Annual Report 2013-2014

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Do Good. Better.Do Good. Better.

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15 January 2015

Dear fellow changemakers,

Thank you for making the 2013/2014 academic year a time of increasing growth and success at the Melvin J. Ballard Center for Economic Self-Reliance and the Peery Social Entrepreneurship Program. This year was particularly notable, as the Ballard Center commemorated its tenth anniversary and launched a successful rebranding strategy to increase engagement and awareness across Brigham Young University’s campus.

Highlights from 2013/2014 include the following:

Thank you again for your continued support of the Ballard Center and Peery Program in our landmark tenth year. Your involvement helps provide our students with transformative educational experiences as they apply the principles of social innovation, social entrepreneurship and Do Good Better into their lives.

Sincerely,

Todd ManwaringDirector & Associate Teaching ProfessorMelvin J. Ballard Center for Economic Self-ReliancePeery Social Entrepreneurship ProgramAshoka U Changemaker Campus Change Leader

Education in Zion Exhibition: In February 2014, we premiered an exhibit about the Ballard Center at the Education in Zion Gallery in the Joseph F. Smith Building. This interactive experience educates patrons on the importance of organizations that promote self-reliance, how to recognize high-impact organizations and how Elder Melvin J. Ballard was an example of Doing Good Better. The exhibit will run through 2 March 2015.

Y-Prize Competition: Y-Prize is a new partnership between our Social Venture Academy and the national D-Prize competition, which focuses on known solutions to poverty that need greater distribution in the developing world. Fourteen student teams joined the effort to create innovative strategies to distribute schistosomiasis medicine to at-risk populations throughout Uganda. Schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease that can be controlled by an eight-cent pill, is spread through contact with water that contains parasites and affects over 200 million people worldwide. The winning team, which received a $12,000 grant, tested their solution for distributing these pills over the summer. (More information on pages 13-14).

Published Books: Paul Godfrey, Ballard Center associate academic director and the William and Roceil Low Professor of Business Strategy, wrote More Than Money: Five Forms of Capital to Create Wealth and Alleviate Poverty. Jeremi Brewer, cofounder of Micro Enterprise Partners, and Stephen W. Gibson, founder of the Academy for Creating Enterprise, edited Necessity Entrepreneurship: Microenterprise Education and Economic Development. Both books are available online and in bookstores.

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10 YEARS OFIMPACT

2003The Ballard Center’s charter is approved by BYU.

1936 Headed by Elder Melvin J. Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve, the LDS Church announces the Church Security Plan, which will eventually be known as its Welfare Plan.

September 2009Social Innovation Projects begins its on-campus internship program which pairs students with leading social innovation organizations.

January 2009The Marriott On-Board program is created, allowing graduate students to serve on a local nonprofit’s Board of Directors for an academic year.

January 2010The Ballard Center starts the impact investing initiative with the University of Utah. It eventually becomes the Sorenson Global Impact Investing Center.

March 2004The Ballard Center officially opens on BYU’s campus as The Center for Economic Self-Reliance.

October 2005 The Ballard Center premieres a PBS documentary Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty.

January 2006The Ballard Center launches the microfranchise initiative, its first initiative to combat poverty by providing turn-key microbusinesses to microentrepreneurs around the globe.

MELVIN J. BALLARD CENTER FOR ECONOMIC SELF-RELIANCETIMELINE OF SIGNIFICANT MILESTONES

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Major Milestone

Inaugural Event

Initiative

February 2011The Peery Social Entrepreneurship Program launches to support students and faculty interested in social entrepreneurship.

September 2010The Peery Film Festival becomes an annual event to teach students social innovation principles through multimedia projects.

March 2011The Ballard Center begins hosting its annual TEDxBYU conference, an event which features prominent speakers that present great ideas in eighteen minutes or less.

February 2014An interactive exhibit opens in the Joseph F. Smith Education in Zion Gallery to educate patrons on self-reliance principles and the Ballard Center’s history.

April 2010The center is renamed the Melvin J. Ballard Center for Economic Self-Reliance.

January 2014The first-ever Y-Prize competition challenges teams of students to develop a distribution solution to a solvable societal problem.

September 2012BYU is designated by Ashoka U as one of thirty Changemaker Campuses for its work in social innovation education.

August 2012The Ballard Center starts the microenterprise education initiative to educate necessity entrepreneurs on small business principles.

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Roberts teaching self-employmentclasses in Brazil.

Ballard Center Classes: A Hands-On EducationJEFF ROBERTS, SOCIAL INNOVATION PROJECTS

“Being part of the Ballard Center helped me to learn the most effective ways to help people find employment and provide for their families.” - Jeff Roberts

After spending two years in northern Brazil on a mission, Jeff Roberts returned to his undergraduate degree at BYU with a new goal. He had seen that people around the world needed ways to be self-reliant, and he wanted to provide a solution.

He enrolled in one of the Ballard Center’s social entrepreneurship classes where he learned how its programs guide students in making a difference in the lives of others.

“I liked the ability to use what I was learning in school to serve,” he says. “Being part of the Ballard Center helped me to learn the most effective ways to help people find employment and provide for their families.”

Now a graduate student in BYU’s MPA program and a project coordinator for the LDS Church’s Perpetual Education Fund Self-Reliance initiative (PEF), Roberts has found his niche in a service-oriented field. The program now has three focus areas: educational loans, employment, and self-employment. In his role, he manages Ballard Center on-campus interns who are conducting research for PEF.

Roberts says the chance he had to get involved at the Ballard Center, including a trip back to Brazil to teach self-employment classes with the Academy for Creating Enterprise, gave him real-life career skills.

“There’s a lot that you can learn through a finance class or through an undergrad program, but when you get into the real world you see there is so much more to learn,” Roberts says. “It’s a really positive thing that the Ballard Center helps students participate in projects around the world.”

By Angela Marler & Glenn Rowley

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BALLARD CENTER CLASSES are offered each semester at BYU. Undergraduate classes include the Social Innovation & Social Entrepreneurship Lecture Series, Do Good Better and Social Innovation Projects. Additionally, changemaker maps tailored to more than a dozen majors help students integrate social innovation into their overall education. An MBA social innovation minor is also available to all graduate students.

Partnership with the Laycock CenterJEFF SHEETS, PEERY FILM PROGRAM

The Ballard Center has teamed with BYU’s Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration

to run the Peery Film Program which helps students learn how to solve problems

through a creative lens.

The Ballard and Laycock Centers work together, using their respective expertise as

social innovators and creative thinkers, toward a common goal of improving and inspiring the

world. This year a team of Laycock Center students and faculty created multiple short films to help the

Paraguayan nonprofit Fundación Paraguaya market the Poverty Stoplight, their system for gauging poverty

alleviation. The system classifies living circumstances and behaviors into three groups—red, yellow and green—

and is designed around self-evaluation and self-reliance, giving users a vision of their potential for a future without

poverty.

By Caroline Smith & Glenn Rowley

Jeff Sheets, director of the Laycock Center, enjoys the partnership because it allows the center to channel its students’ creativity into valuable causes.

“By partnering with the Ballard Center, we’re finding a greater foundation behind creative work that fulfills some of the unique purposes of a BYU education,” Sheets says. “We are going to use all of our artistic expertise to help social innovation. We are going to lift the world. We’re going to find solutions to pressing problems in innovative ways.”

This partnership provides students with firsthand access to experts in creativity

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“We are going to use all of our artistic expertise to help social innovation. We are going to lift the world. We’re going to find solutions to pressing problems in innovative ways.” - Jeff Sheets

PEERY FILM PROGRAMThe Ballard Center’s Peery Film Program is an annual collaboration between the Peery Social Entrepreneurship Program and BYU’s Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration. Each year, the Peery Program selects one of its partners to collaborate with Laycock Center students in a semester-long class culminating in a ten-month multimedia film project. Past projects include collaborations with Kiva, Acumen Fund, Vittana and others.

and social innovation and encapsulates BYU’s unofficial motto: Enter to Learn; Go Forth to Serve.

Laycock Center student Adam Eastburn says the collaboration is a perfect opportunity to channel creativity into addressing societal problems. “Our goal with the Laycock Center is to collaborate on creative projects,” he says. “Working with the Ballard Center and Fundación Paraguaya was a perfect opportunity to do that. The Ballard Center’s connection and personnel, combined with our creative abilities, allowed for us to go to Paraguay and experience what work is being done there and then film the methodology in action.”

Eastburn says working on the project for Fundación Paraguaya was one of the best experiences of his undergraduate career.“The possibilities for peace seem slim in a world of increasing conflict and struggle,” he says. “The pursuit for growth and healing can seem overwhelming, but when we can come together in small ways, our combined strength can bring about good.”

To view the collaborative film, please visit ballard2014.byu.edu.

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A Musana artisan creating handcrafted jewelry.

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Providing Navigation for Budding Social EntrepreneursMELISSA SEVY, SOCIAL VENTURE ACADEMY

“This is my passion.”- Melissa Sevy

On a summer volunteer trip to Lugazi, Uganda, Melissa Sevy felt a strong sense of compassion for the Ugandan women and children. She enjoyed teaching sanitation and literacy courses; however, she had a nagging feeling that she could do more.

“As the end of summer approached, we wondered how these women would live when their seasonal employment disappeared,” Sevy says. “In the majority of the households in Lugazi, the women have the economic responsibility for their families, but they have few prospects. Scraping together a living is challenging, and most cannot afford to send their children to school.”

She and two friends decided to create a social venture to help women in Uganda become self-reliant. As they took on the endeavor, Melissa discovered that their lack of business training left them unprepared for many challenges, including pilfering by their first in-country manager.

Melissa connected with the Ballard Center and learned about the Social Venture Academy (SVA). SVA provided her funding and coaching to develop Musana, an entity that sells handcrafted jewelry produced by Ugandan artisans. Today Musana employs women as craftsmen while teaching them courses in literacy, business and health. When the artisans feel ready, they receive coaching on starting their own businesses.

“This is my passion,” Sevy says. “This program changes lives, and the joy I see in these women is infectious. Many are learning to read and write in Luganda and English for the first time. Their children attend school, they can afford preventative medical care and they save for the future.”

By Alicia Gettys & Glenn Rowley

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SOCIAL VENTURE ACADEMY connects student social entrepreneurs with resources and knowledge to turn their ideas for social ventures into reality. Student teams are guided through a three-step curriculum—ideation, product development and execution—to produce ventures that are sustainable, replicable and impactful. Past winners include EcoScraps, TeensACT and Trano Mirary.

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businesses. In 2012 he became director of the Ballard Center’s Microenterprise Education Initiative, which researched world-wide best practices in teaching microentrepreneurs to start and grow their own microbusinesses.

While at the Ballard Center, Brewer finalized research and plans for a new educational venture called Elevate Global, a business education center which offers courses in microentrepreneurship and English as a second language.

Jeremi Brewer was fifteen years old when he resolved to get a Ph.D. by the time he was twenty-nine. He had seen the power of education bring his family out of poverty and wanted to ensure that others had that same opportunity to escape difficult circumstances.

After receiving his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and performing his doctoral research on “Culture, Poverty, and Necessity Entrepreneurship,” Brewer joined Steve Gibson’s Academy for Creating Enterprise in Mexico, an organization that trains financially-challenged LDS members in start and grow small

Revolutionizing Microenterprise EducationJEREMI BREWER, BALLARD CENTER INITIATIVES By Glenn Rowley

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“I’m excited. I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life. Every decision that I’ve made for the past fifteen years has been leading up to this opportunity.” - Jeremi Brewer

Now Brewer, not yet thirty, is establishing his own schools to give necessity entrepreneurs—people who start a business because they can’t find work elsewhere—the skills they need to succeed.

This year, Brewer and Gibson co-edited Necessity Entrepreneurship: Microenterprise Education and Economic Development. The first volume in a two-book series, Necessity Entrepreneurship features work from more than a dozen thought leaders in the field to further define who necessity entrepreneurs are and demonstrate their potential to positively impact the economic development of their families, communities and nations through microenterprise education.

“It’s a new field,” Brewer says. “We are the first people to publish on the concept of necessity entrepreneurs, how to train them and what to train them on.”

For Brewer, launching Elevate Global is the culmination of a lifelong dream. “I’m excited,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life. Every decision that I’ve made for the past fifteen years has been leading up to this opportunity.”

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Brewer teaching business classes to Paraguayan necessity entrepreneurs.

BALLARD CENTER INITIATIVES aim to help postgraduate fellows become worldwide thought leaders in social innovation while fostering a deep connection to the Ballard Center and Peery Social Entrepreneurship Program. Past initiatives include impact investing, microfranchising and single mom research. Conducted by Ballard Center research fellows, these initiatives provide impactful, replicable solutions to poverty alleviation and demonstrate the Ballard Center’s mission to Do Good Better in the world. Spin-off programs are being led by Fairbourne Consulting/Motiis, the University of Utah’s Sorenson Global Impact Investing Center and Micro Enterprise Partners/Elevate Global.

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By Glenn Rowley

Children in Uganda frequently come in contact with fresh-water parasites which cause rashes and fevers that lead to malnutrition and developmental issues known as schistosomiasis. As a result, many children are unable to attend school and receive no treatment to help them recover. The parasites that cause schistosomiasis can be eliminated by an inexpensive eight-cent pill called Praziquantel; however, there is no established way in many developing countries to distribute the medicine to everyone in need. During the 2014 winter semester, several BYU students took on the problem in the first-ever Y-Prize Challenge, co-sponsored by the Ballard Center and the national D-Prize competition. “Y-Prize presents a societal problem with a known cure but without a way to get it to all of those who need help. It’s a distribution problem,” says Todd Manwaring, director of the Ballard Center.

The winning team included economics senior Spencer Anderson, business management graduate Ryan Thomas, and sociology graduates Bronwen Dromey and Dane Andersen. Three of these students spent May to August 2014 in Uganda testing and improving their winning strategy. Q: What did you do in Uganda?Spencer Anderson: We’d done a lot of research before and built out a good model of distribution for the medicine. However, when we got there, we discovered Uganda actually has a full-fledged program for distribution. So instead of implementing our idea, we worked with the Ministry of Health and found out how we could be more effective in the existing framework. In some areas, the program was working well and in some areas it wasn’t working at all. The Ministry of Health was excited for us to look at their system to see how it could be adjusted to produce positive effects throughout the entire country.

Q: What were some of your suggestions? What was implemented?SA: The first thing we did was talk to a lot of stakeholders, from the director of the vector control division (who monitors schistosomiasis in Uganda) to different workers in the Ministry of Health. We also did surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups with the volunteer community health workers who actually distribute the drug.

“Nothing compares to getting out there and actually

testing your idea. The more we started doing that, the

more traction we gained and our understanding grew

exponentially, as opposed to just talking about the

problem.” - Dane Andersen

Photo, left to right: Spencer Anderson, Ryan Thomas, Dane Andersen and Bronwen Dromey

Implementing Innovation on the Ground in UgandaSPENCER ANDERSON, BRONWEN DROMEY & DANE ANDERSEN, Y-PRIZE

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back to look at the big picture of what’s working effectively and which problems can be improved, instead of merely maintaining the status quo. We brought in an outsider’s perspective and found a lot of issues that they weren’t aware of or paying attention to.

There are concepts you learn in the Ballard Center’s Do Good Better class, but nothing compares to getting out there and actually testing your idea. The more we started doing that, the more traction we gained and our understanding grew exponentially, as opposed to just talking about the problem.

BD: We came in with an idea of what we wanted to do, and quickly realized we had to work much more within an existing framework than we anticipated initially. There’s a good balance between being innovative and realizing existing frameworks are in place that are working relatively well. Don’t be afraid to try new things.

Y-PRIZE CHALLENGE is a new Ballard Center effort in conjunction with the national D-Prize competition. Each year, teams of students are presented with a solvable societal problem in need of a distribution solution and compete to develop the most innovative, impactful strategy. Winning teams receive grant money and are then tasked with implementing their solution on the ground.

Bronwen Dromey: The leaders had a big impact on the opinions, thoughts and trust of the local people. So we worked at the village level to implement a system of community meetings where the leaders could discuss why controlling schistosomiasis is important, what effects it has on individuals, and on a larger scale, the disease’s economic consequences. We had community members put on a drama explaining these concepts, and we coached them on things they needed to include to sensitize and educate the communities.

We also instituted a raffle program where the medicine could be distributed at the meetings. Everyone would come to one central location to learn about and take the medication. By participating, people could win something like a chicken or a hoe, which at the village level is a big incentive.

Q: How did this experience help you Do Good Better?Dane Andersen: In programs like this, there’s often no one stepping

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BYU student Trevor Morgan teaching a digital literacy class for the Google Community Leaders Program.

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SOCIAL INNOVATION PROJECTS is the Ballard Center’s on-campus internship program. It pairs students with top-tier social innovation organizations. Students gain a real-world understanding of social innovation by using their skill sets to develop new solutions to some of the world’s most pressing social problems. Past partners include the Academy for Creating Enterprise, Teach for America, Kiva and the Solutions Journalism Network.

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Turning an Internship into a Dream JobTREVOR DIXON, SOCIAL INNOVATION PROJECTS

“It made me want to change my career direction to do as much good as possible.” - Trevor DixonPhoto: Trevor Dixon with his wife Christie and daughter Amelie.

It’s not often that a piano-playing gig leads to landing your dream job. However, that’s the way it worked out for computer science major Trevor Dixon when he was asked to play at an award dinner hosted by the Ballard Center for The New York Times journalist David Bornstein.

Dixon had never heard of the Ballard Center until the dinner. There Bornstein spoke about social innovation—solving society’s intractable problems in new, creative, more efficient ways. The speech changed the way Dixon thought about service and work—they didn’t need to be separate parts of life.

“Bornstein was spending all of his time doing socially-minded things,” Dixon says. “It made me want to change my career direction to do as much good as possible.”

The next semester Dixon signed up for Social Innovation Projects, the Ballard Center’s on-campus internship program and got his first taste of social innovation by working with Benetech. After two semesters, he joined another on-campus internship with the Google Community Leaders Program (CLP). The program teaches digital literacy skills to low-income communities, small business owners and minorities in Provo, helping them improve their businesses and lives through computer education and skills.

For CLP, Dixon helped local business owners promote their businesses online. His computer programming skills were a natural fit, and he was hired by Google as a software engineer while still an undergraduate.

“His experience with a computer science background and knowledge of how Google tools were utilized in the community, and the fact that he was such a thoughtful, hardworking and intelligent student made it easy to recommend him at Google,”

By Angela Marler & Glenn Rowley

says Jennifer Holland, a program manager at Google and founder of the Google Community Leaders Program.

Things worked out better than Dixon imagined, both for his career and his future outlook. “I want to take advantage of all the opportunities Google provides to serve others as part of my career,” he says.

3,984TOTAL STUDENTS

57,418UNPAID HOURS TO PARTNERS

Exploring students are still discovering social innovation opportunities through advisement sessions and public events such as TEDxBYU and the Peery Film Festival but remain unattached to a specific program.

The next level of interaction with the Ballard Center includes students who are beginning their social innovation education through participation in lecture series classes or club attendance.

Engaged students actively participate in Ballard Center experiences by working in related internships, gaining hands-on education, and investing several hours each week over several months. 

Students who we consider “changemakers” have learned from the Ballard Center and now contribute in a way that augments our impact on campus and the world. They actively lead and educate others. They show ongoing commitment to becoming social innovators and plan to continue this commitment throughout their life’s work. 

3,033STUDENTS

405STUDENTS

346STUDENTS

199STUDENTS CONTRIBUTING

ENGAGING

LEARNING

EXPLORING

BY THE NUMBERS

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Financial OverviewFINANCIAL YEAR IS 1 JANUARY - 31 DECEMBERThough a part of BYU, the Ballard Center does not receive operating funds from BYU or its sponsoring institution, the LDS Church. We are entirely funded by our sponsors and their generous contributions that make our efforts possible.

The Ballard Center follows four financial principles: • Treat all revenue as a divine stewardship • Provide more outgoing value than what is put in to each program • Remain as operationally lean as possible • Walk our self-reliance talk and ‘live’ within our means

Ballard Center Experiences: Participation v. Cost

This first graph shows: Growth in the number of students participating in a Ballard Center experience.

Change in cost per experience as we become more efficient in delivering our programs.

This second graph shows the growth of our endowments (Ballard Center, Peery Program, and Fleming) over time. The funds show current amounts in the endowments (principal + interest – payouts). BYU requires that we have endowments to cover long term commitments.

Ballard Center Endowment Fund (in millions)

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The Ballard Center follows four financial principles: • Treat all revenue as a divine stewardship • Provide more outgoing value than what is put in to each program • Remain as operationally lean as possible • Walk our self-reliance talk and ‘live’ within our means

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Jake Harriman, founder of Nuru International, speaks at TEDxBYU.

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Media Highlights

TEDxBYU has become an annual highlight on BYU’s campus. TEDxBYU is an independently organized TED event to educate and inspire the BYU community about creativity and social innovation. Hosted by the Ballard Center, this year’s theme was “At the Intersection”, and featured 10 innovative speakers, including Jake Harriman, founder of Nuru International and our Social Innovator of the Year; Jen Anderson, co-founder of the Reset Foundation; BYU Animation Program Director Kelly Loosli and many others. To view videos from TEDxBYU, see the Ballard Center 2013-14 Highlights playlist at ballard2014.byu.edu.

Peery Film Program For this year's partnership with the Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration, students created a commercial and a mini-documentary for Vittana, a social venture providing international microfinance loans to college students. With access to these microfinance loans, thousands of students have been able to complete their education and break the poverty cycle. To view the Vittana commercial, see the Ballard Center 2013-14 Highlights playlist at ballard2014.byu.edu.

Education in Zion Exhibit In February 2014, an interactive exhibit on the Ballard Center premiered in the Education in Zion Gallery of the Joseph F. Smith Building at BYU. The Do Good Better exhibition i l lust rates our approach to social innovation by teaching patrons the importance of organizations that promote self-reliance, how to recognize high-impact organizations and how Elder Melvin J. Ballard (our center's namesake) was an example of Doing Good Better. To learn more about the exhibit, visit educationinzion.b y u..edu/exhibitions.

The Ballard Center showcased many of its programs and events through various forms of media. From our annual TEDxBYU conference to student-produced projects, these media channels were used to increase the scope and impact of Doing Good Better across campus and the world.

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AnonymousJeremi & Rebecca BrewerKurt & Katie BrownDick & June ElderBob & Lynette GayMichael & Kahani HoritoJon & Karen HuntsmanKing Benjamin Foundation Steven & Marilyn LeiningerRex & Ruth MaughanPeery FoundationDiana PetersonGwen WarburtonBill & Mary Way

Kurt & Katie BrownJeremy CoonBob & Lynette GaySteve GibsonJohn KellerCurtis & Misty LefrandtDiana PetersonJessamyn Shams-LauBeau SeilDave Stephens

Gibb DyerPaul GodfreyAaron Miller

DonorsBoard Members

Faculty Advisors

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Alicia Gettys | Communication and Operations Managerp: 801.422.9009 e: gettys@byu.edu

Contact UsTodd Manwaring | Directorp: 801.422.1781e: manwaring@byu.edu

Alicia Becker | Partner Relations Managerp: 801.422.6920 e: a.becker@byu.edu

Managing EditorArt DirectorDesigners

©2014 BYU Melvin J. Ballard Center for Economic Self-Reliance

Alicia GettysRob TonksAlison Brand & Crystal Lin

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Do Good. Better.ballardcenter.byu.edu

801.422.5283