RP345 Profit for a Cause

 RP345 Profit for a Cause

Can capitalism be a force for good in matters of the environment and social justice? This is the question at the heart of the social enterprise movement. If you were to ask any social entrepreneur who's working hard to start their own business, they would surely say "yes."
In some ways, a social enterprise is exactly like a regular enterprise. It provides a product or service, employs workers, and aims to make a profit. But there is one major difference: a social enterprise is striving to make the world a better place. You might be thinking: "Doesn't every enterprise want to make the world a better place? Corporations like Apple donate millions of dollars to charity. "That's true, and it touches upon the central debate in the social enterprise movement.
There's a lot of disagreement over what exactly constitutes a social enterprise. To some people, it's an enterprise that invests all of its profit into social welfare. Think of a thrift store that takes its profits and funds a local food bank. This is the "purest" interpretation, but it still raises a few difficult questions. For example, should the thrift store expand and open new locations? Doing so might save more people from hunger. Yet the more money it devotes to expansion, the more it looks like a regular corporation.
Others define social enterprise as a corporation whose goal is to provide social or environmental benefits. An example of this would be a factory that converts dangerous waste into a useful product. The factory operates like any other corporation, but it just so happens to be benefiting the local population. Another interpretation of social enterprise is one that hires vulnerable people who struggle in the mainstream economy. An example of this is the Children Are Us Foundation in China. This foundation runs bakeries staffed by mentally challenged young adults.
With all this disagreement, it's almost like anything can be a social enterprise. But what we're really doing here is just putting a new name on an old phenomenon. Social enterprises have been around for thousands of years. In the past, it was simply called neighbors helping out neighbors. You might even say that "social enterprise" is as old as human generosity.