SEA 3.0: A New Board for A New Version of Social Enterprise Alliance
A new board of directors emerged from a coalition of 40 social enterprise leaders across the country who quickly organized after it was announced that Social Enterprise Alliance (SEA) intended to end its local chapters. New directors were officially onboarded on May 14, 2020, when previous directors stepped down to make room for renewed energy and innovative ideas.
On February 11, 2020, SEA announced the ending of its local chapter model, an organizational strategy piloted in 2009 with the creation of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter for SEA to host the 2010 Social Enterprise World Forum and SEA Summit in San Francisco. The SEA chapter model was fully launched in 2010, prompting the birth of more than 20 local networks of social entrepreneurs across the United States over the span of 10 years. Sixteen SEA chapters were in existence at the time that the end of the model was announced.
“What we know is that the model we currently have is not sustainable. As we thought about what SEA looks like going forward, we’ve made the decision as a board to disband the chapter model,” said Tamra Ryan, SEA Board Chair and Interim CEO on February 11 during the National Members Meeting. Chapters were given a deadline of March 31 to choose one of 3 options: create an affinity network based on geography, find a fiscal sponsor or disband.
Forty social enterprise leaders representing 11 SEA chapters quickly organized across the country after the announcement was made. As chapter leaders were scrambling to collect data for making decisions, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global health pandemic, and soon after, it became a national emergency in the United States. SEA chapter leaders grew concerned that organized groups of social entrepreneurs in local communities were facing the risk of disappearing in a moment when they were most needed.
Local SEA leaders collaborated to conduct a nationwide participatory and democratic decision-making process, using virtual meetings to hold deliberations, online surveys to gather input, and documents in the cloud to draft language together. Through this collaborative process, Social Enterprise leaders started building a collective voice that they used for engaging in conversation with the SEA board.
Chapter leaders and board members held a series of meetings to explore the challenges and opportunities of the current moment. Given the enthusiasm of chapter leaders, the board’s executive committee offered to fill board vacancies with a slate of new directors and to support a board transition in which previous directors would step down, making room for new energy and innovative ideas.
An open nomination process was conducted to elect a slate of new board members. Every member of the new slate is a chapter leader, deeply committed to local communities, and the national movement. This new slate of nine board members was proposed to the SEA board executive committee.
Antonio Aguilera from the San Francisco chapter was elected Chairperson, Belinda Li from the Chicago chapter was elected Vice Chair, David Gaines from the Cincinnati chapter was elected Co-Vice Chair, Niki McCuistion from the North Texas chapter was elected Secretary, Matthew Gale from the Utah chapter was elected Treasurer, and Charles Ajemian from the Virginia Chapter, Chuck Brown from the San Francisco chapter, Mike Hyzy from the Chicago chapter, and Rebecca Dray from the Michigan chapter were elected board members at-large.
Previous directors officially appointed the new board and stepped down from their positions at a meeting on Thursday, May 14. On Friday, May 15, new board members held their first board meeting and created an SEA 3.0 Task Force organized into 3 committees to address: rapid fundraising, stakeholder engagement and opportunities for a new business model dubbed SEA 3.0. The new board expects that by the end of July 2020, SEA will have collected and processed input from members, chapter leaders and key stakeholders to identify a strategic path toward the future of Social Enterprise Alliance and the social enterprise movement.
“We clearly recognize that local communities make the national alliance. It is our intention to invest in our local chapters, while we continue to explore affinity networks and encourage connections across sectors, impact areas and other verticals,” said Antonio Aguilera, newly elected SEA board Chairperson, who is co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. “Social entrepreneurs are resilient, and we are stronger together. We can organize from the bottom-up and for the benefit of all — individually, collectively and for the greater good. This is the time for us to put forward our vision for using business and technology as forces for social change, and help forge a new normal.”
Six North American non-profit leaders doing business to advance their social impact missions gathered in Colorado Springs hoping to learn from each other’s experiences and looking to resource each other’s market pursuits in 1997. A year later, Jerr Boschee, Jed Emerson, Gary Mulhair, John Riggan, Billy Shore and Richard Steckel organized social enterprise leaders across the United States, and invested funds and human capital for Social Enterprise Alliance to be born. In 1998, the founding board formed SEA as a national membership nonprofit 501c3 legal entity for bringing together organizations using the marketplace toward social impact.
SEA became the first professional association for social entrepreneurs, who started gathering every year in an annual summit. Since then, SEA has been a platform where social impact professionals have connected to catalyze social innovation in the United States.
SEA 3.0
The new version of Social Enterprise Alliance aims to elevate the voices of social entrepreneurs throughout the US to leverage the depth and breadth of social enterprise initiatives locally and globally toward social justice, prioritizing that those most affected by inequity are at the front and center of decision-making, action-taking and benefit-sharing of social enterprise organizations and the social enterprise movement.
Join us at socialenterprise.us!
