Business
Social Enterprise: A Gated Community?
There’s a growing debate in the social enterprise world, not only about who’s a social entrepreneur but about who’s being left out of the club.
True, the exceptions and misconceptions abound, but the debate settles around two main points—that unless you’re a Caucasian and unless you’re an MBA, it’s tougher to get support for your good work trying to start a social enterprise.
Is that fair? Consider the arguments. The first point being raised by some across the sector is that MBAs seem to be preferred by social ventures and the foundations willing to fund aspiring social entrepreneurs. Employers, the argument goes, also seem to prefer MBAs, but the truth is that not everyone who can make a difference or start a social enterprise can afford business school—nor think they should have to get an MBA in order to get funding to develop their ideas. “I have no MBA nor do I want one,” says Martin Montero, the founder of Austin Social Innovation Fund. Montero tweeted me the other day in response to one of my queries about an October 15 story in the Wall Street Journal that cites the surge of interest by business school students in “socially-responsible money-making.” The article also notes how business schools are being pushed to create a whole host of courses and study tracks to help MBA students sort out the best way to build companies that both make money and help to solve social problems. Montero and others, including a number of Justmeans.com community members who messaged me earlier this week, said the fuss over socially-minded MBAs tends to leave out a great deal of people who are not in business school but who already have been making a big difference in the sector. ” We most definitely need more non-MBA social entrepreneurs,” Montero wrote.
A second point I keep hearing is that the developing world is, more or less, being left out of the conversation. Justmeans community member Gerard Ww, in a comment responding to my query on that site, said that “no company, organization, or individuals (seems) willing to really get their hands truly dirty side-by-side with us (those people at the bottom of the pyramid) while trying to help the BoP!” Describing himself as one of the billions at the bottom of the pyramid, he said that “we are never included in the [potential] interventions; it’s always the so-called academics and ‘successful’ business persons who dictate terms and conditions. Too few of us will ever be helped by the continued exclusion, but who else knows the conditions [at the bottom of the pyramid] better” than the people who live there?
Gerard isn’t the only person posing the question. Rod Schwartz, CEO of ClearlySo, an online marketplace that aims to raise the visibility of social businesses, sparked a lively debate earlier this year when he posed on the SocialEdge blog the following question: “Are the only innovations in social entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?” Schwartz had asked the same question at the 2009 Skoll World Forum, which I also attended, asking fellow conferees what they thought of the fact that a majority of the speakers and panelists were Caucasian.
Ashni Mohnot, who joins me as a contributing blogger at PopTech, wrote on that site this past summer that “many of the top socially entrepreneurial organizations work in international development, building products, services and social capital to improve lives at the base of the pyramid, yet they are often based in the UK or the US with founders and CEOs hailing from the Western world.” She cited D.light Design, FORGE, FaceAids, and Kiva as some examples of social ventures that develop their products by native Westerners or those educated in the West. Mohnot wrote that while these social ventures “subsequently engage locals in pilots, distribution or marketing, the initial product design is often the sole realm of the US arm.”
To be sure, it’s not true that all social innovators have MBAs and that they’re all “Anglo-Saxon” as Schwartz put it. But the debate continues over what some see as troubling trends in this new field of social enterprise.
What do you think? Do you perceive yourself to be in what Mohnot called an elite “social entrepreneur’s club?” Or is the debate unfair or misinformed? Does it raise some important or long-ignored issues that should continue to be discussed on these pages and across the sector?
Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.
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COMMENTS
BY Megyn
ON October 20, 2009 03:42 PM
Great info Its alway hard if you are just getting started its all about knowing the right people in the right place.
BY Jenna Nicholas
ON October 20, 2009 04:31 PM
I think that the conferences and events that bring together social entrepreneurs in the first place are a step in the right direction. There is definitely more work to be done but I think building off what we already have would be a good place to start.
For example, there are some great events posted on the Stanford Social Innovation Review website at: http://www.ssireview.org/events/
BY Martin Montero
ON October 20, 2009 08:08 PM
To me social entrepreneurship has always been about elevating the poor to solution creators via market inclusion.
This is from my last post on how the greatest boost our sector can have in exponentially multiplying our impact is to empower the poor, the working poor, who are often targets of aid and charity, to the status of co-creators of the solutions to their problems:
“When the poor are elevated to the status of partners and co-creators an entire new realm of possibilities, perspectives, skill sets opens up. It’s time we kick our charity feel good mentality and look at those we seek to help through the lenses of commerce, partnership and opportunity.
The concept of capitalism as a ‘pot luck dinner’ has been developing inside of me for some time now. Traditionally it is an invite only pot luck that is not well advertised and even if you happen to stumble upon it you must know some one already inside the feast to give you an invitation. Social entrepreneurship makes this pot luck an open invitation and makes sure that the poor are welcomed as equal beneficiaries and contributors. The broader and more diverse the pot luck guest and the dishes they bring the better off we will all be and the greater the chance that game-changing innovations will come out through ‘combing the recipes’ of all the various economic and cultural classes.
The poor hold half, if not more of the answers to a great many of the world problems. If we combine our half of the answers, resources and networks with their half I am certain that the degree and depth of innovative solutions will vastly surpass any achievement that either Industry or Humanitarian efforts have been able to do for their sectors and humanity even when combined. This new economy will truly create a stronger and healthier society not by the redistribution of wealth in ‘IV drop dosages,’ but rather by expansion of opportunity and collaboration in a wide open flood gates approach.” - http://budurl.com/BOPentrepreneurs
BY Marcia Stepanek
ON October 21, 2009 12:25 AM
Martin—Thanks for your thoughtful commentary. What I especially like about your “pot luck” metaphor is your point of random encounters. Think how different some of these enterprise opportunities might look if the partnerships were intentional and strategic.
BY elmundodemando
ON October 21, 2009 01:41 AM
Hi Marcia. Unfortunately, you do have a point. I would suggest that these social entrepreneurship circles are gated and they only let a few people of color in. I don’t think they do it on purpose but circles like these and other nonprofit organizations don’t do a great job on being intentional on reaching out to diverse stakeholders. This also creates barriers/labels between helpers/doers and people needing the help.
Authentic entrepreneurship reaches out to those that have the ideas, resources and time no matter the degrees or ethnic background.
One misconception is that people of color or people affected by issues are not involved in social entrepreneurship. They are, they’re just not doing it with mainstream networks.
Thanks for post and great comment Martin!
Mando
BY JTHESSERT
ON October 21, 2009 03:36 AM
Agree with elmundodemando’s comments.
And general implications of post re ironic conflicted nature of elitism within certain circles of Social E community; a community who sets out to help ppl but on one level seems to be creating a barrier between themselves and those they seek to empower by the process of creating systems to aid ... interesting to review in this context the 1st huffpost article by Somalian/ Canadian rapper and activist K’naan Warsame “The Problem of Charity” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/knaan/the-problem-of-charity_b_325252.html) where he bluntly discusses his own experiences with the impacts of this psychological dilemma.
re Jenna’s comment mainstream young people in many areas of the U.S. / World do not have access to those events and the quality of speakers, presentations and culture associated. I look around @ events in Alaska, and I can assure you that there is nothing compared to the information I can find on the internet re conferences in the Bay Area, New York etc….. And the content maybe available online, but rarely are young people inspired / self-motivated to seek it out, engage and begin to try to implement proven solutions in new innovative ways to impact challenges in their local communities. They do not even know the conversation is happening… and for the few who figure it out, become inspired and who begin to try to make a difference… Like Elmundodemando mentioned: many established circles seem to be unwilling to reach out to non-traditional changemakers.
One of the cornerstones of the vision for my personal work is improving education so I hope to do my part to remedy this situation here in Alaska by creating improved opportunities for youth in their developmental stages, inspiring and connecting them to social change concepts and transformative leaders so that they have the incentives and tools to pursue meaningful community building careers while they are still young…. but I can only imagine the disparity between young people within the communities I am begining to work with here and developing-world communities in terms of access to opportunity, and subsequent access to positions of influence to positively realign social systems in favor of balance and equality.
Is there a certain “Celebrity” vibe around the group (D.light Design, Faceaids, Kiva, Forge and others etc.) Ashni Mohnot mentioned? Is the social E community reinforcing a negative by focusing its lense on these success stories to the exclusion of so many other hardworking activists and budding young social entrepreneurs the world over? Could you (we) pick a model where the person who gets aid eventually ends up on the panel @ Socap or some other conference fielding questions from the audience? ... Rather than being in the picture on the website in the improvished foreign country?
BY Mackenzie Andersen
ON October 21, 2009 05:49 AM
The lexicon of “social entrepreneurship” scares me as much as the lexicon of “social justice’ - the former that has granted executive power to a group dominated by anti-white, anti-capitalistic belief systems that are currently undermining the very basis of the American economy- and American freedom.
Sometimes the fear is misplaced but in my view, it is better that trust be earned than assumed. There is an implied assumption that people have to be organized by the collective mind in order to “serve” society. I know the inclination to serve the whole, exists out side of the collective organizational mind- it exists within the individual, Formerly some might have said that the desire to align oneself with social good is emergent from the Christ center existing within the individual, but these days it has become politically incorrect to use the lexicon of Christianity.
I understand that there is a point to forming networks that seek to reward those that align themselves with that which benefits the whole-, but there is a danger of this becoming a political bully pulpit, as organizations assume unto themselves the role of judge and jury of “social good”, often focusing on one particular aspect that they choose to champion at the expense of everything else to which they are occluded. Perhaps this is what you are trying to do- to understand those you are occluding, but the emphasis on “people of color” is so politically correct- What is to follow next- mathematically formulated racial quotas? And the emphasis on the “poor” versus the rich occludes the middle class. It often strikes me that those that aim to help the poor, only, are willing to help them as only as long as they are poor. Once the poor improve their lot, the help no longer applies as long as the middle calss is occluded from concepts of “social Justice”. It is a strong middle class that creates a economic opportunity for all by providing acsessible stepping-stones, enabling those who are willing and able to work to rise to a higher standard of living. Without a middle class, it is fuedalism.
BY Ashni Mohnot
ON April 1, 2010 06:46 PM
Thanks, JT, Martin and all for your insightful comments, and Marcia for drawing in my opinions. In case any of you are curious, here’s my original post on the topic (since it isn’t linked in the article above): http://legacy.poptech.org/blog/index.php/archives/4121
Ashni Mohnot