The social enterprise business is an organization with specific goals of promoting social or environmental advancement. While there exist many businesses out in the marketplace which seek solely to improve their bottom dollar, a social enterprise exists to raise money so that it may achieve some beneficent goal. Many for profit businesses are building their business models around social needs, effectively saving the world while also making a living.
So now this Task Force is seeking to figure out how to, among other things, map out all of the social enterprises in the city. The next step in mapping out these endeavors is to promote more activity between them and to foster the growth of new social enterprises.
I ran into a woman named Aarti Sharma a couple weeks ago, she's working on an article detailing local sustainable business innovations. Check her out HERE. She's precious.
The momentum is fascinatingly beautiful in light of the dawning crowdfunding regulations. It's not legal, but before long (maybe a few months, maybe a year) we, as general people, will be able to invest small amounts of money for actual stake in a new company. This will make fundraising for entrepreneurs, inventors, and community builders very easy, because AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY OF USUALLY "POOR" PEOPLE CAN INVEST, in aggregate, to RAISE AN AWESOME IDEA and, quite importantly, own stock in the idea so that they PROFIT when the idea profits. Awesome, right? Since we are becoming the investors, it makes sense that we should invest in businesses that are conscious of the local community.
There is a term I picked up tonight called #ImpactInvesting . Impact investing is the act of investing resources in a calculated place to generate a measurable change in the local community, as well as generate a return in assets. It makes sense, right? It's the only kind of investment I'd ever make, though it seems as though some of the world has gotten carried away with what corners can be cut to simply make an extra dollar. In the end, I believe the human heart is our most valuable asset. As such, the heart and creativity are how I hedge my bets.
The cool thing about the desire of our Illinois Task Force in mapping out the social enterprise business activity is that, from a comprehensive web of the enterprises, we can identify key nodes that are prime hubs for the investment of resources to then disseminate effectively. In other words, with a good map we will know what roads work best.
Ted Howard, founder of the Democracy Collaborative, spoke tonight about his work in improving the cultivation of social enterprises in Cleveland, Ohio. He has based much of his research of the example of the Mondragon Corporation, one of the largest organizations in Spain, originally founded by student collaboration, and built on a democratic model of employee ownership.
This student collaboration resonates with me, as I feel concentration on the student entrepreneurial and civic collaborative camp will pay off immensely in establishing the future of our global society. A couple of the events I've been to lately have taken place at Roosevelt University, which, incidentally, has just instituted a Social Entrepreneurship degree program. Thank you Ms. Karlson, their first graduate and my connection. This is interesting, and highlights my area of interest. I want to see a hub organization that links students across university boundaries in these endeavors. I see essential to the success of this hub some things:
Creatively inclined students
A place of cultivation
A means of telling their story
Resources to give life to creativity.
There is a documentary called "Shift Change" about employee owned companies. I don't know much about it, but I believe there is some association here with Mondragon and I also believe the model may be in line with the likes of what I want to see raised.
Also related, this group called Sevenly, which sells awesome clothes and donates 7 dollars from every purchase to a weekly charity, is implementing a story telling show to document their weekly shenanigans of glory. This "reality tv" concept could easily be applied by, say, local media students to publish the endeavors of local social enterprises. It's all about leveraging the resources and the story just right, an the community will take off and do the rest: sustainable enterprise.
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| Courtesy of Roosevelt University |
Ciao with love,
Gabriel
Some random links:
"Lift Communites" a cool looking initiative
Some enterprising non-profits around the Vancouver BC area.
