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I just read the recent Inc. Magazine issue cover story on the most innovative small company in America, Threadless.com. It’s a fascinating story of some geeky web design kids who started a social community website in college with frequent T-shirt design contests whereby the winner would get their design printed on a T-shirt and sold online (to that same community). They started selling a couple thousand T-shirts, dropped out of college, and it has since grown over the past 5 years into a $30 million per year, 50 employee company with great margins.

While the above story is unbelievably compelling and a reflection of the cultural shift of a new generation who shares all online, is transparent, and believes in the online medium, it is one of many case studies in the for-profit world. I recently went to a fundraiser for Portland’s best-kept secret of a non-profit, Friends of the Children. I recently joined the Board, and true to my outspoken, naive youthfulness, thought I could make huge changes right away. What I didn’t realize is how much good the organization does at a magnitude I never imagined before. The positive impact really hit home with me at this 600 person fundraiser, when young adult after young adult got on stage with their mentor / friend, and told of impossible odds of rising above their past of abuse or neglect early in their childhood to be the first ever in their family to graduate from high school, or to get to States in their freshman year in high school, or begin full-time working at a prestigious law firm in town.

What makes this organization, Friends of the Children, so incredibly powerful and successful is its innovative business model. It pays full-time salaries for professional mentors to be with a few kids one-on-one mentoring week after week, for 12 years. That loyalty and consistency in these young people’s lives that have never had that from anyone before is unbelievably rewarding, healing, uplifting. I was a mentor in college for 4 years in a program called Big Siblings in Charlottesville, VA. Up until a couple years ago, I still kept in touch w/ my little brother. I have my own kids now and can’t offer that daily consistency that paid mentors can and do provide and the results and emotional connection that occur from these relationships truly inspire all of us who witness it.

My hat goes off to entrepreneurs like Duncan Campbell who founded Friends of the Children and pours his heart and soul into a beautiful creation that transforms kids lives, and the community as a whole.

Thank you Friends of the Children.