Our new Board kicks off this Novemeber. We have several board members staying on and a host of great new board members joining. We would love your participation to make this the best Net Impact Austin year ever.

Welcome to the March Net Impact Austin newsletter. It’s a crazy month for us in Austin with RISE this week and SXSW next week and we’re happily promoting both events (and participating too!). Neither of these great events could happen without passionate volunteers working hard to make these events special.

I had an interesting conversation with Net Impact Austin advisor Sarah Cooke last week about the definition of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). She has embarked on a new project on how employees can shape their employers CSR strategies. One of the members of her team was tasked with creating a definition of CSR and they responded with something like "it's anything a company endeavors to do that doesn't effect the bottom line."

This last May we elected a new volunteer board to run Net Impact Austin. The new board members came together in June to start the arduous process of guiding Net Impact Austin in a new direction for 2010 and 2011.

On Wednesday Net Impact Austin co-sponsored a talk on Microfinance in the USA during the RISE conference. Those of you who attended the last Net Impact event on Microfinance In Texas (Raising the BoP) may recall that many attendees were interested in how similar concepts work in the USA. Kala Philo founder of the Austin Microfinance Network led an engaging panel consisting of professionals who cover a wide variety of roles dealing with Microfinance right here in Central Texas.

The recent Climategate controversy exposed for what it means: nothing. Climate change, or "global warming" isn't the largest driver in developing renewable energy sources. Nor is it the most important. 

In a recent press conference, a reporter raised the question of whether a cap and trade program is essential to the new administration's budget proposal. Obama seemed to suggest that the program may indeed be on the chopping block.

One of the leading contributors to the creation of greenhouse gasses in America is rooted in our production of food.

This morning I attended the Texas Energy Future: Green Jobs and Clean Power keynote address by famed author of The Green Collar Economy Van Jones.

Martin Montero is an Issues and Awareness committee member here at Net Impact Austin. Recently he has been working with a number of individuals to build a network for social entrepreneurship. He’s calling the effort the Austin Social Business Council and the stated goal is to make Austin a hub for social entrepreneurs.