Founded in 1898, Riverview Country Club was the oldest private country club in Wisconsin, USA. In December 2011 however, the club’s owners saw the beautiful, landmarked property as an opportunity to meet the needs of the local community in an innovative way, calling their new venture Riverview Gardens.
Since 2012, Riverview Gardens’ founders, employees and thousands of community volunteers have come together to transform the property into 72 acres with a mission. In the years that followed, they created interactive social enterprises, providing unlimited job training opportunities and including an accessible public park space, a farm, greenhouses and more.
Jeff Snell talks about this and other social innovations he’s encountered in his professional path in this TedX Talk. Based on his experiences in the non-profit sector, he argues that the traditional form of charity is no longer solving the big social problems that society faces. His solution is to provide and promote social innovation as a cross-sector platform for solving social problems, rather than managing them. You can see more of his presentation here: