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I co-founded Raisely, we’re a social enterprise. Impact is baked into our constitution, we report on it before profit, we restrict who can use our SaaS and we’re a bcorp. I wouldn’t call it “riding a wave” or just “talk” - it’s just genuine global citizenship.
I run a company that collects and delivers used furniture for charities in the UK ( https://boxmove.com ) It’s a social enterprise in the sense that we save charities a fortune on the way they currently operate, and we employ our staff on better salaries than they receive working in-house. The flip side is we expect a decent day’s work from our teams. We are profitable, sustainable and no reliant on grants, funding,…
I'd imagine that a huge part of your pitch is that you're MUCH more efficient and therefore you can save on costs if they outsource to your business.
There are exceptions of course, like if you made money by cheating via violence or because you got the government to grant you special privileges. Otherwise, if you're playing by the rules then your profit is the only objective, rational way to reason about your social impact. The more profit you make, the greater that you know your impact has been.
The first prototype house should be done this year!
I co-founded Raisely, we’re a social enterprise. Impact is baked into our constitution, we report on it before profit, we restrict who can use our SaaS and we’re a bcorp. I wouldn’t call it “riding a wave” or just “talk” - it’s just genuine global citizenship.
I'm curious -- who do you report the impact to, and how?
Is there a framework in how you went about pricing to balance the profit-motive and the impact-motive?
I'm working on a company to create a universal basic income utilizing technology instead of financial instruments. Doing that through building homes that run on renewable energy, grow their own food and are cheap to make. The first prototype house should be done this year!
I'm working on a company to create a universal basic income utilizing technology instead of financial instruments. Doing that through building homes that run on renewable energy, grow their own food and are cheap to make. The first prototype house should be done this year!
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.
I co-founded Raisely, we’re a social enterprise. Impact is baked into our constitution, we report on it before profit, we restrict who can use our SaaS and we’re a bcorp. I wouldn’t call it “riding a wave” or just “talk” - it’s just genuine global citizenship.
I've just checked your site out, I really like that you offer core services for free and then up-sell on marginal services! I'm curious -- who do you report the impact to, and how? Is there a framework in how you went about pricing to balance the profit-motive and the impact-motive?
We report impact regularly internally (it’s in dashboards the whole team has access to) and through the B-Corp certification we get assessed in detail every few years. Our staff hold us to account, more than our customers or the law.
For us we found a mechanism where benefit and profit are aligned, and I think most good social enterprises have done the same. That’s to say that the more impact we have, the healthier we are on classic business metrics.