Convinced that social enterprise represents the future of business, Co-Founders Mark and Derk formulated the beautiful question that would lead to the birth of MovingWorlds: What kind of support do social entrepreneurs on the ground really need to succeed? In 2010, MovingWorlds was officially registered as a Social Purpose Company, the Washington State equivalent of a "Benefit Corporation."
After years of piloting, the MovingWorlds “Experteering” platform was launched to help social enterprises around the world connect with skilled professionals willing to volunteer their expertise. Since then, 1,800 projects have been completed in 122 countries, unleashing over $25 Million USD worth of pro-bono expertise.
As the social enterprise movement continued to grow, and the Experteering movement alongside it, multinational corporations asked us to help them scale their own corporate volunteering and social impact programs. We combined forces to build shared-value programs like Microsoft’s MySkills4Afrika, PayPal’s Nonprofit Experience Program, SAP’s Acceleration Collective, and more.
To even better support our professional members, we launched the MovingWorlds Institute: a professional Global Fellowship that combines the learning of a certificate course, customized support of a career coach, real-world exposure of a consulting project, and global connections of a prestigious alumni network into a single 6-month program. Since then, our Global Fellowship community has grown to include more than 300 professionals from over 55 countries.
To help social enterprises survive the pandemic and thrive on the other side, in July 2020 we partnered with SAP to launch The Sustainable Growth of Revenues for International Development Program (SGRID) to help social enterprises to create sustainable revenue streams by partnering with the corporate sector and connecting into global value chains.
In 2022, MovingWorlds, SAP, TRANSFORM, and Unilever partnered to merge their respective programs (including S-GRID), and re-launch as the TRANSFORM Support Hub: a global platform that connects social enterprises with corporates, peers, impact investors, learning content, and a network of pro bono professionals to deliver market-based solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals.
May 25, 2022
July 9, 2020
Social Enterprise Alliance Podcast, April 2023
Awarepreneurs Podcast, November 2022
Superpowers For Good Podcast, August 2022
3BL Media, June 2022
World Economic Forum, May 2022
TALRadio, March 2022
Portals of Perception, February 2022
Create New Futures Podcast, January 2022
Daughters of Change Podcast, November 2021
Impact Audio Podcast, August 2021
Fast Company, May 2021
Triple Pundit, March 2021
Escape the City, February 2021
Positive News, February 2021
Tech Stands Up Podcast, December 2020
Restarting America Podcast, November 2020
CSR Wire, July 2020
The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, July 2020
The Guardian, May 2019
CSRWire, May 2018
Badcredit.org, May 2019
CareerShifters, February 2018
SF Chronicle, December 2017
King 5, May 2017
Upworthy, May 2017
Devex, May 2016
FastCompany, November 2016
Globe & Mail, October 2016
The Daily Muse, July 2015
Forbes, July 2015
Komo 4 news, June 2014
Huffington Post, May 2015
Devex, November 2014
Association for Talent Development, May 2024
Pioneers Post, October 2023
Stanford Social Innovation Review, October 2022
NextBillion, September 2022
World Economic Forum, September 2022
Impact Entrepreneur, April 2022
Triple Pundit, March 2021
Triple Pundit, October 2021
Harvard Business Review, January 2020
FastCompany, December 2019
NextBillion, December 2019
TriplePundit, December 2019
Conscious Company, August 2019
Kununu, July 2019
FastCompany, May 2019
The Ladders, May 2019
Next Billion, January 2019
Stanford Social Innovation Review, February 2018
Thrive Global, periodic 2018-present
Huffington Post, periodic 2016-2017
Triple Pundit, June 2018
Fast Company, May 2016
Harvard Business Review, November 2015
Forbes, March 2015
Devex, February 2015
What makes this moment in time so pivotal is that inequities and environmental degradation tend to increase after recessions. By investing in social enterprises today, we can help them be ready to integrate into the post-COVID recovery to better distribute wealth while using regenerative business models to address the ongoing environmental crisis.
-Mark Horoszowski, CEO and Co-Founder of MovingWorlds, SPC
Over the last 9 years, we’ve seen how essential communities of practice are to individuals and organizations intent on scaling impact. With S-GRID, we can help build the capacity of employees behind the social enterprises that will push business to be more sustainable and equitable for years to come. The program will give participants access to a community where they can discuss complex problems and design solutions, ensuring their ideas are truly scalable and world-changing.
-Cole Hoover, Director of the MovingWorlds Institute
S-GRID is the first program of its kind to help social enterprises build the skills, know-how, and connections needed to participate in global supply chains, and in a way they can truly deliver social impact. With the socio-economic implications of COVID-19 hitting social enterprises across the world especially hard, SAP is doubling down on its long-standing commitment to accelerating the social enterprise sector through access to talent, technology and markets. SAP has a powerful platform to help the private sector put their money where their purpose is and scale the social enterprise sector. Corporations today spend trillions of dollars - 3 trillion on SAP Ariba’s platform alone - related to sourcing and distribution chains. Imagine the positive impact that could be made through procurement spend if just a few percent is directed towards social-first organizations.
-Alexandra van der Ploeg, Head of SAP Corporate Social Responsibility
As a start-up we have participated in many accelerators but we are particularly keen to apply for S-GRID. We are excited by the prospect of whole team training but especially the potential to form strategic corporate partnerships. Building meaningful connections in the corporate sphere is a challenge faced by all small enterprises. As such, we are looking forward to exploring how S-GRID is able to accelerate and foster these connections so we can focus on what we do best - providing water to those at the forefront of the water crisis.
-Louise Bleach, Business Development Manager, Desolenator
We're applying to S-GRID so we can make a bigger impact. It's the only program that offers any and every member of our team training and support so that we can scale our sales and operations to effectively partner with the corporate sector. S-GRID has the potential to save us time and costs so that we can focus on our mission of cleaning the oceans, while also building a sustainable economy.
-Pete Ceglinski, CEO, Seabin
This solves a huge problem for social enterprises to scale - we need more knowledge, experience, and resources. Not just to partner with the international companies that everybody knows, but more importantly, to connect with all the organizations across a company's network that are part of these global supply chains. If corporations want to create change on the ground, they need to find a local solution to partner with and support, and S-GRID helps them do that.
-Henri Nyakarundi, Founder and CEO, A.R.E.D.
In VillageCapital’s accelerator programs, we prioritize 1-1 meetings between social entrepreneurs and corporate leaders because social enterprises often have great products but lack access to decision-makers in their sector's distribution/value chain, making it harder to scale to world-changing impact. S-GRID is an important program that will help solve this problem: assist social entrepreneurs in building the social capital they need to connect to corporate value chains.
-Allie Burns, CEO, VillageCapital
The S-GRID program fundamentally shifts how social enterprises are thinking about scale beyond the enterprise itself. There's an opportunity to enable corporations who are already shifting from a shareholder to stakeholder-view of capitalism to reconceptualize their value chains to incorporate more local social enterprises that are committed to doing good. Now that's impact at scale!
-Nate Wong, Interim Executive Director, Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, Georgetown University
For a complete list of our FAQs, please visit our help center.
Please email Alexandra Nemeth at alexandra@movingworlds.org with your questions and/or request.