Give Work by Leila Janah

Author:Leila Janah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

MEETING DOUBLED STANDARDS

In the meantime, we were still ferociously competing for bids in the States. No matter how well we performed, we had to prove ourselves all over again with every project. On the one hand we had to prove that we were upholding our mission, but on the other hand we also had to be able to prove that we were competitive vendors. The social mission was our heart and gave me the story I needed to get people to pay attention, but the assurance of quality was the only way I could get any business. I wasn’t selling pretty jewelry, furniture, or retail items that people might buy because they feel connected to the mission (or because they like what the logo says about them as consumers). I was selling data services. Only three things matter to any company: will the work get done on time, done on budget, and done right?

We’re always in the peculiar position of having to rise to the highest standards of both nonprofits and for-profits, and we don’t get cut any slack. Not that we need it. Perhaps one of the happiest moments of my career was in the fall of 2015, when I sat on a panel with Robert Hohman, CEO and cofounder of Glassdoor, one of our clients. During the panel, he confessed that he had found out only five minutes earlier in the greenroom that Samasource was a nonprofit. He had chosen to work with us because our salespeople were the most knowledgeable. I cheered inside. Just as our workers want to be chosen for their talent and not out of pity, we want to be chosen for our excellent quality and service, not out of charity. For our clients, our social mission should be icing on the cake. We do a great job and we help move people out of poverty. Why wouldn’t you work with us?

Our business continued to grow. When I met Steve Muthee he had four people working for him, and his business was hanging by a thread, supported by the donations of friends and family, especially his mother, a farmer. The Bookshare contract was the turning point. As of his untimely death in 2014 at age thirty-two from a rare autoimmune disease, he employed 150 people and had expanded into other kinds of data-entry work. Our partnership had ended because he didn’t need us anymore; he had grown—to the point where he had taken over the top floor of a building in downtown Nairobi—and wanted to work directly with customers. He was a pivotal reason impact sourcing came to Africa, and I believe that he succeeded in his mission to raise Kenya’s profile in the eyes of the world.

Over the years, we built a network of more than twenty entrepreneurs like Steve in six countries. We heard success stories from many of them. In Rukka, technology services firm Usha Martin Rural Services (UMRS) started out training thirty-one students from nearby villages in Jharkhand. By August 2010, UMRS employed one hundred workers and had a four-member management team.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.