TUGG deserves a plug

For those of our readers from the innovation community, you’ll be interested in hearing about a Boston-based organization we’re involved with called Technology Underwriting Greater Good (www.TUGG.org). Our firm sponsored their charity wine party a few months ago, and I’ve been meaning to bring the organization to your attention. Yesterday’s terrible attack at the Boston Marathon brought TUGG to the forefront, so there’s no time like the present. For a bit of background, here’s how TUGG describes its mandate:

TUGG is dedicated to catalyzing and spreading social entrepreneurship in New England. By harnessing the power of the region’s technology ecosystem to source, screen and fund social innovation, TUGG helps young people to realize their full potential through entrepreneurship, education and life experiences. TUGG empowers both the individual and the community to identify important issues and collaborate to solve them.

Unique, don’t you think? Canada has incubators and accelerators and start-up fests and conferences and associations, but I can’t think of a group that has intertwined their VC and start-up community into a social entrepreneurship initiative. At least not with such clarity of purpose.

TUGG’s portfolio includes some interesting initiatives, as you’d expect:

SCFG Science Club for Girls (www.scienceclubforgirls.org), Generation Citizen (www.generationcitizen.org), Bikes Not Bombs (www.bikesnotbombs.org), More Than Words (www.mtwyouth.org), Boston Scholars (www.bostonscholars.org), Teen Voices (www.teenvoices.com), and the Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (www.yeaworks.org).

This morning, the benefits were clear when TUGG put out an appeal over Twitter to raise $50k to help the bombing victims and their families. Boston’s a wealthy town, but that doesn’t mean everyone standing near the finish line can financially or emotionally withstand what may have happened to them or a loved one yesterday afternoon; or pay for what’s to come in terms of rehab, therapy or the costs of a caregiver.

Once Fortune’s Dan Primack got involved, the broader industry put the campaign well over the top. The wonders of our new forms of communication. There’s still time to help with a donation, too, if you’d like to join us in the effort.

MRM