Innovative Southern California Businesses Address Homelessness

credit:

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."

Read the Entire Article

A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.

How's Your Community Doing?
Check Out it's
Community Vital Signs

Kannada Koota New York Is Reshaping Diaspora Experience: Badari Ambatti

Badari Ambatti and his wife, Roopa Hhaprakash, moved from Bengaluru, India, to Garden City Park in New York about 10 years ago, and since then, they've made a home for themselves and their daughter,...more

Australian Entrepreneur Hailed for Cleaning Philippines' Trash-Strewn River €“ but Will It Last?

"People used to go swimming in it, and then how grateful [they] are for the work that we're doing in conjunction with the government and other organizations," Mike Smith tells This Week in...more

Is Your Money Supporting Your Values? This Philly Nonprofit Helps Investments Work for Good

"No matter how hard we work, until we get our capital aligned, we're not going to fix the problems," Cory Donovan, executive director of ImpactPHL, tells Technical.ly. That's why the nonprofit in...more

Penn State'S College of Agricultural Sciences Honors Outstanding Alumni

Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences recently honored three of its alumni with 2024 Outstanding Alumni Awards.Vijay Nandula, of Overland Park, Kansas, was this year's recipient of the...more

Starting with Place

If you're looking for a way to boost your community's sense of place, researchers at Gustavson University in Sweden have just the thing. They've developed a set of five principles that community...more

Changemakers Are Flocking to the New World of Eu Innovation
Foundation: Changemakers

The US may be the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide, but the European Union is No. 1 when it comes to researching and developing green technologies. In fact, the EU is No. 1 when it...more

Strengthening Climate Finance Delivery: The Path from Brazil'S G20 Presidency to Cop30

When Brazil takes over the presidency of the G20 in 2024, it will be the first country to do so from the developing world. But a new report from the Chatham House think tank warns that Brazil...more

California Doubles Down on Paid Service to Meet California's Workforce Needs

When Josh Fryday joined the California Service Corps as a 17-year-old high school senior, he never imagined he'd end up as the state's chief service officer. But that's about to change. The...more

Navigating The Data Deluge: Privacy, Ai Governance, And The Future Of Innovation

Google has a new privacy-related headache to deal with: its own self-driving car. In a blog post, the company explains that it plans to start testing its own self-driving car in the US next year,...more

Preparing Leaders for Sustainable and Equitable Business

If you work for one of the world's biggest companies, there's a good chance you've never heard of social enterprise. That's the concept of "social, social, and governance" that focuses on...more