What could you do with $27? Besides a few trips to Antonio’s or a meal at Fresh Side, not much right? Gumball Capital, a microfinance organization that raises money to be loaned out to social entrepreneurs, defies the idea that $27 isn’t enough money to make a difference in the life of a struggling entrepreneur. The idea fueling Gumball Capital can be explained with the clever metaphor behind its name: each time a small amount of money is put into a gumball machine, one gumball rolls out and, in doing so, moves all the other gumballs closer to the exit chute. This idea, put in terms of small amounts of money being loaned to a poor businessperson, has successfully helped fund hundreds of developing-world entrepreneurs. Each loan is then repaid over a set period of time and the money lent out to another person in need. Thus, each dollar raised helps many people, moving the world out of poverty microloan by microloan.

Besides the direct monetary support Gumball Capital provides, another goal of the organization is to get students from across the country interested in learning more about using entrepreneurship for social change. To raise money and the profile of their cause, the Gumball Capital founders started the Gumball Challenge in 2007. In Nov. 2007 and 2008, five colleges completed the challenge. Now, students from the Center for Community Engagement’s (CCE) social entrepreneurship program are bringing the Gumball Challenge to the College. For this 10-day event, students form teams, are given $27 and 27 gumballs, and then, using these materials, come up with a moneymaking scheme to implement immediately. The teams compete to raise the most money for the Gumball Fund, which then redirects the money through various organizations, like Kiva, that facilitate loaning the money out in small amounts to the working poor all over the world. Amherst’s version of the challenge will run from Nov. 5-12, coinciding with Parent’s and Alumni Weekend so that students have another audience to draw from. The competition attempts to both supply the Gumball Fund and give college students a taste of the entrepreneurship that the Gumball Challenge supports. Highlighting the mixture of fun and fundraising that this event is designed to be, the event will host an awards night with a variety of prizes for both the team that raises the most money and teams with less successful ventures.

Gumball Capital is remarkable both in its ability to directly impact the lives of small business owners in developing countries and in its inventive inception: the group was created by Stanford students as part of the Stanford Entrepreneurship Week Challenge. Their success at taking an idea created for a competition and turning it into a thriving non-profit organization should be an inspiration for students at other universities and colleges. Gumball Capital asks you to support deserving people who need a boost to jumpstart their businesses but almost more importantly, encourages the pursuit of creativity in doing so. This fundraising through competition is designed to further their cause while asking participants to stretch their imagination and talent in new directions. The Gumball Challenge founders seem to be pushing current students to follow their lead in taking ideas from a simple school competition and implementing them to actually address a problem in the local or worldwide community.

The CCE’s hope in bringing this event to campus, as expressed by the intern for social entrepreneurship Megan Clower, is that the somewhat unfamiliar phrase “social entrepreneurship” comes to represent a cause worth getting involved in. The successful execution of the Gumball Challenge at Amherst would altruistically serve the global need to reduce poverty, publicize the importance of entrepreneurship for social change and, in a way that is both educational and enjoyable, give students an opportunity to design, execute and see the results of their creativity. For these reasons, the CCE and the committee members organizing the competition hope that participation is enthusiastic and sets a precedent of success for an annual competition that both provides entertainment and encourages academic growth.

For more information, to register a team or to see what past teams have come up with, visit http://www.gumballchallenge.org/site/.