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Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#111

Post by bjelkeman-again »

kgonza wrote: post #40
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #30

I co-founded Akvo Foundation [1] in 2007. Akvo is a not-for-profit/not-for-loss [2] organisation that put together a combination of tools, services, local expertise and sector knowledge. We work mainly in management of water, sanitation and agriculture, even though organisations use our platform for all sorts of data. WWF are tracking turtles in Indonesia, SNV manages their massive biogas programmes, Sierra Leone qua…

Why Netherlands for your HQ?

Two of our founders, (we were seven, 2xSE, 1xUK, 2xUS, 2xNL) where based in NL. They also had great connections to the government in NL that supported us to get started. And we were initially part of a project which was based in the NL.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#112

Post by jpetso »

daniel-s wrote: post #71
patja wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about tobacco companies? Or payday lenders? I understand some would do something highly profitable but morally questionable and then donate the profits to a more socially productive firm. Is that what you are thinking? The end justifies the means?

Regarding Tobacco: they're providing a product that people want to consume. I'm classifying fraud with violence. So if a tobacco company lies, pretending that their products are healthy or whatever, that's evil. But a rational human can decide that they want to indulge in something now at the cost of possible consequences in the future. That you or others may not have such a strong time preference, i.e. choose curren…

Would you equate satisfying the (real or perceived) needs of individuals with social benefit? Are there situations where you could view the profit-generating satisfaction of one person's needs as a net negative to the sum of all individuals' needs?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#113

Post by jungletime »

jrmg wrote: post #72
jungletime wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if this hurt your feelings. You're one of the good people, doing great work. From reading "How to Win Friends..." I learned the importance to make people feel important. Sorry if I didn't do that in this case. My acumen is smaller. I apologize for any triggering. I was just poking fun at tech companies, funding not so well thought out positions. To answer your question, its currently one of the stated goals of…

“Dismantle the nuclear family” ... “currently one of the stated goals of BLM” This is patent nonsense. Why would you ever believe that’s the goal of any widely supported organization? What happened to Occam’s razor? The absurdity of this claim inspired me to “do my own research” on the matter. The notion that this is a “goal” seems to stem from this portion of the “what we believe” page here: https://blacklivesmatter…

So BLM won't pay for babysitting for single mothers out protesting? So much for supporting women that quit their two jobs to support a cause they get millions in donations for. This is hilarious, drivel for the stupid. But patriarchy and nuclear family bad.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#114

Post by camdenlock »

benrmatthews wrote: post #19

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 register…

> B Lab Takes a Stand: A Commitment to Justice and Anti-Racism

A lot of these organizations seem to be ideologically possessed by Critical Race Theory. The above snippet is essentially identical to:

> B Lab Takes a Stand: A Commitment to Dianetics and Scientology

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#115

Post by staunch »

Bill Gates and Elon Musk are two of the best examples of effective social entrepreneurship.

Bill Gates made the money and then spent it socially on vaccine research, reducing disease, improving education, etc.

Elon Musk's efforts are more directly social-entrepreneurial. He's helping to move the entire world away from gas powered vehicles (Tesla/Solar City), reducing urban congestion and improving rural life (SpaceX/Starlink), and trying to back up civilization on other planetary bodies (SpaceX).

I think the idea of "social entrepreneurship" is plagued by the problem of "serving two masters" when you really need focus to be successful.

Elon Musk clearly is clearly doing social entrepreneurship, but in practice that just means running successful (and relatively traditional) capitalist enterprises. Gates was even more conventional with his path. Both are doing a lot more good than most people who call themselves social entrepreneurs.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#116

Post by mgbmtl »

I work at a small cooperative. We do contact management for non-profits (from large professional associations to small activist groups). It's an area where Salesforce is present, but there is a huge potential for growth, especially outside the US (data sovereignty).

We're a small worker owned coop, meaning we are basically a few partners doing hosting and consulting for the CRM. The CRM is open source, and we are many companies and organizations working together. They have become a very big family (with the good and sometimes the bad).

I like being my own boss and getting to chose my projects, while getting to work with really nice people (whether the clients or colleagues). Of course, no illusions, at the end of the day, we have to get the job done, on budget etc. It's not all rainbows, but I like it. You might say it takes a certain personality to be able to collaborate with alot of people on the long term. We all have weird personality traits. It requires patience.

In the same day, I might work with folks in France who work with animal shelters, people in Turkey who work with oppressed teachers, and small activist groups in the US who hide migrants from ICE.

Money isn't the end goal, but we still have salaries in the higher average, in our area. CRM isn't super exciting tech, but it quickly provides value to users.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#117

Post by frompdx »

jacob_rezi wrote: post #28

Considering the economic fuck-house as a result of the pandemic , our company has shifted our focus from increasing MRR to helping out anyone and everyone who can benefit from our resume software. Furthermore, I've started to familiarize myself with the Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the UN - specifically inclusive economic growth as so many people are the edge of economic ruin. https://rezi.io - we are ju…

Hi Jacob,

A couple of questions.

1. I could be mistaken on this, however, the resume template used by your service ("The Rezi Format") appears to be generated with LaTeX. Do you allow your users to download the tex source code?

2. If your service does use LaTeX behind the scenes, where was the original tex source code for "The Rezi Format" template acquired?

3. A resume will typically contain a lot of high value user data. What steps does your service take to keep this data secure from you, your employees, or any future buyers?

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#118

Post by dvt »

Nextgrid wrote: post #107
songzme wrote: post #98

2016 - While working as an engineer at Google, I decided to start a free coding bootcamp on the side. I believed I could teach anyone how to become a software engineer so I made a public post asking if anyone is interested in learning how to code and about 30 people showed up at my house. While I was at work in Mountain View, 30 people strangers used my house as a coding bootcamp. 2017 - 30 students were hard to mana…

Just wondering, how do you vet the people that apply? I can imagine a lot of people would love to "earn" a free 2k a month and would happily play along doing the bare minimum amount of work required. I contemplated doing something similar in London (not paying money per-se, but providing a location & good hardware for the students to use) but was kind of worried about ending up with an office full of freeloaders that…

> Just wondering, how do you vet the people that apply? I can imagine a lot of people would love to "earn" a free 2k a month and would happily play along doing the bare minimum amount of work required.

I think people that never worked in the public sector, particularly in something like social services, overestimate the goodness (for the lack of a better word) of average people. People that do this usually come from highly-competitive and privileged backgrounds -- top tier universities, FAANG jobs, etc. And the assumption is that "anyone else" could have made it, too! Everyone is just as stubborn, just as motivated, and just as smart. But FAANG jobs and top-tier universities are self-selecting.

There's a nugget of truth here, and we shouldn't forget what Rawls taught us about the Veil of Ignorance[1], but the reality is that social mobility (particularly in the West) is at a historic all time high. I'm not saying don't donate or don't give back (as a Christian, I feel a moral obligation, in fact, to donate to the less fortunate), but just that implementing welfare policies or -- as @songzme did -- giving resources away, is pretty tricky. Not only do you want to avoid the Free-rider problem[2], but you also want to make sure that people won't end up being wholly dependent on the resources they're the beneficiaries of.

[1] https://fs.blog/2017/10/veil-ignorance/

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-rider/

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#120

Post by slickdork »

User23 wrote: post #103
benrmatthews wrote: post #19

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 register…

> I know a fully for-profit company who claims they are a social enterprise just because their main client base is registered charities. 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 exe…

Non-profits have to report financial, and in their 990 forms have to say all employees who make over 100k a year. You can look at them usually through the IRS website. Gates Foundation posts theirs here: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Informati...

The only people making more than 300,000 are their 4 directors.

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