NTEN conference calls get great attendance and have robust backchannel discussions. You can get all the details about the call here.

I hope you’ll join us as I ask Patty to discuss Groupon’s social enterprise roots, her hopes for their G-Team integration with The Point and her view of the social impact potential for Groupon over the long term.

[Sorry for the couple of days without posts. Teaching my kids to ski took precedence!]

Back in 2007, 26-year-old Andrew Mason was working away on a website called The Point. The concept was that people would pledge to take some sort of social action – give money, volunteer, join a campaign – but they would only follow through on the pledge if a certain number of other people made the same pledge. This allowed someone raising money via The Point to tell a potential donor that they could pledge $100, but would only have to make the gift if at least 100 people made the same pledge. In this way the donor would know that they would only have to give the money if the nonprofit was going to get $10,000 and fully fund the project.

The Point quickly joined Social Actions and during the FORGE event in late 2008, Andrew approached me about setting up a Tactical Philanthropy community project on The Point.

It turns out that just about the same time, Andrew was launching a little side project called Groupon that would apply the tipping point concept to buying discounted goods and services. That little side project exploded in popularity and the now 29-year-old Andrew is the CEO of a multibillion dollar company.

But Andrew’s social entrepreneur roots are still solidly in place. The Point is still operating and recently Sharon Schneider argued that Groupon might be the most successful social enterprise ever. Sharon’s argument rested on the fact that Groupon deals are not just for restaurants and spas, but also drive increased traffic to nonprofit museums, offer discounts on local sustainable food and other products and services are offered by nonprofits or result in some sort of social good. For instance Groupon has offered deals on Kiva.org microfinance credits (which Oprah pointed to as a “best holiday gift”) and offered what was effectively matching funds for donations via Donorschoose.

Now Groupon is focusing directly on social impact activity. Since Groupon has dramatically higher brand awareness than The Point, the two organizations have teamed up to launch G-Team on the Groupon website.

Here’s how Groupon explains the new platform (Andrew is known for his sense of humor, telling the NY Times during the rumored Google takeover that he couldn’t talk on the record with them unless they wanted to talk about his true passion… miniature dollhouses):

“Long, long ago (2008), Groupon was born out of a group action and fundraising platform called The Point. As the Groupon community grew, our collective consumer power helped people get great deals and discover fun ways to experience their cities.

After a desert vision quest where we invoked our ancestral spirits, we are repossessed with The Point’s powers. Newly inspired, we’ve devised a way to connect Groupon users with their communities in a different way—with G-Team. Groupon followers who want to do good, have fun, and make a real impact can now join forces through G-Team campaigns.

G-Team campaigns range from ridiculous flashmobs to fundraisers that benefit local community organizations. Every G-Team campaign connects you with enough people to achieve something awesome that you couldn’t have done alone.”

G-Team isn’t just replicating The Point, it is combining the offering of Groupon and The Point.

One of the examples explaining the service is a Groupon discount where buyers can get an $80 bike tune-up for just $35 (so long as enough people sign up). However, since this is a G-Team joint effort with The Point, the offer also includes the fact that if the discount tips, a local bike cooperative will fix up 100 broken bikes and donate them to disadvantaged youth.

In some ways, G-Team looks like a cleverly designed corporate philanthropy effort. One in which Groupon gets “good karma” credit for the social good offered by the companies that use their service. But unlike much of corporate philanthropy that is almost wholly disconnected from the for-profit activities of the company, G-Team seems perfectly aligned with the strengthens of Groupon.

I’ve written recently about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy. But with Andrew Mason we have a true social entrepreneur who seemingly stumbled into an unbelievably profitable business venture. While Zuckerberg and other signers of the Giving Pledge should be rightly applauded for their efforts to give money generated in business to social impact organizations, the next frontier is business leaders who figure out how to embed social impact into the DNA of their profit engine.

With the launch of G-Team, which has the potential to deliver social impact as well as increase revenue for Groupon, we may be seeing the emergence of a multibillion dollar social enterprise.

(A special thanks to Christine Egger for pointing out G-Team to me)

Institutional foundations have been making this shift for some time now. Individual donors have only recently become more focused on thinking about the impact of their giving. The media have just begun to cover this shift. But corporate giving seems to have only barely been involved. This makes sense because it is hard to see the benefit to a corporation to focus on impact rather than on the higher profile nature of the gifts that they make.

So I read with interest an article in Advertising Age (note this is a advertising industry publication, not a philanthropy journal) examining how corporations can benefit from focusing on impact rather than on their giving (hat tip @bsttrach).

The author, Eric Henderson, writes:

What would happen if a brand were consciously identified with creating [a] level of change? Sales. On the strength of the kind of residual awareness and engagement that do not rely on a given campaign… If I felt and understood that a brand were truly the force behind significant community development where I live, then I’d buy the toothbrush, the shoes and the fizzy drink — all in one bundle.

…The equation can only begin with doing what’s right for the brand — i.e., putting your oxygen mask on before trying to help others. Doing right for the brand in this case means recognizing the business value of engaging consumers on genuine terms that are also recognized as such. Be (and be seen as) committed, long-term players in the cities and neighborhoods where you do business.

Note that Henderson is not just arguing for corporations to give back to the communities in which they operate. He is calling on them to make a difference in those communities and arguing that doing so is good for their bottom line.

It seems to me that this approach can be used to break down the natural suspicion we have of corporate giving. Consumers appreciate the fact that companies are charitable, but there is the lingering assumption that they do it only to help their bottom line. But what if a company didn’t just give, but actually made a difference? Actually had an impact on their community? Does it matter anymore to the consumer why they give? If a company gives 2% of income, a consumer might think they do it because on a net basis it actually increases profit and so the “net giving” is actually zero. But if a company’s corporate giving program was focused on achieving impact (and actually achieves it) does the consumer care anymore about how much they gave or why?

It may be that shifting the focus from corporate giving to corporate impact can revolutionize corporate philanthropy in the same way it is changing foundation and individual giving.