Unjunk Mail

"In an unusual but completely sensible move, Dukky is both a direct mail company and the company behind Unjunk Mail, a service that lets you both opt out and in of what mailings you’d like to receive from Dukky. After all, whether we admit it or not, there are a few things we’d actually like to get in the mail. Or in Dukky’s case, email or SMS are also an option. Then, after having done extensive research to find the best combination of free, easy, and effective, Unjunk Mail gives you the direct link to three services that cover removing the spectrum of potential direct mail offerings."

I love this idea of choosing whether I want to receive a catalog or not. I receive literally hundreds of pieces of junk mail a week. But yes, in some ways there can be a positive environmental impact with junk mail, as I am tending to do more and more shopping at home and driving less to the stores at the mall. It is of great advantage for me to receive the catalogs I want.
I think more importantly though, it's time for businesses to get involved in assessing their impact on the environment by asking the consumer whether they want to stay or be removed from the mailing list. I think only one company has ever done that with me.
Is Dukky working with companies directly on this?
All in all this is a great idea and thanks for spreading the word about it.

Comment posted on Can Junk Mail Ever Be Considered Sustainable? Possibly | Triple Pundit at www.triplepundit.com using Reframe It

The Not To Be Missed Unconference Day at SOCAP09

"Three full days of rich content. Over 100 speakers. A special unconference day. In its second year, the Social Capital Markets conference brings together the broad ecosystem of funds, foundation and individual investors and donors, and for-profit and non-profit entrepreneurs using business to make a positive difference. If you're an investor or donor, entrepreneur or executive, your task is simple: be at SOCAP09."

About a month ago I had the opportunity to interview Kevin Jones of GoodCapital and the organizer of SOCAP 2009. One of the subjects we touched upon was the third day, the “unconference” day of SOCAP09. This topic interests me a lot as I see people coming together to just talk in many number formats as an incredibly powerful tool for supporting each other, building on ideas and creating new initiatives. Many people night choose to leave after the second day, thinking- what the heck is an “unconference” day and is it worthwhile to hang around? Whatever you do -don’t miss it!

There are, for sure, fabulous speakers and attendees coming to this year’s SOCAP09. But the opportunity to dialogue on the topics of mutual interest and co-create new ideas, should not to be missed. Here’s why, in Kevin’s words.

LH: Tell me a little bit about your organizing the SOCAP09 conference in Sept. I am particularly interested in that third day is an open space type format, because I use a facilitation tool, Appreciative Inquiry, that uses Open Space within its format. How are you structuring that?

KJ: Well we did it last year in that traditional sort of Open Space Technology format, where somebody says : “I want to talk about this” and we will see if people are interested and they vote with their feet. Oddly enough we had fifty grids and there were fifty topics. I have never seen it where it was a perfect open grid format.

And most people stayed for the third day and the ones who stayed almost uniformly said it was their favorite day. But on the first day people were afraid of it because they hadn’t been to something so unstructured. These are people from maybe financial services or international aid agencies, investment banks, social venture funds and all of them are used to something structured; it’s structured capital, it’s institutional. So that the idea of a free play day, based on the quality of the people we had convened was scary to some of them. But they became converts because they saw the density of the content, so the whole breath of the market was there and that the convening was right. We had brought together the right people and they trusted these people like Sub-Saharan African funds working on water or aid agencies doing some innovative things. They trusted the convening they trusted the content and the context and then they were able to do it their own way. That was neat.

We kept on trying to put a grid on it. It was hard not to put some form on it. But we decided to keep it like this.

So, we had people working on particular sector together like Sub-Saharan water in Africa or we had people working in a particular region, the South Americans or whatever and the groups were organized around these. Although we designed the event really well, you still never catch all of the interest and so groups formed, maybe there were five people around a topic like equitable sustainable energy in West Africa. And for those five people it was really valuable to come together.

LH. I really applaud that. I get frustrated when I go to a conference; you get inspired, you walk out and okay, then what?

KJ. That’s why we built the Hub too. SOCAP09 is once a year. The Hub is for every day. All these social entrepreneurs want to help each other, because they all need help.

Business Philanthropy Has Some Fun

Combining social media, business and philanthropy helped one needy and Detroit area family find housing and get back on their feet.

Last May the Live to Give Foundation was chosen as the recipient of the first Detroit Charity Tweetup. The Detroit firm, Identity Marketing and Public Relations rallied 6 corporate sponsorships and more than 100 Detroit Twitter users that attended a Tweetup at Bar Louie of Novie, which helped raise over $1,500 for the Shuck family of Rochester Hills. These sponsors each donated $1 for every person that showed up and that support made the event successful:

CRT Medical Systems, iDetroit, LA Productions, TwitArt.com, C! Tech Solutions, Identity Marketing & PR and Bar Louie of Novi.

Not to minimize the pain and difficulties that so many people in the world experience, but there are ways to have some fun and do some good for the world- and businesses in the Detroit area chose to do just that.

In his message to me, Ryan Doyle the Founder and Director of the Live to Give Foundation wrote:"Philanthropy is so important for businesses to take part in".

Live to Give Foundation is made up of a team of 8 college graduates of which 7/8 are all under 23 years old. This that they has are very proud of and people really enjoy to hear. "We are young minds with big hearts trying to inspire our generation into action."

Right on Ryan!


http://livetogivefoundation.org/