Solomon McCown &

It was unintended symbolism: Mayor Thomas Menino speaking at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's Annual Meeting - not from the stage where other powerful dignitaries addressed the 1,500 attendees, but from the floor of the Convention Center hall, visible because his image was fed onto giant screens looming above the crowd.

"If you see anybody out there being negative about Boston, step on them," Menino urged the leaders of the city's most influential businesses and institutions.

In that moment, two decades of Boston's political past crystallized. Here was the quintessential "strong mayor," the self-styled urban mechanic who had firmly grasped the city's levers of power and imagery since 1993, unapologetically preaching defiant optimism despite being forced to step down from the spotlight.

Just 12 hours earlier, four leading journalists had debated the positives - and the negatives - that will shape the future of Boston at a panel discussion hosted by Solomon McCown & Company and attended by nearly 150.

With the city preparing to elect only its fourth mayor in 45 years, the SM& Presents event surfaced concerns ranging from leadership styles and Boston's vanishing middle class to the chronic challenges affecting planning, mass transit and public education.

"Given time, dedication and opportunity, a mayor can have a profound impact on the fabric of city," said Meghna Chakrabarti, co-host of WBUR's Radio Boston, who praised Menino's impact on commercial development.

But Chakrabarti also wondered aloud whether "a city can outgrow its mayor" and whether the next mayor might do more to position Boston as "a world-class city."

Referring to a 2012 study by the Boston Indicators Project depicting the widening income gap that parallels the loss of manufacturing jobs, Paul McMorrow, associate editor of CommonWealth magazine, expressed concern that Boston could come to resemble "ancient Rome" - a city of "the wealthy, the not wealthy and no one in between."

McMorrow pinpointed public education as "the big lever a mayor can pull" to recruit and retain a new generation of middle class families.

NECN Business Editor Peter Howe lauded Menino's unique ability to "make people feel good about themselves" and said the biggest challenge for the next mayor may be to "not screw up" the positive momentum the city seems to have achieved.

But Howe also complained about the chronic inability of mass transit to work efficiently on behalf of residents in the city's working class and minority neighborhoods.

"MBTA riders are the most shockingly under-utilized political force in the state," he said, calling for a concerted effort to "rebuild trust" in the MBTA by solving basic service problems and rooting out perceived waste and favoritism.

With a new school superintendent and a new student assignment plan looming on the city's horizon, Boston Globe columnist Joanna Weiss said, "Reforming education will require a big vision from the next mayor."

Good urban schools are integral to the growth and vitality of strong neighborhood communities, argued Weiss, who also spoke passionately about the need to address several emerging public health issues among young women in the city's poorer neighborhoods.

"It's striking to me that Mayor Menino has not hand-picked or groomed anyone to continue his legacy," she added. "It will be left to the public to winnow through this vast group of candidates... and they could pick someone very different."

By Ed Cafasso, Senior Vice President at Solomon McCown & Company

Last night, SM&'s Catherine Blancard attended Root Cause's Social Innovation Forum. The Forum provides a unique opportunity for innovative nonprofit organizations and social enterprises to gain visibility, expand their networks, and build capacity through funding support. Similar to a venture capital round table in the financial industry, the entrepreneurs pitch their model to a crowd of funders in hopes of attracting investment or other support.

Launched in 2003, the Forum has been working to create a social impact market that distributes resources to organizations based on performance in order to most efficiently and effectively solve social problems in Greater Boston. It strives to build a social impact investment community that will invest and re-invest resources in innovative, results-oriented nonprofits, thus advancing innovation in social impact.

Since 2007, SM& employees have been involved to varying degrees to help the social innovators with communications strategy and support. It's amazing to see how the Forum and the innovators have both evolved over the past five years.

Click here or below to learn more about the social innovators that were featured yesterday:

• AgeWell West Roxbury
  AgeWell West Roxbury is an Ethos-sponsored initiative that promotes the development of an age-friendly community and the creation of successful aging-in-place strategies for the Boston neighborhood with the highest concentration and highest absolute number of elders.

• Groundwork Lawrence
  Groundwork Lawrence (GWL), through environmental and open space improvements, fresh food access, education, youth employment, and community events, they truly create the building blocks of a healthy community, and empower residents and other stakeholders to make the city a great place to live, work, and play.

• GRLZradio
  GRLZradio is a unique afterschool and summer program that gives girls from Boston the opportunity to change their lives and their communities. The girls learn radio technology and communication skills and spread the message of possibility rather than despair; respect rather than abuse.

• Safe City Academy, a program of Dorchester Youth Collaborative
  Safe City Academy is a stipended GED, work readiness, mentoring, and community service program for high school dropouts ages 16 to 19. In addition to coursework, students obtain job skills on a work crew that provides maintenance services to city‐owned, foreclosed properties.

• Shelter Music Boston
  Shelter Music Boston presents high-quality classical chamber music concerts in homeless shelters. They believe that all people deserve access to the dignity, creativity, and passion of classical music, whether or not they have a home.

• City Feed and Supply
  City Feed and Supply is a small scale, full service market cafe focused on building community through service to our neighborhoods, our employees, and our regional food economy.

• Green City Growers
  Green City Growers installs and maintains urban farms for community and commercial locations, fostering a deeper connection to the food we eat.

• Global Research Innovation & Technology
  GRIT's all-terrain wheelchair helps people with disabilities get off-road and on with their lives.

• Project Repat
  Project Repat makes it fun and easy to upcycle your excess clothing into fashionable and functional new products, while creating fair-wage jobs in the United States.

And a special congratulations to Blu Homes, an amazing organization and the winner of this year's Business Innovator Award!

Our client, Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP), sponsored a Boston visit by the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC), mental health professionals who specialize in trauma. ITC came to Boston to help stitch lives together in the aftermath of the city's recent tragedies, spending the last week meeting with those affected by the bombings, including more than 100 ­Watertown teachers.  The event was later featured in the Boston Globe and on WBUR.

Photo by YOON S. BYUN/GLOBE STAFF

In her recent article, "Is Facebook Worth the Hassle for Smaller Nonprofits?,"Joanna Fritz, Ph.D., talks about the importance of social media for nonprofits.

For many nonprofits, especially smaller ones, Joanna recognizes entering the social media world can be a challenging one.  However, she says, "in a multichannel world, where people get their information from a variety of sources, playing the social media game is just as important as setting up a website, sending out press releases, and mailing out fundraising appeals."

If one thing is clear, it's that social media is not going away anytime soon. It's something every organization should be taking advantage of. Facebook, Joanna advises, can be a great jumping off point for many nonprofits looking to make their way into the social media world and take advantage of an engaging and listening audience.

In looking at the nonprofits I follow on Facebook, I can't think of a small nonprofit leverging Facebook better than Be like Brit. As a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the children of Haiti, Be Like Brit aims to continue the compassionate life and legacy of Britney Gengel, a 19-year-old Lynn University sophomore who was tragically killed in the 2010 Haitian earthquake. The organization has established a safe, nurturing and sustainable orphanage in an environment where children can grow, learn and thrive.

On Facebook, Be Like Britdoes an excellent job of constantly keeping their readers updated with pictures and videos. Despite the orphanage being located in Haiti, through the organization's posts, photos, videos and stories, I feel as though I am there and know each and every one of the children at the orphanage (from Love-Na to Kerby) personally.

The same goes for Britney. Although I never met her, Brit's personality and passion for service live on in the photos and stories that the page provides. The Facebook posts are simple, yet colorful, informative and engaging--which is why it's no surprise the Facebook page has over 13,500 likes.

Be Like Brit is a great example of how a smaller nonprofit can thrive on a social media environment. I'm amazed at not only the incredible mission of Be Like Brit, which grew from the four members of Britney's immediate family, but its' ability to constantly interact and communicate effectively on social media through itsFacebook page, Twitter handle, YouTube channel and blogs (http://belikebrit.org/blog/ and http://belikebrit.org/category/jonathans-blog/).

As Joanna states, if nonprofits do take the plunge to join social media, they should be prepared for a long road of hard work, learning, and experimentation. But, as I'm sure Be Like Brit can attest, putting effort into social media is totally worth it and can create very exciting results.

By: Amey Owen, SM& Account Coordinator

The scramble to shape the post-Menino era has begun, and the stakes couldn't be higher for companies and organizations in the real estate industry, healthcare and mission-driven, non-profit sectors.

Today's announcement by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino that he will not seek re-election means the city has the chance to elect only its fourth mayor in 45 years. Since 1968, the year before the Mets won a World Series and America put men on the moon, only three people have led Boston government - Kevin White, Ray Flynn and Menino.

There will be no shortage of candidates for the job, but the seminal question is: Will Bostonians go "big" or small in choosing Menino's successor? While actual Boston residents will cast the ballots, everyone knows the money and blessing of the city's business interests will exert disproportionate weight - especially if most of the key influencers wind up unifying behind a favorite candidate.

Is Boston's next mayor a Paul Grogan, the head of the Boston Foundation, a Peter Meade, the head of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), a Stephen Lynch, the congressman from South Boston now running to succeed former U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry? Or it is City Councilor John Connolly, the only official candidate who had the temerity to get in the race early. Or Councilor Michael Ross, a bridge builder with a strong personal story to tell? Or Councilor Ayanna Pressley, the first African-American woman to serve on the Council? Or any of the dozen or so other councilors and state representativeswhose names are being floated today?

Menino has always been perceived as friendly to the development community and the city's real estate industry is booming as a result in Boston's core. Menino's administration has been wildly successful masterminding a relentless PR push touting the promise of the Fort-Point-Innovation District-Waterfront area.

Favorable financial conditions will continue to propel commercialdevelopment in the oldest real estate market in country, but the next mayor will also control the BRA, which is where the rubber meets the road for commercial real estate and affordable housing.

Boston's globally renowned network of hospitals and academic medical centers provide the jobs that employ one in five Boston residents, driving a big slice of the city's economy, so you can bet that institutional executives in the healthcare sector will want to exercise some control over the destiny of their workforce and expansion plans.

The policies of the next mayor also loom large for mission-driven non-profits, including the city's colleges and universities. A mayor who is friendly to labor uniongrowth and who demands more or larger payments-in-lieu-of-taxes, for example, would have a major impact on the business models of institutions already struggling for stability in the post-recession economy.

And then there are the neighborhood voters, who want crime kept low, their streets plowed free of snow, better family housing, a better urban transportation system, especially in the poorest neighborhoods, and, of course, better schools.

There's never a dull moment when politics and business intersect in Boston, and they haven't had the chance to collide like this since Menino succeeded Flynn in July 1993 and then won election outright that November. The next nine months will produce a political spectacle that most of the city's residents and many of its business leaders have not experienced in 20 years.

One ironic and telling anecdote, the "Menino Won't Run" story was broken Wednesday on Twitter by David Bernstein, the sharp-eyed former political columnist for the Boston Phoenix, which folded a few weeks ago.

Bernstein's scoop is a good reminder of how the media environment has changed since the days when an army of beat reporters and columnists from city's two newspapers and major television stations controlled the flow of game-changing information. It's no longer about where you work or who you work for; when you are online, breaking news is about your connections.

Based on a look at today's papers, it appears the Boston Herald, led by former Boston City Hall Bureau Chief and now Editor-In-Chief Joe Sciacca, had the story early enough to produce a package of blanket coverage in today's edition. The Boston Globe's new editor, Brian McGrory, also a former City Hall reporter and Metro columnist, appears to have paid a personal visit to the Mayor to make sure his paper remained competitive on Menino's departure plans.

By Ed Cafasso, Senior Vice President at Solomon McCown & Company

On February 2, the Boston Chamber of Commerce hosted John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, and Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism Institute, and professor of Marketing at Bentley University. The two spoke about the secrets behind a successful business and the negative notions associated with big business today which they addressed in their new book, Conscious Capitalism.

When capitalism began 200 years ago, more than 85% of our country was living off less than $1 per day. Despite a vast change in personal wealth, only 19% of individuals living in the United States today approve of big business, said Mackey and Sisodia. They attribute this to the common adjectives associated with big business: greed, power, exploitation and selfishness.

Their book, Conscious Capitalism was written in an attempt to make the case for big business. Mackey and Sisodia argue the most successful businesses and their leaders embody characteristics opposite from greed and selfishness. These businesses (referred to as "conscious businesses") do exist, and include Whole Food, which has been on Fortune Magazines' Best Companies to Work List for since its inception in 1998.

In addition, these businesses are prosperous as a result of their:

• Positive Company Culture, which is established by a given company's leaders, and involves every one of a company's stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, and the community members in which it works. For example, every five years Whole Foods organizes a "Future Search" to bring together the company's stakeholders to discuss the future of the company. Through the "Future Search," Whole Foods founded "Whole Journeys," food related and community service trips/activities.

• Servant Leaders. These leaders are motivated by a higher purpose, not money or power. These leaders are down-to-earth and serve as mentors to inspire and motivate their colleagues.

• Higher Purpose, or the goal or a vision of a company. Companies with higher purpose understand the need for social responsibility, practice environmental integrity and have a well-established company culture. Mackey pointed out that 80% of diseases, such as heart disease and stroke, directly correlate with obesity related causes, and currently 69 % percent of US individuals are overweight and 36% are obese.  In response, Whole Foods is committed to educating society about health, lifestyle and diet options.

• Win-Win Situations: Mackey explained there does not have to be trade-offs in business. If you have not determined a win-win situation for all involved you must "get back to the drawing board." If a solution is not win-win, you have not found the solution yet.

Thanks to The Boston Chamber of Commerce for organizing an impressively motivational event. To learn more about the event, check out the conversation on Twitter #gbccef

By Lauren Michaels, Assistant Account Executive at Solomon McCown & Company

Our client Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (MABVI) State Director Jesse Mermell talks about the many ways to make the holiday season brighter for visually impaired relatives on The Caregivers Voice Blog.

Nellie Mae Education Foundation President Nick Donohue, our client, was featured in this week's "Outside the Box" interview in the Boston Business Journal. In the interview, Nick discusses the organization's mission in reshaping the public high school experience to fit the modern age.

Click here to read.

SM& Co-founders Helene Solomon & Ashley McCown were again honored at this year's Boston's Top 100 Women-led Businesses award ceremony, hosted by The Commonwealth Institute & the Boston Business Journal.

We've all heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But this year, there's a more powerful and heartwarming way to kick off the holiday gift giving season: #GivingTuesday.

#GivingTuesday, a social media driven campaign debuting this year on November 27, was created by a group of charities and corporations to make the Tuesday after Thanksgiving a day of giving to those in need.

#GivingTuesday aims to deter a disappointing trend in our society. With the recession hitting Americans hard, it's no surprise that last year, as Giving USA reports, Americans gave $298 billion to charities, well below the peak of $310 billion in 2007. However, in the same year, there was a near $1 billion uptick of retail sales on Black Friday, wherein buyers spent $11.4 billion-all in one day. The idea behind the campaign is to gain as much enthusiasm, as seen at store fronts and malls on Black Friday, towards volunteering and giving to causes all around the nation.

Only a few days away, I can already see the promise in this campaign. Not only is it armed with a resourceful website, a blog with endless content and a major presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter, #GivingTuesday has a major asset on his side: simplicity. The campaign is adaptable and allows every individual, family, organization and business the ability to find a way to give or promote giving on social media and beyond.

In the coming days, I hope everyone will take a break from the "shop 'til you drop" mentality and join this important movement, whether it's giving money, goods, services, blood, time-or by simply spreading awareness about the campaign.

I expect #GivingTuesday will show what I know to be true: nothing can overcome the power of social media and generosity.