An App Finds Social-Purpose Businesses

Social Impact features restaurants and stores that pledge to improve the common good. Social Impact features restaurants and stores that pledge to improve the common good.

October 14, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute

Looking for a place to eat, go shopping, and change the world?

A new smartphone application seeks to connect do-gooders with more than 1,000 social-purpose businesses.

Social Impact is a free app, available for Apple devices, that features restaurants, coffee shops, fair-trade stores, and other businesses that provide goods and services and also seek to create social benefits, such as job training for disadvantaged teenagers or greater exposure for eco-friendly products.

“I’m convinced that there are millions of customers who would shop at those places if they had the information in front of them at the right time,” says Rolfe Larson, the app’s creator and a consultant who advises nonprofits about social enterprise.

Mr. Larson created Social Impact in partnership with the Social Enterprise Alliance and the Kibble Education and Care Centre, a charity in Great Britain. He says an Android version of the app and a Web-based version of the tool are forthcoming.

To download the app: Go to itunes.apple.com.

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.