Social and societal entrepreneurship
Are you interested in doing business with social enterprises or do you want to start one? Here we tell you more about how you can make a difference. Social enterprises and societal entrepreneurs are needed to find solutions to societal challenges such as integration, gender equality, health, education, climate change and unemployment.
What is a social enterprise?
A social enterprise is characterised by
- business being a means of creating societal benefit
- performance being measured in terms of societal benefit goals
- most of the net profit going back into the business
How can societal benefit be measured?
The driving force of a social enterprise is to solve societal challenges, but how can you measure the societal benefit generated by your business? Investors and public operators who want to do business with your company want to see the results you achieve. So it is important that you have ways to measure your results, both economic and social, and that you can communicate and demonstrate the benefits your company is delivering.
Do you want to start a social enterprise?
More and more associations are developing a more business-oriented part as a complement to the non-profit work. If you work in a non-profit association and want to start a social enterprise, you in the association need to think about how to organize the business so that it becomes a clear and delimited part towards the non-profit work. It can be done in different ways. For example, you can contact Coompanion for help in finding the best solution for you.
Are you a social entrepreneur?
Many entrepreneurs today want to run businesses with a community commitment as a driving force. If you want to start a social enterprise yourself, you need to think through your business idea carefully, think about what benefit it will do for society and who can imagine paying for it. Who is the customer? You can start in the form of business that suits you best but be clear in the articles of incorporation/bylaws about the purpose of the business and how the surplus will be managed.
Create jobs through social entrepreneurship
If you meet people who have difficulty finding work or if you yourself have been unemployed for a long time, you can start an ASF, Employment Integration Social Company. It aims to create work and pathways to the labor market for groups that have a particularly difficult time on the labor market.