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According to a 2019 point-in-time count, there are more than 612 unsheltered homeless individuals in the Coachella Valley. A Southern California company, Renova Energy, has handed out a few dozen cell phone solar chargers to homeless individuals living in Sunrise Park in downtown Palm Springs to power their phones while living unsheltered so they can reach public safety, caseworkers, family members, doctors and friends.
Renova Energy CEO Vincent Battaglia believes that any business no matter how large or small has the responsibility to give back. And he's not alone.
Companies around the country are doing more to tackle homelessness. Some companies, like Microsoft, are providing loans for affordable housing in Seattle. Others are small start-ups like The Giving Keys, an L.A. jewelry company that hires homeless individuals, or Detroit's Empowerment Plan, which hires homeless women to sew jackets for people on the streets.
According to experts, there are several ways businesses can work toward being socially responsible: philanthropy, volunteering, using company skills to create human-centered products or services, or providing innovative opportunities for community members.
For any business wanting to be sustainable and mission-based, it needs to be innovative. Abby Fifer Mandell, a University of Southern California business professor and the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab director, requires the need for business models that are "financially sustainable, which means they have to be clever, creative and innovative, and are also digging deep on pressing problems by addressing long-term solutions."
Selected Grant News Headlines
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
If you're a teen in Lenawee County, Mich., and you love giving back to your community, you may want to consider becoming a member of the Lenawee YOUTH Council. The council, a program of the...more
Foundation: Whitefish Community Foundation
"But wait. We're not done yet." That was the message from Lois Davis, CEO of the Whitefish Community Foundation, as it handed out $520,300 in grants to 68 nonprofit organizations in the...more
It's that time of year again: time for investors to look back at the last presidential election and see if there's any correlation between it and the performance of the stock market. A Bloomberg...more
Foundation: Kellogg Foundation
For more than 30 years,Henrie Treadwell has been fighting for racial equity at the University of South Carolina, where she became the school's first black graduate since Reconstruction, the...more
If you're an employer looking to attract the next generation of workers, Entrepreneur has some advice: Get to know Gen Z. The list is based on a recent study of 11,495 high school students,...more
May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month, and all the major broadcast news networks are getting in on the fun. ABC News, for instance, will feature an...more
When Sharon Kotsonas moved from Puerto Rico to Gilbert, Ariz., 20 years ago, she didn't think much of the culture. "I was 19 when I moved," she tells the Gilbert Independent. "And then from...more
For nearly a decade, UNICEF has been working with women in the Ivory Coast to turn their plastic waste into bricks that can be used to build new schools. Now, the charity says, 383 classrooms...more
The UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability (EIIS) are holding a summit in Rome this week to discuss how innovation...more
If you're an artist trying to break into the music business, there's a good chance you've never heard of entertainment law. But if you're a law student at Mercer University in Georgia, you may...more
Social Entrepreneurship
Spotlight
Influencing Social Good Through Retail
When Hannah Davis traveled to China to teach English, she noticed how Chinese workers and farmers were often sporting olive green army-style shoes. Those shoes served as her inspiration to create her own social enterprise, Bangs Shoes.
