Discussion from Science for humanity website for all to see.

[Traidmark.org]

How to create a self funding organisation that solves human problems.

It would be great to hear about existing projects and way to create self sustaining organisations that use innovation to solve human problems.

Am working on a self sustaining enterprise that aims to provide the platform to empower young people to 'do good'. Would be great to chat more. Working site at www.FREEtraid.org but can message full details. We have a business structure that donates 100% net profit to invest in youth projects (ala Traidmark.org) and are looking for funding and partners with locations we can use. edwhyman at google mail
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Sawubona from KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

If you have the funding,possibly you can partner with the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Science & Technology Innovation Park(STIP),web http:stip.ukzn.ac.za

Please let me know what type of projects you have.
Thanks
Pravesh Moodley
Secretariat,STIP Steering Committee
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Permalink Reply by Allan William Ullman on 12 May 2009 at 8:02pm
The ideal situation would be to have an innovative product funded and marketed successfully, with all profits used to fund science for humanity ventures. This would achieve productivety in the richer Nations and funding would follow, the trick is getting the development funds in the first instance.
Taking this forward would need a secret millionaire to kickstart it, but alas there are very few willing to donate...Unless you are one reading this? In case you ask, an innovative product could be found in the patent office files there are plenty which may never see the light of day due to lack of initial development funding.
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Permalink Reply by Traidmark.org on 12 May 2009 at 8:44pm
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Pravesh and Allan

Thanks for the great information:)

We are working on a self funding cafe format that anyone can set up (with a basic cover site at ) http://openspacecafe.ning.com

Also check out http://www.traidmark.org which explains the benefit of donating net profit to fund future innovation:)
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Permalink Reply by Traidmark.org on 12 May 2009 at 8:54pm
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It would be great if it was possible to anyone to set up an enterprise though science 4 humanity too:)
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Permalink Reply by Richard Craig 15 minutes ago
Hi Ed

Great idea and something I've always been interested in. I did a quick poll of a group I was talking to ages ago to gage public reaction to a company that charged a little more (few %) that the competition but donated more/all profit to charity or supported community projects etc. I was disappointed when most said they wouldn't support an organisation like that - they would prefer to donate, rather than be charge more etc. That was only a small test group, but I would think that if a product is good quality and roughly priced at market value then people will support it. I have helped design products so would be interested in helping.

I was interested in starting a software organisation staffed by volunteers to code software similar to OpenOffice and other common main stream applications. I like what the Natural History Museum are doing at the moment with simple science kits. I even bought a scale model of the ear for my research!

I was impressed by Kiva ( www.kiva.org ) that help people provde short term loans to people in developing countries. This highlights peoples desire to help as there are not enough entrepreneurs to meet the demand from lenders!
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Permalink Reply by Traidmark.org 1 second ago
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Hi Richard

What you are doing sounds great. Check out brightone.org as they would be good partners. I also would love to work with other tech volunteers to solve social problems innovatively and cheeply then generate income that can be used to fund even more innovation which is the aim of the Traidmark.org business structure. The aim is to have cheeper products (through innovation) that also donate 100% net profit to charity so the consumer gets cheeper goods and also knows where the profits are going:)

This may be of interest (and will be a great way to meet some clever
tech guys who made SuperCoolSchool:)

I am running a 'class'/discussion about the Traidmark.org business
structure that you saw me present a while back and thought you might
want to interact with it online here
http://startup.supercoolschool.com/classes/432 (FRIDAY 29.05.09 13.30 GMT)

I am hoping to persuade the supercoolschool creators to donate 100% net
profit from Supercoolschool to fund innovation that solves social problems.

I am currently using this business model to set up
http://openspacecafe.ning.com/ which aims to generate profit from
cafe/restaurant sales to invest in innovation.

do join the Traidmark.org group for updates and add comments there so EVERYONE can see them without having to log in (open everything:)