The Markets for Good Challenge, a partnership between Liquidnet and Net Impact, is challenging undergrad and graduate teams to develop innovative solutions to improve performance-based giving, so that more money can get to the nonprofits who are doing the most good — and the ideas are flowing. We’re extremely excited to announce the four finalist teams, who will go on to compete for the $10,000 prize!

• Corporate Giving Shared Value Cycle (Dartmouth)
• Needmap (CU Boulder)
• Social Market Exchange (Bainbridge Graduate Institute)
• Give Social (Georgetown)

This year, Liquidnet also gave a special $1,000 prize to the team that produced a video that best showcased their idea. And the winner is…Needmap! We asked Vladimir Dubovskiy, the co-founder and CTO of Needmap, a few questions about his winning video.

How did the idea for Needmap come about?

We traveled to India for four months, and worked with many orphanages and slum schools to understand the lives of orphans. One day, a boy skipping school passed by - the director called on him, and Shahed’s only reaction was to give us a blank smile. He was high from sniffing a green marker he had stolen from school to escape his hunger.

We realized that issues of literacy are complex and blindly building schools won’t make Shahed’s life better. Many children in the slums are addicted to chemicals from as early as six months old. And who can blame them? The pain of hunger is too hard to cope with, so they get high on the cheapest chemicals they can find: printer cleaners, markers, and erasers. Even when there’s a school that's free to attend, Shahed is too hungry and high on fumes to possibly retain information.

Lack of data on which problems are causal chronically impacts society’s ability to answer on-the-ground needs. So we created Needmap to make sure that governments, donors, and organizations can visualize the urgency and prevalence of needs before investing into losing or low-return strategies, and instead invest in approaches that work.

What populations do you see Needmap serving at first, and why those?

Our initial target population will be orphans and vulnerable children. Not just because India is home to the largest orphan population, but also because orphanages are at the cross section of many issues: education, health, human rights, and poverty, just to name a few.

You say Needmap will help governments, donors, and organizations invest in approaches that work. How will it do this?

Needmap makes global giving data-driven. With Needmap, as a donor, you will achieve two goals: first, you can visualize community needs, understand the quantity of product or service required to solve those needs, and identify the top-performing organizations that are solving the needs. Secondly, you can give directly through our network of high-performing non-profits to an organization of your choice, track your donation through our system, and see how your money solved the needs you intended to solve.

What’s the biggest challenge you foresee in terms of developing this idea?

The greatest challenge is proving our added benefit. For us to prove that we truly increase an organization’s effectiveness, we need many data points and many partners. In our initial stage, forming partnerships and making sure partners use Needmap will be challenging. We’re certain that the adoption rate will increase once reputable organizations begin using Needmap and flourishing with our help.

What do you anticipate to be the biggest personal gain from participating in the Markets for Good Challenge?

Markets for Good had a well-established network of like-minded people who can provide invaluable feedback on our idea, and collaborate with us. It’s a great place to test our idea with highly experienced organizations and individuals, so we can be better equipped to bring this company to scale. Also, the relationships we form from our participation will light fire not only in our hearts, but also under our butts to make a true difference in the world.

What will you do with the $1,000 your video won?

We will use the money to build a team here in Bangalore. We’re currently in the hiring process and are very excited about winning the $1,000, as it goes a long way in India.

When you think of the many challenges facing US National Parks, you probably go straight to a lack of funding, or maybe encroaching land development. But there’s another threat to the park system that’s often overlooked, particularly in California: illegal marijuana cultivation. “It has a huge impact on the park,” explains Snapper Poche, a former National Parks Business Plan Intern who served at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, “because heavy equipment and fertilizer is brought in, trees are cleared, and the place is trashed.” Snapper’s job at the park was to help identify how much park personnel were investing in battling this particular issue.

The focus on the park’s anti-drug efforts was really just a piece of Snapper’s internship, which was dedicated to helping the park strategize ways to better use their resources, particularly with regards to park personnel. Was staff investing their hours performing geological studies? Studying endangered species? Assessing the health of overall ecosystems? This assessment was critical to helping the park allocate its limited resources and personnel. But it was especially important when it came to fighting illegal marijuana cultivation. “They knew what the returns were [to the safety of park staff and visitors],” says Snapper, “but didn’t know how much they were putting into stopping it.”

The internship allowed Snapper to parlay his MPP studies into valuable real-world experience: “I got a lot of experience understanding how big budgets work, how resources are allocated across priorities, and how decisions are made. You meet some fantastic people; I worked with some of the highest decision-makers in the park.” That experience led to offers from multiple consulting firms that recognized how much value he could bring to their operations. He now works for the nonprofit federal consulting firm LMI, where he helps federal agencies implement GHG accounting and management practices.

Snapper learned a lot about how the cost-benefit analysis theories he read about in school really work in the real world, thanks to his internship. But when asked what he remembers most about his experience, there’s no hesitation. “It was definitely the opportunity to go camping every single weekend,” he says. “The job was fulfilling, the work was challenging, and it fit exactly what I was interested in doing. But the most memorable thing was camping under the stars and waking up in a mountain valley bathed in sun at 6,000 feet above sea level. That was for sure my favorite part.”

Held every summer, the National Park Business Plan Internship combines students’ business and leadership skills with their passion to make a real difference through the work they do — all against the backdrop of some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. While the 2012 application period has closed, you can read more about NPS interns in action.