Friday, July 18, 2008

Zoosa taps job seekers’ social conscience

By Brendan Lynch

A startup with its roots at Harvard Business School wants to help people reduce the lead time from altruistic thought to selfless deed — or a profitable deed that happens to help others as well.  

Second-year business school student Michael McGlade said that while there are websites that allow people to look for volunteer positions in specific areas, and job boards that focus on business sectors such as clean technology, there has been no one-stop-shopping destination for socially responsible jobs.

McGlade’s startup, Zoosa.org, will initially be a job board that aggregates volunteer opportunities and paying positions at clean-tech companies. After those two fields are up and running, companies in other sectors will be able to list positions involving socially responsible activities.

The Cambridge-based, self-funded company, which will launch an open beta test of the job board in August, expects to make money by charging a fee to companies and organizations listing positions, although volunteer positions will initially be free to post. McGlade said he hopes to partner with other sites to make the site a volunteer-position aggregator.

“If the information isn’t on Zoosa, we’re perfectly fine handing that customer off. It still does good,” he said.

Phase two of Zoosa’s strategy is expected to incorporate social networking features, such as an event invitation function. McGlade said he plans to partner with an existing social networking site rather than host the feature on Zoosa. Noting that market research indicated his busy target audience is already managing several social networking sites, he said, “What we don’t want to do is add another one to that list.”

McGlade said the company was still working on defining what makes a company socially conscious or not. In the meantime, don’t expect to see community outreach positions at tobacco companies or firearm manufacturers listed on the site. “If you have a position at a controversial company centered around social enterprise, do we post it or not?” he said. “That’s a question we’re going to struggle with until we figure it out.” 

Entrepreneurs and employees alike may be trending toward more socially responsible business practices. A recent report by Mass Inc. found that 96 percent of 25 to 39-year-old Massachusetts residents polled said they thought it important to work for an employer who is “respectful of ethical values, people, communities, and the environment.”

Other companies are addressing the interest in social responsibility. Lexington’s Givvy Inc. (see story, page 3) is developing software to make it easier for employees to donate to charities from their credit cards and eventually directly from their electronic paychecks. 

In addition, this year’s MIT$100K Business Plan Competition winner, Diagnostics for All, is a nonprofit developing cheap diagnostic tools for developing countries. Covalent Solar, a clean-tech company, won both the energy track and the $10,000 prize voted on by the audience at the awards ceremony.