tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1021613321559430951.post513041652594732013..comments2024-02-17T07:41:37.569-08:00Comments on Doing Gd: State of Social Enterprise in SingaporeIron Bowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12073903213249428840noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1021613321559430951.post-85456984341588007002014-09-25T23:27:56.728-07:002014-09-25T23:27:56.728-07:00Hi Pyk,
I think spending more than xx% of the pr...Hi Pyk, <br /><br />I think spending more than xx% of the profits on nation wide social causes does not make it a social enterprise.<br /><br />Monsanto can give away 96% of profits to Monsanto Foundation, and it does not make it any better.<br /><br />I agree with you that, a social enterprise has to have the social cause as the main reason for existence of the business. <br /><br />I also think that the social cause also needs to have social impact. There are lots of initiatives to employ disadvantage groups of people because there are subsidies or these people can be paid less. Many are setup for the sake of "doing" something, rather than fixing a problem. <br /><br />I am not saying that they are less important or a waste of time, but I feel that social enterprises should be focused on preventing homelessness, rather than giving clothes to the homeless for example. Attacking the problem at the core and running a sustainable business. <br /><br />If there is real social impact, I don not really care about profit ploughback or any excess profits. If a program can end poverty, and the founder makes millions, and is sustainable, it solves a problem at the root and it is sustainable, so it has far more impact than someone making little money and putting profits to a social cause.Iron Bowlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12073903213249428840noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1021613321559430951.post-402866175784768552014-06-07T15:54:22.365-07:002014-06-07T15:54:22.365-07:00Thanks for your article. I agree with many of your...Thanks for your article. I agree with many of your points. My wife and I run a web portal (stuffwithadifference.com) which features social enterprises, mostly in Singapore. Don't mind two quick comments:<br /><br />(1) I have a relative who works in FairPrice. A little known fact is that FairPrice actually spends more than 95% of the profits on nation wide social causes (and not just for members), so in that sense, yes I think it can be considered a social enterprise.<br /><br />(2) I actually disagree with Social Enterprise Association's view that any company contributing more than 10% of their profits to a social cause can be considered a social enterprise. That's wrong and dangerous as you have pointed out. <br /><br />In running our website, my wife and I have had several businesses approaching us wanting to be listed on our website as a social enterprise. We turn down some of them as we don't view them as social enterprises. <br /><br />In our view, a social enterprise has to have the social cause as the main reason for existence of the business. The business side is merely a means to support the social cause in a more sustainable way, rather than asking for donations like a charity would (that's why for SEs, social comes before enterprise). And profit-driven business have the primary goal of making money, and if they happen to contribute a small percentage of their resources to a social cause, that would be called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. So it's important to distinguish the continuum from Charities (donations and fund-raising model for social causes); to Social Enterprises (supporting social causes through a sustainable business model; to Profit-Driven Businesses (with a CSR programme or not).<br /><br />A social enterprise can have several ways of wanting to impact their social cause - it could be through direct employment of disadvantaged groups of people to run the business, or it could be contributing majority of their profits (after expenses etc) to the social cause at heart. Secondly, partial profits can be retained to reinvest to grow the business in order to have a great social impact for the selected social cause. And lastly, investors can also get a small return on their investment if there is excess profits after the first two criteria are met.<br />Pykhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02818059235814291594noreply@blogger.com