Can't Not Do. Paul Shoemaker

I mean right, girl. I got my MBA in Texas, was a product manager at Nestlé, spent time in and loved Los Angeles, launched a start-up in Boston that did not make it (bad idea with a three-month-old baby in tow), and rounded things off with a stop at Microsoft for six years in the 1990s. I have three sons who make me proud, damn proud. And, for the past 17 years, I have been with Social Venture Partners (SVP).

      Many, though definitely not all, of the people I talk about in this book are regular heroes I have met at my not-so-regular place of work. In 1998, I was given a job that was, and is, so much more than just a job. SVP wasn't my idea to begin with, so I'm free to talk about how great the founders' concept was without any hesitation. I've been a steward for the vision of Paul Brainerd, Scott Oki, Maggie and Doug Walker, Bill Neukom, and Ida Cole. They created SVP and have enabled thousands of people all over the globe to find what they can't not do.

      SVP builds powerful relationships between people who want to give back and the nonprofits and social entrepreneurs that make change possible. We help people build their civic and philanthropic potential through peer grant making and networking and help nonprofits build stronger organizations though strategic volunteering and collaboration. A quick note here about the word “nonprofit” – I'll use it throughout the book to refer to organizations focused on positive social change; in today's world, that might be a nonprofit or a for-profit social enterprise, or a public benefit corporation. Consider those terms interchangeable; it's great that we have more diverse organizations cropping up!

      SVP's vision? We envision a community in which, regardless of income, class, or race, all children receive an excellent education and all people live and work in a healthy environment. Our mission? SVP cultivates effective philanthropists and strengthens organizations driving community change, building powerful relationships that advance shared community goals.

      It's all about engagement and connection. The magic, if you will, is in putting all these parts together. It's not just one of the parts – the grant making, the volunteering, the networking – because you can find each of them standalone somewhere in your community. It's all of it mixed together. It's how SVP makes 1 + 1 + 1 = 10. It is how so many people find they have more to give because they give alongside others. And it's the power and leverage of a network, brought to bear to help solve social problems and catalyze the future civic and philanthropic leaders of our community, all at the same time.

      The founders' original vision in 1997 fit the dot-com, new-wealth, be-more-engaged ethos of those times. The timing for this current, international model of SVP in our hyperconnected, hands-on, socially responsible world of 2015 is even better. It is out of SVP that many of these stories grow, but their messages extend far beyond. Do you need to be in SVP to create impact? Most definitely not.

How to Use This Book

      • Introduction and the Multipliers. These will orient you to the title of this book and why your can't not do matters now more than ever.

      • Part I, Chapters 1–3– Finding Your Focus, contains three questions that will help you define your can't not do. These will help you lay down your foundation, get clarity, and understand what your “true north” is.

      • Part II, Chapters 4–6– How You Do This Work Well, offers three more questions designed to help you put your can't not do into action. Once you've defined your can't not do, how do you best show up in your community to be most effective and help others around you create more positive impact, too?

      • Part III, Chapters 7 and 8 and the Conclusion – Bringing It All Together for Your World and You. This section brings everything full circle with the ultimate question and also offers a few different ways to embed your answers in your mind and heart.

      • Appendices. Resources here will help you answer questions like, what's the checklist to help me intentionally work this through for myself? Which stories in this book are most relevant to me? What other resources are out there for me? And more.

      You can dive in just about anywhere in the book, just get started, but keep in mind how the chapters interconnect. I hope you might read the three parts in order, but for the three chapters within each part, I think you can jump around. Each chapter concludes with five key ideas, but I hope you'll make lots of notes in the margins with your own important ideas, as you read along. The appendices at the end will give you more ideas and tips to effectively put all of these ideas into motion in your community. And if you don't get enough in the pages of this book, go to www.paulshoemaker.org/.

      And let me say a little more about who this book is (and isn't) for.

      • It doesn't matter if your politics are left or right, the ideas in this book don't tilt either way.

      • These ideas are not faith- or religion-dependent. Depending on your faith, you may or may not see a lot of resonant ideas, but whatever your religion, this book isn't driven by any specific faith.

      • It's not a specific, narrowly defined book about how to start a nonprofit or be a social entrepreneur or a great philanthropist, although I've included a few of those kinds of books in the Appendix. This is about people, regular heroes who want to make a positive impact on the world, whatever walk of life they come from.

      • And if some of the people here seem like they've done more than you possibly could at this point in your life, and maybe that's true, please do not assume you can't learn any lessons from them. None of us are Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks, but we often glean life lessons from heroes like them; you can do the same here.

      In general, the concepts here are most (though not only) resonant with people at transition points in life, people who have had a significant positive or negative event happen recently and who have some predisposition to create meaningful positive change in the world. If you are a person who has met a lot of basic needs in life and has already realized some level of success, acclaim, or achievement, you probably have the right frame of mind that will enable you to get the most out of the seven questions. In the end, the person who will know best if this book is for you is…you! I hope you're ready to find your can't not do!

      Our world's social challenges – education, poverty, leadership development, urban ecosystems, homelessness, and so on – aren't getting easier. But the opportunity and the potential to create significant, positive change has never been greater. It's a race between opposing forces and our communities hang in the balance. On the one hand, are the complexity of our social challenges and the speed at which our world changes and on the other, the collective know-how and human and financial resources we can bring to bear on them. Can't-not-do people are the ones who will help decide who wins that race.

      So what's your can't not do? To me, this is the fundamental question. This book will have served its purpose if the personal stories and questions inspire more people to ask this of themselves and to get on board with taking deeper, longer-term, effective action. As I was doing my last edits on this manuscript, Bill and Melinda Gates penned their annual letter on their “Big Bets for the Future.”4 They talked about specific progress they foresaw in impoverished parts of the world, but they also emphasized that “we think there has never been a better time to accelerate progress and have a big impact around the world.”

      And they didn't just mean themselves. They went on to say, “There's a crucial factor: informed, passionate individuals working together to form effective movements for change… We call them global citizens [I call them can't-not-do people]… The more global citizens (www.globalcitizen.org) there are, and the more active and effective they are, the more progress we will make… In fact, we're betting on it.” I'll double down on that bet with Bill and Melinda right now.