TheCausemopolitan.com is written by me, Sloane Berrent.
You can also find me online here:
Integrated Marketing Strategy & Consulting
Newsletter About New Orleans
Cause It’s My Birthday Campaign
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In 140:
Kiva Fellow. Humanitarian. Sloane blogs at The Causemopolitan about her life, nonprofits, social entrepreneurship and “cause-filled living.”
Short Bio:
Sloane Berrent is a cause-based marketing and social branding consultant, nonprofiteer and budding social entrepreneur. She combines high-level social media strategy, product evangelizing, fundraising and community development services to for-profit and nonprofit companies with a focus on social action campaigns. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, Sloane has lived in Burlington (VT), Boston (MA), Rome (Italy), and Los Angeles (CA). She spent 2009 as a digital nomad, traveling the world experiencing life and volunteering including stints in South America, New Orleans and three months in the Philippines as a Kiva Fellow. She co-created “Cause It’s My Birthday” a campaign to raise money (over $19k to date) and awareness for malaria prevention in Ghana. Sloane moved to New Orleans as her new home at the end of 2009 and co-launched NOLAlicious, a weekly newsletter of events in New Orleans. She was recently named the citizen journalist to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for the MySpace and The Wall Street Journal communities. Her consulting practice, Answer With Action, focuses on strategic integrated marketing consulting. She speaks frequently on building community and blogs at The Causemopolitan.
A Little More:
The first time I ever left the United States was by myself when I was 12 years old and in the seventh grade. My mom put me on a plane to Paris to visit my aunt who was in graduate school there. I had one year and a half of French under my belt, which helped asking for directions when I was confused and for ordering croissants and hot chocolate. My aunt had class during the day and I would set off exploring by myself, getting terribly lost but seeing amazing things. At the end of that week I had two takeaways; there was a gigantic world out there to see and that as scary as it seemed at times, I could handle it.
That same year, walking home from school as I did every day, I past The Children’s Institute as I had a million times. This time I walked in and asked if I could volunteer. I knew kids lived there mostly recovering from serious injuries or surgeries but didn’t know if there was anything I could do to help. I was 12 and unaccompanied, but determined. How could I walk home from school every day past this place when I knew kids inside were struggling to learn to walk again? Turns out they had a program at night where people would get into a pool and help with physical rehabilitation. I was a great swimmer, I asked my mom’s permission. It was a go! It was to be my first weekly volunteer activity.
So when asked when I realized that my life would be dedicated to cause and to help others in the world, I have to say it all started when I was 12 at the intersection of travel and volunteerism.
I started an all-school recycling program in the fourth grade. I was the first Youth Chair to the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force when I was sophomore in high school. I co-created an all-school volunteer “Day of Caring” my junior year that is still in place today. I gathered friends to volunteer in college. It was a part of my fabric, something that fit right and I didn’t grow out of.
Philanthropy, giving back, inspiring others to find something they care about – to start small, start anywhere – has always sort of just been my thing. I lost track of that for a few years after college when I worked for Ernst & Young and subsequently moved to Los Angeles to escape the corporate culture I had so quickly learned was not for me.
I rediscovered that passion while working in the Development Department at The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles. Our team secured the School’s first year in raising a million dollars in annual giving and secured a $5 million gift creating a financial aid scholarship fund for minority students. I wrote grants securing over $550,000 for academics, financial aid and other needs of the School. I saw the raw power of fundraising in changing the lives of under-privileged and disenfranchised girls as well as the power of education as the most important tool towards empowerment.
My next role at Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation as a National Development Officer expanded my responsibilities to include direct mail, special events, mid-level donor stewardship and Board relations. With an annual budget of $12 million, fundraising was critical to run programs across 13 offices nationwide and in my tenure I raised over $2.5 million from individual donors and worked with the Program Department to create new campaigns to continue to help seriously ill children and their families both while in-patient and as out-patients waiting for their next treatment.
During my time at Starlight, I co-founded Answer With Action with two friends. Answer With Action provided socially-conscious young professionals in Los Angeles a chance to get together and volunteer combining boutique volunteer experiences with networking opportunities. I left Starlight to take Answer With Action to a new level providing fundraising, cause-based marketing and digital strategy to for profits and non-profits. It was during this time that I started to get actively involved with the Los Angeles tech community. Understanding that online would play a crucial role in the future of social action campaigns, I joined Causecast in January 2008 as the third hire, first as a Nonprofit Relationship Manager and quickly thereafter taking on the role of Director of Business Development. From a simple investor deck and a newly ordered Apply computer, we built Causecast from scratch. Alternating between Project Manager working with designers and developers, Human Resources assessing our growing needs and writing job descriptions and interviewing candidates, to growing both the nonprofit and celebrity leader relationships and building strategic partnerships, Causecast was my life. Blood, sweat and tears. As startups tend to be.
We launched at TechCrunch50 with over 25 nonprofits and celebrity leaders on the site promoting their work in the nonprofit world. We were dubbed “The One-Stop Philanthropy Shop.” Life went on. We worked at creating verticals for the nonprofits to be successful at reaching their audience in a new type of aggregated content social network. The niche social networks were emerging, letting people play with the people who were most like them and hopefully, while on our site, getting involved with cause and finding a way to incorporate cause into their everyday life.
Unfortunately, at that time, the economy sank and without a revenue model, many startups folded. Many companies nationwide struggled. This is fall 2008 after all. In the largest month of layoffs the U.S. had seen since 1983, national unemployment rose to 6.7% for the month (10.2% overall). I, like many, woke up and found myself out of work. My first inclination was to get another job. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Dust ourselves off and keep trucking along on the same path.
One week later, in what I now call a moment of equal clarity and despair, I decided to NOT do that. Instead, I put 30 days notice on my apartment (I had wanted to move), mutually ended a long-term relationship (we’re much better now as close friends), sold most of my things, put the rest in storage and bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires. I had savings. I had pending severance. I was a frugalista and had an emergency fund and could buy myself some time. I didn’t know for how long. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I just knew I had always felt given the chance to travel and GO and SEE and DO, that I would.
One year later, I stand before you forever changed for the experiences I had this past year and grateful for this opportunity to see the world. I spent two months in South America including Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador, returned to the U.S. to be on a panel at SXSW and then went to New Orleans for two months to give back and dig into what it was like to try to rebuild a city in America devastated by national disaster. Little did I know I would fall in love. With New Orleans. With her strong sense of community and burgeoning social entrepreneurship scene. That I would feel, from the moment my feet hit that Louisiana soil, that I was home. During that time I was accepted in the Kiva Fellowship to be partnered with a microfinance institution in the developing world. I said “farewell for now” to New Orleans, promising myself to return and traveled once more to the Philippines where I spent June-August in poverty alleviation.
In order to raise the money to go on the Fellowship, I created a online campaign using my blog and social networking tools to raise $7,500 in one month. I really believe through my story-telling, pictures and video, people were able to feel like they were a part of the experience bringing a 360 degree feel to both my fundraising campaign and my Kiva Fellowship. My bond and tie with the Philippines will never be broken. I lived in her provinces and took bucket-showers in her villages. I met the women and people there and worked incredibly hard to give them all the resources, knowledge, and skills I had to make their infrastructure stronger.
Upon returning from the Philippines, I launched Cause It’s My Birthday, a national fundraiser to raise education and money for malaria nets to be distributed in Northern Ghana. My partner on the project and I worked with Netting Nations, a 501(c)3 and raised close to $20,000 during the month-long campaign and specific week-long series of “giving instead of getting” birthday parties.
Now? Now is the great and wondrous unknown. I’ve made introductions about who I am and my true sincerity around wanting to make an impact on this planet and leave a legacy to be proud of me behind me. I live to inspire others, and in turn strive to be inspired every day by someone or something else.
Throughout my personal and professional life, I’ve always believed there was a way to tie together my actions with cause. I think radically, I act passionately, I reflect deeply.
It’s all a work in progress. I’m excited to share in the journey with you. Take a bit and read through some of the archives, and say hi! I love connecting with new people.
Virtually yours,
Sloane
sloane (at) thecausemopolitan (dot) com
