Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise
organizations have really taken flight over the past decade! Though the idea of social enterprise
has really been around for several decades, people are taking an increasing interest in this business
model now particularly for its baked-in ability to generate sustainable revenue while also making
a positive social impact. But how exactly social enterprise works is still a mystery to a lot of
people, so in this video I'm going to share 7 examples
of social enterprise organizations
out there making a big impact in the world, and I hope that it inspires you and sparks
some ideas! Welcome to my channel! I'm Amber Melanie Smith. I am a non-profit founder and
executive director. I love making these videos here on YouTube to help folks who are just out
there trying to make an impact in a variety of ways - whether it's through starting a non-profit
or social enterprise or trying to make an impact in other ways too. So be sure to check out
the
rest of the videos on my channel for more content all about that topic, and don't forget to hit
the like symbol on this video and subscribe to my channel too. And if you're thinking of starting
a non-profit, be sure to check out my website, FounderToFullTime.com. I've got some trainings
and resources up there for folks who are on that social change journey. So before we get
into these seven examples of social enterprise organizations out there making an impact I want to
just pause and
take a moment to define what social enterprise is for those of you who might just be
learning about this concept for the first time. Essentially, a social enterprise is when you
are applying a market-based or business-based strategy or approach to addressing an unmet
community need or tackling a social problem. It's kind of like combining the social impact
mission of the non-profit world with the revenue generating model of the business world. And
to clarify, social enterprise just refers
to the approach you take - the business model of your
organization - not its tax or legal structure. So a non-profit can be a social enterprise or a
for-profit business can be a social enterprise. You can do the social enterprise model with either
type of organization. So now I'm going to get into these seven examples of social enterprise
organizations to illustrate my point that you can be either type of tax structure business or
non-profit and be making an impact in the world and also gen
erating sustainable revenue so for
each of the seven examples I'm about to share I will say what structure it is whether it's a
non-profit organization or a for-profit business I will share how it makes an impact in the world
and then I will share how it generates revenue to remain financially sustainable all right let's
jump in example number one that I'm gonna share is Tala. This is a for-profit business social
enterprise and it makes an impact by helping those folks around the whole worl
d who don't have
a credit history build a credit history through their smartphone and the reason they're focusing
on this particular topic is because they learned that 30 percent of the global adult population
does not have a credit history this is important to them because credit history allows you to
take out loans and build economic mobility, etc. so in this way tala is helping combat global
poverty so how does it generate revenue well tala generates revenue by offering low interest
loa
ns to its users and this revenue generated supports the rest of the programming that they
offer. Social enterprise example number two is Carroll's Kitchen and this is a non-profit
organization. Carroll's Kitchen makes an impact by helping women emerging from some kind of crisis
gain employment so they offer job training and they also often hire them to work for Carroll's
Kitchen the organization now here's how they generate their sustainable revenue the women
that they hire after the job tr
aining programs work in the Carroll's Kitchen restaurant and the
restaurant of course sells food and beverages in order to cover the cost of its other programs.
Social enterprise example number three is called PastureMap. PastureMap is a for-profit business
and they are making an impact by helping cattle ranchers reduce their carbon footprint while
generating and increasing their profits as cattle ranchers. And how it does this is it collects
and analyzes data all about grazing soil quality
rainfall and other things that might impact a
cattle rancher's ability to successfully ranch cattle basically they're equipping these
ranchers with better data so how pasture map generates revenue is that the cattle ranchers
will pay a reasonable annual membership fee in order to access this live data in their area.
The fourth social enterprise example i'm going to share is called Textbooks for Change. now
Textbooks for Change is a for-profit business they're actually also a registered b c
orporation
which i know i talked about in a recent video too. Textbooks for Change is making an impact
in the world by donating about half of its college textbooks to partnering campus libraries
in east africa and how textbooks for change generates revenue is it sells the other half of
its textbooks at an affordable price to college students and partnering campuses around the world
and textbooks that are too damaged to be sold or used are recycled. The fifth social enterprise
example that
i'm gonna share is called With Love L.A. and I thought that this example
was really interesting because they're actually a non-profit and for-profit hybrid
or partnership. With Love L.A. is a grocery store cafe and community program combination so
with love la employs locals in their community to work it's for-profit arms so that grocery
store in that cafe that i mentioned and then the leadership also runs these community
programs like educational and health classes a community garden and t
hey also have some youth
internships too so and i failed to mention this before but whenever a social enterprise model is
being used through a non-profit organization they can also be collecting donations like any typical
non-profit would so in this case for example with love la is collecting just community donations
through its non-profit side and then is generating revenue through its grocery store and its cafe
also. The sixth example i'm going to share is called the Asian Health Alliance
. And by the way
I will leave the links to these organizations if you're just curious you want to check out more
about them in the description below the video also so this is a for-profit business they provide um
high quality medical diagnostic services to low income and rural areas in india at a below average
affordable price so that is how this company as a social enterprise it's making its social
impact they're able to reach people who might not have access to these services at least not
affordably so providing them at a price that is affordable to them is making a big impact
in their lives and of course i already kind of said this but that's also how they generate
revenue by offering these services at a low price but those low fees are still helping cover
some of the costs of the rest of the programming. And the seventh example i want to share today um
this organization is super cool it's a non-profit and it's called Develop for Good. so Develop for
Good makes an impact
by working with non-profits who might have a web design or a web development
project to get those projects completed by university students who have some coding and
programming experience and just might want to practice a little bit more to volunteer to
complete those projects and if you've ever tried to hire someone or do a web designer development
project you know that they can get pretty costly so this organization developed for good is helping
non-profits get these projects taken care o
f at a very very affordable price below market value
for sure and the university students hopefully are getting some great experience too and are
generously offering up their time and talents as volunteers as for how develop for good generates
revenue i kind of just alluded to this but the non-profits do pay a low fee for the services
just to cover the cost of the organization's work and then of course the university students are
volunteering their time so they're able to apply the revenue
that they bring in to covering
the cost of their programs technology etc. okay there are hundreds and thousands of other
super cool examples of the social enterprise model at work out there in the world but i just wanted
to share these seven that i thought were really interesting and showed a good variety of the types
of approaches that people are taking so at this time i'd love to hear your thoughts i find social
enterprise organizations and efforts to be just super fascinating and creativ
e and innovative are
you thinking of starting a social enterprise have you tried this model before with your non-profit
or your business do you think it is a model that could work for you why or why not share in the
comments below and let's see if we get a fun conversation going and as i mentioned before if
you are starting a non-profit organization and you're looking for some extra support and training
check out my website FounderToFullTime.com for some trainings and opportunities about th
at i also
do a newsletter for non-profit leaders and change makers of all types i typically leave the link for
where you can subscribe to that if you'd like to in the comments and the description below so
definitely check that out if you're interested in joining it of course you can opt out at any
time finally if you are on Facebook don't forget to check out my group change the world or bust
we have over 2,000 people in there from around the world all wanting to make an impact in their
own
ways and it's great community so come on by join our community and i hope to see you
there next time i'll see you later, bye!
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