Home / Business / Harvard Business School Graduate Launches Social Impact Platform: Zoosa

Harvard Business School Graduate Launches Social Impact Platform: Zoosa

Original Source: http://www.csrwire.com
Author: CSR WIre
Original Publication Date: 27 July 2009

With unemployment rates near 10% and many recent graduates still searching for work, young professionals need to stand out from the crowd. One recent graduate of Harvard Business School is doing his part to help individuals enhance their resume by creating Zoosa, a new website that connects professionals with nonprofit boards and skills-based volunteer positions.

Zoosa aggregates the best social enterprise resources, including industry news and employment and volunteer opportunities, to create a single destination where professionals can learn about the renewable energy, education, and nonprofit sectors. While visiting Zoosa, individuals can create a social impact profile that highlights their professional skills, their offline actions, and their interests in certain social impact issues.

“These social impact profiles have the potential to save nonprofit organizations, churches, and schools millions of dollars annually at a time when charitable giving is under increasing pressure,” says Mike McGlade, CEO of Zoosa.

Although professional networks built around connecting passive job seekers with high level jobs already exist (e.g. LinkedIn, Plaxo), until Zoosa, there hasn’t been a way for organizations to find individuals who do not volunteer today, but would be willing to join a nonprofit board or donate their professional skills if asked. Given the tough economic climate, most current students, recent graduates, and experienced professionals will benefit from creating a social impact profile and adding high level volunteer work to their resume.

McGlade first began working on Zoosa while a student at Harvard Business School, through the HBS Social Enterprise Summer Fellowships program. Formed in 1982, the program provides financial support to MBA students working with Social enterprises during the summer to address important managerial issues utilizing their analytic and strategic skills, and recently expanded to support students starting their own social enterprises. “HBS is focused on supporting students who want to get involved in social entrepreneurship,” adds McGlade.

After a successful launch last month, Zoosa has already become a useful tool for professionals searching for social impact news and opportunities. With over 1,100 positions included in Zoosa’s jobs & volunteering section, professionals now have a single location to find all relevant positions without searching multiple sites. Several thousand additional news stories, blogs, and tweets are included in Zoosa’s community section.

“We have a lot of interesting plans for Zoosa. As our community grows, we’ll add new tools that will make it easier to convert online actions and ideas into real world social impact activities. In the meantime, we’ve kept the registration process fast and easy so that everyone can get involved,” adds Brian Fleming, Zoosa’s CTO.

About Zoosa
Zoosa is a new website with a mission to make it easier for professionals to learn about and get involved in the social enterprise sector. By partnering with dozens of high quality social impact websites and promoting the best content, Zoosa creates a single destination for all social enterprise resources: news, blogs, actions/ideas, social impact jobs, & skills-based volunteer opportunities. As a result, individuals and organizations can utilize Zoosa as their portal to the social enterprise network.

 Retweet This Post