So why will social enterprise win over NPOs?
Both NPOs and SEs have social mission. What makes NPOs fear SEs?
One of the main factors is that it is
self-sustainable. Social enterprise can generate revenue and profit to ensure
the continuity of their business and social mission. For example, SEs have a
business that is running, selling products, that most of the time, in line with
their social mission to create awareness of their social mission and in the
same time generates revenue to ensure that the business side of it is taken
care of. However, NPOs depend more of donations from public, corporates or
through their fund raising activities to ensure that they have enough funding
to sustain their organizations. Hence, do the NPOs focus more on getting more donations
from different sources to ensure that their organizations are sustainable or do
they focus more on their social mission?
Most of the time, most NPOs will focus more on
getting donations instead of focusing on their initial intentions of doing good.
This article describes how social enterprise
will be able to take over NPOs in the future as both are generally similar as
they seek to tackle social issue faced by the world. What makes them different
is that SEs is self-reliant while NPOs are more dependent on donations.
The article has mention that “For decades
nonprofit leaders have been pushing corporations to embrace “corporate
responsibility”” which is CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) by donating
huge amount of money to the organization to build “good image of the
corporate”.
Such methods are not effective anymore, as more
corporates are now try to improvise their own CSR department to encourage their
stuffs to come up with ideas on how to contribute back to the society instead
of just donating a large sum of money to NPOs or charities.
This makes me wonder, if a corporate has a CSR
department and they are focusing a significant amount of effort to contribute
back to the society what difference it is from a social enterprise?
Does that mean that there is no need of NPOs? No
need of SEs?
NO! One of the main reasons that more corporate
are looking into CSR is because of the public’s supportiveness of NPOs and SEs.
They realized that they will also need to do something about social issues in
order to make sure the competitiveness is there.
Thus, I believe that many NPOs are realizing
that they have to be self-sustainable in order to survive and work towards
their social mission. Hence, if NPOs are adaptable to changes I think that they
should not fear of been replace by social enterprise as they are slowly
developing into one already.
All in all, there might be one day that social
enterprise will take over NPOs!
Till we meet again!
References:
MikecassidyAZ.
(2011). Why Nonprofits Should Fear Social Enterprise? Retrieved
October 30, 2012, from Leadership For Good:
http://leadershipforgood.com/why-nonprofits-should-fear-social-enterprise/
Hi Jianing!
ReplyDeleteI am sure that one day social enterprise will be well-known to the public and NPOs will not be as 'powerful' as it used to be.
I've always believe that even if corporate has CSR to pay back to the society, it can never be the same as a social enterprise. I have that belief because of the real agenda of establishing a social enterprise. The simple reason why Social enterprise exists in the first place is the clear social mission which the founder would like to eradicate. However, a corporate exist to make profit. This simple yet impactful reason makes a corporate with CSR and social enterprise absolutely different.
I agree with what you thought about NPOs not having to be fearful of social enterprise because NPOs can change itself to be a social enterprise in the future if learns to be sustainable on itself.
Let's hope that social enterprise will be able to make a change in people's lives and public know what social enterprise is all about. :)
Hi Jia Ning! :)
ReplyDeleteYour blog title is very captivating and this is indeed a rather argumentative introduction. I agree with your point that NPO leaders coming out to get corporate companies to donate to them as part of their CSR is not working anymore. Every company have been working on their CSR department and have their staff looking into opportunities to do good for the society.
This has got to think of your question of 'If a corporate has a CSR department and they are focusing a significant amount of effort to contribute back to the society what difference it is from a social enterprise?'.
I would say the difference is significant. An SE is a sustainable business where in Singapore most of its model are based on 30% profits to benefit their beneficiaries. A corporation's CSR department uses a sum of money allocated by the company to do good to a particular community, for example Procter & Gamble as well as Unilever building houses for people in the Philippines through Gawad Kalinga's initiative.
Hence the difference here between a corporation's CSR department and an SE is that one (Corporation) uses money to get their staff involved to do good whereas the other (SEs) to good by providing employment opportunities to the beneficiaries and uses the money which beneficiaries play a part in helping them to earn to help the beneficiaries back.
I believe the same as you that there will still be a need for NPOs and SEs. Both exists for a reason and will continue with that particular reason which is to do good to people in the society. What we hope NPOs and SEs can do would be that they would be able to raise that amount of awareness that out of 10 people approached, 9 of them know what an NPO/SE does and perhaps even name a few examples! :)
Jovin