Where For-Profit and Nonprofit Are One

The Intersection Conference aims to foster innovation in the nonprofit marketplace.

Image: Photobank.Klev.UA / Shutterstock

Just because a company is for-profit doesn't mean it can't be involved in a business that is rooted in doing good things. In fact, a number of new models of for-profit businesses are being created to engage in traditionally nonprofit sectors.

But what can those involved in philanthropy learn from these new type of businesses? And when should someone create a for-profit company as opposed to a nonprofit? These are some of the questions the organizers behind a January 14 conference hope to answer.

"The future of philanthropy is social enterprise, in which the power of the entrepreneur wins over big-government or big-enterprise thinking," said Randy Haykin, of Haykin Capital and the Gratitude Network and orchestrator of the Intersection Conference, addressing problems in education, poverty, health, and the environment.

Haykin is bringing 14 “innovation masterminds” to the Pixar Studios in Emeryville, California, to debate how this intersection of the for-profit and nonprofit sectors might look and to inspire young innovators down that path.

“There’s a growing consciousness of inequality,” Haykin told Portfolio.com. He says that a combination of increased free time due to previous success, joblessness due to the poor economy, and improvements in technology have given people more time to think about the problems of the world and spawned the change in consciousness.

For the last 25 years, venture capitalists have had a “field day” of innovation, largely due to the the invention of the Internet, said Haykin. But only recently have new ways of looking at business begun to develop, breaking down traditional barriers between what was once considered worthy of for-profit business endeavors and what was left for the nonprofit industry.

The Intersection Conference aims to disrupt that pattern, Haykin says.

The conference is broken up into two parts: the “in front of the scenes” part taking place on Saturday and covered in detail on the conference's site, and the “behind the scenes” part occurring the day before. That's when all 14 speakers—including Steve Case, Guru Singh, Susan Sarandon, and Lauren Bush—will meet to discuss the biggest questions arising from the confluence of for-profit and nonprofit thought.

Haykin will measure the success of the event in terms of how many gray-haired venture capitalists and enthusiastic young minds find themselves sitting side-by-side and having a conversation about ideas introduced by the panel of speakers.

“Our goal is to make people say, 'Wow, I’ve never done anything like that before.'”

The event is nonprofit, though registration fees range from $199 for 50 student attendees up to $2,495 for nonstudents after the preregistration ends on December 16. After costs are met, Haykin says any profit will be invested by the Gratitude Network in both equity investments and loans, depending on whether the recipient is a for-profit or nonprofit endeavor.