Social Enterprises, TagSpoon, and Next Steps

Several months back, I began talking with a friend at Microsoft about an idea of his to create a consortium of non-profits and social/humanitarian-based for-profit companies. In November, Social Enterprises was created, and Daniel is working on the paperwork for 501c3 status, which will allow him, among other things, to accept donations as part of his tax status. I’ve agreed to participate as a member of the board of directors, and am excited to see this venture get off the ground. (I am still on the board of Story of My Life Foundation, although my role is small)

Which got me thinking about my own startup concept, TagSpoon (formerly known as the Samaritan-Web Project), and whether I should form the legal entity as a non-profit (which was my original intent) or as a for-profit company. I still haven’t decided, to be honest, and am concentrating more on the resources available to me to build out the platform. I have a couple developer friends who have offered to help build and test the web-based platform, and another who is a gifted web designer who will help with the look and feel and branding.

Since officially leaving Microsoft last month, I am surprised at how little time I’ve had to make any progress on this new venture, but things are still moving forward. After several whiteboard sessions, the key scenarios have been outlined and a BRD is taking shape.

What is fascinating to me is how my original idea, which I came up with back in 2002, is still relevant today (and I don’t believe has been adequately answered by the competition). A summary from my initial blog post:

The underlying premise to my work is that people want to help people – but unless it is easy for people to find service opportunities, they won’t necessarily seek them out. Existing tools are fine for people looking for opps, but I am interested in finding ways to make it more viral – using network science and collaboration technology to push knowledge of these service opportunities out to a broader audience.

Looking forward to the next steps.