Geri Stengel's blog

Let’s get down to brass tacks: It’s all well and good to say that brick-and-mortar stores need great customer service in order to compete in an e-commerce world but how do pull it off?

In 1995, Julie Azuma, the mother of a newly diagnosed autistic daughter, went from store to store, trying to find the educational materials her daughter needed. Along the way, she’d joined a listserve -- remember those? -- for parents of autistic children so she knew that other parents were as frustrated as she was.

Impact investing – the balancing of financial returns with social impact – comes in all shapes and sizes. Recently, I attended an event held by the Community Investing Network of NJ, an organization that is a great example of how government, foundations, and individual investors can come together to revitalize local communities.

Karen Barbour is founder and president of the Barbour Group, a $3.6 million dollar company that grew 45% from 2007 to 2010, earning a place -- for the 4th consecutive year -- on Inc.500/5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. She was also a 2009 Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Winning Woman.

Many nonprofits already use social media, including mobile, to raise money among individual donors. Small donations add up, as Mark Hanis found. His first Facebook campaign raised $250,000 in 2005 for Genocide Intervention Network, now known as United to End Genocide.

Believe it or not, the US government is using social media … not all agencies, but two in particular.

Impact investing has the ability to unlock much more money for good causes from the world capital markets than philanthropic sources can provide. These investments balance financial return with social good. It’s a concept I wholeheartedly support and have written about in the past. Now I plan to write regularly on the topic so I thought I’d give you an overview of why impact investing rocks.

Investing in women is smart economics, according to the World Bank.

“LuxeFinds is a luxury lifestyle blog search engine for women.”

Who you know does matter. To speed up business growth and avoid pitfalls that can stunt growth, you need multiple networks: those that provide support and those that provide connections. Often, the two overlap; sometimes they are separate.