| I’ve been working for, running and volunteering for social enterprises for 12 years now. I find that “social enterprise” as a term isn’t really known by anyone outside of the social enterprise bubble, e.g. those running, funding or volunteering for a social enterprise. The funding structures available to social enterprises seems to be an issue - you can be anything from a private limited company through to a registered charity or anything in between (and don’t get me started on CICs...). I know a fully for-profit company who claims they are a social enterprise just because their main client base is registered charities. I also think that the B Corp movement (https://bcorporation.net/) is building a much better brand than the social enterprise movement - and the whole process to becoming a registered B Corp is much more stringent than become a social enterprise, and has the added benefit of helping improve the social impact of organisations that apply to become B Corp registered. I’m currently building a database of social good organisations in the UK and beyond here: https://goodhere.org/ Would love to see more projects and funders submitted. Email is in profile if you’re interested in discussing more. |
Cynical me thinks that for-profit companies primarily work to benefit their executives and shareholders. Non-profit companies primary work to benefit their executives alone. How is this better? My source is overhead conversations in bars in Seattle where I heard Gates Foundation executives bragging about how they were getting paid $300,000 a year to do absolutely nothing.