But they have no direct experience, so they're biased by their own life situation. they went out and they went into a homeless shelter, they went into a... kind of another facility, and they were talking to people the ground about what their experience was in accessing resources in Columbus. And they learned some really interesting things from that. I remember ⁓ learned that quite often they go ⁓ a place and ⁓ has like this piece of paper with like, here are the resources in town, ⁓ at it. And they're like, OK, great. I need help with food or with laundry or with health. And they call the number on the list. it's like the place is closed because it's only open for two hours on a Tuesday. It doesn't fit into their schedule. So like, how do they access services when they need them? And then ultimately, that piece of paper gets lost and thrown away. And then what do they do? They have to wait until they can go back into the ⁓ agency get another piece of paper. And so it was just this experience of like they were learning by going out and talking to the people that experienced the problem and understanding what their experience was with that. Usually when we have a problem in our life that is significant enough that we care, we do something about it. And so you're never really going to solve the problem for somebody else if you haven't experienced it yourself, they've probably thought of all the things that first come to your mind. People are pretty smart at the end of the day. ⁓ But where the value comes in is if you can see what they've tried, how they've experienced it, it probably triggers something in your mind of like, hey, here's how I would do it differently. And given all these different things that somebody's tried, like, maybe there's something from your experience that you have to offer. And that's where the magic of this design thinking and this GiveBackHack experience come in. It's around these conversations which ⁓ really us share our and help drive forward. One thing I've learned from all of this. is that, yeah, GiveBackHack on the surface. It's about businesses that a social impact, building social enterprises, teaching design thinking. But you step back that ⁓ and look at the deeper of what's going on, it's making us better communicators. It's us build connections with people from different backgrounds or across socioeconomic boundaries. It's a space where people can be I think that's one of the greatest gifts that we have in life, when we can really listen to somebody else. I've been reflecting recently on how quickly things have been speeding up just with the advent of AI. just seems to get faster and faster and faster. And I read an article recently that explained why this is happening and what it actually looks like. I was drawing the analogy where the TV took 75 years to go from ⁓ to whatever, 100 million ⁓ When ChatGPT came out, ⁓ went from zero to 100 million users in a couple months. And the rate of change of AI. I talk about this a lot because I'm in technology. when I was ⁓ to vibe code in 2025, I was like, this stinks. I'm much better than AI. I I'm not going to waste my time ⁓ trying do something with AI and spending three hours where I can do it myself in 20 minutes. That's different this year. This year, it's like, no, I can actually explain clearly here's what I need to be done. And it goes and does it and it writes a test and test itself. Huge amount of change in the last year. if you look at that rate of change from last year in AI, I can only imagine where we're going to be a year from now or three years from now or ⁓ different everything's going to be in another five to 10 years. Things changing. Like that is a lot of significant change. As things speed up, it's harder for us to pay attention. It's harder for us to stay grounded. I think there's also just so much news of what's going on in the world. it's scary and it's ⁓ and it's front of our mind. Sometimes we lose track of like, what really matters? And if you step back, it's like the things that we really care about, they tend to be social desires, right? Things that are relationship driven, having good solid relationships. Maybe those are your like relationships or your friend relationships or your family relationships or your work relationships. ⁓ And there's social times that we have, the ways that we connect with each other. There's something in this work, that's come out of GiveBackHack, of creating where we have really authentic conversations. We're gonna pay attention to each other. It's one of groups that attracts a very diverse of people. And I think in that diversity, you start to learn something yourself. Like you show up and... Yeah, there's always something different about ourselves, but deep down, there's this common thread. You know, there's something in life that we're struggling with. And you start to see that in everybody. And you start to say, yeah, actually, there's also this joy for life, this joy of giving back and connecting over a higher purpose or coming together over something that means more than, you know, just being in a job and earning the money so you can buy groceries. And I think it's that space that leads to transformation. It's one of the reasons I really love GiveBackHack and the community around it. So what have I learned from watching teams over the years? Gosh, I've been GiveBackHacks since the pandemic. And I've seen get off the ground and grow a business. I've seen teams get off the stay alive for a couple years, and then get burnt out. And I think it's hard for people to get over that initial hurdle of earning enough revenue to be able to leave your day job and a social impact business full time. I've seen a challenge with social of selling, ⁓ going out actually getting people to them money. It's like there's this joy of showing up ⁓ to social impact where ⁓ You're volunteering, you're not having to knock on a door or make a sale. And that feels slightly uncomfortable to a lot of social entrepreneurs. I've seen that the GiveBackHack world attracts a breed of people who aren't your typical entrepreneurs. Like they're not the people who are like, I want to get an idea so that I can pitch it to a venture capitalist in three months. That's not who comes to GiveBackHack. They're people who are like, I care about this issue in my hometown and I want to make a difference. Yeah, I wouldn't think of myself as an entrepreneur, but yeah, okay, that's a way to solve it. I'll do it. And so these kind of unintentional entrepreneurs. I think it's really good because it brings in this extra creativity, but it also means that that natural business instinct of like, hey, do I have a good idea? Do I understand my target market? What their dream outcome is? And are they going to pay for it? If yeah, they're going to pay for it. How am I going to reach them and actually make that sale and make it easier for them to pay? Build that audience so that I can have a functioning business. If I look at what I've learned from some of the recent participants, Karen, like research became her product. So she was bringing what she already knew. Same with Leah, like she was there in the community. ⁓ She bringing something she knew from direct experience. If you don't have that direct experience, go volunteer. You ⁓ to an area of the city that's really struggling. Work with a nonprofit that, ⁓ you know, a little extra help. ⁓ And if you volunteer, see if you can volunteer on the front line where you're interacting with people who are experiencing a problem. Because then you really learn, know, the nitty gritty of like what they've tried, what they're going through, what their situation is. ⁓ you all this context for saying, "Hey, here's something I would like to try. It gives you an avenue of like, here's how I find the people I want to impact when I'm building a business." If I think about what I've learned from Wesley, it's almost that it's OK to build the scrappiest possible thing. Do it fast and get it in front of somebody so that you can learn something from them. This is design thinking on a whole. It's like, how can you always be getting feedback from your customers, people that are your stakeholders, and learning something that answers an assumption that you have? And not just affirming what you already know, but actually understanding somebody else's experience in a way that you make better decisions. I think if I look at Leah, one thing I've learned from her is like, it's not that hard to just get out the door and talk to somebody new. it feels a little ⁓ or uncomfortable, but people are usually very willing, especially if you're in that early stage and you're like, hey, I just want to figure something out. So. Thank you for to my episode about GiveBackHack in action and how it actually creates change in the world and how to a better social entrepreneur ⁓ when you're in beginning and you don't have a fully formed idea. And all, just remember that you're not alone. I think there's something you get to a GiveBackHack event and everybody just shows up at the same starting with an idea, that's enough to get started. But how do you move that idea forward in a practical way where you don't get hung up or stuck because you don't have enough time or resources? And that's where this approach really comes in and shines, helping you build those connections, have those conversations, and make something new. So thanks for listening to this episode of People Helping People. If you are launching a new social enterprise idea, reach out and talk to me. I work with social entrepreneurs all the time. I run a social impact mastermind group ⁓ social entrepreneurs at regular intervals, helping you connect with other people who are experiencing something similar to you. Thanks much for listening. Till next time. Cheers.