It’s a tricky question to answer. As Bike & Build has grown from an idea to a baby to an established organization, my goals, expectations, and hopes for it have changed and evolved.

I started Bike & Build in 2002, after completing a cross-country ride organized by New Haven Habitat for Humanity the summer before.  The experience I had – combining elements of charity, volunteerism, travel, and adventure – was so positive that I finished my ride with a single thought: everyone should have the chance to do a trip like this.  Initially, Bike & Build was my way to replicate and share with others the experience that was so formative to me.

As Bike & Build grew, the potential for creating impact among the affordable housing cause and housing groups in the field became increasingly important and compelling.  Over time, the organization was able to become a larger funder of affordable housing projects.  The fuel behind my work and involvement with Bike & Build was the opportunity to fund and execute projects that would meaningfully change the lives of the families they touched.

Most recently, to me Bike & Build has become about the community of riders, alumni, affordable housing partners, trip hosts, parents, and friends that has grown out of the organization and its programs.  It’s an incredible group to be a part of.

As Bike & Build has grown, with it my role has evolved – from Founder to Director to Chair.  After 10 years, the time is right for me to scale back my involvement with the organization.I will be stepping down as Chairman, and look forward to defining what my new role with Bike & Build will be.  I look forward to staying close to Bike & Build, and I feel fortunate to turn the organization over to a fiercely dedicated and talented staff and board.  I am also grateful that Kristian Sekse will be taking over the Chair position.

When I started Bike & Build, I didn’t truly know what I wanted it to be, but I’m incredibly excited and grateful for what it has become.  My sincere thanks to all of you who have touched Bike & Build in big and small ways, and have helped it to become what it is today.  I look forward to continuing to be a part of extending the experience of a Bike & Build trip to more people, helping the organization create affordable housing, and growing and connecting with the amazing group of people who are a part of it.

I am staying in a quiet corner of the Shanghainese neighborhood of the French Concession, which is filled with boutiques, restaurants, and bars.  The French Concession is a bit west of the hustling downtown area, and my hotel is in the western part of the neighborhood.  (An enclave within an enclave.)  On a tip from a TechnoServe alum, I booked a room in a boutique courtyard hotel, which is set back from a leafy side street.  Sometimes, I hear, there’s not one car when you arrive on the street after stepping out from the hotel.

Beyond the immediate area where I’m staying, crossing the road remains easier here.  Shanghai – while a massive city – does not have the extremely wide parade boulevards of Beijing.  And although the crowds of people, cars, and bicycles could get almost as thick as in the capital, the intersections have been more orderly.  There are even countdown lights on the “Walk” signs.  If I were a professional street crosser, I’d definitely choose to ply my trade in Shanghai over Beijing.

Shanghai is the tail of the dragon which has been my trip to China.  The most Western of Chinese cities, one of the – if not the biggest, and definitely the most modern and forward-looking, I’ve heard more than one Chinese refer to Shanghai as “the New York City of China.”  It felt true – during my three days here there have been moments when I could have been in Manhattan.  And in many ways, Shanghai is years ahead of NYC.

My first stop in Shanghai was the excellent Shanghai Museum, which has very good and accessible collections of Chinese art, calligraphy, jade jewelry, coins, furniture, and stamps.  The museum is shaped like a circular vessel, complete with handles at the top, and the galleries ring a large atrium in the center.

I took a particular interest in the seal – or stamp – exhibition.  The museum has an extensive collection of the seals used by emperors and their administrations to certify documents and correspondence.  Accompanying the seals was a narrative describing the technology and policy governing the seals and their use – from standardization of the designs under different emperors to the more widespread (democratization?) of seals in later years, when technology and relaxed regulation allowed more Chinese to create and use their own seals.

Though I didn’t see it in it’s full glory, later conversations with an expat, Guillermo, and his friend,Yuanyuan (more below), confirmed my suspicion that China is a stamp-happy country.  My stamp experience was limited to immigration at the airport – STAMP!; changing money at the bank – STAMP!; and buying a train ticket- STAMP!; but apparently the practice of stamping things is alive and well in many more activities.

In China, the English word for “stamp” – both the noun and the verb – is “chop.” I commissioned a customized chop of my own for any and all business that I needed to conduct while in China.  Readers of my dispatches from southern Africa will know that I am now prepared to deal with official documentation and correspondence coming my way in both China and Swaziland.

The other museum in Shanghai which I particularly enjoyed is the Propaganda Art Center, a tucked away musesum with a collection of government issued posters from the 1940s through the 70s, denouncing the (imperialist!) USA, heralding China’s alliance with the USSR, and otherwise charting the rise and unification of the nation through a particular lens.  I had seen the other side of these posters at various places in the States, and suggested in the PAC guest book a joint side-by-side collaborative exhibition.

At the museum I met another vacationing American, Christine, who I spent a couple of hours walking around the French Concession shops with.  We ended our walk at the Shanghai flagship store of Shokay, a maker of yak-down items such as scarfs, hats and other clothing, throw blankets, etc. A friend, Esther Hsu Wang, played a hand in incubating the business.  Shokay is a social business, and it was fun to see the store in Shanghai mixed in among all the other boutiques (but it would have been more fun to see the yaks or the weaving in the countryside).

One of the highlights of Shanghai is it’s impressive skyline, and the tallest building in the city (for the time being) is the 100 story Shanghai World Financial Center.  Many of the buildings, including SWFC have viewing decks atop the structures, with the admission price correlated to the building height.  At RMB150 (around USD$25) the SWFC deck is the most expensive single attraction that I’ve visited in Hong Kong or China – more than the Great Wall and the Forbidden City combined.  (New business idea: build a massive skyscraper and charge admission to a top floor viewing deck. NB: lots of competition on this one in China.)

Before entering the elevator to the top of the SWFC, visitors are guided through a small museum about the city and the building.  The most memorable part of this was a video with side-by-side renderings of the NYC, Tokyo, and Shanghai skylines over time.  Starting in 1920, the years ticked forward and showed new developments in the skylines.  As new buildings emerged in NYC from the beginning, Tokyo’s silhouette was still until around the mid 1960s when towers started to emerge.  The image of Shanghai was basically unchanged until the mid-90s; in the past 15 years the development has been nonstop.

Stepping out of the elevator and onto the observation deck, the city stretches forever in all directions.  The top floor of the SWFC is supported by the rest of the building only at the ends of the viewing hall – there is no structure below the main hall – and panels of glass in the floor allow you to look down below.

Between these activities, walking around Shanghai, and more good eating, I squeezed in a visit to the Shanghai Library, an evening cruise on the Huangpu River, some time at the Confucian Temple, and a fun stop at the Shanghai Bird Market where the main attraction to me wasn’t the birds, but rather than many different types of bugs (ranging from insects to grasshoppers to I don’t know what) being sold alongside them.

While in Shanghai, I met up with Guillermo and Yuanyuan for an evening.  Guillermo is a friend of my friends Philippe and Daniel Gerschel, and he has been in Shanghai working for Adidas here.  (He is all in.)  I met them for dinner one evening, and they took me to a smart bar afterwards for a drink.

The roads which form the grid of and rings around Beijing are perpetually packed with pedestrians, cars, trucks, bicycles (electric and conventional), scooters, and mopeds, all of which (outside of the pedestrians) seem to have the right of way at any given moment.  At major intersections a mass of people will gather on the corner and start to wade across the road.  They’re up against drivers, whose approach at the intersections is single-minded: get across the road or make the turn as quickly as possible.  Left turns – and the occasional daring and artful U-turn – are particularly momentous affairs, as corners are cut and new lanes are created, resulting in a mish-mash of vehicles pointed in various direction.

Beijing (and perhaps all of China) has a right on red policy which differs from the law in America in terms that no stop is required, resulting in a constant flow of traffic around corners.  Since cars have the right of way, pedestrians line up on the corners and wait for a slight break in the stream of traffic – a driver who has brought dishonor upon his family by not following the car in front of him close enough – to fill in the gap and begin to cross.

My crosswalk strategy has been to first make my way to an island one lane into the street – which separates the main road from a lane for cyclists – and then to wade across downstream of the other pedestrians, allowing them to both set the course and to cushion the impact from any unforeseen vehicle.  So far so good.

This morning is my last in Beijing after an active and memorable five nights here.  I’ve been ably and graciously hosted by Freda and Chris Murck, the parents of my good friend Jen.  Highlights in Beijing include a visit to the Forbidden City, curated visits to Panjiayuan Market and 798 Art District, running in (and finishing!) the Beijing Half Marathon, an excursion to the Great Wall, and a number of delicious meals.

My first day in Beijing started early, in time for the sunrise flag raising ceremony by the Chinese Army in Tiananmen Square.  The ceremony started at 6:20 am.  I think that most in the crowd looked a bit weary and would have preferred a slightly later start time, but – hey – this isn’t a democracy.

Tiananmen is a huge open space, with a couple of monuments in the square and ringed on the sides by government buildings.  After the ceremony and a walk around, I crossed the street just to the north to enter the Forbidden City, the home and royal court of various Chinese emperors.  While I won’t recount – nor could I do justice to – the history, the scale and detail of the palaces and grounds was remarkable.

Freda escorted me the following day to Panjiayuan Market, an antiques and collectibles market in southeast Beijing.  The market’s biggest on Saturday (when we visited), and had a vast array of vendors with jewelry, clothing, porcelain, furniture, lawn ornaments, samurai swords, musical instruments, books, etc.  I picked up a vintage Chinese army jacket and a couple of smaller trinkets.

Freda also let me join her on a related trip to an art collectibles dealer in pursuit of an item for an exhibition she is curating for Museum Rietberg in Zurich.  She is a Chinese art historian and has studied and written on the artistic renderings of a gift of mango fruit from Mao to workers in 1968, and the subsequent appearances of mangoes in Chinese art.  Freda had identified a platter with a drawing of mangos at a local dealer, and I accompanied her to pick up the piece.

Straight from the markets, I met two local Beijingers, Justine and Tingting, whom I was introduced to by Monroe Price.  Justine is a university student and Tingting – her sister, is an artist.  After a delicious lunch (below), Justine and I travelled out to 798 Art District, a former military factory and settlement which has been converted into gallery and studio space for contemporary artists.  Like other things in Beijing, the area was immense, with countless galleries and shops; in about two hours we may have gotten to half of them.

My trip to Beijing has also been the occasion of my first half marathon.  My visit corresponded with the Beijing Marathon, which also included a half marathon, a 9 km race, and a mini-marathon (about 4 km, I think).  I signed up for the half shortly after booking my plane tickets 8 weeks ago, when 13.1 miles didn’t seem like too far of a distance in my head.  What a great way to see and experience the city, I thought.

I picked up my bib and other registration materials at the Marathon Expo in Olympic Park, situated between the Bird’s Nest Stadium and the Olympic Water Cube,  What great fortune I had to be assigned bib 24051, which happens to be a particularly auspicious number in Chinese tradition!

The next morning I rose and travelled back to Tiananmen Square, the start site.  The square was filled with 30,000 runners between the four events, and Chinese and American music being pumped through speakers helped to provide the crowd with energy.  I met and talked with a Malaysian named Ooi, who was in Beijing touring and for the event, and he extended to me an invitation to run in the Kuala Lumpur half marathon in April.

The half marathon runners were queued up behind the marathon entrants, and when we set off just after 9am the main boulevard leading off of the square was flooded with runners in the orange race t-shirt.  The first 9 or 10 km were on six-lane wide flat boulevard, and I felt strong, slowly advancing through the crowd and overtaking other runners.

Along the side of the road were spectators all yelling “JIE-yoo,” or “Let’s go!” (literally “add gas”) in Chinese.  My guess is that half of them intended to be there, while the other half were caught at the intersection in their cars when the crossing was closed to traffic. (The ultimate Beijing pedestrian revenge?)

After a very pleasant and (I think) fast first 10 km, I slowed noticeably for the next several K.  Each kilometer was marked, and water stations were positioned at each 2.5 km, which were helpful in marking distances and breaking up the race.  Kilometers 16-18 were particularly tough, and then the prospect of finishing kicked in for the last few km.  I finished in 2:03:28 – a particularly auspicious time in the Chinese tradition.  It was slower than the number in my head, but still successful for my first half marathon (and first run over 7.5 miles).

Yesterday I travelled to the Great Wall with three Austrailian ladies – Ellie, Ingrid, and Maureen – whom I had met at dinner at the home of friends of Freda and Chris the night before.  They were in town for vacation – Maureen and Ingrid from Austraulia, and Ellie en-route back home from an eight month trip through the U.S. and South America.  They had arranged for a private car to see the wall in Mutianyu, about 75 minutes northeast of Beijing, and invited me to join.

We arrived at the base of the mountains below the wall and rode a cable car (cabin #7, a very auspicious number in the Chinese tradition) to the top.  While bits of the wall were clear from the bottom, and while I was familiar with the scale and scope of the endeavor, it was only when I disembarked from the cable car that the enormity and amazement of the wall became more apparent.

(The feeling that I had was quite similar to when I traveled to the Grand Canyon in 2001.  After hearing from many people how spectacular it was, I felt that it would not live up to the hype I had heard.  Of course, I was blown away on both occasions.)

At the top Ellie and I headed off for a walk along the wall, which travels up and down the contours of the mountain ridges.  As we travelled away from the cable car station (and the slopes became steeper) the crowds thinned out.  Along the way we spotted a path down to the mountain base, which we set off on (rather than return through the cable car).

The way turned from a dirt path to a concrete strip to a paved road, and the whole hike down we didn’t pass a single other person, nor could we glimpse the cable car towers – for good reason.  We ended up in a small village and came upon a small group of Chinese women who asked us in Chinese, as I could only imagine,”What are you doing here?”  It turned out the path we chose landed us about 9 kilometers away from Mutianyu. A minor miscalculation.

Without a lick of Chinese or a functioning cell phone between the two of us, Ellie and I were very fortunate that a lady in the crowd recognized the English words “cable car” and “taxi.”. A villager pulled up in his car and we happily paid the 30 RMB (about USD$5) that was asked of us for the shuttle ride to meet Ingrid, Maureen, and our driver.  I think both Ellie and I were glad to have had the experience of the hike and the mini-adventure.

Lastly, eating in Beijing has been quite fun (and delicious), and I’ve had a number of memorable meals.

Justine and Tingting took me to lunch at a restaurant with food from X’ian province, where their family is from.  (In the lead-up to this trip, I had been practicing eating Chinese food through lunchtime trips to NYC’s Chinatown, and had familiarized myself with X’ian-style pulled noodles from a shop under the Manhattan bridge.). They ordered a feast of cold noodles and vegetables, braised fish, lamb and carrot dumplings, roasted lamb, fresh bean curd, and yogurt drizzled with honey. It’s the tastiest (and most plentiful) Chinese meal that I could remember.

Last night, I was in invited with Freda and Christian to a dinner of Princeton Graduate School alumni, a club that both Freda and Christian are members of.  It was an interesting mix of academics and business type locals and expats in Beijing, and they didn’t mind that I’m a Yalie without a PhD.  A specialty of the restaurant – a whole fish flash-fried and served in a sweet and sour style – was brought to our host, Rose, before it was cooked for her review and approval.  (Similarly to how a bottle of wine may be presented at a restaurant in the States.) The fish arrived in a metal container; when the lid was flipped back and Rose peeked in, the fish jumped – to Rose’s approval – and was subsequently sent to its fate in a hot wok.

I also dined on Peking duck, the flagship dish of Beijing, at a restaurant particularly well known for it.  I was alone for this meal, and had ordered what I thought was Peking duck for one person.  In fact I had ordered one Peking duck(!), which was dutifully carried out and carved table-side.  I didn’t eat again (apart from the delicious corn ice cream which was served for dessert) for a day.

In between these meals, there have been snacks from shops, bakeries, and street vendors, which are plentiful and cheap.

Other observations on Beijing:
- Most things (food, transportation, attractions) have generally been fairly cheap in Beijing.
- If Hong Kongers dress smart and chic, Beijingers are hip and cool.  I don’t know how to describe the style here, but I think most Beijingers on the street would look comfortable if they were dropped into the Lower East Side of Manhattan, while most Hong Kongers could be placed in Saks or a fashionable office at a moment’s notice.
- There’s not a lot of English spoken here.  The tourist sites have limited but serviceable English displays and translations, and limited English is spoken in restaurants and some stores.  Elsewhere English is generally not read nor understood, and I’ve gotten by with pointing and gesturing and with a handy map supplied by my hosts to give to taxi drivers to direct them to where I’m staying.
- I had been warned before my trip, but the Chinese habit of spitting on the street is jarring.  On any street, men (and the occasional woman) will clear their throat and hawk something up.  It’s very common and pronounced.
- While obviously these cities could take years to explore and discover, I leave Beijing after five nights feeling that I could easily spend a lot more time here.  There are whole sections of the city which I didn’t come close to, and there’s a ton of variety here – between the history, arts, culture, food, business, and politics. While I enjoyed my time in Hong Kong, I didn’t have this same feeling upon leaving.

A special thanks to my very gracious hosts, Freda and Chris, and also to Justine and Tingting for sharing Beijing with me.

Now it’s onto Shanghai – at 300+ km/hr on the bullet train – for four more nights before returning to NYC. I’ll aim to send another dispatch written from my plane ride back home. If you have any tips on or connections in Shanghai, I’d love to hear them in the next 48 hours.

EGG operates  a battery subscription service which it is rolling out in Tanzania.  They’ve developed a business and distribution model for providing rechargeable batteries to Tanzanians in villages that don’t have access to the grid.  EGG charges batteries at a power station, and then distributes them through a network of shopkeepers and other local entrepreneurs.  Consumers use the battery to power lights, cell phone chargers, and other electronics in their home for 3-5 days; when the battery is used, they return to the distribution point, pay a small fee (about $0.60), and receive a new battery.  It’s not a perfect analogy, but think of it as a milk-delivery service for electricity.

I had some familiarity with the company before the meeting, but within a few minutes of hearing from Jukka, the multiple value propositions of EGG were clear.

First and foremost, EGG is providing electricity to the villages in Tanzania at a lower cost than conventional methods.  EGG charges an up-front fee of $50-60 to consumers to outfit their homes and install wiring so they may use the batteries , and subscription and battery swap fees which total about $60-70 per year.  In the first year, the customer recoups the installation fee, and in year two they save roughly half off of what they would spend on traditional energy sources.  (Jukka said that the installation fee hasn’t been a big obstacle to users adopting the service, and that micro-finance institutions have shown a willingness to finance the up-front costs.)

Electricity is a prerequisite to meaningful development and education, and EGG is making it more affordable and available.  And besides for winning on price, EGG’s batteries are much greener and healthier than current energy sources, such as burning kerosene, timber, and crop waste.  In addition to being cleaner for the environment, electric batteries have health benefits for users: unlike fuel sources, they don’t release harmful smoke in the home, an issue which largely affects women and children.

While there are a lot of challenges for EGG to prove its financial and operational models and grow to scale, the company has a lot of promise.   In a time where multiple bottom-line businesses are all the rage, EGG has potential to be a financial-developmental-environmental-health win-win-win-win.

EGG received seed funding from a few business plan competitions and other early stage funders, and  is now in the process of raising a round to build new charging stations, expand into new territories, and develop its distribution network.  My sense is that it would be a very interesting option for funders and (impact) investors, and was surprised to hear Jukka spoke about some of the the difficulties of fundraising.

One thing which has stuck with me is the incredible tax burden that EGG (a Delaware-registered company) and its investors face, which limits its attractiveness as an investment.  Consider the taxes levied on a dollar of operating profit that the company earns in Tanzania.

The rates that I’m using may be slightly off, but the story doesn’t change much with different numbers.  It’s hard to realize a competitive return for investors when 40% of your profits are swallowed before the money even enters the states.

I am a novice in this area, and I imagine that I’m presenting a very simplified case and there are many options that I am not considering.   For example there could be more involved corporate and/or investment structures which will help reduce the tax burden.  It’s also possible that EGG will reinvest its profits into growing the business for a while, and that the company’s investors will be motivated by its social mission and willing to accept a lower financial return than traditional investments.  And lastly, it’s likely that larger companies have more sophisticated structures and strategies to limit their tax burdens than businesses like EGG do, and that this problem is limited largely to start-ups operating in developing world.

Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to this tax issue after having read about how Google, big Pharma, and other multinational corporations avoid taxes by sending their revenues on an electronic trip around the world, with stops in Ireland and the Netherlands before finally ending in Bermuda.  These techniques have lowered the companies’ tax rates to the low single digits.

It seems to me that forward-thinking companies like EGG are the types that should be attracting investment and receiving tax breaks.  It’s hard enough to start and grow a multiple bottom-line business in a developing country, and it seems especially hard to do so given the realities of the tax environment.

I’d love for someone with more knowledge as an investor in or operator of a company in developing countries to provide some input or feedback in the comments.

On July 20, Paige Hicks, a leader on the 2010 Providence to Seattle (P2S) Bike & Build trip, was killed in a fatal accident.  She was 21.

Paige was stopped on the shoulder of a road in rural South Dakota, when she was struck by a wide load being pulled by a semi truck.  Reports have found that both Paige and the driver of the truck were acting within their rights and appropriately as cyclist and motorist; the accident was the result of a freak confluence of events, with an incredibly sad and tragic result.  Details about the accident and Bike & Build’s response to the tragedy are available here.

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind, and a lot of thoughts and feelings have been swirling through my head.  This is the first fatality on a Bike & Build trip, and the absolute worst case scenario for Bike & Build and our community.  It is an incredibly sad event that we have been actively working to prevent over the past several years.

I traveled to St. Louis last weekend to be with the P2S group and Bike & Build’s staff as they met with Paige’s family and attended her memorial services.  Though I had only met Paige briefly, earlier this year at a Bike & Build leader training retreat, there are certain things that I felt I knew about her through her involvement with the organization – as a two-time participant (she was part of the Providence to San Francisco trip in 2009) and a 2010 trip leader.

As Bike & Build’s founder, I feel a bit of a paternal instinct towards everyone who takes part in one of our trips in a way that seems very obvious to me, yet is difficult for me to explain beyond that.  This feeling towards Paige is amplified – I feel this way towards all Bike & Builders, but feel more strongly to those who come back for a second trip, and also those who are trip leaders, and enable this experience for others.  It takes a certain type of person to complete Bike & Build once, and a very special person to lead a trip and do it twice.

There were two things which were most striking to me in St. Louis.

The first was how accomplished Paige was, and how vividly she had lived.  At 21, Paige had biked across America with Bike & Build, run on her high school cross-country team and completed a marathon, lived and study abroad in Barcelona, been elected to be a co-captain for her college ultimate frisbee team, and worked as a peer counselor – all while working towards a degree in biology at Brown.  Remembrances by her friends and family painted a vivid picture of her as a generous, kind, and delightfully colorful woman.  She loved Harry Potter (and had named her bike Firebolt), was a fluid speaker of Pig Latin (winning Pig Latin endurance contests, and oftentimes enlisting others in conversations), wore her trademark bright purple sunglasses (at times leaving pairs with friends), and loved the Muppets (this scene, Love Led Us Here, from The Muppets Treasure Island was played as part of the memorial service).  The quirks that  made Paige different and potentially vulnerable were things that she embraced, making her all the more special and endearing her deeply to her friends and family.  In learning more about Paige, it struck me that it’s at once both easier and much harder to say goodbye to someone who had lived so richly, seemingly beyond her years.

I was also struck by how big a part of Paige’s life Bike & Build had become.  Through photos and objects displayed at the visitation session, in talking to Paige’s friends and family, and in hearing remembrances at the memorial service, it became clear how strongly Paige felt towards Bike & Build, how committed she was to the different components of the organization, and how great of a match she was for the program.  Seeing the photos of Paige on Bike & Build and the objects on display were upsetting to me at first, but quickly made me glad that Paige had found Bike & Build, and thankful for her involvement in and commitment to the organization.  In many ways, it had been a perfect match.

As tragic a situation as this has been, the silver lining of the past two weeks has been the response and strength of the Bike & Build community.  There has been an outpouring of support towards Paige’s family, the P2S group, and Bike & Build from so many members of our community.  One particularly touching tribute was an effort to make and collect chalk messages in memory of Paige.  Bike & Build riders use chalk to leave messages for each other on the road while they are riding, and the messages were a way for the community to memorialize Paige in a unique Bike & Build style.  (An album of the chalkings could be found here on Facebook.)  Seeing the kind and generous response of the Bike & Build community this past two weeks has made me proud and thankful to be a part of it.

I’m a big fan and supporter of these “a-thons,” and recognize the powerful experiences they offer to participants, as well as their ability to raise big and much-needed money for charitable causes.  Over time, these operations have become bigger and slicker, involving more people and raising more dollars.  (In 2008 Team in Training, an endurance athletics program for the National Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, involved 360,000 participants and raised an astonishing $850M – or $2,361/participant – to support blood cancer research and patient services.)  Outside of the money raised, the events have successfully publicized and elevated the causes that they support.

While the events themselves are ubiquitous, the fundraising solicitations that support them are even more so.  Each year, I get anywhere from 8-12 notes from friends who are running marathons, participating in triathlons, or riding their bikes, to request a contribution.  I try to contribute to many – if not all – of them.  If I care about the person who’s participating or the cause he or she’s supporting, it’s hard for me not to make a donation, even if it’s a small amount.  (Note to future Bike & Build participants: I never turn down requests for Bike & Build; just ask!)

It’s never been easier for participants in these events to ask their networks for financial contributions.  When you sign up for a fundraiser, you’re prompted to set up a page that tells your story and tracks your fundraising progress.  Organizers have built online tools that make it easy – and socially permissible – to solicit your friends through email, and increasingly through other methods like Facebook and Twitter.  And the events have spawned an industry of web sites, payment processors, and other tools that make this process easy.  (Causes on Facebook, Kintera – an enterprise solution now owned by Blackbaud, and Active.com come to mind.)

Equally – or more – important, is that we’ve all become accustomed to receiving these solicitations.  And they’re highly effective.  I wasn’t able to quickly find data on response rates for these requests, but my guess is that they’re very high – and much higher than the response rates generally for solicitations by charities.  I am many more times likely to make a contribution to a cause if I’m asked by a friend or colleague in conjunction with an event, than if I receive an email or letter from a charity.

I give great credit to the “a-thon” industry for creating this groundswell movement, and trace much of what’s been created back to the AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer Walks pioneered by Dan Pallotta and Pallotta Teamworks, which started in the mid-90’s.  Together, these groups have created a culture where it’s easy, accepted, and expected for individuals to ask for and receive support from their friends for charitable causes.

These tools and environment are exactly what’s needed for blood donations.

When I became a blood donor last year, I tried to recruit friends to come with me.  I struggled to find a way to ask them to join me, eventually settling on semi-personalized emails and a note on Facebook.  A couple of blood bank web sites I looked at contained tools which aimed to help me recruit friends, but they were very basic, poorly conceived, and not user-friendly or intuitive to use.

Also, at the time I barely understood the blood donation process or the eligibility requirements, and I can’t imagine that my friends were familiar with this.  It was a bit of a black box for me, and there wasn’t (and still isn’t) the same recognition of giving blood that’s so commonplace for making contributions to fundraising events.

There are a lot of important differences between asking others to make a financial contribution and donating blood.  It’s a lot easier to give money – you could do it instantly on a web site, there’s no needle involved, and everyone is eligible to contribute – but blood banks would be smart to take a page from the “a-thon” industry’s success, and build tools that help create a culture where it’s easy, accepted, and expected for individuals to ask for their networks to become blood donors.

I’ve been thinking about what drives people to donate blood, what methods blood banks are using to recruit and retain donors, and whether these efforts are successful in meeting demand – and at what cost.  I’ve noticed that at any given time, it’s not uncommon to see acute shortages of certain blood types in different regions.  (See these real-time searches for “blood shortage” on Google News and Twitter to get an idea of this.)  It’s hard for me to get a complete handle on the overall supply chain, but there are signs that point to an increasing demand for blood products (through factors like increased prevalence of cancer and other diseases which require high numbers of tranfusions) combined by a simultaneous squeeze on supply (due to demographics, restrictions on donors, etc.).

It seems a given that there should always be an adequate supply of blood products, especially with all the available resources in the US.  I’m looking into how big a problem these blood shortages are now, and how big an issue they will be in the future.  Contributing towards a robust and sufficient  supply chains seems like a worthwhile challenge, and one with a number of possible solutions.

…

I became a blood donor late last year, after a family member received an emergency transfusion.  The availability of blood products was a critical factor in the health outcome, and my family and I were thankful for the donors who had rolled up their sleeves and made their blood available.

The experience made me realize that donating blood was a relatively easy and quick way to do something both generous and thoughtful for someone else, and an opportunity to feel really good about myself.  Becoming a blood donor was an easy decision for me, and a good way to pay forward the gift given by others to my family.

I had to delay my first donation due to my recent travel in Africa, and when November came around I was ready to follow through on my promise.   I made an appointment with NY Blood Center, and sent an email to a number of friends to recruit them to come with me.  (I also posted a version of the email as a note on my Facebook page.)  A few friends wrote back to let me know that they made an appointment or otherwise were thinking about doing so, but I was unsatisfied by the low response.

It occurred to me that unless you were highly motivated to be a donor – or the act of donating was made very low-cost (through a blood drive at work, for instance) – it’s extremely easy to not consider donating blood.  My experience made me think that there had to be a better way to put donating blood on people’s radars, and help blood banks to ensure adequate supply (and potentially smarter and cheaper supply chain management).

…

While I’ve been thinking about this for a few months, I’ve yet to jump in and start creating.  I’m excited now to give it a go, and move from ideation to action plan to product to (hopefully) sustainable business.  My working name for this project is Donor Universal, which is a play on “universal donor,” or those with blood type O-.

I feel confident that new tools could help recruit and retain blood donors, more smartly manage the supply chain,  and help create a culture where asking and inspiring others to give blood becomes commonplace.  And I also feel excited on the cusp of launching a new social venture; many of my feelings are similar to those I felt on the eve of founding Bike & Build, which has been my most rewarding work to date.

As much as possible, I plan on using this blog to share my thinking and progress, engage others in this project, and hold myself accountable in moving forward.  I look forward to sharing more insights and questions about the blood supply, ideas (and mock-ups) of tools to be built, and trends in tech and online organizing that have influenced my thinking.

And lastly, I look forward to your comments, insights, and feedback on this project.  I’ve read enough start-up blogs to be convinced that actively sharing my ideas (as opposed to stealth mode) is the way to go.  Good ideas are a fine starting point, but executing them is the real challenge.  And besides, my ultimate goal is to contribute towards ensuring a robust blood supply chain.  I don’t think there are too many other people who are actively thinking about how to do this, but if my blogging moves others to develop methods or tools that achieve this goal, the problem will be solved – even if it wasn’t me who solved it.

Below are two of the videos.  Enjoy!

MTV’s SuChin Pak profiles Sharif:

Destorm on Bike & Build:

For about a month before I arrived in Tana, I had been in touch with all of the rental agencies trying to locate a small, cheap car for the week I would be there. But in Madagascar, you can’t rent just a car – instead, you hire the car and a driver together. So, this is how I ended up spending four days of my time in Madagascar riding shotgun with Rebe, a driver I hired through a recommendation at one of the hotels in the capital.

Our negotiation was quick: I told him where I wanted to go and for how long, he quoted a price, I knocked off 25% – to make the offer a bit lower than the price charged by the major rental agencies, except Rebe’s price included the petrol – and he agreed immediately. There is nothing worse than having a counter-offer immediately agreed to, and I knew that I paid more than I needed to. But Rebe turned out to be well worth the money.

Driving in Madagascar is a sport. It’s a test of dexterity, agility, and endurance, and it requires the right combination of patience and aggressiveness, knowledge of the local roads, and a sense of humor. It’s probably best for tourists, Malagasy, and the cars themselves that foreigners don’t drive. For four straight days, Rebe piloted his red Ford station wagon through the Madagascar towns and countryside, handling the hazards and distractions in, on the side of, and beyond or past the roadside.

What’s in the road depends on where you are. Getting out of Tana – which could take between 30 and 90 minutes, depending on the time of day – the road is thick with traffic and people, mainly vendors selling whatever you could possibly imagine and taxi brousse, the Malagasy equivalent of an African combi.

Taxi brousse are shared-ride mini-buses that travel along a set route. To take a ride, you find the right taxi brousse in the bus station lot, throw your bag on the roof, and take a seat inside. And then you wait. Most taxi brousse are the size of 15-passenger vans in the States, but in Africa it’s common to have 20 people inside, and not uncommon to have 22-25 passengers. When – and if – the taxi brousse fills up , the trip begins. (Besides the comfort factor, travelling to the countryside by taxi brousse wasn’t an attractive option for me, as I didn’t have the time needed, and not speaking any French would have made it very difficult.)

Back on the road in Tana, Rebe stays close to the cars in front of him, putting his front bumper right next to the bumper of the car in front of him, careful not to let a car sneak in, or to allow a never-ending stream of pedestrians to carve a path in front of him. Whenever we are still for more than a few seconds, a street vendor approaches my window and holds out mango, toy, a whisk, or a live chicken. (15,000 ariary – about USD$8, I’m told is the price of the flashlight. I don’t need it, I tell the vendor. Fine: 11,000 ariary, he comes back with. And so on.)

As we leave Tana the crowds thin, the scenery changes, and the obstacles in the road change. Rebe puts on his old MP3 player, which has about 50 songs on it – a combination of 90’s American dance music (think Vanilla Ice, and other hits from the early 90’s bar mitzvah circuit) and French/Malagasy electronic – which he knows quite well. There’s one song, part in English and part in French, which I gather is called “Chihuahua,” that Rebe seems to like. It’s on the playlist multiple times, and Rebe starts to whistle to the melody when it comes on.

We’re on a “good road” – it is sealed and wide enough for a lane in each direction, but it still has its share of large potholes and the occasional unmarked speed bump (a Swazi specialty, no doubt, that has made its way to Madagascar), of which Rebe seems to know each one. Here, instead of the armies of people and vendors, Rebe now navigates the curves of the road bending around the hills and mountains, and whatever else ends up blocking our path. We are likely to come across a pack of cattle being shepherded by young boys to a pasture, an overloaded taxi brousse or large truck chugging slowly up the side of a hill, or a pousse pousse, or rickshaw, especially if we are in or close to Antsirabe, where there seems to be a rickshaw for each of the 150,000 living there.

When there’s something in our way, Rebe taps on his horn. This first toot is polite – friendly even – and most often the offending party obligingly moves. Trucks drift to the side of road, and flip on their left indicator lights, signaling to Rebe to pass; rickshaws slow down and move over; and even the cows knowingly shuffle aside (and if they don’t voluntarily move, the young boys give them a sharp smack on the side with a stick, tree branch, or rope.) But if there’s no movement, Rebe becomes inpatient. He hits the horn again, but in a longer, angrier blast.

In the countryside the roads are clearer, and my attention turns to the show on the side. There are constantly women lining the sides of the roads, with huts or simple displays selling honey (in recycled empty plastic water bottles), fruits, crayfish, homemade rum, crafts, or live animals. As we approach, each woman holds up what they are selling and gestures to our car. I quickly learn that live animals are handled in different ways to keep them docile while they’re being held. Chickens are dangled upside down, held by their feet; rabbits are presented by their ears, held back behind their heads; and ducks are fastened by their wings.

We often pass furnaces, where sand from the rivers is pressed and baked into bricks. These are simple ovens, formed by creating several long openings at the bottom where wood is inserted. These bricks will be loaded into wooden carts, and pushed or pulled by a team of young children along the side of the road to their destination. (Almost all of the buildings on the sides of the road are the same modest construction of brick and thatched roofs. They are rectangular, with a triangular roof, and windows only opening to the west, to avoid the fierce wind coming from the east.)

There is more activity on the side of the road, but my attention often drifts beyond it, to the beautiful hills and mountains we are traversing. The Malagasy countryside is beautiful, and this trip will take me through farming areas (rice paddies, mainly – all cultivated manually – no tractors here – with cattle pulling sleds to churn the land and women knee-deep in water pulling the rice out), rolling hillsides, and finally rainforest.

When we arrive at our destination – a park or nature reserve, or a hotel for the evening – Rebe will often sort everything out for me. He will locate a park guide who allegedly speaks English or arrange the room. We’ll figure out a time to meet up later in the day or the next morning (the hotels here often will give the driver a free shared room and sometimes a complementary dinner as well). He will disappear, and I will explore.