An Entrepreneurial Drive To Change the World

I have been tweeting on Twitter (my call sign is "addedvalueth") for the past two weeks, wondering why a grown-up would share mundane parts of his personal life ("heading to sleep") with complete strangers on the other end of a computer or handheld.

The most substantive discussion I have had on this social networking site centered on the merits of Chicago-style deep dish pizza vs. flat, greasy New York pizza.

I wondered what the possible business applications of Twitter could be. While I was wondering, I got a pitch from entrepreneur Scott Beale, who used Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist and a bunch of other Web sites to win $100,000 from online contests to fund his District start-up.

The start-up is a nonprofit. Don't press the snooze button yet. Beale approached the project as if he were building the next Google.

The 33-year-old Georgetown graduate and former State Department employee quit his $42,000-a-year Foggy Bottom job three years ago and, using the same Web strategy that President Obama used to raise campaign funds, built what he calls a "Peace Corps in reverse."

His creation is Atlas Corps (http://www.atlascorps.org), which brings highly skilled nonprofit decision-makers from India and Colombia to the United States for a year, running Sept. 1 to Aug. 30.

He concentrates on India and Colombia because he speaks some Spanish and has worked in India. They also have highly developed nonprofit sectors, not to mention a high opinion of the United States, Beale said.

He finds U.S. nonprofit organizations willing to pay $26,000 to sponsor a visitor. The idea is to help the volunteers learn U.S. nonprofit management skills. The nonprofits hope to learn something from the volunteers as well.

"I'm using entrepreneurial business skills to make a difference in the social sector, which isn't any different from using business skills to make money in the for-profit sector," Beale said.

Atlas keeps $4,000 of the $26,000 to cover its rent and administrative costs. It gives the rest to the Atlas "fellow," which covers a stipend for housing, food and transportation. Atlas covers health care, too (at a student rate of $800).

Chief executive Beale and his company live on the cheap. He has five staffers and sublets a tiny, windowless office space near Dupont Circle. (For its first two years, staffers worked out of their own apartments.) Beale collects a salary in the "low $40s," and his five staffers split $120,000 a year. He travels to New York on $25-each-way buses, entertains over coffee and bagels, and uses free space at Synergos, another nonprofit (sponsored by a Rockefeller heiress) that works in the developing world.

The group has 12 fellows in the program, including nine in the Washington area. Atlas also has helped send three Americans to Colombia. When they are finished with the fellowship, participants must return to a nonprofit in their home country.