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4 Innovators Using Civic Consumption to Change the World

by Will Byrne | ashoka | Ashoka UK
Thursday, 29 May 2014 18:02 GMT

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

You’ve heard about disruptive new businesses popping up across the country. Well known examples of the sharing economy—Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit—are taking center stage and challenging business as usual.

In the sharing economy, sometimes referred to as collaborative consumption, rather than owning, people are sharing, renting, and bartering access in a peer-to-peer marketplace. They are democratizing the system and increasing access to the desirable goods and services that people want. It’s an exciting trend, and technology is propelling it faster than I can keep up, but it isn’t the only disruptive model changing the way we consume. And as of now, it hasn’t been applied to democratize access to the goods and services that people—low-income people and disadvantaged communities in particular—truly need.

What you may not have heard about is an innovative new model that social entrepreneurs are using to address some of today’s biggest social challenges, particularly around issues of equity and access.

Taking lessons from movements like collaborative consumption, these industry leaders are taking a market-based approach to social impact. They’re pooling shared buying power across communities—cities, neighborhoods, organizations—and leveraging that power to drive increased access to essential goods and services, while rewarding businesses that prioritize social and sustainable practices. At Groundswell, we call it Civic Consumption.

Civic Consumption is not just about decreasing costs or reducing consumption, though they are often benefits. Instead, it’s about tapping into the power of groups, because together, we have power. We have the power to reward businesses that are doing the greatest good. We have the power to reduce prices on things people need to survive and thrive, reduce inequity, and expand the marketplace to include underserved areas.

At Groundswell, we’ve been using Civic Consumption to pool communities’ buying power to drive increased access to clean energy. We combine the purchasing power of people and organizations—nonprofits, small businesses, faith-based organizations, and schools. The power of the group incentivizes renewable energy suppliers to provide their best prices and offer fair contracts. We then help those people and organizations make the switch to clean energy.

Our goal is to strengthen communities, address inequity, and increase sustainability on the local level. Though we’re a nonprofit, we’re proud to be on the cutting edge of embracing a market-based model for social impact. By helping people leverage their collective buying power, we’ve been able to complete over ${esc.dollar}{esc.dollar}10 million in clean energy projects. We’re particularly proud of the work we’ve done to help mission-based organizations that serve low-income areas to lower their utility bills and put that money towards their important missions. In total, we’ve helped save communities more than ${esc.dollar}{esc.dollar}2 million.

We’re not alone in using Civic Consumption to address some of today’s most important social issues, but we need even more innovators to embrace the model as a new framework for social change. Let me introduce you to four leaders who are applying Civic Consumption to create lasting impact by rethinking how people access health care, broadband, healthy food, and books.

  1. Freelancers Union. As founder and Executive Director, as well as the CEO of the social-purpose Freelancers Insurance Company (FIC), Sara Horowitz (@Sara_Horowitz) has been helping independent workers solve their problems for nearly two decades. Freelancers Union connects the nation’s 42 million independent workers to group-rate benefits, resources, community, and political action. In 2009, Freelancers Union launched Freelancers Insurance Company to bring together New York’s self-employed workers as a group and create access to high-quality, affordable, and tailored health benefits. FIC now covers more than 26,000 New Yorkers and has kept premiums unchanged for three straight years. The power of the group also allowed Freelancers Union to open a 7,000-sq. ft. “freelancer hall” in Brooklyn last year, anchored by a no-co-pay primary care practice exclusively for its members. The hall hosts free yoga, acupuncture, education, and networking events. Freelancers Union is opening another hall in Lower Manhattan in January.
  2. EveryoneOn. CEO Zach Leverenz (@ZachLeverenz) is leading a national nonprofit working to eliminate the digital divide. Through unprecedented public-private partnerships with Internet, hardware, and software providers, EveryoneOn is working to bridge the digital divide by offering access to low-cost, high-speed home Internet and computers. By prequalifying 14,000 zip codes with an annual median household income below ${esc.dollar}{esc.dollar}35,000, EveryoneOn leverages the market power of 60 million Americans to engage private and public partners alike to achieve digital inclusion and the correlated social outcomes for education, employment, health, and civic engagement.
  3. First Book. Ashoka Board Member Kyle Zimmer, president and CEO, has led the fastest-growing and largest network serving children in need. First Book is putting new books in the hands of the children who need them most. By combining the purchasing power of schools and nonprofits, First Book has pioneered groundbreaking channels to provide new books and educational resources at deeply reduced prices. The First Book Marketplace offers high-quality new books at prices 50 to 90% below retail cost and works with more than 90 leading publishers. To date, First Book has distributed more than 100 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the United States and Canada.
  4. Common Market. As Co-Founder and Co-Director, Haile Johnston has built a social enterprise that works in the Delaware Valley to strengthen regional farms while making the local bounty accessible to communities and the institutions that serve them. By aggregating demand and providing the distribution infrastructure, they connect schools, hospitals, grocery stores, and workplaces with products from regional farms. Common Market purchases from nearly 90 growers and processors and delivers six days a week to almost 200 public and private schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, workplaces, grocery stores, nonprofits, and faith institutions throughout the Delaware Valley.

 

Civic Consumption isn’t limited to health care, healthy food, clean energy, broadband, or books. It can be applied across sectors and will continue to disrupt our economy in a new way—one that uses the power of people coming together to make lasting impact that can meet our 21st century challenges.

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