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Creating a Winning Business Plan for Social Entrepreneurs

MAY.23, 2023

Business Plan for Social Entrepreneurs

1. What is a Social Entrepreneur Business Plan?

A social entre­preneur business plan is a de­tailed strategy and roadmap. The Nonprofit Start-Up Busine­ss Plan outlines the social ente­rprise’s revenue­ generation, financial manageme­nt, and progress measureme­nt. By creating a comprehensive­ business plan, social entrepre­neurs can ensure that their social enterprise is we­ll-prepared to meet its objectives.

2. Why do we need a social entrepreneur business plan?

A successful social e­ntrepreneur ne­eds an essential tool: a we­ll-crafted business plan. This plan serves multiple purposes. First, it helps in identifying the specific problem that needs to be addressed. Second, it sets clear goals and de­fines the target audience. Third, it devises strategies for achieving these­ objectives. Additionally, this plan plays a crucial role in identifying potential funding sources and resources. It also maps out a timeline for goal attainment.

A Homele­ss Shelter Business Plan aids organizations in de­veloping successful and scalable business models that can effectively achieve their de­sired impact.

3. Sources of funding for social enterprise businesses

Grants are one­ of the sources for funding social ente­rprise businesses. Social e­ntrepreneurs ofte­n receive grants from non-profit and government organizations. These grants serve as startup capital and provide ongoing operational support.

Links to funds for non-profit organizations: Newprofit: https://www.newprofit.org/ Ashoka: https://www.ashoka.org/en-us MassChallenge: https://masschallenge.org/

In addition to traditional funding sources like­ crowdfunding, angel investors, and venture­ capital firms, social enterprises can also e­xplore loan programs provided by the Small Busine­ss Administration. Two such programs are the 504 and 7(a) loan programs which offer financing options for social e­nterprises.

Furthermore, an increasingly popular ave­nue for funding social enterprise­ businesses is through social impact investing.

4. How to write a social enterprise business plan

  • Start by Defining Your Social Mission: Before diving into writing your business plan, it is e­ssential to have a clear understanding of your organization’s purpose, values, and desire­d social outcomes.
  • Describe Your Target Market: The target market description is a crucial aspect of your Strate­gic/Operational plan . It is essential to clearly identify your target customers, their needs and desire­s, and outline how you intend to address those­ requirements effectively.
  • Outline Your Business Model: Then comes outlining your business model. This step involves de­termining how you’ll generate­ income, what products or services you’ll offer, and how you’ll deliver them to your customers.
  • Develop Your Marketing and Sales Strategy: After your business model is outlined, you should then develop your marketing and sales strategy. This social enterprise business plan should include how you plan to market and promote your products or services, what pricing model you plan to use, and how you plan to generate sales.
  • Describe Your Team and Resources: This includes showcasing the skills and experience of team members, outlining strategies for attracting and re­taining top talent, as well as identifying any necessary resources required for the success of the­ business.
  • Outline Your Financial Plan: These include­ identifying the start-up funds require­d, determining the me­ans of financing operations, and planning for future investme­nts that may be made.

5. Executive summary

Our social ente­rprise, JYC, has a mission to empower vulne­rable communities in deve­loping countries. The JYC organization collaborate­s with various stakeholders like NGOs, governments, and corporations to establish a comprehe­nsive platform. This platform aims to empower individuals in de­veloping and sustaining their own businesses. Through our tailored training programs, financial resources, and me­ntorship opportunities, entrepre­neurs receive­ the necessary support to build and maintain successful ventures.

6. Company (Institutional) analysis

The social e­ntrepreneurship busine­ss plan aims to establish a sustainable, equitable­, and responsible economy. It does so by offering resources and training to e­ntrepreneurs, enabling them to create busine­sses that generate­ meaningful social and environmental advantage­s.

We strongly believe­ in equal access to resources and networks for building successful businesses, ensuring that everyone­ benefits from their success.

7. Structure and Background

JYC, a social entre­preneurship company founded in 2020, is de­dicated to tackling social and environmental challe­nges through the impleme­ntation of innovative and sustainable business mode­ls. Its main focus revolves around enabling unde­rserved and marginalized communities to access quality education, employment opportunities, and healthcare services.

Our team comprises skilled professionals from diverse­ sectors, including finance, technology, and social work. Their collective experience empowers us to create sustainable solutions that drive positive­ social change while fostering financial stability.

Social Entrepreneur Business Plan

8. Market (Industry) analysis

The social entrepreneurship market is growing rapidly in the United States of America; estimated that 22% have over $2 million in revenue, 89% were created since 2006, and 90% focus on solving problems at home (2012).

https://www.socialchangecentral.com/social-enterprise-statistics-from-around-the-world/

JYC’s social entrepreneurship business plan will focus on providing innovative solutions to social issues and problems that have not been solved traditionally.

9. Competitor analysis

Our social entrepreneur business plan template competitors are:

  • Social Impact Exchange – a global platform that helps social entrepreneurs connect with investors to fund their projects
  • UnLtd – a social enterprise accelerator that provides support for early-stage social entrepreneurs
  • GlobalGiving – a crowdfunding platform that helps social entrepreneurs and non-profits raise funds for their projects
  • Ashoka – a global network of social entrepreneurs providing mentorship and resources to empower the social enterprise sector
  • Social Enterprise UK – a membership organization that supports and promotes social enterprises in the UK.

10. Services and Products

Our components of a business plan social enterprise include services and products which are:

  • Consulting services for small businesses and start-ups
  • Advisory services for nonprofits
  • Educational programs for children in underserved communities
  • Professional development programs for adults
  • Impact investing services
  • Training and development programs for entrepreneurs
  • Community outreach programs
  • Corporate social responsibility programs
  • Social enterprise incubator services

11. Sales and Marketing Plan

In order to ensure the success of a social e­ntrepreneurship company, an effective sales and marketing plan should incorporate the following key elements:

The business aims to develop a mission and vision statement that effectively outline­s its goals and objectives. This stateme­nt serves as a guiding framework for the­ organization’s future

In order to set the company apart from competitors and establish a unique­ selling proposition, an innovative social ente­rprise app is being created.

In order to effectively promote a product or service, it is important to develop a compre­hensive marketing strategy.

12. Operational plan

Our hybrid social enterprise operational plan’s format focuses on serving our community, creating jobs, and reducing our carbon footprint.

  • Supporting local businesses
  • Incorporating green practices into our operations
  • Developing social programs to benefit the community
  • Establishing a system of sustainable production
  • Creating partnerships with nonprofits and public institutions
  • Minimizing waste and energy consumption.

13. Evaluation/assessment

  • Analyzing the mission statement and goals of the social entrepreneurship company.
  • Examining the business model and resources required to achieve success.
  • Assessing the impact of the company on the community.
  • Examining the company’s financial health and sustainability.
  • Evaluating the management team and their ability to execute the plan.
  • Analyzing the marketing strategy and its effectiveness.
  • Evaluating the potential for growth and scalability.
  • Assessing the competitive landscape and how the company can differentiate itself.

14. Management team

Executive Team:

  • Chief Operating Officer
  • Chief Financial Officer
  • Chief Technology Officer
  • Head of Human Resources

Advisory Board:

  • Business Development Advisor
  • Legal Advisor
  • Marketing Advisor
  • Technology Advisor

15. Projection and Financial Planning

The social e­nterprise group aims to raise $1 million in capital over the next five years. This funding will support various aspects, including platform development, staff recruitment, and covering ope­rational expenses. The­ organization plans to generate re­venue through government contracts and by offering data analytics services to local governments.

Startup Costs

The initial startup costs for this business will be $200,000.

The primary source of revenue will come from government contracts and data analytics services. Government contracts will provide a steady stream of income, while data analytics services will provide additional revenue.

Financial Highlights

The projected financial highlights for the business are as follows:

  • Revenue: $1.5 million by 2024
  • Profits: $400,000 by 2024
  • Return on Investment: 40%
  • Cash Flow: $1.2 million by 2024
  • Break-even Point: 12 months

16. Discover the Power of Social Entrepreneurship with OGS Capital

Highly efficient service.

Highly Efficient Service! I am incredibly happy with the outcome; Alex and his team are highly efficient professionals with a diverse bank of knowledge.

OGS Capital specialize­s in assisting entreprene­urs in developing and implementing impactful social entreprene­urship business plans. Our highly experie­nced team collaborates with nume­rous social entreprene­urs to create custom plans that yield me­asurable outcomes.

Whether you are an aspiring entrepre­neur trying to make your mark or a seasone­d professional in the business world, our Busine­ss Planning Services are here to assist you. We specialize­ in developing comprehe­nsive plans that fully embrace your unique­ vision and core values. Through close collaboration, we­ will work diligently alongside you to identify the­ optimal strategies for success and de­termine the necessary resources to bring your goals to fruition.

OGS Capital values the­ transformative power of social entre­preneurship. With our guidance, you can establish a social ente­rprise that leaves a lasting, me­aningful impression.

OGS Capital can be your re­liable partner in creating a robust social e­ntrepreneurship business plan. Feel free­ to reach out to us today for assistance.

Q. What are examples of social entrepreneurship businesses?

1. Revolution Foods: Revolution Foods is a social enterprise providing healthy meals to underserved students. https://www.revolutionfoods.com/

2. Kiva: Kiva is a nonprofit providing micro-loans to developing countries’ entrepreneurs. https://www.kiva.org/

3. Ecosia: Ecosia is an online search engine that donates 80% of its profits to reforestation projects worldwide. https://www.ecosia.org/

4. Warby Parker: Warby Parker is an eyewear company that donates a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair purchased. https://www.warbyparker.com/

5. Solar Sister: Solar Sister is a social enterprise that helps women in Africa build businesses selling solar-powered products. https://solarsister.org/

Q. How do you write a social enterprise business plan?

When establishing a social enterprise, it is crucial to unde­rtake the task of crafting a comprehe­nsive business plan. This plan serve­s as a roadmap, outlining key aspects such as the e­nterprise’s objective­s and mission, the range of service­s or products on offer, an analysis of the intended audience and market, financial conside­rations, a succinct overview of the marke­ting strategy, and a timeline e­ncompassing both launch and growth milestones. A meticulously de­veloped social ente­rprise business plan sets the­ stage for success in this impactful venture­.

The plan should have­ a comprehensive e­xplanation of the enterprise­’s mission and values. It should also address the compe­titive landscape and any applicable re­gulations. When writing the plan, it is important to be thorough, re­alistic, and ensure clarity for easy understanding.

Download Social entrepreneur business plan Template in PDF

OGSCapital’s team has assisted thousands of entrepreneurs with top-rate business plan development, consultancy and analysis. They’ve helped thousands of SME owners secure more than $1.5 billion in funding, and they can do the same for you.

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Social Enterprise Business Plan Template

  • Written by Dave Lavinsky

social enterprise business plan template

Table of Contents

Social enterprise business plan.

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 500 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their social enterprise businesses. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a social enterprise business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What Is a Social Enterprise Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your social enterprise business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a Social Enteprise

If you’re looking to start a social enterprise business, or grow your existing social enterprise business, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your social enterprise business in order to improve your chances of success. Your social enterprise business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Social Enterprise Businesses

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a social enterprise business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for social enterprise businesses.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

How to write a business plan for a social enterprise.

If you want to start a social enterprise business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. Below are links to each section of your social enterprise business plan template:

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of social enterprise business you are operating and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a social enterprise business that you would like to grow, or are you operating social enterprise businesses in multiple markets?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the social enterprise industry. Discuss the type of social enterprise business you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.  

Company Analysis

In your company analysis, you will detail the type of social enterprise business you are operating.

For example, you might operate one of the following types of social enterprise businesses:

  • Trading social enterprise : this type of social enterprise refers to cooperatives, collectives, and other organizations that are worker or employee-owned. This type of ownership structure allows a higher degree of economic resiliency compared to a traditional organization.
  • Financial social enterprise: this type of social enterprise includes credit unions, cooperative banks, and revolving loan funds, which are all membership-owned. In other words, the money deposited from a member is used to help other members who may need financial assistance.
  • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and charity social enterprise: this type of social enterprise businesses are usually created to support a specific social, environmental, or political goal. The profits are used to further the social or environmental aims of the organization or to provide salaries for people who provide free services to specific groups of people.

In addition to explaining the type of social enterprise business you will operate, the Company Analysis section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to question such as:

  • When and why did you start the business?
  • What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of clients served, number of positive reviews, reaching X amount of clients served, etc.
  • Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the social enterprise industry.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the social enterprise industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating. 

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, particularly if your research identifies market trends.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your social enterprise business plan:

  • How big is the social enterprise industry (in dollars)?
  • Is the market declining or increasing?
  • Who are the key competitors in the market?
  • Who are the key suppliers in the market?
  • What trends are affecting the industry?
  • What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
  • What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your social enterprise business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your social enterprise business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments:non-profits, individuals, social causes, etc.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of social enterprise business you operate. Clearly, social causes would respond to different marketing promotions than individuals needing financial assistance, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other social enterprise companies. 

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes social enterprise companies such as brand awareness companies, community organizations, government programs, etc.

With regards to direct competition, you want to describe the other social enterprises with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be social enterprise businesses located very close to your location.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

  • What clients or causes do they serve?
  • What type of social enterprise company are they?
  • What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
  • What are they good at?
  • What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

  • Will you provide social enterprise services that your competitors don’t offer?
  • Will your social enterprise business help more people in need?
  • Will you provide better customer service?
  • Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.  

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a social enterprise business plan, your marketing plan should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of social enterprise company that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, in addition to social enterprise services, will you provide access to funding, marketing, counseling, and/or brand awareness, and any other services?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the location of your social enterprise company. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, is your social enterprise business located near an office complex, a university, an urban setting, or a busy neighborhood, etc. Discuss how your location might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your social enterprise marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

  • Website and SEO marketing
  • Community events
  • Commercials
  • Social media marketing
  • Local radio advertising

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your social enterprise business, including communicating with clients, marketing, accounting, accounts payable, fundraising, and searching for grant opportunities.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to obtain your XXth client, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your social enterprise business to a new location.  

Management Team

To demonstrate your social enterprise business’ ability to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company. 

Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing social enterprises. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in managing a social enterprise business or are connected to a wide network of professional organizations that frequently tend to donate to various causes.  

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

Income Statement : an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you take on one new service at a time or multiple services ? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets : Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your social enterprise business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement : Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt. 

In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a social enterprise business:

  • Cost of social enterprise services
  • Cost of overhead, marketing, and outreach
  • Payroll or salaries paid to staff
  • Business insurance
  • Taxes and permits
  • Legal expenses

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your social enterprise outline of services, types of customer and/or cause you will be targeting, and the areas your social enterprise business will serve.   Summary Putting together a business plan for your social enterprise business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the social enterprise industry, your competition, and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful social enterprise business.  

Social Enterprise Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my social enterprise business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily complete your Social Enterprise Business Plan.

What is the Goal of a Business Plan's Executive Summary?

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of social enterprise business you are operating and the status; for example, are you a startup, do you have a social enterprise business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of social enterprise businesses?

  OR, Let Us Develop Your Plan For You Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.

Click here to hire someone to write a business plan for you from Growthink’s team.   Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

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MITx: Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises

Are you a social entrepreneur looking to refine your mission and scale your impact? Learn how to articulate your impact goals, theory of change, and plans to scale with a global community through this five-week, interactive course. This course is run by Solve , an initiative of MIT that supports social entrepreneurs solving the world’s most pressing challenges.

Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises

Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises

About this course.

People in every corner of the world are innovating to solve social and environmental problems in their communities. In the past decade, new programs like MIT Solve have emerged to support those social entrepreneurs and drive partnerships to accelerate their impact. However, many startups find it difficult to develop business plans that clearly communicate their work and impact — vital factors in securing funding and other growth opportunities.

This five-week course helps early-stage social impact startups define three key aspects of their business:

Impact Opportunity: What is the scale of the problem you are working on? How many people are impacted? and What impact might you make?

Customer Discovery: What specific group will your solution serve, and how will it impact their lives? How can you better understand this group?

Theory of Change: How can you be sure that your work addresses the problem you’re solving? How is your approach unique?

Planning for Scale: How can you reach more people to scale your positive impact? Where will you gain the funding needed to expand?

Each week, we will dive into case studies from leading social entrepreneurs and both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises around the world. Building off these studies, we will help you design your own social business model and impact plan. Upon completing this course, you will have:

Designed unique responses to five core business model and impact questions. These answers can be used to scale your impact moving forward and to submit an application to MIT Solve’s open innovation platform

Produced a pitch video summarizing your work for potential partners and users (Optional)

Made new connections to other social innovators who are solving important problems in your region and beyond

You may be a good candidate for this course if any of the following criteria apply to you:

You are considering applying to Solve’s Global Challenges in 2021 or another social impact innovation program and are seeking advice to create and complete the application

You are solving an important social or environmental problem and need help to describe and develop your work

You are starting on an idea or solution to a social or environmental problem and need training or skills development to design and share your goals

What is Solve?

Solve is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to solve world challenges. Solve is a marketplace for social impact innovation. Through open innovation Challenges, Solve finds incredible tech-based social entrepreneurs all around the world. Solve then brings together MIT’s innovation ecosystem and a community of Members to fund and support these entrepreneurs to help them drive lasting, transformational impact. Join Solve on this journey at solve.mit.edu .

At a glance

  • Institution: MITx
  • Subject: Business & Management
  • Level: Introductory

No formal prerequisites. A basic awareness of business concepts is useful, and a project that you are working on is beneficial if not required.

  • Language: English
  • Video Transcript: English
  • Associated skills: Communications, Theory Of Change, Business Modeling, Entrepreneurship, Planning, Innovation

What you'll learn

How to describe key aspects of a social impact startup, such as impact opportunity, theory of change, and plans to scale

How to analyze the social ventures of your peers and predecessors and apply that analysis to your own work

Gain confidence in your ability to identify and address social and environmental challenges

Course assignments can be used as part of applications to social entrepreneurship programs such as MIT Solve

Frequently Asked Questions

I’m applying to Solve’s Challenges - will taking this course give my submission an advantage? Solve’s judges and reviewers will not consider whether an applicant participated in the course. However, we hope that the content and exercises will strengthen your application to our Global Challenges.

I’m applying to Solve’s Challenges - will paying for verification give my submission an advantage? No. Verification will give you access to graded tests and staff evaluation on your written assignments, with the potential to earn a verified certificate from edX showing an understanding of this content. No staff involved in grading coursework will be involved in reviewing Challenge submissions.

I’m not yet working on an idea/I’m just starting to work on my idea/I’m not sure I’d call myself an entrepreneur, am I allowed to take this course? Yes - we welcome learners at all stages of experience.

Who can take this course?

Ways to take this course, interested in this course for your business or team.

Everything that you need to know to start your own business. From business ideas to researching the competition.

Practical and real-world advice on how to run your business — from managing employees to keeping the books.

Our best expert advice on how to grow your business — from attracting new customers to keeping existing customers happy and having the capital to do it.

Entrepreneurs and industry leaders share their best advice on how to take your company to the next level.

  • Business Ideas
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Good company » growth studio, 7 steps to becoming a successful social entrepreneur.

Making a difference is at the heart of being a social entrepreneur, and these steps will help you succeed in your endeavor.

 Man looking over valley

Social entrepreneurs are a big-hearted breed. They care deeply about more than earning a profit. They’re also passionate about making a difference.

For some, such as Yoobi founder Ido Leffler and TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, that means donating a product to an individual in need for every product purchased. For others, such as Scholly co-founder Christopher Gray, that means helping low-income students find the scholarship money they need to make their college dreams come true.

To succeed as a social entrepreneur, as these inspiring change-makers have, you also need more than a great purpose-driven business idea. You need a step-by-step plan and the commitment to see it through, says C.J. Hayden, a San Francisco-based social entrepreneurship coach and founding board member of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Social Enterprise Alliance .

“If you feel called to make more of a difference in the world and want to make a living while doing it, you’ll need a clear roadmap for your journey,” Hayden, a social venture founder herself, said in an interview. “A specific set of directions to get your business from a flash of inspiration to off the ground is required.”

Here are seven practical, actionable steps that Hayden suggests carefully following to become a successful social entrepreneur — and to truly be the change you wish to see in the world:

Write a mission statement

“Start by deciding precisely who you want to serve and exactly where and how you want to serve them. Be equally clear about the problem you’d like to solve for this demographic through your business service or product.

Think about your natural talents, core competencies, professional skills and training, and access to needed resources. Ask yourself simple guiding questions like ‘What will I do?’ ‘How will I do it?’ ‘Who am I doing it for?’ and ‘What value will I provide?’ The answers to those questions will inform your mission statement.”

Additional resources:

  • How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas , by David Bornstein
  • The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World , by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan

Research the field

“Learn more about the social business landscape you want to work in and see who the players are and how they’re changing the world. Don’t reinvent the wheel. If a social entrepreneur out there is already doing exactly what you want to do, use that as inspiration and fuel to come up with your own distinctly different purpose-driven offering.

Google is your friend here in finding those who you might consider competitors or collaborators. Also, if you were someone who wanted to engage with a business offering that you want to offer, what would he or she search the web for? What specific keyword search terms would he or she use? See yourself as your ideal customer or beneficiary and search online through that lens.

You’ll also want to research trade associations specific to social entrepreneurship. The Social Enterprise Alliance , which has 16 chapters throughout the U.S., is a great first resource to reach out to. See who the members of this group are and what types of social enterprises they’re operating.

Further honing in, research trade associations geared toward your particular potential offering. For example, if you aim to provide office supplies using the popular one-for-one donations model, you’ll want to reach out to the National Office Products Alliance . See what the people there are teaching their members and the topics they’re talking about at meetings and conferences. This will help you get the pulse of what’s going on in the field you hope to enter.”

Additional resource:

  • List of industry trade groups in the U.S.

Conceptualize your unique offering

“How can you offer something different than what others are already offering? The more grounding and granularity you have in what you want to do and how you will do it — ideally in ways that have not been done before — the more unique your social enterprise will be.

A helpful exercise here is to grab a pad of Post-It notes and to put on each note a word that is directly related to what you’re trying to accomplish with your social enterprise. Then stick the notes on walls or windows where you can easily see them and move them around in different combinations.

Over several days or weeks, continue to adjust your sticky notes, keeping in mind what you want to achieve and who you want to help, plus how you can do all of that uniquely, as only you can within your own specific social niche.

Or, if you can’t be entirely different from others already in the field you’re venturing into, think about ways you can add value to their efforts, perhaps collaboratively.”

  • From Idea to Concept: The 3 Stage Business Plan for Aspiring Entrepreneurs , by John Endris

Reach out to team members for feedback and support

“What I mean by ‘team member’ is not necessarily someone who is going to work with you and for you, either as a business partner or an employee. Rather, it's someone who will be a steadfast supporter of what you’re trying to accomplish through your purpose-driven venture. Someone who is on your team, rooting for you.

To gather outside support, look to people already in your life and career who you consider to be trusted mentors and advisors. Or, they may be some of the competitors and collaborators you came across when researching the field, or members of relevant trade associations that you looked into. They could also simply be like-minded souls who want to make a difference, too, or already have.

Team members are people you can freely, openly bounce ideas off of and seek feedback and advice from. People who have been in your shoes before who can help guide you to success, ideally opening up their networks and resource pools along the way to propel you forward.

Present your supporters and mentors with your mission statement, and simply see what they think about it. You’ll have to have a thick skin when doing this because some may provide very strong corrective criticism. Remember that your team members likely have good intentions and want to see you succeed.”

  • SCORE free small business mentorship services
  • Social Impact International's mentorship network

Develop your business model

“A business model is a roadmap for how your enterprise is going to make money. Think about just how far you want your services and/or products to reach. Are you going to be satisfied with serving and assisting just the number of customers that you yourself can serve locally as one person? Or are you going to need to expand and hire in order to make a bigger impact?

Decide and document exactly how much money you want or need for this social enterprise to bring in order to support your mission, pay for itself, pay you, and anyone you might hire, and to perhaps eventually expand. What specific type of business model will lead to the earnings you require and desire?

Also ask yourself if the beneficiaries of your enterprise’s goals will pay for your enterprise themselves, or are you going to have one group of people pay for your products and then have another group of people be beneficiaries? For example, the one-for-one model of TOMS Shoes has one group of people — consumers — paying for the shoes and individuals in need are the beneficiaries, which is a very common social business model.

An example of a social enterprise where the beneficiaries themselves pay for products or services is micro-lending ventures . These increasingly popular business model structures involve making microfinance loans to people who pay interest. The interest collected from them funds the repayment of the loans and provides profits, as well as funding for additional loans to be made.

Once you settle on which type of social enterprise business model fits your business concept best — and there are many to choose from — consider putting your chosen model forth in a local social entrepreneurship pitch competition, with the goal of refining it as much as possible.”

  • Business Model Generation: A Handbook For Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers , by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
  • Power to the People: How to Create a Profitable Social Enterprise , article by bplans.com
  • Global Social Venture Competition

Identify initial funding sources

“This is where you’ll want to do your homework to find out where you’ll source seed funding from. Where will you obtain the funding you need to launch and what will be required to get it?

Will you seek a traditional business loan or can you afford to self-finance? Will you look to friends and family for loans or reach out to angel investors and venture capitalists?

What about perhaps crowdfunding your social enterprise through Indiegogo [as Lisa Curtis did to get her global poverty-fighting superfood startup Kuli Kuli, Inc. off the ground]? Crowdfunding is a particularly wise move if you already enjoy some early success as a startup social venture, and have a large mailing list or e-newsletter subscriber base you can broadcast your crowdfunding campaigns to. If you don’t have broad target demographic reach or a significant social following, crowdfunding might only produce very small amounts of funding and may not be worth the time investment on your part.

One of the best funding options specifically for social enterprises are impact investing groups, which exclusively fund purpose-driven companies. The aforementioned Social Venture Network is a great place to connect with investors that fall in this growing category.

As with any kind of outside investing, you’ll want to be cautious that the investors you work with are 100 percent behind your social mission, and not just investing in order to get the highest return possible.”

  • The Art of Startup Fundraising: Pitching Investors, Negotiating the Deal, and Everything Else Entrepreneurs Need to Know , by Alejandro Cremades and Barbara Corcoran
  • The Global Impact Investing Network
  • Investopedia’s Top 5 Impact Investing Firms
  • RSF Social Finance

Write an action plan (and stick to it)

“An action plan — not to be confused with a business plan — very specifically lays out the to-do tasks and action items you need to commit to and by when. It will include the exact date you want to launch your social venture and how long it will take you to get there, working backward from that date.

Your action plan is your master to-do list, it’s your schedule, it’s your calendar. Build it around your annual, monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly entrepreneurial goals.

Particularly when you’re starting up from scratch and you don’t have outside accountability to anyone, carefully creating an action plan — and meticulously following it — is absolutely essential to staying on track. When you do, you can transform your dreams of changing the world into reality.”

  • C.J. Hayden’s Life In a Notebook Planning System
  • American Express’s 9 Essential Action Items For Every New Entrepreneur

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business planning for social entrepreneurs

Business plans for social enterprises (SE) and social businesses

Writing a business plan helps to ensure you focus on the core of your business. You must concentrate on key deliverables in a resource-constrained organization and communicate effectively with your stakeholders, including your funders or investors, customers, community, board, employees and volunteers.

The value of social enterprise business planning

Business planning will help any social enterprise (SE) or social purpose business (SPB) to:

  • Attract investment
  • Identify risks
  • Measure social or environmental outcomes
  • Demonstrate that you are using a business approach
  • Showcase the management team
  • Build alliances
  • Check thinking
  • Determine feasibility

In a business plan, you must clearly articulate:

  • The mission of your social enterprise
  • The outline of specific actions to achieve your goals and objectives
  • Establish targets for planning, measuring and improving performance
  • Project the necessary resources, costs and revenues of your program

Sample business plan templates

Many business plan templates exist in the public domain, including this one .

The elements are best used as prompts by social entrepreneurs to build their own plan, assessing along the way whether or not the question (or element) is relevant for the Social Enterprise or the social business.

Social enterprise business plans versus non-profit plans

Description of the business/mission statement.

The social mission and the importance of meeting both the financial and social goals should be discussed in this section.

Management and organization

Financing the capacity of the organization is as important as supporting the programs. Include an assessment of the current organization, planned additions and/or changes as well as the cost of building the team’s capacity in order to achieve the projected growth. Demonstrate that the staff has both programmatic and business skills.

Market assessment and marketing plan

The plan should focus on delivering market-driven products or services as opposed to program-driven products or services to the target customer .

You will also need to articulate how to promote your social objectives along with the product and service.  Partnerships and collaborations extend the reach of the social venture.  Highlight your partnership strategy in this section.

Your marketing plan includes the strategies and tactics to reach your customers, partners and the community.  Outline the public relations, media relations, and advertising that will be required to meet your objectives. The marketing plan should be linked in with your financial plan and your overall strategy.

A solid financial position will allow you to pursue your mission with flexibility and high-quality service, beyond mere stability.  Investors must feel confident their investment will be used effectively to achieve both the social mission and financial results that will enable your organization to thrive and achieve continued growth.

The financial plan provides the framework for social entrepreneurs to forecast the resources they need to create and sustain social and economic value. Commercial entrepreneurs prepare business plans to show why they need money and how they will use it.  Social entrepreneurs should use the same approach and not worry about the limited resources currently available.

Social Enterprise Investors

Investors and funders alike want to know the cost to develop, start up, offer and deliver services or products, whether or not any one user or payer is willing to cover it. When interacting with potential funders or investors, you need a detailed budget and projection of required outside investment tied in with a plan to reach the desired market position.

Investors want returns, typically a blend of financial and social. Your plan must describe the potential “return” on investment for investors and the desired social outcomes, and provide a framework for assessing social performance .

Remember that a social purpose business is similar to any other for-profit business, but the organization will likely raise financing from investors who are interested in a double bottom line. Social enterprises in the non-profit environment will typically raise funding from traditional fundraising, loans and other forms of social finance.

Dees, J.G., Emerson, J., & Economy, P. (2001).  Enterprising Nonprofits: A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs . Toronto: John Wiley & Sons.

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Browse Course Material

Course info.

  • Dr. Anjali Sastry

Departments

  • Supplemental Resources

As Taught In

  • Entrepreneurship

Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises (0.SolveX)

Course description.

People in every corner of the world are innovating to solve social and environmental problems in their communities. In the past decade, new programs like MIT Solve have emerged to support those social entrepreneurs and drive partnerships to accelerate their impact. However, many startups find it difficult to develop business plans that clearly communicate their work and impact.

The main focus of this course is to help early-stage social impact startups define key aspects of their business by examining case studies from leading social entrepreneurs and both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises around the world.

The course was created by MIT Solve for MITx, and is now archived on the Open Learning Library (OLL) , which is free to use. You have the option to sign up and enroll in each module if you want to track your progress, or you can view and use all the materials without enrolling.

A young African woman is smiling as she workshops ideas with other local entrepreneurs at a large table.

business planning for social entrepreneurs

Using the Business Model Canvas in a Social Entrepreneurial Context

Introduction.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, entrepreneurs are increasingly recognizing the importance of incorporating social and environmental goals into their ventures. Social entrepreneurship, a growing field that focuses on creating sustainable solutions to societal problems, requires a unique approach to business planning — the Business Model Canvas.

business planning for social entrepreneurs

Since we here at SteepConsult are supportive of social entrepreneurs everywhere, we decided to put our heads together and use our own experience in this field to see what knowledge we could share with all current and prospective social entrepreneurs who are out there looking for knowledge to improve their chances at success.  

Today, we shall be writing about a tool that is very useful for any social entrepreneur who wants to launch a new initiative or find ways to explain their social enterprise in a straightforward and striking visual manner to lay people. 

This tool has already gained widespread popularity in a normal for-profit context, as it is an extremely effective representation of business ontology. We are talking of course about the popular Business Model Canvas (BMC).  

This particular tool is so popular because it allows entrepreneurs to effectively summarize their business and present it in a visually appealing manner to people without much understanding of their specific business. This is important because as another popular fake Einstein quote – as we did to introduce you to the concept of what is a VRIO analysis – so aptly states: 

“’If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself” 1 Most probably not Einstein

While the veracity of this claim is something you should take with more than a grain of salt, it does reflect an important tenet of human psychology. People will not invest in you, nor will they buy your product or else be interested in working with or for you if you cannot clearly explain to them what your business is all about. 

To help clarify your business idea and ensure that you are able to pitch it properly to third parties, the BMC is an ideal tool to help you focus. Important to know for social entrepreneurs in particular is that the BMC that is used in a social entrepreneurial setting does however sport a few slight differences to the classic format designed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur in 2005. We shall highlight these in the sections to come and show you how to make proper use of the differences. 

This article will study the application of the BMC in a social entrepreneurial context, highlight its benefits and provide practical insights for professionals in this space who are aiming to create impactful ventures. 

Understanding the Business Model Canvas 

The Business Model Canvas, developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, is a strategic management tool that helps entrepreneurs visually depict and analyse the key components of their business model. It consists of the following nine building blocks, each of which we have clarified with a small explanation:

Customer Segments

You can not be everything to everyone. The key to success is focus. By zooming in on the nexus of unique pain points, demographics, buyer behaviour, and other relevant characteristics, you should be able to segment your potential audience and identify those segments where the chance of success is the greatest. 

Value proposition

As with the customer segments, your value proposition should also focus on the key decision-making features in your industry. On these key features, you should be able to define why your product or service is better than its competitors (e.g., it’s cheaper, more user-friendly, higher in quality, more robust, more sustainable, etc.). 

Which distribution channels are you going to use to bring your product/service to your customers. This can be a network of brick-and-mortar locations, a webstore, social media, etc.

Customer Relationships

This aspect of the BMC is focussed on the interaction with customers and is highly contingent on the exact type of business you are. 

Revenue streams

In this aspect of the BMC, an entrepreneur is asked to detail how their business is going to make money. This seems a rather straightforward question at first glance, but it can soon start to become quite complex. A prime example on this front is Amazon.  

If we simplify Amazon’s business model, it is a web shop and it makes its money through the buying and selling of goods. However, Amazon generates massive reams of data due to the popularity of its product. This data is also monetized through online advertisement options that are fed by the data it gathers on its customers.  

On top of that, to host all the data produced by their web platform, Amazon became an early investor in cloud computing which led to the rise of AWS, which monetizes the expertise Amazon has built in cloud computing.

Key Activities

Here, we have to return to our value proposition and ask how we plan to achieve it. It is in other words a question of toolkits. Will you offer superior service by hiring more people? Will you offer cheaper services by investing heavily in automation?

Key resources

This section lists every resource that enables you to organize your key activities and thus make good on your value proposition. This could be staff members with specific expertise, IP, brand value, material assets such as factories, capital, etc.

Key Partnerships

This section of the BMC lists those stakeholders (e.g., your suppliers, customers, mentors, trade associations, etc.) which might enable you to succeed. 

Cost structure

This section should be completed with an overview of all the key cost drivers, as well as try to categorize them (fixed v. variable, emphasis on capital or labour expenditures, etc.). 

Filling the business model canvas

Below we have included a rather valuable schematic overview of the various aspects of the BMC. We like this view primarily because it does a great job in mapping the dynamism of this framework:

business planning for social entrepreneurs

A common mistake when completing out the BMC is that not enough attention is paid to the interplay between the nine key components. It is however a fact that you cannot really look at one part of the BMC in isolation if you truly want to fulfil its promise. The sign of mastery lies in the fact that you can explain how the cost structures allows you to hire/maintain key resources, which allow you to organize your key activities and thus deliver on your value proposition.  

While we will see in just a bit that the BMC is preferably filled out from right to left, which allows you to move from the questions that are most visible to your clients to the back-end processes which support it, once it is completed you should be able to jump from one section of the BMC to the other and see the logical connections in between the different areas. 

As mentioned before, the BMC was initially designed for traditional businesses. However, its adaptability and flexibility make it highly relevant for social entrepreneurs as well. Naturally, the structural set up of a traditional BMC is completely geared towards the ontological components of a traditional for-profit business structure and all the peculiarities that this entails.  

As we shall examine in the next chapter, the traditional BMC structure has been slightly tweaked at various points to capture the reality as experienced by social entrepreneurial ventures.

Adapting the Business Model Canvas for Social Entrepreneurship 

When applying the BMC to a social entrepreneurial context, certain modifications and considerations are necessary. Let’s explore how each building block can be approached in the context of social entrepreneurship: 

In the social entrepreneurship realm, the “customer segments” portion of the BMC becomes a little bit more complicated. For these types of ventures, a split is often introduced between clients on the one hand and beneficiaries on the other hand (although not always). 

This split is particularly necessary in cases of cross-financing, where a service or product is sold to for-profit customers to finance the service or product offered to beneficiaries. Roughly speaking, we might say that the beneficiaries are the reason for the social project, while the clients are more impacted by the core entrepreneurial drive. 

In any case, identifying the needs, preferences, and challenges of both beneficiaries and targets is crucial to create a relevant value proposition.

Value proposition of offer

Social entrepreneurs must articulate their unique value proposition, which addresses both social and economic or traditional benefits. We prefer to describe this as the “Offer” to differentiate it from the more limited scope of a value proposition in the for-profit BMC. To bring a good “Offer” description to the table, you need to identify the social problem that your venture addresses, the solution being offered, and the value it creates for beneficiaries, partners, and funders. 

Effective communication and distribution channels are also vital for social entrepreneurs. They need to consider the most appropriate methods to reach their target audience, ensuring the delivery of their products, services, or interventions effectively. 

In social entrepreneurship, building strong relationships with beneficiaries, partners, and stakeholders is fundamental. This often requires a deep understanding of community dynamics and an empathetic approach to foster trust and collaboration.

Revenue Streams

Generating revenue is a crucial aspect of any sustainable venture. Social entrepreneurs need to consider diverse revenue models that align with their mission, such as impact investments, grants, cross-subsidization, or earned income strategies.

Key activities

Social entrepreneurs engage in a range of activities to create social impact. This includes research, product or service development, community engagement, advocacy, and policy work. Identifying and prioritizing key activities is essential for efficient resource allocation.

Key Resources

In addition to financial and human resources, social entrepreneurs must consider the intellectual, social, and natural resources required to deliver their intended impact. Leveraging partnerships, volunteer networks, and shared resources can enhance their operational capacity.

Collaboration is often vital for social entrepreneurs, who often work with diverse stakeholders, such as non-profits, governments, corporations, and community organizations. Forming strategic alliances can broaden the reach, expertise, and impact of a social enterprise.

Analysing the cost structure helps social entrepreneurs ensure financial sustainability. They must consider direct costs, overheads, and investments required to deliver their impact while maintaining a balance between social objectives and economic viability. 

Benefits of Using the Business Model Canvas for Social Entrepreneurs 

The adoption of the BMC by social entrepreneurs offers several advantages, we have already introduced a few of these in our introduction, but we shall quickly reiterate all the arguments in favour of using the BMC below: 

Visual Clarity:

The BMC provides a clear and visual overview of the entire business model. This allows social entrepreneurs to:

  • Identify potential gaps, synergies, and areas for improvement. 
  • Pitch their business in convincing and authoritative manner to customers, investors, and other potential partners 

Iterative Approach:

The BMC allows for easy experimentation and iteration, enabling social entrepreneurs to refine their model over time. As a living document, it is great to expose to successive generations of employees/partners/beneficiaries/other stakeholders so that it can be constantly refined. In this manner, the BMC is a low-effort way of engaging in Open Innovation (on which we have quite coincidentally written the definitive guide, available here).

Applying the Business Model Canvas to a real-life Use Case 

As we here at SteepConsult like to get our hands dirty, we thought it would be a good idea to put our knowledge into practice and apply the social entrepreneurial BMC to a social venture that we ourselves greatly admire for its results. 

Aravind Eye Care System is a pioneering healthcare organization in India that focuses on providing high-quality, affordable eye care services. Founded by Dr. G. Venkataswamy in 1976, Aravind Eye Care System aims to eliminate needless blindness by making eye care accessible to all sections of society, particularly the underprivileged.

Aravind’s innovative approach includes a unique cross-subsidy model, where revenue from paying patients is utilized to offer free or subsidized services to those who cannot afford them. This model enables the organization to reach a diverse range of patients and ensure that quality eye care is available to all, regardless of their socio-economic background.  

With this model, Aravind has been able to expand tremendously. Not only has it performed about 7.8 million operations over the course of its operations, but its impact has also expanded from its original Indian heartlands to countries all over the developing world due to its training programmes and manufacturing prowess (with a focus on creating low-cost and affordable eye care tools for Low-and Middle-Income countries around the world).  

We have completed a BMC for Aravind Eye Care System and included it here for teaching purposes below. We have tried to make it as simple as possible, using post-it like visuals as a call back to the way it is ideally filled in during a collective exercise with an experienced facilitator like those, we have at SteepConsult. The logos are there to make it visually a bit more striking and the arrows are there for the benefit of the reader to showcase the relationship between the various aspects of the BMC: 

business planning for social entrepreneurs

Now let us go through this BMC example in a step-by-step approach. As mentioned earlier, when starting from an empty canvas, it is generally recommended to begin with the client-facing parts of the BMC first. 

We would recommend beginning with the ‘Offer’ first, as your value proposition is what drives everything else in your project. As stated before, in a social entrepreneurial venture, the question of the offer is rather more complicated than in a normal for-profit context in the sense that you can have both a traditional and a social offer. 

In case of Aravind, the division is relatively uncomplicated, since it offers the same type of services (i.e., high-quality eye care) to both its paying clients and its subsidized beneficiaries. The difference is that the former have to pay market rates for the therapies they consume, while the beneficiaries are helped at rates that are far below standard market prices. Note that such an uncomplicated division is not necessarily the standard.  

It is perfectly possible for a social enterprise to offer one type of service or product to paying clients and do something completely different to help its beneficiaries. The benefits of the Aravind approach, however, are quite attractive since offering the same service/product in the traditional and social offer allows you to realize economies of scale that would not be present otherwise. 

In the case of Aravind in particular, this is vital as a lot of eye surgery is (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) rather sensitive to scale. Thus, Aravind’s surgeons get a lot of practice from working on their poor patients, which ups the standard of care they can offer to their paying customers. Since the quality of their offering is higher, Aravind’s paying customers are prepared to lay out greater sums for their treatment at Aravind’s facilities. Thus, the paying patients cross-subsidize Aravind’s offer to its beneficiaries.  

On top of that, further savings are achieved by combining the two patient flows, lowering the costs per treatment. Due to the lower cost per treatment, Aravind’s profit margins on its paying customers are higher and the expenses for offering treatments to poor beneficiaries are lowered. The interplay between all these various advantages thus creates a virtuous circle that benefits everyone serviced by Aravind. 

Customer Segment 

Our explanation of the Offer above already does quite a bit to explain the customer segmentation in place at Aravind. Like with the Offer, there is a division between the clients (i.e., the same group of people who would be present in a for-profit BMC) and the beneficiaries (i.e., the newly introduced group of people who benefit from the ‘social’ side of the project). 

In this section, we shall therefore just restrict ourselves to adding a bit more context. For starters, we wrote in our previous section that eye care surgeries lend themselves to scale quite well. This is primarily visible in the high number of people Aravind treats for avoidable blindness. The most common cause of which are age-related cataracts.  Since blindness has such a tremendous impact on the daily life of patients in developing countries (e.g., by preventing them to work or take care of their families, despite being otherwise healthy), it is hugely cost-effective to prevent/cure any cases of blindness that are as easy to fix as cataracts. Since this old age disease affects both the rich and the poor similarly, it is easy to go and hunt for the economies of scale Aravind’s model requires. 

As to paying clients, here we would like to stress the fact that people who could afford this type of treatment in the past would often have to go abroad to seek treatment. Despite the fact that for many of these richer patients, the additional expense this caused was not necessarily a dealbreaker, the benefits of finding proper care close to home are self-evident. It is therefore easy to see why richer patients would have a strong incentive to make use of Aravind’s local services. 

Customer relationships 

On the relationship front, there is relatively little difference between the traditional and social offer at Aravind. As this is a medical relationship in both cases, it is important that interactions with beneficiaries/clients are professional. 

As we shall see in the next section of distribution channels, Aravind has also built out an expansive infrastructure of primary care facilities. These focus on preventative treatments and aftercare for the people who had to undergo a surgical intervention. To ensure that people come in regularly, it is important for Aravind’s staff members to strive for a personal and close relationship with both groups serviced by themselves. 

Distribution channels 

To facilitate the type of care that is necessary to fulfil its mission, Aravind has to be present in close proximity to the final users. That is why they have built an extensive network of over a hundred primary eye care treatment centres embedded in local communities and these centres in turn serve as a funnel to bring the patients who need surgery to the network of 14 hospitals which Aravind has set up to bring this type of capital-intensive surgery to the masses it serves. 

Key Activities 

As to Aravind’s key activities, we can also be rather brief. The original idea that animated Aravind was to bring affordable eye care to the masses. In the beginning, its sole focus was on carrying out the actual treatments. 

Once they had optimized their model and were able to benefit from the economies of scale we have described in our section on their Offer, Aravind started to have room to broaden its scope. It has thus started innovation activities in the broader field of eye care surgery with a focus on reducing costs.  

If you are interested in more information on expanding your core offering with exploratory activities which can over time become new drivers of business, feel free to reach out to SteepConsult. Our consultants are specialized in the use of StrategyTools diagrams, which allow for a structured and efficient estimation of future business opportunities. [To be added in a box, with a link to information on ST, to be checked with Quentin if there is already something on StrategyTools available on our website] 

This has led to training programmes to spread knowledge on the one hand, and innovation about the cost-effectiveness of eye care surgery equipment and treatment on the other hand. Since most of the leading providers of this type of equipment/medicine/treatment focus on western markets were the need to be cost-effective is less pronounced, Aravind’s focus on affordability has allowed it to emerge as one of the few providers of (relatively) low-cost treatment options, broadening its positive impact to include most of the developing world. 

The know-how that as a result of these activities has accrued to Aravind has furthermore strengthened their position, as it has allowed them to recoup the costs of its innovations by bringing them to an even wider audience than the one Aravind traditionally services in India alone.  

Key Resources 

On Aravind’s key resources, we can again be brief. The biggest advantage it currently has is its scale, this has allowed it to build up deep know-how through the employment of skilled staff. This has allowed it to further improve its brand profile and has led to a virtuous circle of partnerships.  

Partner Network 

Aravind, as a successful social venture of considerable scale, has over the years been able to set up wide-ranging partnerships with various international organisations, multi-national enterprises, and government agencies (see logos on the BMC for some examples). 

A successful social enterprise can be an attractive partner for all three groups, since association with the social venture will lend a halo-effect to the organisations it partners with. A particular strength of an organization that is as big as Aravind is that it can be a more logical counterpart for the colossal type of organizations like the UN or a company like Google who seek to use some of their resources for the benefit of all. For these organizations, a social venture that is of a sufficient scale has a gravitational pull all of its own as it unburdens for example Google from having to keep track of many different ventures individually. 

Revenue Streams 

From the partner networks, we seamlessly flow into the revenue streams. In the case of Aravind, it is very clearly an example of hybrid financing. Hybrid financing means that the organisations is not dependent on donations and grants only. 

Aravind does receive some financial supports from its wide partner network (explaining the red arrow that runs from partner networks to revenue streams), but most of the income comes from two other sources, namely its core service offering and its ancillary services. 

The income from its core activities is the revenue generated by Aravind’s core offering to its paying clients. The income from ancillary services is all the income they derive from their training programmes, R&D activities and the manufacturing of core surgical tools, medicine and other equipment needed to provide high-quality eye care and surgery. 

Cost Structure 

The cost structure of Aravind is relatively uncomplicated. It primarily boils down to three major blocks. First, there are the costs related to staffing. To maintain a large and expansive network, Aravind needs good employees (mostly highly trained doctors and nurses). This of course requires competitive salaries and other benefits, which given the size of the workforce does amount to a pretty number. 

Secondly, there are the costs related to maintaining its facilities. Both the primary eye care centres and the hospitals are expensive to maintain, so that also soaks up a lot of costs. Finally, there are all the costs associated to the ancillary activities of Aravind. Production facilities and the development of courses all require expenditure and together this is the third block of the cost structure.

Conclusion 

In the realm of social entrepreneurship, where the pursuit of social and environmental impact is paramount, the Business Model Canvas (BMC) serves as a valuable tool for planning and strategizing. By adapting the BMC to suit the unique needs of social entrepreneurs, professionals in this field can effectively design and execute ventures that address pressing societal challenges. 

Furthermore, the BMC’s visual nature offers a clear and concise representation of the entire business model, allowing social entrepreneurs to identify areas for improvement, innovation, and collaboration.  

By utilizing the BMC, social entrepreneurs can effectively communicate their ideas, attract stakeholders, secure funding, and measure their progress towards achieving their social mission. Moreover, the canvas facilitates strategic decision-making, resource allocation, and the identification of key partnerships necessary for maximizing impact. 

It is important to note that the BMC is not a static tool but a dynamic one that should be revisited and adapted as the social enterprise evolves. Social entrepreneurs must remain agile, open to feedback, and willing to iterate their business models to stay relevant and effective in the future.

business planning for social entrepreneurs

After having amassed a wealth of experience in Innovation & Change Management, Arjan joined SteepConsult to support our transition towards an innovative, solution-oriented, and sustainable future. As our in-house intellectual, he enjoys sharing his knowledge with customers and colleagues alike.

Reference List 

Hoos, F. (2017). Social Entrepreneurship and Changemaking: From Traditional to Social Entrepreneurial Business Model Development [Course Presentation]. Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship University Certificate, HEC Paris.  

Marbaise, M. (2017). The Business Model Canvas Let Your Business Thrive with this Simple Model . AA 50Minutes. 

Orgler, M. (2021, May 18). How to Fill in the Business Model Canvas? – Business to the Moon – Medium. Medium . Retrieved from https://medium.com/business-to-the-moon/how-to-fill-in-the-business-model-canvas-590e200a13da   

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Institute of Entrepreneurship Development

Social Entrepreneurship: Writing Successful Business Plans

Entrepreneurship.

  • Innovation & Digital Transformation
  • Sustainability
  • Education & Training
  • Culture & Creativity
  • Social Inclusion & Human Rights
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business planning for social entrepreneurs

The work of a social entrepreneur is always a complex mixture of socio-emotional relations and consideration of not only financial and marketing factors but also a combination of environmental, cultural, and emotional aspects that always come into play. When the correct approach is being taken, it represents the analysis and the proper estimation of social and environmental outcomes before the business approach is taken.

Without a doubt, working on a business plan, one must not only attract investment and determine feasibility but work hard to identify the risks at play. Therefore, social entrepreneurs must strive for strong, informative, confident, and convincing business plans to receive the support they seek from investors, partners, or the general community.

This article will focus on the ultimate steps necessary for writing such a successful business plan. Take your time to study each paragraph and make sure that you implement them correctly by estimating your objectives, finances, and available resources.

business planning for social entrepreneurs

The important aspects to follow when writing successful business plans

Executive summary.

It’s one of the most important parts of your business plan, which is why it should be short and to the point to let the executives understand all the key moments quickly and without having to turn to additional resources. The trick is to highlight your major points by taking notes of the key arguments. Start by describing the objectives you aimed to receive, then talk about results and recommendations that you find necessary. It should be like an outline before the actual business plan comes up. Read your executive summary and ask yourself whether it reflects the overall content you plan to present. It should act as a synthesis of what you already have.

Your mission must be achievable! It’s one of those factors that many entrepreneurs ignore as they tend to write all the nice phrases that do not sound realistic in the first place. If you are not sure how to achieve this kind of wording, approach professional essay writing companies, such as IHateWriting and explain your situation. When composing your mission statement, mention what you have already achieved, and talk about the methods that you will use when working with upcoming projects.

Target customers

Knowing your target audience is paramount to writing a successful business plan. There are two options to consider. You may focus on taking a specific niche , which will be suitable if you work with the troubled youth or your business plan relates to a limited geographic area. Another option would be focusing on a global audience by making it clear in your business plan that you aim for international cooperation and that you are open to investment proposals.

Problems and pain points

business planning for social entrepreneurs

Without a doubt, there will be problems and challenges that you will face when composing your business plan. The key to success in this regard is narrowing things down and including only those aspects that can be managed. This way, you won’t mention something hard to achieve. Ask yourself about what’s necessary and list your available resources. Regarding additional circumstances like Covid-19 restrictions or logistics , these must be mentioned with due care and legal provisions.

Market and competition analysis

Knowing the market must be reflected in your business plan as well. Research things first and see what’s being offered by your competitors. Once you have this data and some statistics, mention your findings in your business plan by stating why you do things differently and what makes you unique and better in certain regards. For example, if you can achieve something differently, mention it by explaining the market state and why you plan to take certain solutions as your business marketing method.

Products or services

Don’t forget to include basic information about your products or services that are being offered. While it doesn’t have to be included in your executive summary section, it’s still necessary to list product specifications in a separate section or make a mention of services that you offer. It should be clear and listed with the help of bullet points where you talk about exclusive offers accessibility factors and discuss environmental and social aspects. According to local or international legislation, make sure that you provide certifications for products and licensing documents for services.

Financial plan

Your financial plan section of the business plan must include past financial reports, current balance, estimated outcomes, and the calculation of possible risks. As a rule, all reports must be mentioned and included as appendix documents for convenience purposes. Include financial information regarding interest rates and the bank data that may be in question when discussing your funding matters.

The cultural & explanatory aspect

business planning for social entrepreneurs

Since we are focusing on social entrepreneurship, focusing on cultural points becomes an essential part of work, even though it does not represent a written part of your business plan. For example, when you are dealing with a Middle Eastern country or focus on providing your business initiatives in Japan , there are certain cultural and marketing aspects to consider like trading practices, environmental safety concerns, and addressing logistics, among other things.

Take your time to study traditions and restrictions that you may face, get to know the locals, and, most importantly, do not be afraid to ask questions to ensure that you understand every challenge correctly. Once you know the basics about the country, it will always show as you work on your business plan by changing the wording or avoiding certain business marketing phrases.

The same relates to explanatory tone, which may be suitable for certain business plans that deal with several countries where the cultural clash is inevitable. It’s a part of modern business diplomacy and a sign of a good attitude as you will be able to secure the deal and build a strong partnership with investors and stakeholders. The key is to learn as much as possible and implement it in your writing!

Do you want to write for us? Read our guest post guidelines here !

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Grow Ensemble

Build a Better World, Together

50 Inspiring Examples of Social Entrepreneurship in Practice

If you’re looking for a comprehensive introduction and explanation of social entrepreneurship, download our Social Entrepreneurship 101 Guide before you dive into our conversations with leaders in the space.

In early 2019, we launched The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, where each week we release an episode featuring both established and emerging leaders in the social impact and socially responsible business space. 

We’ve covered a variety of topics with social entrepreneurs and innovators from a wide range of industries—tour companies, medtech, agencies, hospitality, and many, many more. 

Each conversation provides our Grow Ensemble team with endless discussion of new information and interesting viewpoints we glean from our guests. In this post (and the two-part podcast episode that goes along with it) we want to highlight (a few) of those lessons and insights.

Whether you want to hear from the CEOs of some of the world’s most successful sustainable businesses , small business leaders making massive waves in their industry, or Executive Directors from entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations influencing widespread positive change, the gang’s all here!

The  businesses you’ll see (or hear) here, aren’t just running a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program to check the boxes on “social good.” These businesses and business people have integrated positive social change and impact into their core of how they do business and how they show up in the world. 

Their business methods and philosophies are inspiring for the change-maker and entrepreneur alike, making it clear that not only are those two identities compatible, but they should be inextricably entwined. What a pleasure it’s been to sit down with so many generous and successful social entrepreneurs and innovators thus far! 

Excited for many more inspiring conversations and connections to come.

What is Social Entrepreneurship?

Before we jump into a list of some of our favorite social entrepreneurs, it’s worth a brief mention of what social entrepreneurship is in the first place.

Social entrepreneurship, as a movement and term, is moving aggressively into the mainstream. And with this rise in popularity, more and more change agents are racing to the scene, as well as racing to define what social entrepreneurship is and who social entrepreneurs are. 

In brief, social entrepreneurs are business people who use their business to create social value. These do-gooders are not funneled into the public sector, but in fact make up an increasing portion of the private sector. In addition to earning a profit, and equally if not more importantly, their businesses respond to social issues or social needs they see in the world around them. 

When the status quo isn’t good enough, these change-makers take action and show us (and the world) that when businesses understand social value creation as central to their company’s purpose, that can lead to large-scale solutions to local and global problems.

Check out our Social Entrepreneurship 101 Guide for a more comprehensive definition of social entrepreneurship where you’ll get a more in-depth look at how a few different people are defining it, where social entrepreneurship came from, and what its role in society might be now and in the future. You can also take a loot at our list of social entrepreneurs books for more resources.

Clothing & Fashion

1. alex husted, founder & ceo of helpsy, on the consumer’s role in the sustainable future of fashion.

As informed by Alex and the Helpsy team, 95% of all clothing, shoes and other textiles can be given a second life. Sadly, over 85% just ends up in the trash! 

In our podcast recording, Alex dove deeper into this issue, reducing, reusing, and recycling textiles and clothing, and explained how the consumer can and should be making an impact on this massive waste issue. 

“The R’s come in order for a reason, right? So reduce is first because that’s the best thing you can do is just use less and then, reuse and recycle. Reuse is kind of where we do the playing, we’re trying to get as much reuse as possible, and then, recycle what can’t be reused.  So for folks like you [or your listeners] who I can’t tell to go to one of our bins and drop their old stuff in there, find someone close by that will take them. Any place you put it other than the garbage can is a whole lot better than putting it in the trash because if the life of those things gets stretched out in a number of ways that most people just don’t realize.  Everybody thinks that I don’t want it, so why would anybody else want it? I never want to see this pair of jeans again, I’ve worn them a hundred times. Why would anybody else want to wear this pair of jeans? It’s just not true. We’re trying to get that across.” 

Want to hear more from Alex on Helpy’s vision for a sustainable future of fashion? Listen here.

2. Manish Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO of Matr Boomie, on Empowering Communities Through Trade

Manish Gupta and the Matr Boomie team have been able to connect and empower over 20,000 artisans in 40 partner communities in India since their founding in 2006. 

It was Manish’s goal in starting Matr Boomie to use the power of trade to empower these Indian communities, provide them with resources and sustainable living , and hopefully, move the needle on lifting many of these communities out of chronic poverty. 

“I have seen firsthand how powerful trade is and anything that we want is available to us. That’s quite amazing. Things from around the world are at our fingertips and that’s an amazing system. But at the same time I’ve seen how if trade is not done responsibly, it can exploit communities.  We’ve all heard examples of challenges in Bangladesh and small communities where there is so much chemical pollution that is ruining their rivers and farming. So we all know how trade, if it’s irresponsible, can exploit communities. But I also believe that if trade is done responsibly, it can empower communities.  It truly has the potential to eradicate poverty in the world. And that’s what I want to do is use trade as a tool for positive change.

To hear more from Manish about Matr Boomie and their continued mission to empower Indian artisans, listen here.

3. Hannah Davis, Founder & President of BANGS Shoes, on Advice for the First Year Social Entrepreneur

Hannah Davis’ and the BANGS Shoes team sell shoes to invest in entrepreneurs all over the world. And this was the mission that Hannah set out with when starting BANGS shortly after starting college. 

A young entrepreneur, the start of her company seemed to revolve around all hustle, with little of the “success” she was seeking. However, with some significant personal development and key turning points, the growth of BANGS completely changed with BANGS now getting closer to a decade old, Hannah shared her advice for a social entrepreneur who might find themselves in their ‘year one.’ 

“I would say to relax a little bit. I think that’s a big thing to not overreact with emotion when things appear to not be going well, but just again, [think] what are your options and solve the problem.  And the other thing I would say…is don’t try to reinvent the wheel. It’s very, very rare that anyone has an extremely 100% unique idea. Look for somebody that’s done what you’re doing, but maybe a little bit better and possibly slightly differently and get their feedback and use technology to do the work for you because there’s so many apps and different resources and I just would encourage people to take advantage of those.  [I]t takes research and patience to understand what the possibilities are. But it is a really wonderful, beautiful time to be an entrepreneur.”

For more from Hannah on tips from her (and BANGS’) entrepreneurial journey, listen here.

4. Colleen Clines, CEO of the Anchal Project, on Building a Social Enterprise Success Story

The Clines sisters, Maggie and Colleen, have built a thriving social enterprise in the Anchal Project. What started in 2011 as a nonprofit being built and run out of their parents’ basement, now employs over 150 artisans throughout India and the Clines’ hometown of Louisville, KY. 

In our episode with the sisters, we dove into their now nine-year trajectory from humble beginnings and hustle, to what is now a clear social enterprise success story. 

Colleen shared a little insight into how, even with few resources, the Clines sisters still managed to build the confidence to continue in the early years of Anchal: 

“A real turning point for us was one, the confidence we built through those first few years, but really the impact, it’s about taking action regardless of whatever you don’t have.  Once we had a few years, two years I’d say of artisans that we had been working with, seeing the little impact that we had in their daily life at the time, and then products to show for it. That’s when people started slowly getting on board.”

For more from Colleen & Maggie on the building of a social enterprise from the ground up, listen here.

5. Laura Wittig, Founder of Brightly, on the Importance of Closeness with Your Customer to Move Conscious Consumerism Forward

Laura Wittig and the Brightly team have created a centralized platform for consumers to engage with ethical fashion, beauty, and homegoods brands. They’ve created a great alternative to Amazon for these products!

What started as a desire to facilitate the search for sustainable fashion brands, Laura had this idea for Brightly to be the one-stop-shop for the  conscious consumer  to find sustainable clothing brands and connect with others interested in the same. 

In our episode, Laura shared how her experiences in Amazon, Google, and Adobe as a product manager influenced the modern and open culture she’s driven to create with Brightly. 

“[I]n order to [project manage], to successfully do that, you have to make sure that you are adequately convincing people across the company as to what you’re doing. So you do a lot of pitching, you do a lot of negotiations across teams to make sure that you’ve got the resources that you need.  And for me it’s been trying to understand, as I’m growing this team is how do I make sure that I am always fostering a culture of openness, mindfulness, and then also a culture of being really, really connected to our customer.  Because that is what always sticks out in product development at least, is the closer you are to the customer and to the actual problem, the better off you’re going to be.” [14:17 – 15:30]

For more from Laura on the influences that brought her to creating an ethical shopping marketplace, listen here.

Food & Drink

6. allison gibson, from paintbox catering & bistro, on a b corporation business culture that puts its people first.

I first connected with Allison at the 2018 B Corporation Champions Retreat in New Orleans.

From the moment we met, it was wildly clear Allison had a passion both for the work she did and the community she and the Paintbox team had cultivated in Regent Park, a historically disadvantaged neighborhood in Toronto. 

Allison was generous enough to join me for a recording to talk more about this culture at Paintbox, with a specific example of how that culture allowed her to lean on her team when she had to manage the challenging personal experience of a parent passing. 

“I’m super, super grateful for the team that I have and for the opportunity to work for and with a business that puts its people first. Had I been working anywhere else, I definitely would have been fired or laid off…Despite going through what I was going through with my mom, my personal needs did not change, my rent was still due the first of the month, all of the people that depended on me still depended on me…  I needed to really trust my team and give people more opportunities. So at that period when I was away, I would take certain servers from the restaurant and ask, “I know you don’t normally do bar inventory for example, but can you please do that while I’m gone?” And, they would rise to the occasion and do an amazing job.   So I really took away that if you challenge your team or give them opportunities and they rise to the occasion, great—keep giving them responsibilities, keep going to them to help problem solve. I also really, really valued that I work at a business that cared because it wasn’t just that they sent me cards, they were sending food to my house, people would just call me, come by. I would come home to flowers on my doorstep almost daily. It was insane.”

For more from Allison, and a business culture that creates community, click here to listen.

7. Yoni Medhin, CEO of Grain4Grain, on the Desire to “Give Back” with Business

Almost serendipitously, Yoni and I connected at a local farmer’s market here in San Antonio. Using his spent grain pancake mix, Yoni was flipping cakes for passers by, and I, a sucker for a good “one for one” model (and a free pancake), was drawn to hear more about their work. 

This struck a friendship and an ensuing podcast interview from the comfort of my San Antonio living room, where Yoni shared with me his motivations and values in starting Grain4Grain with his friend and business partner, Matt Metchly. 

“Really the taste came when I went overseas to Poland to teach English. And then in college, I went to Nicaragua to help build an orphan home for kids that suffer with addiction… But essentially that kind of feeling that I had, and purpose, of just giving somebody my all, somebody that I did not know, a stranger, and then them actually receiving something of value, because we always hear about all these companies that just give money and kind of wipe their hands and say, “Hey, we did our thing.”  But for us, it was…and for me, personally, this is something that’s just true to my heart—building company that intimately gives back . This just has flourished into now what is Grain4Grain.”

Want to hear more about Yoni & Grain4Grain’s “give back” model? Click here to listen.

8. Paul Hargreaves, CEO of Cotswold Fayre, on the Only Reason to be “in Business”

Paul Hargreaves is a leader and staunch advocate within the certified B Corporation community in the UK and Europe. In March of 2019, Paul published his book,  Forces for Good: Creating a better world through purpose-driven businesses . 

In it his book and our interview he elaborated on his journey through purpose-driven business, from  starting a nonprofit organization  in inner-city London to now leading Cotswold Fayre, one of the founding B Corporations in the UK and leading specialty food and drink wholesale distributors in the region. 

Paul’s passion for using business as a force for good is starkly clear, and that shines through in his perspective shared throughout his book and our conversation. It seems to all boil down to one point for Paul:

“If people are happy and fulfilled working for me, then I’ve done my part to make the world a better place. It’s the whole reason I’m in business.”

For more from Paul on the culture of Cotswold Fayre and the power of business as a force for good, listen here.

9. Max Rivest, CEO & Co-Founder of Wize Monkey, on Why Passion Creates the Persistence to Succeed

Max Rivest is the CEO and Co-Founder of Wize Monkey, a Vancouver-based tea company that “resurrected” a coffee leaf tea, which helps stabilize the coffee industry for long-term socio-economic growth. 

His business plan that started as a master’s thesis in business school became a social enterprise business model. Max & Wize Monkey have created a need for year-round work for coffee farmers (and those who harvest the berries) who have previously been victims to seasonality. 

Max, a very passionate and creative entrepreneur, came on the podcast to elaborate on his pursuit of his own passions and his recommendations for others doing the same.

“If you’re working on something that you don’t care about, you’ll never be good at it because you just won’t have an innate instinct to just get better at it. And it’s just irrelevant to you if you keep forcing yourself to do that. No one ever wants to learn something by force. No one ever wants to do something by force. It doesn’t work like that.  Humans, especially, millennials now because we’re kind of in a different mindset than prior generations, we really have to find what we care about and try to break into that space and carve out your own niche within that space. Eventually, once you get good enough at it, you’re going to bring value to somebody and that’s when you start getting a paycheck.”

For more from Max, the Founding of Wize Monkey, and pursuing passion, listen here.

10. Paul Bain, Tea Captain (& CEO) of Justea, on the Impact Equity Can Make in Their Family Owned Tea Business

Paul and the JusTea team, based in Vancouver B.C., have partnered directly with Kenyan tea farmers to provide ethical, antioxidant-rich, and sustainably produced fair trade tea. 

What started with a 2012 trip to Africa with his Dad, has turned into over 200 jobs for women and young people in rural Kenya and the founding of the first-ever small scale, farmer-owned artisanal tea factory in the country. 

On the podcast, Paul shared much to the ‘story behind the tea,’ with a particularly striking story as to the impact this sense of (and literal) equity had on the community of Kenyan farmers. 

“We were doing these trainings on how to handcraft teas [in Kenya]. So at the very simple level of just using hand picked leaves, hand rolling, and then sun drying. And when we first tasted this tea we thought, “Hey, this is an amazing cup of tea.” It was really delicious and not like other teas that we’ve had from Kenya before.  When these farmers tasted it, they were really excited and we didn’t know why. We thought it was just because of the taste, but then they started just chatting in Swahili to each other and so I asked someone who was taking us around, “What are they saying?”  And he said, “They’re so excited because this is the first time they are tasting the tea that they grow.” So they’ve been growing this tea for decades, and they never actually tasted it…from the weighing station to the factory, to the broker to the auction, they never got a taste of the tea that they’d been bending their backs over, trying to pick every day for their whole life.  And so when they finally tasted, it was such a great sense of ownership and pride and really special moment for us and them.”

For more from JusTea’s Tea Captain, Paul, and the using trade versus aid to support developing countries, listen here.

11. Mark Cuddigan, CEO of Ella’s Kitchen, On Redefining What “Great” in Business Means

Mark Cuddigan is the CEO of Ella’s Kitchen, the number one baby food company in the United Kingdom. He’s also the Head of Sustainability for the Hain Celestial Group and a staunch advocate of using business as a force for good, as a member of the UK’s B Corporation Community. 

On the podcast Mark shared why it isn’t enough for a business to be “great,” and that “great” in business isn’t what it always was. 

“It’s not good enough now to say you’re a great company. It’s not acceptable. I don’t think a CEO can get away with saying, “I run a great company.” My thought would be, “Great, what you want? Do you want a medal? Do you want a pat on the back?” No. Your responsibility if you’re running a great company is to inspire other companies to follow your lead.  We’re in a whole world of trouble, literally, with global warming. We’re not going to get out of it by people being selfish or looking after themselves. We need to help other companies and we need to inspire other companies.”

For more from Mark on redefining business greatness and the importance of a social mission, listen here.

12. Logan Christopher, Founder of Lost Empire Herbs, On The Power of Seeking Impact Partners

Logan Christopher is the Founder of Lost Empire Herbs.

On our podcast recording, Logan shared with me the “why” behind his decision to enroll Lost Empire Herbs in the 1% for the Plant commitment and what it’s meant thus far. 

“Glad to have made the decision. When I came across 1% for the Planet, I thought, “That’s just an amazing thing, we should definitely do that.” It was kind of a fast decision… We’re proud to be part of that. We support a number of different charities through doing that. One of which that I’ve worked with personally, the Pachamama Alliance. I ended up traveling down to the Amazon rainforest with them. It’s been great to really dive into that world and understand the bigger picture of all these other things going on. The planet’s not going anywhere, but if things keep continuing the same direction with where we are going, we could end up going somewhere else. So being able to find the charities that can really make a strong impact in these different areas is important.”

For more from Logan & Lost Empire Herbs’ commitment to the planet, listen here.

Home, Health, & Lifestyle

13.  thomas querton, ceo & co-founder of atlasgo, on why you don’t need all the answers .

Thomas Querton is a young, hungry entrepreneur from Belgium, now based in San Francisco, CA working with the AtlasGo team as they cultivate a community of ‘sweaty change-makers.’ 

In our recording, Thomas shared a lot of wisdom, despite his relatively recent development into an entrepreneur. He discussed the importance of having a clear focus, strategy, and taking time away to analyze successes/failures, as well as the truly critical component of reminding yourself you don’t need all the answers. 

“As a Founder, especially if you read Steve Jobs’ biography and you’re kind of naive and stupid like I am, you think that you need the answers to everything, right? You think you need to have the vision, right? People talk about this vision that you have to have. And that puts so much pressure on you.  [Often] you’re just a kid and you don’t know too much…but you really need to ask good questions. And then, with that ability to ask, it’s really simple, right?  Asking your users what they want, asking your clients what they want and really paying attention to what they say and continuously asking more questions. They have the answers. So it makes everything easier, right?”

For more from Thomas on learning as a young entrepreneur & AtlasGo’s mission to move and make change, listen here.

14.  Kate Jakubas, Founder of Meliora Cleaning Products, On Business as a Tool to Solve Social & Environmental Problems

Kate Jakubas is an environmental engineer by trade. Growing up as one of the kids who had a “rock collection” instead of a lemonade stand (as she put it), she hadn’t considered herself at any point destined to be a business person. 

However, with her care for the environment and her engineering drive to solve problems, she became inspired to determine what potential toxic and environmentally harmful chemicals she could remove from her own personal consumption. This then turned her onto household products and led to the founding of Meliora Cleaning Products, which she runs with her husband, Mike. 

Kate came on the podcast to talk zero-waste production and shared how she found the connection to business as a tool for good from her engineering background.

“As engineers we solve problems. It’s basically everything that engineering is, you find something that’s broken and you fix it or you find something that you think you could make better and you make it better. And that’s ultimately what I like to do.  …As I got more work experience, I noticed that, it’s not just a hammer, it’s not just a piece of duct tape that you can use to solve a problem. You can actually use business itself as a tool. And that was really interesting to me. …I really liked the idea of using business as a tool and focusing it on a social problem or an environmental problem.”

For more from Kate & using her business as a tool to solve the environmental problem of wasteful and toxic household products, listen here.

15. Dave Spandorfer, CEO of Janji, On Using Running to Start a Business that Affects Positive Change

Dave Co-Founded Janji in 2012 when he was a college student with one of his teammates on the cross country team. Reflecting on the fulfillment each of these two had received from the sport of running, they wanted to start a business that kept them connected with the sport and shared the joy they’ve received from it with others. 

With the risks involved in starting a business, both Dave and his Co-Founder believed they might as well do something bigger to make it worth it: make an impact. They decided to take a chance on creating a business that seemed truest to them, and with the greatest integrity. 

Now one of the producers of the “Best Running Shorts of the Year,” as they were named by Runners World, Dave came on the show to share with me this journey with Janji and some of his thoughts early on as they were formulating the business’s ‘do good’ DNA.

“You see all these stats of the rates of failure for people who start businesses. If we are going to start something, we knew we had to do something that would affect positive change in the world. We wanted to find a way to use running as a power to make the world a better place because it had been this power to make our own lives better.”

For more from Dave on the origins of doing good through Janji, and their success and growth trajectory, listen here.

16. Jim Osgood, CEO & President of Klean Kanteen, On The Importance of Being Clear on Your Mission & North Star 

Klean Kanteen has been a model of a “triple bottom line business” since the beginning, with their focus being on creating and offering solutions to eliminating single-use plastics. It was in 2011 when Jim Osgood joined the ‘Klean Team’ to help elevate that mission to the next level. 

In Jim’s time with the Klean Kanteen team, Klean Kanteen became a certified B Corporation in 2012, and they have continued to make massive contributions to  1% for the Planet , all the while tripling sales and dramatically increasing profits. 

Jim attributes this largely to Klean Kanteen’s focus on maturation as an organization with a key element of that growth being their commitment to strategic planning and getting clear on their “why.” 

Since our chat, Jim has embarked on a new business adventure, but as CEO of Klean Kanteen, he provided great insight into Klean Kanteen’s emphasis on mission and strategic planning.

“Being clear on your North Star, clear on your mission, clear on the fundamentals, they key priorities, [that] makes [strategic] decisions pretty easy when you’re true to your values, true to your ethos.  …When you are true to your values, true to your ethos, the big, gnarly decisions actually become easy. It’s the little knick-knacky things that we get wound up on every day that are pretty inconsequential.”

For more from Jim on Klean’s strategic planning and ambitions to rid the world of single-use plastic, listen here.

17. Peter Dering, Founder & CEO from Peak Design, on the Formula for Balancing Business Growth with Environmental & Social Sustainability

Peter Dering launched Peak Design nearly a decade ago through Kickstarter, with a product called the “ Capture Camera Clip .”It became the second most funded project on Kickstarter of all time. Since then, Peter and the Peak team have continued on with one major Kickstarter campaign per year, and in 2019 they were on pace to do $100M in sales when we spoke for the podcast. 

But, a conservationist at heart, Peter has made sustainable practices and environmental action a core to the way that Peak does business. And, Peter shared with me Peak’s “formula” for giving back and mitigating their environmental impact to combat climate change. 

“Here’s our formula. We’ve joined 1% for the Planet. 1% of sales is frankly a totally arbitrary amount of money, right? It doesn’t look at profitability, it doesn’t look at what type of business you’re in. It’s just this arbitrary line in the sand that says “1% of sales.” It happens to be for us a both reasonable and meaningful amount of money to give. So we start there and from within that budget we then figure out how to best affect positive change. …Then you’ve got to look at your supply chain and the most important things that you can do are reduce what you can, right? Use the least carbon-intensive protocols you can. It starts there, but you’ve got to understand full well that changing the entire worldwide supply chain is not going to happen over night. So while you absolutely should take vigorous efforts to reduce your carbon footprint, be very well aware that you’re going to have a lot left over. Secondly is to adopt social policies specifically in the factories where you’re doing the majority of your work that allow for happy and healthy and satisfied lives of the people who are doing that very, very hard work. That is another rung, right? Thirdly is don’t choose materials and processes that are chemically unsafe, like be as conscientious as you can. …And then the last step is offsetting that carbon footprint . And this is a whole other very big conversation, but we went through that journey of measuring our entire footprint all the way back to the extraction of raw materials to produce aluminum and refine it. All of that. We found our footprint was 20,000 tons in 2017 we also found that the average cost of a carbon offset at that time was three bucks a ton. So for one fifth of our 1% for the planet budget, we were able to offset the entirety of our carbon footprint. And that is both interesting and really begs the question of — if carbon offsets are that cheap right now, shouldn’t everybody be offsetting their entire carbon footprint as a baseline for responsibility?”

Learn more from Peter, Peak Design, and their commitment to creating high-quality products and environmental conservation.

18. Madeleine Shaw, Founder of Lunapads & Nestworks, On How to Find Your Entrepreneurial Counterpart 

Madeleine Shaw is best known for founding the extremely successful mission-driven company , Lunapads (now Aisle), which specializes in providing reusable and sustainable solutions for periods. Madeleine has since been extremely active as a social entrepreneur and member of her Vancouver community, founding an event series for adolescent girls called G Day and now, a parent-friendly co-working space, called Nestworks. 

Madeleine was quick to admit that her success as a social entrepreneur would have not been remotely possible without her counterpart and business partner, Suzanne Siemens. 

Madeleine shared how other entrepreneurs might be able to find a “Suzanne” of their own.

“The way you find them is you tell them a great story about what you’re trying to create. Then they fall in love with it. You’re super nice to them, and you’re respectful of them, and you listen to them. You make them part of it, and you allow them to be part of it, and you build it together.”

Want to hear more from Madeleine on social entrepreneurial success and work life integration? Listen here.

19. Chris Chancey, CEO of Amplio Recruiting, On the Power of “Playing a Part” in a Compelling Story

Chris Chancey is the CEO of Amplio Recruiting, a staffing agency that places refugees into jobs with U.S. companies. Chris started Amplio after he and his wife moved to a refugee community outside of Atlanta, GA and familiarized themselves with the stories of their new neighbors. 

Hoping to find a way to help, in a means that would be sustainable, Chris’ staffing agency, Amplio Recruiting was born. 

While the success of Amplio thus far could be surely attributed to providing an excellent solution to U.S. companies’ chronic problems (finding good people), Chris also believes that Amplio’s growth can be attributed to them being a part of such a compelling and engaging story given the issues that are facing us locally and globally. 

“As people learn more about what’s happening in the world around the refugee crisis, and especially as the U.S. and our government make certain policies that in the case right now are not very beneficial, not very in favor of the refugee community, there are companies that are now educated about who a refugee is, their legal status, and their ability to work. Companies call us, saying, ‘We would love to be a part of their story.”

Want to hear more from Chris and Amplio’s innovative solution to finding work for resettling refugees? Listen here.

20. Casey Ames, Founder of Harkla, On Why His Company Seeks Out to Make Mistakes

Casey Ames, my brother, is the Founder of Harkla, an e-commerce company that manufactures and sells products that support families with children who are living with special needs. Three years since its founding, Harkla hit over $1M in revenue—achieving extremely rapid growth. 

In our episode, Casey dove deep into his and Harkla’s systemic approach to building their company, and how that approach influences their thoughts on making mistakes. 

“I always try and instill the mindset in my employees that it’s perfectly okay to make mistakes, but we can’t make the same mistake twice. It’s only an issue if we don’t learn from the mistake. And so we make mistakes all the time and it’s perfectly fine because they’re fail-safe.  We try and do pre-mortems before we do a big experiment of how could this go terribly. And then we try and cap our downsides.  But while we are systematic, we’re always trying to make mistakes and then go back and fix the system. So [we ask ourselves], “Where did this break down? What didn’t work?” It’s taking a scientific method approach to your company— coming up with a hypothesis, then let’s test it.”

For more from Casey and Harkla’s approach to building a company serving those living with special needs, listen here.

21. Henry Burgess-Marshall, Director of Marketing with Canniloq, On Where a Call to Influence Change Comes From

Henry Burgess-Marshall and the Canniloq team manufacture high-end stash containers for the safe consumption and storage of cannabis. At the core of Canniloq’s operations is the social mission of righting what seems to be the moral wrongs grossly revealing themselves as marijuana is legalized throughout the United States. 

Alex Husted founded Helpsy in 2017 with a group of friends with the environmental mission of reducing textile waste by creating greater convenience to recycle  old clothes . Since its inception, Helpsy has placed 1,800 collection containers throughout the Northeast U.S., and in the last year, they collected over 25 million pounds of clothes.

This was the impetus for Canniloq’s “Unloq the Truth” campaign where they are dedicating themselves to raising awareness, support, and resources for those who have suffered or are suffering from antiquated drug laws, while a newly legal industry booms. 

In our podcast recording, we talk about the origins of Henry’s interest and care for this issue of drug incarcerations, and the clear discrepancy as this issue affects people of color disproportionately more than others. 

“The real catalyst [for me] was getting informed and educated. Some people have read the book, the new Jim Crow, maybe they’ve seen the Netflix documentary, 13th, about the 13th Amendment and the mass incarceration of people of color in this country. I was working at an addiction treatment center here in Seattle, and it was for youth boys ages 13 to 18.  It was really a deferment from youth jail. They go through the four month treatment and if they make it through there, they don’t have to serve any time for whatever drug charges they had. I saw a lot of people of color and not very many white people. I knew from growing up, that white people were using drugs at very similar, if not more often rates.  That really got me thinking, as I was learning all this information too. I was applying it to what I was seeing. And then I was not always the perfect standup citizen, and as I made mistakes, I kept getting let off the hook and given second chances in life while people who didn’t look like me weren’t.”

For more from Henry and consciousness in the cannabis industry, listen here.

22. Andy Freedman, Co-Founder of Miles4Migrants, On the Need & Approach for Smart People to Solve Massive Problems

Andy Freedman is the Co-Founder of Miles4Migrants, a nonprofit that takes donated airline miles and flies migrants and refugees wherever they need to go to be reunited with their families. 

What started as a one-time project with some airline miles enthusiasts has turned into the full-blown nonprofit that you see with Miles4Migrants. As of the end of 2019, the Miles4Migrants team has booked over 2,000 flights to reunite refugees with their families—with many more to come. 

Andy gave us some guidance on how others can go about finding “their problem to solve.”

“For me, it was supporting refugees and asylum seekers, but I think whatever the passion is, there is a need for smart people to be thinking about these massive problems.  My other advice is to not try to solve the entire problem, because you will fail miserably. There is a reason they [these problems] are massive.  And so find, a piece of the problem that you feel like you are best suited for or have an idea that you think could help and start there.”

Want to hear more from Andy on how Miles4Migrants is playing their part in refugee resettlement? Listen here.

23.  Andrew Glazier, CEO & President of Defy Ventures, on Why Social Justice Movements Must Start with Connection

Andrew Glazier and the Defy Ventures team offer entrepreneurship and job training programs for currently and formerly incarcerated men and women in seven states across the United States. They have enrolled over 5,000 EITs (entrepreneurs in training) in prison, and in their post-release program. 

This work has led to phenomenal results, with a one-year recidivism rate at 7.2% compared to the national average of 30% and their employment rate for post-graduates of their program is at 82%. 

In our podcast recording, Andrew talked about the success of Defy, and the successes (although with a long road ahead) of this social justice movement as a whole. 

“I believe that no social justice movement can be successful without person-to-person interaction and people having that human experience. And that’s why we work really hard at making this issue accessible to people, particularly in the business community, to come with us and see what we’re doing.  And more importantly, sit across from somebody who is incarcerated or formerly incarcerated and recognize that we’re not that different.  And when you’re able to make those connections and cut through that sort of fear and emotion, you can start to have a rational conversation about it to say, “look, if someone’s completed the Defy program and they’ve gone through seven months of work and 1200 pages of curriculum in 10 to 15 hours a week, and at the end of it they were able to stand up in front of volunteers and pitch their business.  That’s hard to do.  And maybe we should be thinking about what a fair chance looks like for somebody who has really shown the wherewithal to turn their life around and transform themselves.”

Listen to Andrew to learn how Defy Ventures is addressing the issue of mass incarceration and  reducing recidivism .

24. Lindsey McCoy, CEO of Plaine Products, on How Their ‘No Plastic’ Personal Care Business has Taken Off 

Visit Plaine Products’ home page and you’ll be greeted with the phrase, ‘Personal Care Without All The Plastic.’ Founded in 2017, by Lindsey McCoy and her sister Alison, Plaine Products offers shampoos, conditioners, and more in refillable containers to keep single-use plastic out of your bathroom. 

At the time of our initial podcast recording, Plaine Products were on pace to hit over $2M in sales and divert over 100,000 plastic bottles from landfills—in 2019 alone! 

Lindsey was gracious enough to join me for a recording and share with the Grow Ensemble listeners what she felt has contributed to their rapid growth. You can also check out our Plaine Products review for even more insight into the company.

“I think, one, is that we are legitimately solving a problem for some people, we were able to move into a space where providing a convenient alternative to single-use plastic with good quality products, there’s just not a lot of people doing it so I think that has helped. There’s not a lot of people searching for refillable shampoo, or at least there wasn’t when we got into it. But for sure, having something that sets us apart from our competitors has been helpful.  Having a mission has been helpful. I think people are much more willing to help us spread the word, tell their friends about us because we have a purpose and because we’re trying to do good.  We really have not had a lot of funds to put into marketing. We’ve had incredible word of mouth…”

Want to hear more from Lindsey and how Plaine Products has made the impact it has? Click here to listen.

25. Liza Moiseeva, CMO & Co-Founder of GlobeIn, on Focusing on Building a Community to Scale the Good Your Business Does

Liza Moiseeva is the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder of GlobeIn, a social business that offers a monthly subscription “artisan” box that specializes in fair trade and ethical products to empower artisans in the developing world. 

Originally from Russia, collegiate swimming brought Liza to the United States. She’s continued to channel that competitive spirit for her appetite and ambition to use business not just make money but also solve significant social problems.

Liza is very generous and open with her insights and advice for other ethical brands and shared her expertise on our podcast urging new brands to focus on building a community around their niche. 

“If I were a new brand, and this is what I tell new brands right now, start building a community before you start selling.  That’s how all of the big successful brands’ stories are, like Glossier, it started as just a blog. You build a community, you build your expertise and then you sell it.  Maybe you don’t want to be an influencer yourself, But [in whatever way, on whatever platform] even before you have a product, start building a community of followers…So when you have a product you already have someone who will be interested in that.”

For more from Liza on launching a new ethical brand & scaling impact, listen here.

Our Social Entrepreneurship 101 Guide will provide great contextual background for the tips and inspiration our podcasts guests have provided. Check it out!

26. Tim Lara, Owner of Hawaiian Paddle Sports, on How Guides Can Turn Tourists into Advocates

Tim Lara is the Owner of Hawaiian Paddle Sports, an Eco-Tour certified B Corporation located on the island of Maui. Tim has a tremendous passion and respect for the natural life, and culture of Maui as well as an engine that just won’t stop. 

Tim listed the many activities he’s involved himself in, in Maui, in our podcast, as well, he shared what seems to be both an opportunity and duty for his guides as they take visitors on tours of the natural areas in Maui.  

“We have this captive audience, if you will, where we have them for a period of time. And so if we can use that time to help them have a deeper appreciation and understanding of the marine world and Hawaiian culture, then that’s really what we’re looking to do.  Jacques Rousseau said people protect what they love, right? And so if we can help people fall in love with these things, then they’re going to grow up and help protect them.”

To hear more from Tim on running an Eco-Tour company & advocating for the environment, listen here.

27. Adrianne Chandra-Huff, of Bodhi Surf + Yoga on the Need for Environmental Stewardship in the Tourism Industry

Bodhi Surf + Yoga is a  certified B Corporation  based in Uvita, Costa Rica. They teach their guests how to surf, practice yoga, and help them learn about their local area in Costa Rica. 

Adrianne, who I connected with at the B Corporation Champions Retreat in 2018, joined me for an episode where she shared the trajectory of Bodhi’s growth and evolution as a model for sustainable tourism , and her understanding of the obligation all businesses in the tourism industry have to mind and preserve the local region they benefit from…

“As a tourism company, you are benefiting from the very resources that draw people to you in the first place. So, that’s to say, if it were to become super polluted down here, people probably won’t come anymore.  So we have, I think, a moral and fiduciary imperative to take care of those very entities that we benefit from. But also, I just think it’s cool that we do, you know, because we live here and we’re benefiting from it more than just as individuals, we’re benefiting from it as a business.”

For more from Adrianne on the obligations of the tourism industry (and more) click here.

Professional Services

28. russ stoddard, founder of oliver russell, on success in social entrepreneurship & the sense of urgency to do good.

I first came across Russ through his book,  Rise Up: How to Build a Socially Conscious Business , where he introduces the concept of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship. In late 2018, I visited Russ at his office in Boise, Idaho for a podcast recording. Russ’ wisdom, generosity, and advocacy for the sustainable and social business model shined throughout our chat. 

Russ explained why a positive impact is more appropriate compensation than just a paycheck and shared how he manages his ever-growing portfolio of business and impact involvement.

“I guess some of the compensation I derive from the business is actually the meaning I’m able to create through it. Whether it’s with the folks who work here at Oliver Russell, whether it’s in the community with stakeholders, for me it’s just like earning a paycheck, making money is not enough for me. And making money is actually for me, kind of a consequence of doing good in the world, I wanted to create a business that would actually make our community a better place and do that intentionally so.” [As for managing priorities]: Constant challenge. Focus. Some days I’m good at it, other days I’m not, I kind of operate with the universe in mind. Oftentimes it creates opportunities that come up very opportunistically and I will jump into those not unlike creating Oliver Russell. So, I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m the best at managing my own time, I feel a sense of urgency to accomplish a lot and hopefully be an initiator or co-collaborator where I can and leverage other people’s efforts in the world.  A co-founder of a benefit corporation here in town, it’s funny, a couple of weeks ago, we’re both in the bathroom together, standing at the urinals and he said, “Russ, how in the hell do you get everything done that you tackle?” I said, “Not very well…” So you know, I’m not regimented in many ways. I get up at four, I go to hard until nine some days I’m, as I said, I’m focused and other days I’m kind of scattered. I’ll take action over just thoughtful planning any day, that’s what I’m built for.”

Want to hear more from Russ on his social entrepreneurial success? Listen here.

29. Jessica Kellner, from Bark Media, on Building Community & Support Around Your Organization Through Authentic Storytelling

I briefly connected with Jessica at my first B Corporation Champions Retreat in New Orleans.

Jessica and other folks from leadership on the Bark Media team hosted a wonderfully insightful breakout session where they shared strategies for other B Corporations to get started telling their own stories and collaborate with others in the B Corp community to do so. Luckily for us, following this social impact conference Jessica joined me for an early episode of the podcast. 

Jessica dove deeper into these topics of storytelling and community-building and connecting with “your” people in our chat, 

“We really believe in authentic storytelling and we believe that the way to build a community, to build support around yourself as an organization or as a movement is to tell that authentic story. And frankly, that only works if you have an authentic, interesting story to tell. …there are a lot of people out there in the world that want to support work that is making a difference , that want to support companies that are running themselves in certain ways that want to support movements to improve our world. It’s telling your authentic story so that you can find the right people who are going to support you because they’re out there. It’s just that they don’t know about you right now.”

Want more on authentic storytelling and community building? Listen to Jessica’s episode here.

30. Chris Hutchinson, CEO of the Trebuchet Group, on the Rewards of Personal Development

My conversation with Chris was inspiring—a true example of a self-aware, reflective leader.  Chris and the Trebuchet Group are deeply committed to personal development and expanding the leadership capacities of individuals and organizations and that came through in our recording. 

We talked about leaders who create other leaders, the self-awareness that’s required to be a leader, and Chris’ experience writing his complete leadership “playbook,”  Ripple: A Field Manual for Leadership that Works .

Early on, Chris opened up about the rewards of focusing on developing yourself.

“Working on yourself first is the most rewarding work you’re going to do. Not only for you, but for everyone around you.”

Want to hear more about developing leadership skills & self-awareness? Listen here.

31. Dave Fortson, CEO of LOACOM, on the Importance of Passion & Persistence to “Stay in the Game”

Dave, his business partner Eric, and the entire LOA team, have a true passion for the work they do, and they have a good time doing it. LOACOM is an agency in Santa Barbara, CA with expertise in building movements. They support organizations who want to improve the world to develop better products, services, and fully express their mission. 

I’ve had the great privilege to partner with these folks, working to amplify the mission of example better businesses like All Good Products, and they’ve continued to impress with their passion, strong and flexible company culture, and commitment to serve their client partners. 

On our podcast, Dave revealed some of the core ethos of LOA as a company by sharing some reflections as to how LOA initially survived, and now thrives with a specific position in the social business market space. 

“Passion for what you do will pull you through the worst times. If you love it, it really doesn’t matter if the economy tanks or if you’re having a bad week or if you lose a client or your product sucks or whatever. You’ll just keep innovating and creating until you find the groove that’s best for you. But that is defined by passion.  Persistence, I think is in the same vein as passion. You’re going to run into a bunch of walls and you’ve got to go around, above, below or through…Sometimes you’ve got it and sometimes you don’t. Similarly, I think it’s related to both passion and persistence is that, a lot of times, it’s who’s left.  And if you really love what you’re doing, and you continue to believe in your work and you continue to innovate and evolve and be open to that, then oftentimes you’ll be the last person standing and you’ll see kind of market growth around what you do just because of that.”

Hear more about this passion, persistence, and how you can build a movement around your brand by clicking here.

32. Ryan Honeyman, Partner at the LIFT Economy, on Why Our Work Should Focus on the Most Marginalized to Make Systemic Change

Ryan Honeyman is a Partner & Worker/Owner at the LIFT Economy, an impact consulting firm based in San Francisco. In April of 2019, in partnership with Dr. Tiffany Jana (from TMI Consulting), Ryan released  The B Corp Handbook, Second Edition: How You Can Use Business as a Force for Good . 

Ryan joined me on the podcast to chat about the new inclusions in the book and this new determined focus members of the B Corporation and social innovation and social business communities should take towards focusing their work on the most marginalized people, if we want to actually effect systemic change. 

“If you center the most marginalized people in your work, then everyone benefits, because if you are always thinking about how does this affect the most marginalized, then inherently you’ll be considering all the folks above the most marginalized.  And so we’ve been putting this question to ourselves, if we focused on benefiting low income communities of color with our work, what would that change about how we do consulting, how we think about business, and I think that’s a question that’s going to be spreading more in our space. If we’re not centering folks who are part of the most marginalized communities in the U.S. and globally, then we’re always going to be doing something that’s not quite as effective at meeting those people’s needs or everyone’s needs.  I think with B Corps, that’s one conversation we’re trying to bring in as how can we really center these groups in all of our decision making and bringing them into the decision making process. Otherwise, we’re just going to be guessing what people might want and the impacts will be marginal as compared to what could be.”

For more from Ryan on the writing of this second handbook and what businesses can do to make the greatest impact, listen here.

33. Emily Lonigro, President & Founder of LimeRed, on Doubling Down on Community to Succeed with Purpose-Driven Business

Emily Longiro Founded LimeRed with a dedication to use her skills and expertise in design for good. And, now 15 plus years in business, she and the LimeRed team have done just that. Serving not just nonprofits, but social enterprises, and mission-driven businesses of all kinds, they strive to use design to make tangible change. 

But, of course, that’s not easy for anybody. Business and impact pose an inherent greater challenge than just business, right? For Emily, it’s been community that’s allowed her to be a part of “writing this new rule book” of purpose-driven business since 2004.  

“A few years ago when I was at a retreat for  conscious business  leaders, that was something that came up a couple of times[, the added stress of integrating purpose in your company]. We were not talking about our own mental health and the stress we put on ourselves to do this thing that is so nebulous without rules, and we are all here writing this rule book together.  …And the only thing that I’ve ever figured out so far to do, is to really double down into my community and get really involved and to make really, really true and honest relationships with other business owners…So yeah, it’s a different experience and I think that we’re all trying to figure out how to do it together and well, and I don’t think we’ve quite figured that out yet. But. I am very optimistic.”

To hear more from Emily on community and using design to make an impact, listen here.

34. Tim Frick, CEO of Mightybytes, on How Digital Agencies Can Think About Making Positive Change

Tim Frick and his Certified B Corporation Digital Agency, Mightybytes, are exemplars of what it means to be an “agency of change” (a term Tim coined in some of his writing featured on the B the Change blog). 

From tools to measure the environmental impact of your website, to their list of better brand and nonprofit clients, Mightybytes has built an exceptional portfolio of examples where they’ve influenced positive change. While this may look easy, it’s not—and we were grateful when Tim joined me on the show to talk about this “balancing act” of finding what is the good you can do, at a sustainable clip. 

“We learned through the  B Impact Assessment  what we could do with it and got super excited. For example, you’re asked a lot of questions about your supply chain as an agency. Your supply chain [as a digital agency] is pretty much pixels and people so you have to really rethink what that means. …right around that same time we were learning that the internet had a larger environmental impact than the airline industry. And that was the thing that we built for a living. And so because of that, it was really eye opening to say, “Okay, all websites require electricity to run and the majority of our electricity in the United States doesn’t come from renewable sources. So what can we do at least for one step to find green hosting?” And so we started experimenting with a bunch of different green hosting providers. Turns out that wasn’t easy. And that ended up taking like four or five years of us going through a bunch of different hosting providers and seeing if we could find the right fit.  …every one of these things is a little bit of a balancing act of doing what you can do with your resources and trying to spot as many potential red flags as possible while also staying focused on providing good work. You’re only as good as your last project in our world. So making sure that your last project was as awesome as it could be is always a challenge.”

For more from Tim on Mightybytes’ and their agenda for change, listen here.

35. Sarah Woolsey, Founder of The Impact Guild, on the Importance of Small Celebrations on Your Way to Manifesting a Vision

Very grateful to have connected with Sarah Woolsey and The Impact Guild community in my current city, San Antonio. A co-working space I’ve periodically called my office, The Impact Guild is a beautiful community space that Sarah founded with the intent to orient around ethical and sustainable community development. 

In our podcast recording, we talk about the origin story for Sarah’s community space, from the inception of the idea to opening the doors, and everything in between. While they’ve made significant progress, in our chat Sarah reminded us of the importance of celebrating small “wins” on your way to manifesting your much larger vision. 

“I can tend to look at that 10-year vision and see the gaps of everything that hasn’t happened yet and live way more in that space, which puts this internal pressure to go, go, go.  And that is one wonderful takeaway I think of doing this thing in community, and in the community that we’re building, is other people pointing out and saying, “Hold on, pause, celebrate this thing, this goal, this outcome, this thing that was a part of the vision that has been achieved. And yeah, there’s more and that’s going to be great and wonderful but slow down for a second and sit in the space to look back and be reflective. And that is a practice that I am learning right now and it is really fun to see.”

For more from Sarah and her experience building a community of change-makers in San Antonio, listen here.

36. Amy Looper, Co-Founder & COO of One Seventeen Media, On Endurance & Passion In The Social Entrepreneurial Journey

Amy Looper, and her partner Beth Carls, run One Seventeen Media, a Certified B Corporation in Austin, TX, deep in the world of Artificial Intelligence Medical Technologies. 

Together, they’ve created reThinkIt!—an app that helps kids process difficult emotions in real time. reThinkIt! Has been responsible for preventing a school shooting, boosting school attendance, saving schools precious budgetary resources. An experienced entrepreneur, Amy reflected on virtues and successful characteristics of her impact focused entrepreneurial career. 

“We know there’s a lot of opportunity that we want to take advantage of and I think it’s been a slow burn. And, this is just part of the entrepreneurial journey, right? With all of us that are about solving an impact problem, whether it’s social, emotional, or environmental, it is going to take a little bit longer burn rate to some extent. But it is really true if this is your passion , if you find something that you’re passionate about and you can lock on it and stay with it, because there’s certainly been days when we’ve wanted to question, “What are we doing?” Somebody the other day said, hey gosh, this is really cool. You guys are getting ready to take off. And I was like, “Yeah, it’s been a 19-year overnight success!”

Want to hear more from Amy on the “Social Entrepreneurial Journey?” Listen here.

37. Michèle Soregaroli, Founder & CEO of Transformation Catalyst, on How Your Values & Vision Differentiate You in the Marketplace

Michèle Soregaroli is a business coach with a specialty in differentiation, based in Vancouver B.C., helping entrepreneurs and business founders discover greater value, purpose, and mission in their work in efforts to separate them from their competition in the marketplace. 

In our podcast episode, we covered Michèle’s origins into differentiation coaching, the importance of learning as an entrepreneur through trial and error, and business as a force for good. Michèle shared some of her secrets normally reserved from clients, on the keys to differentiation in the marketplace: 

“The key to differentiation was not just about making noise and being loud and getting noticed, but the opportunity for a business to differentiate is the same way a human being would differentiate in terms of what’s important to that business and why it’s in business and what its mission is and what its vision of a better future would be.”

Want to hear more from Michèle on differentiation and the importance of values in business? Listen here.

38. Chris Sparks, Founder of The Forcing Function, on Pushing Forward Every Single Day

Chris Founded the Forcing Function with the objective to empower the next generation of entrepreneur. Through coaching, resources, and retreats, Chris helps entrepreneurs to prioritize, become more effective in their day to day, and achieve significant professional and personal goals. 

In our episode, Chris shared what he believed to be the most important message for anyone listening in.

“If I could give anyone a message from this, find some way to make some amount of small progress every single day… Understand what is important. Make sure that it happens regularly. Protect it. Have a way to track if what you are doing is leading to the results you want. If it’s not, change course.”

For more from Chris on Productivity & the Next Generation of Entrepreneurship, listen here.

39. Claire Booth, Founder & CEO of Lux Insights, on Values Being a “Guiding Light”

Claire Booth is the Founder & CEO of Lux Insights, a market research agency based in Vancouver, B.C., and the author of  Achiever Fever Cure  a book about the balance between seeking healthy achievement and achievement that fills an emotional void. 

In our podcast recording, both Claire and the President of Lux Insights, Hanson Lok, joined to talk about the culture they’ve created which led to Lux receiving the 2019 Best Employer Award from British Columbia’s Small Business Awards. Claire drew the focus to their values.

“Our values were decided upon based on who we are as people. When we hire people who align with our values, they align with us, which is what allows us to deepen those relationships. We also find clients who align with those values tend to be the deepest relationships and the long-standing accounts we have been able to hold on to over the years.”

For more from Claire and Hanson on Creating an “Award-Winning” Culture, listen here.

40. Tara-Nicholle Nelson, CEO of Soul Tour, on Giving Yourself Permission to Not Do Something

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is the Founder & CEO of SoulTour, a company that focuses on spiritual growth for entrepreneurs, specifically high-achieving women running purpose-driven organizations. 

Tara considers herself to be “deeply obedient to the callings of her soul,” and encourages her clients to be the same. Our podcast recording was enlightening, and the clarity with which Tara operates and understands herself is compelling. 

In speaking to the true clarity we all have already within us, Tara calls it an issue of permission…

“People are less confused about what they don’t want to do than they give themselves permission to be.”

To hear more from Tara and the importance of paying attention to your own callings, listen here.

41. Julia Chung, CEO of Admin Slayer, On Managing Your Emotional Health for the Sake of Team Success

Julia Chung is the CEO of two companies (yes, TWO companies), Spring Financial Planning and Admin Slayer. In asking Julia how she happens to manage all that, she’ll humbly tell you: relationships, relationships, relationships. 

And in our podcast recording together, Julia dove into just that, how critical the key relationships and partnerships have been in her success both personally and professionally, and how she goes about managing both herself and those relationships in a healthy manner. 

“Every piece of baggage that you have not only gets carried into your personal relationships, but it also comes to work with you. If you can’t figure out what’s going on in here, you will be absolutely pointless and useless to your team.”

For more from Julia on the relationship between your emotional health and the success of your team, listen here.

42 . Giselle Waters, Content Strategist with Mad Fish Digital, On Why Work Can’t Exist Without Purpose

Giselle Waters is an expert content strategist with Mad Fish Digital, a Certified B Corporation marketing agency in Portland, OR. Giselle championed the B Corporation certification for Mad Fish and has been passionate about using her skills and energy for impact before she joined their team. 

On the podcast, Giselle and I talked about business and work with purpose and how it’s been an essential piece to how she exerts herself professionally:

“I felt like I need to love what I do and love where I work every day and I need to love it for more reasons than just, you know, a paycheck or even the people I’m working with. Like I need to feel like what I do has meaning and impact beyond myself.”

For more from Giselle on B Corporation Certification & Building a Content Strategy, listen here.

43. Becci Gould, Associate Director at Kin&Co, On Why All Employers Need to Take Well-Being Seriously

Becci Gould and the Kin&Co team are award-winning culture and behavior change consultants located in the United Kingdom. A Certified B Corporation as well, these folks have become thought leaders and sit on the cutting edge for reinvigorating organizations with a thriving company culture and purpose. 

From shorter workweeks to Wednesday “ofternoons,” the Kin&Co team and Becci are running experiments on everything that can positively affect employees’ well-being and thus their performance on the job. 

In our episode Becci talks about this topic with urgency, stressing all employers need to give their staff’s well-being focus. 

“I think every employer should be doing something to maintain the wellbeing, the work-life balance, and prevent burnout of its staff. But it depends on what works for that organization.  I’ll also say, as I said before, you don’t need to go and roll this out across the board from day one, test a few different initiatives, see which ones work and then roll them out from there.  You don’t have to commit fully to everything straight away, but have a go and even if you’re just testing a few of these things, the message that sends to your employees is really strong because it shows that you really do care about this aspect of their lives and want to improve things for them.”

For more from Becci Gould on creating a thriving company culture, listen here.

44. Amanda Munday, Founder of The Workaround, On the Parenting & Professional Life Crossover

Amanda Munday is the Founder of The Workaround, a parent-friendly co-working space located in Toronto. In our podcast recording, Amanda dove deep into the dual identities of the professional and the parent, challenging us to think that just because you are one doesn’t mean you can’t as well be the other. 

With her co-working space, Amanda is challenging our assumptions about what possibilities exist, what possibilities must exist, for the professional parents. 

“What I challenge with it is we can run dual identities at the same time. And that’s at the core of what the workaround is doing is saying we are parents and we are professionals and we have other parts of ourselves outside of if you identify as mom or dad, we can have that life before. It’s not over because we’ve moved into parenting.”

Want to hear more from Amanda on evolving to a more parent-friendly workforce? Listen here.

45. Bernie Geiss, Founder of Cove Continuity Advisors, on a Philosophical Alignment that Led Him to the B Corp Movement

Bernie Geiss is the Founder of Cove Continuity Advisors, an award-winning financial services firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before getting into financial services, Bernie spent multiple years traveling the world and learning, practicing meditation and yoga. It was those deeply impactful experiences that Bernie brought with him into his approach to starting his own business. With enough time, it seemed fitting that Bernie played an extremely active role in B.C.’s passing of the benefit company legislation. 

In our episode, Bernie talked about how, with the help of a business coach (Michele Soregaroli, another podcast guest!), he came to align his philosophy with his business. 

“We went through a very extensive deep search about what our commitments are, what our purpose is, and we came to the purpose of, that we want to lead a fundamental shift from unconscious entrepreneurial-ism to enlightened continuity.  And that was a way for us to integrate the philosophical side of what we all deeply believe in with what was going on in the world. That there’s this unconscious entrepreneurial-ism, which is this desire to earn profits and to save money and to consolidate and concentrate wealth in the hands of a small group of people to the exclusion of many people who are working for those people.  It was through Michelle and that evolution of rebranding that we discovered the B Corp movement.”

For more from Bernie and the transition from traditional business to a social enterprise, listen here.

46. Doug Lessing, Founder of Phin, On Using Unstructured Time to Create Flow

Doug Lessing is the Founder of Phin, a soon-to-be Certified B Corporation startup that connects great companies with great people and causes. Doug opted to take the social entrepreneurial leap, leaving a company he “grew up in” to build a startup with social good at its core. 

The impetus for this startup, Phin, came from something of a sabbatical that Doug took as a moment away from his previous job to create space and time to think and process what his next career move might be. 

It’s this prioritizing of space that Doug has kept with him now in his day-to-day of building this social impact-focused business in Phin.

“That unstructured time actually became the one thing that I hold onto now, as the one thing that I really learned, and that’s that when we give ourselves some space, the magic really begins to happen.  The creativity begins to flow, energy begins to flow, the ideas begin to flow.”

For more from Doug & his approach to social entrepreneurship, listen here.

47. Austin Buchan, CEO of College Forward, Listening & Responding to Feedback to Scale Impact in the Nonprofit Sector

College Forward is a nonprofit in Austin, Texas that helps what would be first-generation college students get to and through college. Joining CEO (and my brother-in-law) Austin Buchan in the College Forward office for a recording, Austin reflected on how College Forward has been able to develop the powerful programming for students that they have (through what would now be called Human-Centered Design). 

He also got into how College Forward is taking that intimate understanding of what their students need to begin to look at how they continue to serve students, but at a much larger scale. 

“Going back to just mission and money as the two things that we’re thinking about within the overarching lens of scale, there are 1.7 million students in college in Texas alone, and we’ve got to think differently if we want to see these numbers [low-income student access] move. And you know, sadly I think this is kind of tragic in some ways, but the outcomes that we care about, looking at the number of low-income students getting into college, persisting and graduating, that number has actually gone down since we started this work even in our local community. Those inequity gaps are growing every single year. And even though for the fortunate students who kind of stumble into our program by chance, we’re leveling the playing field… How we take what’s worked for 13,000 students and scale it to 130,000 over the next year, 1.3 million the year after…those are the questions that we need to be designing programs and business models around to make sure that we can do it at scale. And when I say scale, I really mean scale. Not how do we open up another office in San Antonio to serve 200 students, but how do we really design a model that could reach hundreds of thousands if not millions now over the next 10 years?”

For more on Scaling Impact and Earned Revenue Models in the Nonprofit space, listen here.

48. James Christie, Founder of SustainableUX, Footprints in the Digital World & Taking Passion Projects to Full Blown Enterprises

James Christie Founded Sustainable UX in 2016 with the hopes that this online conference “for UX, front-end, and product people who want to make a positive impact—on climate change, social equality, and inclusion” would attract 40 visitors. It brought 400 to attendance. 

Since then, Christie knew this topic had concern and traction, and alongside his full-time work as a Director of UX with Mad*Pow, Christie and his SustainableUX team have continued the conference drawing over 1,000 attendees over the last two years. 

James joined me on the podcast to talk both digital footprints and challenges of taking this passion project and turning it into something much greater.

“All the challenges are basically personal. This is a spare-time project and it’s a passion project…there are a lot of competing priorities. [One strategy is] to de-distractify [my] life, to focus on what matters, to prioritize beyond the noise. I’m getting way more focus and able to unblock myself there. It’s definitely a work in progress.”

Want to hear more about the footprint of the internet and how James created this online event around sustainable design that attracts thousands? Listen here.

49. Yasmine Mustafa, CEO of ROAR for Good, on the Power of Personal Stories to Forge Persistence

Yasmine Mustafa is a wildly talented and inspirational social entrepreneur. Being forced to flee Kuwait with her family to the U.S. during the Gulf War, Yasmine’s determination has led her through challenge after challenge. Whether it was completing Temple’s social entrepreneurship program while working two part-time jobs, or now pivoting her company ROAR last year, when faced with product/market fit challenges. 

Yasmine joined us on the podcast to share what has kept her going with this company, and ROAR specifically.

“At every event, no matter what, someone would approach us with their personal story. That’s what ultimately drives you…I would actually go and re-read testimonial emails as motivation any time I got down. It’s the impact of the people she’s working with that keeps Yasmine going, she also makes sure to focus on that which drives her, and that which doesn’t:  “I take stock of things that drain me and things that energize and do more of the latter. Whatever’s draining, I try to eliminate that.”  [32:04 – 32:15]

For more from Yasmine on her determination & development as a social entrepreneur, you can listen here.

50.  Frederick Hutson, CEO of Pigeonly, On the Talent of the Formerly Incarcerated That’s Largely Overlooked

Frederick Hutson is the CEO of Pigeonly, which is a service that makes it easier and more affordable for families to connect with their incarcerated loved ones. The idea for Pigeonly was a highly personal one for Frederick. At the age of 23, Frederick was sentenced to five years in federal prison for the illegal distribution of marijuana. 

Once settled into his prison sentence, he obsessed about imagining a better life for himself when he was out. Always an entrepreneur, Frederick thought about how he could leverage this personal experience of incarceration and his intimate understanding of the prison system to provide a useful and valuable service. It was in 2012 while living in a halfway house when the idea for Pigeonly was born. 

On the show, Frederick shared his thoughts on this segment of the population that’s highly talented but being largely overlooked.

“We have returning citizens in every single department of our company. I’m not saying just put people in customer service. I’m not saying we just put people in our fulfillment department that handles all of our shipping and printing.  We have returning citizens that are in engineering, we have them in marketing, we have fulfillment, we have them in customer service, we have them in operations.  What I’ve found and what I know to be true just from my own experience, is that there’s an incredible amount of talent in the U.S. prison system by virtue of the criminal justice system here being largely out of control. And I look at the number of people being incarcerated and the laws that aren’t really designed around rehabilitation…there’s a lot of talent that is being released.”

Want to hear more from Frederick and the evolution of Pigeonly and his entrepreneurial ambitions? Listen here.

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Co-Founder & CEO, Grow Ensemble

Cory is the host of The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast , where he’s interviewed well over 150 leaders in the space of better business, social impact, and innovation. Prior to Grow Ensemble, Cory was the CEO of a digital marketing agency, a position he earned at the age of 22. There, he became an expert on all things digital marketing & SEO.

Cory Co-Founded Grow Ensemble (with his partner, Annie Bright) as a vehicle to raise awareness of and inspire action around some of the world’s biggest problems and problem solvers.

He blogs, podcasts, and publishes video on all things leaving the world a better, more just, equitable, and habitable place for all.

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July 22, 2021 at 10:50 am

I wonder if you could look into social entrepreneurs who such as Hubie Jones of the Boston area or John Crawford of New Haven Ct. area? These men are designing new ways to change the lives of impoverished inner city children by reinventing schools and housing that do no rely on the local government of federal grants.

July 22, 2021 at 11:51 am

Thanks for the comment.

I’ll make a note for our team to take a look at those folks you mentioned.

Timely, as a Boston move is in our semi-near future!

October 28, 2022 at 7:12 pm

Wow! This is an amazing list of social entrepreneurs! I’m so inspired by all of them!

November 3, 2022 at 5:36 am

So glad you found the article helpful and our list inspiring!

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Learning Hub

  • 11.4 The Business Plan
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 Entrepreneurship Today
  • 1.2 Entrepreneurial Vision and Goals
  • 1.3 The Entrepreneurial Mindset
  • Review Questions
  • Discussion Questions
  • Case Questions
  • Suggested Resources
  • 2.1 Overview of the Entrepreneurial Journey
  • 2.2 The Process of Becoming an Entrepreneur
  • 2.3 Entrepreneurial Pathways
  • 2.4 Frameworks to Inform Your Entrepreneurial Path
  • 3.1 Ethical and Legal Issues in Entrepreneurship
  • 3.2 Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship
  • 3.3 Developing a Workplace Culture of Ethical Excellence and Accountability
  • 4.1 Tools for Creativity and Innovation
  • 4.2 Creativity, Innovation, and Invention: How They Differ
  • 4.3 Developing Ideas, Innovations, and Inventions
  • 5.1 Entrepreneurial Opportunity
  • 5.2 Researching Potential Business Opportunities
  • 5.3 Competitive Analysis
  • 6.1 Problem Solving to Find Entrepreneurial Solutions
  • 6.2 Creative Problem-Solving Process
  • 6.3 Design Thinking
  • 6.4 Lean Processes
  • 7.1 Clarifying Your Vision, Mission, and Goals
  • 7.2 Sharing Your Entrepreneurial Story
  • 7.3 Developing Pitches for Various Audiences and Goals
  • 7.4 Protecting Your Idea and Polishing the Pitch through Feedback
  • 7.5 Reality Check: Contests and Competitions
  • 8.1 Entrepreneurial Marketing and the Marketing Mix
  • 8.2 Market Research, Market Opportunity Recognition, and Target Market
  • 8.3 Marketing Techniques and Tools for Entrepreneurs
  • 8.4 Entrepreneurial Branding
  • 8.5 Marketing Strategy and the Marketing Plan
  • 8.6 Sales and Customer Service
  • 9.1 Overview of Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting Strategies
  • 9.2 Special Funding Strategies
  • 9.3 Accounting Basics for Entrepreneurs
  • 9.4 Developing Startup Financial Statements and Projections
  • 10.1 Launching the Imperfect Business: Lean Startup
  • 10.2 Why Early Failure Can Lead to Success Later
  • 10.3 The Challenging Truth about Business Ownership
  • 10.4 Managing, Following, and Adjusting the Initial Plan
  • 10.5 Growth: Signs, Pains, and Cautions
  • 11.1 Avoiding the “Field of Dreams” Approach
  • 11.2 Designing the Business Model
  • 11.3 Conducting a Feasibility Analysis
  • 12.1 Building and Connecting to Networks
  • 12.2 Building the Entrepreneurial Dream Team
  • 12.3 Designing a Startup Operational Plan
  • 13.1 Business Structures: Overview of Legal and Tax Considerations
  • 13.2 Corporations
  • 13.3 Partnerships and Joint Ventures
  • 13.4 Limited Liability Companies
  • 13.5 Sole Proprietorships
  • 13.6 Additional Considerations: Capital Acquisition, Business Domicile, and Technology
  • 13.7 Mitigating and Managing Risks
  • 14.1 Types of Resources
  • 14.2 Using the PEST Framework to Assess Resource Needs
  • 14.3 Managing Resources over the Venture Life Cycle
  • 15.1 Launching Your Venture
  • 15.2 Making Difficult Business Decisions in Response to Challenges
  • 15.3 Seeking Help or Support
  • 15.4 Now What? Serving as a Mentor, Consultant, or Champion
  • 15.5 Reflections: Documenting the Journey
  • A | Suggested Resources

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Describe the different purposes of a business plan
  • Describe and develop the components of a brief business plan
  • Describe and develop the components of a full business plan

Unlike the brief or lean formats introduced so far, the business plan is a formal document used for the long-range planning of a company’s operation. It typically includes background information, financial information, and a summary of the business. Investors nearly always request a formal business plan because it is an integral part of their evaluation of whether to invest in a company. Although nothing in business is permanent, a business plan typically has components that are more “set in stone” than a business model canvas , which is more commonly used as a first step in the planning process and throughout the early stages of a nascent business. A business plan is likely to describe the business and industry, market strategies, sales potential, and competitive analysis, as well as the company’s long-term goals and objectives. An in-depth formal business plan would follow at later stages after various iterations to business model canvases. The business plan usually projects financial data over a three-year period and is typically required by banks or other investors to secure funding. The business plan is a roadmap for the company to follow over multiple years.

Some entrepreneurs prefer to use the canvas process instead of the business plan, whereas others use a shorter version of the business plan, submitting it to investors after several iterations. There are also entrepreneurs who use the business plan earlier in the entrepreneurial process, either preceding or concurrently with a canvas. For instance, Chris Guillebeau has a one-page business plan template in his book The $100 Startup . 48 His version is basically an extension of a napkin sketch without the detail of a full business plan. As you progress, you can also consider a brief business plan (about two pages)—if you want to support a rapid business launch—and/or a standard business plan.

As with many aspects of entrepreneurship, there are no clear hard and fast rules to achieving entrepreneurial success. You may encounter different people who want different things (canvas, summary, full business plan), and you also have flexibility in following whatever tool works best for you. Like the canvas, the various versions of the business plan are tools that will aid you in your entrepreneurial endeavor.

Business Plan Overview

Most business plans have several distinct sections ( Figure 11.16 ). The business plan can range from a few pages to twenty-five pages or more, depending on the purpose and the intended audience. For our discussion, we’ll describe a brief business plan and a standard business plan. If you are able to successfully design a business model canvas, then you will have the structure for developing a clear business plan that you can submit for financial consideration.

Both types of business plans aim at providing a picture and roadmap to follow from conception to creation. If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept.

The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, dealing with the proverbial devil in the details. Developing a full business plan will assist those of you who need a more detailed and structured roadmap, or those of you with little to no background in business. The business planning process includes the business model, a feasibility analysis, and a full business plan, which we will discuss later in this section. Next, we explore how a business plan can meet several different needs.

Purposes of a Business Plan

A business plan can serve many different purposes—some internal, others external. As we discussed previously, you can use a business plan as an internal early planning device, an extension of a napkin sketch, and as a follow-up to one of the canvas tools. A business plan can be an organizational roadmap , that is, an internal planning tool and working plan that you can apply to your business in order to reach your desired goals over the course of several years. The business plan should be written by the owners of the venture, since it forces a firsthand examination of the business operations and allows them to focus on areas that need improvement.

Refer to the business venture throughout the document. Generally speaking, a business plan should not be written in the first person.

A major external purpose for the business plan is as an investment tool that outlines financial projections, becoming a document designed to attract investors. In many instances, a business plan can complement a formal investor’s pitch. In this context, the business plan is a presentation plan, intended for an outside audience that may or may not be familiar with your industry, your business, and your competitors.

You can also use your business plan as a contingency plan by outlining some “what-if” scenarios and exploring how you might respond if these scenarios unfold. Pretty Young Professional launched in November 2010 as an online resource to guide an emerging generation of female leaders. The site focused on recent female college graduates and current students searching for professional roles and those in their first professional roles. It was founded by four friends who were coworkers at the global consultancy firm McKinsey. But after positions and equity were decided among them, fundamental differences of opinion about the direction of the business emerged between two factions, according to the cofounder and former CEO Kathryn Minshew . “I think, naively, we assumed that if we kicked the can down the road on some of those things, we’d be able to sort them out,” Minshew said. Minshew went on to found a different professional site, The Muse , and took much of the editorial team of Pretty Young Professional with her. 49 Whereas greater planning potentially could have prevented the early demise of Pretty Young Professional, a change in planning led to overnight success for Joshua Esnard and The Cut Buddy team. Esnard invented and patented the plastic hair template that he was selling online out of his Fort Lauderdale garage while working a full-time job at Broward College and running a side business. Esnard had hundreds of boxes of Cut Buddies sitting in his home when he changed his marketing plan to enlist companies specializing in making videos go viral. It worked so well that a promotional video for the product garnered 8 million views in hours. The Cut Buddy sold over 4,000 products in a few hours when Esnard only had hundreds remaining. Demand greatly exceeded his supply, so Esnard had to scramble to increase manufacturing and offered customers two-for-one deals to make up for delays. This led to selling 55,000 units, generating $700,000 in sales in 2017. 50 After appearing on Shark Tank and landing a deal with Daymond John that gave the “shark” a 20-percent equity stake in return for $300,000, The Cut Buddy has added new distribution channels to include retail sales along with online commerce. Changing one aspect of a business plan—the marketing plan—yielded success for The Cut Buddy.

Link to Learning

Watch this video of Cut Buddy’s founder, Joshua Esnard, telling his company’s story to learn more.

If you opt for the brief business plan, you will focus primarily on articulating a big-picture overview of your business concept. This version is used to interest potential investors, employees, and other stakeholders, and will include a financial summary “box,” but it must have a disclaimer, and the founder/entrepreneur may need to have the people who receive it sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) . The full business plan is aimed at executing the vision concept, providing supporting details, and would be required by financial institutions and others as they formally become stakeholders in the venture. Both are aimed at providing a picture and roadmap to go from conception to creation.

Types of Business Plans

The brief business plan is similar to an extended executive summary from the full business plan. This concise document provides a broad overview of your entrepreneurial concept, your team members, how and why you will execute on your plans, and why you are the ones to do so. You can think of a brief business plan as a scene setter or—since we began this chapter with a film reference—as a trailer to the full movie. The brief business plan is the commercial equivalent to a trailer for Field of Dreams , whereas the full plan is the full-length movie equivalent.

Brief Business Plan or Executive Summary

As the name implies, the brief business plan or executive summary summarizes key elements of the entire business plan, such as the business concept, financial features, and current business position. The executive summary version of the business plan is your opportunity to broadly articulate the overall concept and vision of the company for yourself, for prospective investors, and for current and future employees.

A typical executive summary is generally no longer than a page, but because the brief business plan is essentially an extended executive summary, the executive summary section is vital. This is the “ask” to an investor. You should begin by clearly stating what you are asking for in the summary.

In the business concept phase, you’ll describe the business, its product, and its markets. Describe the customer segment it serves and why your company will hold a competitive advantage. This section may align roughly with the customer segments and value-proposition segments of a canvas.

Next, highlight the important financial features, including sales, profits, cash flows, and return on investment. Like the financial portion of a feasibility analysis, the financial analysis component of a business plan may typically include items like a twelve-month profit and loss projection, a three- or four-year profit and loss projection, a cash-flow projection, a projected balance sheet, and a breakeven calculation. You can explore a feasibility study and financial projections in more depth in the formal business plan. Here, you want to focus on the big picture of your numbers and what they mean.

The current business position section can furnish relevant information about you and your team members and the company at large. This is your opportunity to tell the story of how you formed the company, to describe its legal status (form of operation), and to list the principal players. In one part of the extended executive summary, you can cover your reasons for starting the business: Here is an opportunity to clearly define the needs you think you can meet and perhaps get into the pains and gains of customers. You also can provide a summary of the overall strategic direction in which you intend to take the company. Describe the company’s mission, vision, goals and objectives, overall business model, and value proposition.

Rice University’s Student Business Plan Competition, one of the largest and overall best-regarded graduate school business-plan competitions (see Telling Your Entrepreneurial Story and Pitching the Idea ), requires an executive summary of up to five pages to apply. 51 , 52 Its suggested sections are shown in Table 11.2 .

Are You Ready?

Create a brief business plan.

Fill out a canvas of your choosing for a well-known startup: Uber, Netflix, Dropbox, Etsy, Airbnb, Bird/Lime, Warby Parker, or any of the companies featured throughout this chapter or one of your choice. Then create a brief business plan for that business. See if you can find a version of the company’s actual executive summary, business plan, or canvas. Compare and contrast your vision with what the company has articulated.

  • These companies are well established but is there a component of what you charted that you would advise the company to change to ensure future viability?
  • Map out a contingency plan for a “what-if” scenario if one key aspect of the company or the environment it operates in were drastically is altered?

Full Business Plan

Even full business plans can vary in length, scale, and scope. Rice University sets a ten-page cap on business plans submitted for the full competition. The IndUS Entrepreneurs , one of the largest global networks of entrepreneurs, also holds business plan competitions for students through its Tie Young Entrepreneurs program. In contrast, business plans submitted for that competition can usually be up to twenty-five pages. These are just two examples. Some components may differ slightly; common elements are typically found in a formal business plan outline. The next section will provide sample components of a full business plan for a fictional business.

Executive Summary

The executive summary should provide an overview of your business with key points and issues. Because the summary is intended to summarize the entire document, it is most helpful to write this section last, even though it comes first in sequence. The writing in this section should be especially concise. Readers should be able to understand your needs and capabilities at first glance. The section should tell the reader what you want and your “ask” should be explicitly stated in the summary.

Describe your business, its product or service, and the intended customers. Explain what will be sold, who it will be sold to, and what competitive advantages the business has. Table 11.3 shows a sample executive summary for the fictional company La Vida Lola.

Business Description

This section describes the industry, your product, and the business and success factors. It should provide a current outlook as well as future trends and developments. You also should address your company’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives. Summarize your overall strategic direction, your reasons for starting the business, a description of your products and services, your business model, and your company’s value proposition. Consider including the Standard Industrial Classification/North American Industry Classification System (SIC/NAICS) code to specify the industry and insure correct identification. The industry extends beyond where the business is located and operates, and should include national and global dynamics. Table 11.4 shows a sample business description for La Vida Lola.

Industry Analysis and Market Strategies

Here you should define your market in terms of size, structure, growth prospects, trends, and sales potential. You’ll want to include your TAM and forecast the SAM . (Both these terms are discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis .) This is a place to address market segmentation strategies by geography, customer attributes, or product orientation. Describe your positioning relative to your competitors’ in terms of pricing, distribution, promotion plan, and sales potential. Table 11.5 shows an example industry analysis and market strategy for La Vida Lola.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis is a statement of the business strategy as it relates to the competition. You want to be able to identify who are your major competitors and assess what are their market shares, markets served, strategies employed, and expected response to entry? You likely want to conduct a classic SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) and complete a competitive-strength grid or competitive matrix. Outline your company’s competitive strengths relative to those of the competition in regard to product, distribution, pricing, promotion, and advertising. What are your company’s competitive advantages and their likely impacts on its success? The key is to construct it properly for the relevant features/benefits (by weight, according to customers) and how the startup compares to incumbents. The competitive matrix should show clearly how and why the startup has a clear (if not currently measurable) competitive advantage. Some common features in the example include price, benefits, quality, type of features, locations, and distribution/sales. Sample templates are shown in Figure 11.17 and Figure 11.18 . A competitive analysis helps you create a marketing strategy that will identify assets or skills that your competitors are lacking so you can plan to fill those gaps, giving you a distinct competitive advantage. When creating a competitor analysis, it is important to focus on the key features and elements that matter to customers, rather than focusing too heavily on the entrepreneur’s idea and desires.

Operations and Management Plan

In this section, outline how you will manage your company. Describe its organizational structure. Here you can address the form of ownership and, if warranted, include an organizational chart/structure. Highlight the backgrounds, experiences, qualifications, areas of expertise, and roles of members of the management team. This is also the place to mention any other stakeholders, such as a board of directors or advisory board(s), and their relevant relationship to the founder, experience and value to help make the venture successful, and professional service firms providing management support, such as accounting services and legal counsel.

Table 11.6 shows a sample operations and management plan for La Vida Lola.

Marketing Plan

Here you should outline and describe an effective overall marketing strategy for your venture, providing details regarding pricing, promotion, advertising, distribution, media usage, public relations, and a digital presence. Fully describe your sales management plan and the composition of your sales force, along with a comprehensive and detailed budget for the marketing plan. Table 11.7 shows a sample marketing plan for La Vida Lola.

Financial Plan

A financial plan seeks to forecast revenue and expenses; project a financial narrative; and estimate project costs, valuations, and cash flow projections. This section should present an accurate, realistic, and achievable financial plan for your venture (see Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting for detailed discussions about conducting these projections). Include sales forecasts and income projections, pro forma financial statements ( Building the Entrepreneurial Dream Team , a breakeven analysis, and a capital budget. Identify your possible sources of financing (discussed in Conducting a Feasibility Analysis ). Figure 11.19 shows a template of cash-flow needs for La Vida Lola.

Entrepreneur In Action

Laughing man coffee.

Hugh Jackman ( Figure 11.20 ) may best be known for portraying a comic-book superhero who used his mutant abilities to protect the world from villains. But the Wolverine actor is also working to make the planet a better place for real, not through adamantium claws but through social entrepreneurship.

A love of java jolted Jackman into action in 2009, when he traveled to Ethiopia with a Christian humanitarian group to shoot a documentary about the impact of fair-trade certification on coffee growers there. He decided to launch a business and follow in the footsteps of the late Paul Newman, another famous actor turned philanthropist via food ventures.

Jackman launched Laughing Man Coffee two years later; he sold the line to Keurig in 2015. One Laughing Man Coffee café in New York continues to operate independently, investing its proceeds into charitable programs that support better housing, health, and educational initiatives within fair-trade farming communities. 55 Although the New York location is the only café, the coffee brand is still distributed, with Keurig donating an undisclosed portion of Laughing Man proceeds to those causes (whereas Jackman donates all his profits). The company initially donated its profits to World Vision, the Christian humanitarian group Jackman accompanied in 2009. In 2017, it created the Laughing Man Foundation to be more active with its money management and distribution.

  • You be the entrepreneur. If you were Jackman, would you have sold the company to Keurig? Why or why not?
  • Would you have started the Laughing Man Foundation?
  • What else can Jackman do to aid fair-trade practices for coffee growers?

What Can You Do?

Textbooks for change.

Founded in 2014, Textbooks for Change uses a cross-compensation model, in which one customer segment pays for a product or service, and the profit from that revenue is used to provide the same product or service to another, underserved segment. Textbooks for Change partners with student organizations to collect used college textbooks, some of which are re-sold while others are donated to students in need at underserved universities across the globe. The organization has reused or recycled 250,000 textbooks, providing 220,000 students with access through seven campus partners in East Africa. This B-corp social enterprise tackles a problem and offers a solution that is directly relevant to college students like yourself. Have you observed a problem on your college campus or other campuses that is not being served properly? Could it result in a social enterprise?

Work It Out

Franchisee set out.

A franchisee of East Coast Wings, a chain with dozens of restaurants in the United States, has decided to part ways with the chain. The new store will feature the same basic sports-bar-and-restaurant concept and serve the same basic foods: chicken wings, burgers, sandwiches, and the like. The new restaurant can’t rely on the same distributors and suppliers. A new business plan is needed.

  • What steps should the new restaurant take to create a new business plan?
  • Should it attempt to serve the same customers? Why or why not?

This New York Times video, “An Unlikely Business Plan,” describes entrepreneurial resurgence in Detroit, Michigan.

  • 48 Chris Guillebeau. The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future . New York: Crown Business/Random House, 2012.
  • 49 Jonathan Chan. “What These 4 Startup Case Studies Can Teach You about Failure.” Foundr.com . July 12, 2015. https://foundr.com/4-startup-case-studies-failure/
  • 50 Amy Feldman. “Inventor of the Cut Buddy Paid YouTubers to Spark Sales. He Wasn’t Ready for a Video to Go Viral.” Forbes. February 15, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/02/15/inventor-of-the-cut-buddy-paid-youtubers-to-spark-sales-he-wasnt-ready-for-a-video-to-go-viral/#3eb540ce798a
  • 51 Jennifer Post. “National Business Plan Competitions for Entrepreneurs.” Business News Daily . August 30, 2018. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6902-business-plan-competitions-entrepreneurs.html
  • 52 “Rice Business Plan Competition, Eligibility Criteria and How to Apply.” Rice Business Plan Competition . March 2020. https://rbpc.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs806/f/2020%20RBPC%20Eligibility%20Criteria%20and%20How%20to%20Apply_23Oct19.pdf
  • 53 “Rice Business Plan Competition, Eligibility Criteria and How to Apply.” Rice Business Plan Competition. March 2020. https://rbpc.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs806/f/2020%20RBPC%20Eligibility%20Criteria%20and%20How%20to%20Apply_23Oct19.pdf; Based on 2019 RBPC Competition Rules and Format April 4–6, 2019. https://rbpc.rice.edu/sites/g/files/bxs806/f/2019-RBPC-Competition-Rules%20-Format.pdf
  • 54 Foodstart. http://foodstart.com
  • 55 “Hugh Jackman Journey to Starting a Social Enterprise Coffee Company.” Giving Compass. April 8, 2018. https://givingcompass.org/article/hugh-jackman-journey-to-starting-a-social-enterprise-coffee-company/

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Social Enterprise Business Plan

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The ability to affect positive change and tackle social or environmental issues is one of the most satisfying parts of owning a social enterprise.

A strong sense of purpose and the desire to change the world motivates social entrepreneurs to start this business. If you are ready to change the world, then start it with proper planning.

Need help writing a business plan for your social enterprise business? You’re at the right place. Our social enterprise business plan template will help you get started.

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Free Business Plan Template

Download our free business plan template now and pave the way to success. Let’s turn your vision into an actionable strategy!

  • Fill in the blanks – Outline
  • Financial Tables

How to Write A Social Enterprise Business Plan?

Writing a social enterprise business plan is a crucial step toward the success of your business. Here are the key steps to consider when writing a business plan:

1. Executive Summary

An executive summary is the first section planned to offer an overview of the entire business plan. However, it is written after the entire business plan is ready and summarizes each section of your plan.

Here are a few key components to include in your executive summary:

Introduce your Business:

Start your executive summary by briefly introducing your business to your readers.

Market Opportunity:

Products and services:.

Highlight the social enterprise services or products you offer your clients. The USPs and differentiators you offer are always a plus.

Marketing & Sales Strategies:

Financial highlights:, call to action:.

Ensure your executive summary is clear, concise, easy to understand, and jargon-free.

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2. Business Overview

The business overview section of your business plan offers detailed information about your business. The details you add will depend on how important they are to your business. Yet, business name, location, business history, and future goals are some of the foundational elements you must consider adding to this section:

Business Description:

Describe your business in this section by providing all the basic information:

Describe what kind of social enterprise business you run and the name of it. You may specialize in one of the following social enterprise businesses:

  • Fairtrade organizations
  • Community development enterprises
  • Socially responsible manufacturing
  • Trading social enterprise
  • Education and skills development enterprises
  • Describe the legal structure of your social enterprise, whether it is a sole proprietorship, LLC, partnership, or others.
  • Explain where your business is located and why you selected the place.

Mission Statement:

Business history:.

If you’re an established social enterprise, briefly describe your business history, like—when it was founded, how it evolved over time, etc.

Future Goals:

This section should provide a thorough understanding of your business, its history, and its future plans. Keep this section engaging, precise, and to the point.

3. Market Analysis

The market analysis section of your business plan should offer a thorough understanding of the industry with the target market, competitors, and growth opportunities. You should include the following components in this section.

Target market:

Start this section by describing your target market. Define your ideal customer and explain what types of services they prefer. Creating a buyer persona will help you easily define your target market to your readers.

Market size and growth potential:

Describe your market size and growth potential and whether you will target a niche or a much broader market.

Competitive Analysis:

Market trends:.

Analyze emerging trends in the industry, such as technology disruptions, changes in customer behavior or preferences, etc. Explain how your business will cope with all the trends.

Regulatory Environment:

Here are a few tips for writing the market analysis section of your social enterprise business plan:

  • Conduct market research, industry reports, and surveys to gather data.
  • Provide specific and detailed information whenever possible.
  • Illustrate your points with charts and graphs.
  • Write your business plan keeping your target audience in mind.

4. Products And Services

The product and services section should describe the specific services and products that will be offered to customers. To write this section should include the following:

Describe your services:

Mention the social enterprise products or services your business will offer. This list may include products or services like,

  • Eco-friendly household products
  • Sustainable fashion items
  • Job training
  • Healthcare services
  • Renewable energy products

Explain the benefits:

Showcase the innovative side:, additional services:.

In short, this section of your social enterprise plan must be informative, precise, and client-focused. By providing a clear and compelling description of your offerings, you can help potential investors and readers understand the value of your business.

5. Sales And Marketing Strategies

Writing the sales and marketing strategies section means a list of strategies you will use to attract and retain your clients. Here are some key elements to include in your sales & marketing plan:

Unique Selling Proposition (USP):

Define your business’s USPs depending on the market you serve, the equipment you use, and the unique services you provide. Identifying USPs will help you plan your marketing strategies.

Pricing Strategy:

Marketing strategies:, sales strategies:, customer retention:.

Overall, this section of your social enterprise business plan should focus on customer acquisition and retention.

Have a specific, realistic, and data-driven approach while planning sales and marketing strategies for your social enterprise business, and be prepared to adapt or make strategic changes in your strategies based on feedback and results.

6. Operations Plan

The operations plan section of your business plan should outline the processes and procedures involved in your business operations, such as staffing requirements and operational processes. Here are a few components to add to your operations plan:

Staffing & Training:

Operational process:, equipment & machinery:.

Include the list of equipment and machinery required for social enterprise, such as manufacturing or production equipment, kitchen & cooking equipment, recycling or waste management, etc.

Adding these components to your operations plan will help you lay out your business operations, which will eventually help you manage your business effectively.

7. Management Team

The management team section provides an overview of your social enterprise business’s management team. This section should provide a detailed description of each manager’s experience and qualifications, as well as their responsibilities and roles.

Founders/CEO:

Key managers:.

Introduce your management and key members of your team, and explain their roles and responsibilities.

Organizational structure:

Compensation plan:, advisors/consultants:.

Mentioning advisors or consultants in your business plans adds credibility to your business idea.

This section should describe the key personnel for your social enterprise services, highlighting how you have the perfect team to succeed.

8. Financial Plan

Your financial plan section should provide a summary of your business’s financial projections for the first few years. Here are some key elements to include in your financial plan:

Profit & loss statement:

Cash flow statement:, balance sheet:, break-even point:.

Determine and mention your business’s break-even point—the point at which your business costs and revenue will be equal.

Financing Needs:

Be realistic with your financial projections, and make sure you offer relevant information and evidence to support your estimates.

9. Appendix

The appendix section of your plan should include any additional information supporting your business plan’s main content, such as market research, legal documentation, financial statements, and other relevant information.

  • Add a table of contents for the appendix section to help readers easily find specific information or sections.
  • In addition to your financial statements, provide additional financial documents like tax returns, a list of assets within the business, credit history, and more. These statements must be the latest and offer financial projections for at least the first three or five years of business operations.
  • Provide data derived from market research, including stats about the industry, user demographics, and industry trends.
  • Include any legal documents such as permits, licenses, and contracts.
  • Include any additional documentation related to your business plan, such as product brochures, marketing materials, operational procedures, etc.

Use clear headings and labels for each section of the appendix so that readers can easily find the necessary information.

Remember, the appendix section of your social enterprise business plan should only include relevant and important information supporting your plan’s main content.

The Quickest Way to turn a Business Idea into a Business Plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

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This sample social enterprise business plan will provide an idea for writing a successful social enterprise plan, including all the essential components of your business.

After this, if you still need clarification about writing an investment-ready business plan to impress your audience, download our social enterprise business plan pdf .

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Frequently asked questions, why do you need a social enterprise business plan.

A business plan is an essential tool for anyone looking to start or run a successful social enterprise business. It helps to get clarity in your business, secures funding, and identifies potential challenges while starting and growing your business.

Overall, a well-written plan can help you make informed decisions, which can contribute to the long-term success of your social enterprise business.

How to get funding for your social enterprise business?

There are several ways to get funding for your social enterprise business, but self-funding is one of the most efficient and speedy funding options. Other options for funding are:

Small Business Administration (SBA) loan

Crowdfunding, angel investors.

Apart from all these options, there are small business grants available, check for the same in your location and you can apply for it.

Where to find business plan writers for your social enterprise business?

There are many business plan writers available, but no one knows your business and ideas better than you, so we recommend you write your social enterprise business plan and outline your vision as you have in your mind. .

What is the easiest way to write your social enterprise business plan?

A lot of research is necessary for writing a business plan, but you can write your plan most efficiently with the help of any social enterprise business plan example and edit it as per your need. You can also quickly finish your plan in just a few hours or less with the help of our business plan software .

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Small Business Trends

Sba launches enhanced equity action plan to bolster small business growth and economic equity.

business planning for social entrepreneurs

Isabel Casillas Guzman, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator, has unveiled an updated Equity Action Plan in a bid to foster inclusivity and economic opportunity. This initiative is set to transform the landscape for America’s 33 million small businesses and startups, particularly benefiting those from underserved communities.

The SBA’s refreshed Equity Action Plan zeroes in on crucial areas such as improving access to capital, enhancing entrepreneurial support services, and broadening economic opportunities to advance the national economy. This plan is part of the administration’s broader commitment to equity, initiated by President Biden’s Executive Order on his first day in office, mandating a comprehensive equity assessment across federal agencies.

Empowering Diverse Entrepreneurs

“As America continues to enjoy an unprecedented Small Business Boom, the SBA remains determined in its efforts to boost entrepreneurship among people of color, women, veterans, and those from rural communities, and this updated Equity Action Plan is a testament to that commitment,” stated Administrator Guzman.

The Equity Action Plan is pivotal in acknowledging and harnessing the value these entrepreneurs bring through job creation, innovation, and competitiveness on both domestic and international fronts.

Strategic Enhancements and Achievements

The 2023 Equity Action Plan outlines strategic improvements in several key areas:

Small Business Deals

  • Access to Loan Capital: Introducing new lenders capable of reaching underserved markets, simplifying lending rules, and promoting policies to support justice-involved entrepreneurs.
  • Federal Government Procurement: Enhancing Small Disadvantaged Businesses (SDBs) access to contracting opportunities and advocating for their inclusion in federal agency contracts.
  • Disaster Assistance: Modernizing application processes and bolstering support for underserved communities in disaster recovery efforts.
  • Business Counseling and Training: Tailoring resources to meet the specific needs of underserved entrepreneurs.
  • Investment Capital: Implementing rules to diversify fund managers within the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Program, aimed at directing more investments toward underserved entrepreneurs.

These strategies build on the successes of the initial Equity Action Plan, which notably increased Community Advantage lending, expanded SBLC licenses targeting underserved businesses, and enhanced SBIC financing to minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses.

Community Engagement and Resource Allocation

The SBA’s engagement with the small business community has been instrumental in shaping the Equity Action Plan. Through nationwide outreach, training events, and consultations with Resource Partners and trade associations, the SBA has honed its strategies to meet the evolving needs of small business owners. Noteworthy accomplishments include the launch of new Small Business Lending Companies (CA SBLCs), significant increases in SDB contracting, and the implementation of the Disaster Loan Program Modifications Rule.

Forward Momentum

As the SBA continues to refine its approach to equity and inclusivity, the updated Equity Action Plan stands as a testament to the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to creating a more equitable economic landscape. By addressing systemic barriers and fostering a supportive environment, the SBA aims to ensure that all entrepreneurs have the resources and opportunities needed to thrive.

For more information on the SBA’s efforts and to read the complete Equity Action Plan, visit the SBA’s official website.

This initiative not only promises to reshape the future of small business ownership in the U.S. but also reinforces the government’s role in facilitating equitable economic growth and resilience.

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JUST RELEASED: View the 2024 Franchise 500 Ranking

10 Expert Insights for the Optimal (and Most Effective) PR Budget in 2024 The age-old question "How much should a company spend on PR?" echoes through boardrooms, with organizations seeking a magic formula for budget allocation. Here are 10 things you need to consider.

By Alexander Storozhuk • Feb 20, 2024

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

As companies vie for attention in a crowded marketplace, a well-executed public relations (PR) strategy can be the key to building brand awareness, enhancing credibility and fostering positive relationships with stakeholders. The age-old question "How much should a company spend on PR?" echoes through boardrooms, with organizations seeking a magic formula for budget allocation.

However, determining the optimal budget for PR efforts remains a complex decision, influenced by various factors. In this article, we delve into the considerations that businesses should weigh when allocating resources for PR, backed by tips for securing your budget and steps to ensure your spending is strategic and effective.

Related: Mastering Public Relations — A Comprehensive Guide to Boosting Your Brand's Reputation

Considerations for PR budget planning

1. holistic approach.

Framing your budget necessitates a holistic approach, encompassing content, search engine optimization (SEO), social media and influencer marketing. A survey conducted by Gartner stated that 82% of chief marketing officers (CMO) reprioritized investments in digital channels in 2023, showing that recent shifts in the PR landscape underline the importance of adaptation to new trends.

2. Alignment with business goals

The PR budget should align with the overall business goals and objectives. For instance, a company aiming to launch a new product or enter a new market may need a more substantial PR investment compared to a business focused on maintaining its current market position.

3. Industry norms and benchmarks

For effective PR budget planning, companies must be aware of industry standards, with spending typically ranging between 7% to 12% of revenue . However, recent trends indicate a slight reduction in marketing budgets across most industries. Gartner's 2023 CMO Survey reveals a decrease in marketing budgets from 11% of company revenue in 2020 to 9.1% in 2023, reflecting the changing landscape as brands seek cost-saving measures. Notably, self-service models, marketplaces and technology-driven services are gaining prominence in this evolving scenario.

Related: How Employee Advocacy Can Help You Overcome the Challenges of Limited PR Budgets

4. Content marketing on top of ROI

When considering investments in content, understanding its direct impact on business revenue becomes imperative. According to a survey by Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers claimed that search engines like Google are the digital marketing channel that brings the highest return on investment (ROI) .

Moreover, content marketing ROI goes beyond mere numbers, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative results. Lead generation, customer loyalty and brand awareness should be factored into the calculation, offering a comprehensive perspective on the effectiveness of content efforts.

Understanding the components of PR budget

1. have a multi-channel presence.

Ensuring a comprehensive multi-channel presence is pivotal for expanding audience reach and engagement. PR specialists, alongside the marketing team, share the responsibility of staying tuned to dynamic social media platforms that drive engagement and build credibility. A study by Adobe emphasizes the effectiveness of a strong multi-channel strategy , revealing a significant 10% year-over-year (YoY) growth for companies compared to a 2.8% growth with a less integrated approach.

Looking ahead to 2024, Twitter and LinkedIn remain essential platforms for PR professionals, extensively used by media professionals seeking pitches or sources. Simultaneously, maintaining an active blog on your website contributes to enhanced SEO and establishes the brand as a thought leader in the industry. Podcasts, now more than just a trend, position companies as authoritative voices in their sectors. The convenience of on-the-go podcast consumption enhances accessibility, and the versatile format allows for extracting key segments, extending impact across various channels like Instagram Reels and TikTok, amplifying reach and resonance.

2. Embrace influencer marketing

With a changing media landscape characterized by a decline in traditional journalism and a surge in influencers, integrating influencer strategies into your brand approach is crucial for successful PR outcomes. Influencers bring authenticity to brand endorsements, as their followers often perceive them as trustworthy individuals.

Partnering with influencers ensures adaptability to emerging trends and aligns with budget-conscious goals. A survey by Influencer Marketing Hub reveals a noteworthy ROI, with businesses earning an average of $5.20 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing .

Related: 10 Influencer Marketing Trends to Keep Your Eye On

3. Forge strategic partnerships

Building meaningful partnerships is set to be a top priority in 2024. Directing resources toward this goal enables PR campaigns to significantly broaden reach and engagement. The costs involved cover a range of expenses, including networking events, booths, invitations, PR packages, meet-ups, collaborative projects, travel expenses and more.

4. Harness the power of AI

As more PR tools integrate artificial intelligence (AI) features, it's mandatory to embrace it to boost your daily workflow. Whether it's streamlining the process of refining pitch strategies or analyzing complex data for insights into the performance of PR campaigns, the integration of artificial intelligence can elevate the engagement and effectiveness of any PR campaign. A 2023 study by PRovoke Media shows that 86% of communication professionals around the world between the ages of 35 to 44 believe that AI has a positive impact on their work .

5. Leverage ESG and CSR initiatives

Companies that effectively communicate their initiatives in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) often experience an enhancement in their reputation.

Examples of initiatives:

  • Sustainable practices : Reduce carbon emissions and minimize waste.
  • Foster diverse and inclusive workplaces.
  • Community engagement and social responsibility : Engage with communities through volunteering and address community needs through supporting education, healthcare or other social causes.

Moreover, ESG and CSR-focused companies are increasingly attractive to investors. According to a report by McKinsey, sustainable investments are growing 2.5 times faster than traditional investments, indicating a shift in investor preferences toward ESG-conscious businesses.

Related: ESG For Entrepreneurs: A Path to Business Success

6. Apply media monitoring and social listening

Expand your focus beyond press releases by investing in PR analytics tools for comprehensive campaign tracking. Metrics like media mentions, social media engagement and sentiment analysis offer valuable insights into the effectiveness of your PR initiatives.

Robust monitoring tools are crucial for assessing campaign performance and a proactive shield against potential crises. In today's digital age, where news and information spread rapidly, a delayed reaction can significantly worsen a crisis. Effective monitoring tools empower organizations to address issues promptly, develop a crisis communication plan, take control of the narrative and minimize potential reputational damage.

In the past, measuring PR impact has been a challenging task, but with recent technological advancements, the process has become more manageable. Starting this process early can streamline measurement and help companies position themselves for more significant budget allocations.

When businesses allocate resources effectively, adapt to emerging trends and practice responsible communication, they increase their brand's visibility and make significant contributions to the ever-changing narrative of corporate communication. The journey towards effective PR spending is as important as the destination, representing a commitment to communication excellence in a constantly evolving realm.

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Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S.—meet 3 who grew their side hustles into successful businesses

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Black women make up less than 10% of the U.S. population, but they've emerged as the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, new research from GoDaddy has found.

The number of Black women-owned businesses in the U.S. was trending upward even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which accelerated entrepreneurship overall. 

Between 2017 and 2020, the number of Black women-owned businesses increased by nearly 20%, far exceeding the growth of women-owned businesses and Black-owned businesses overall, the Brookings Institution reports.

"To me, the rise of Black women entrepreneurs means we're starting to believe in ourselves more, that we're finally recognizing how limitless we are," says Joy Ofodu, who quit her job at Instagram to become a full-time content creator and voice actor in 2022.

Ofodu's decision to leave Instagram reflects a larger trend of Black women ditching corporate jobs and flocking to entrepreneurship for more freedom, fulfillment and flexibility in their careers.

Escaping burnout in the corporate world

Brianna Doe says she decided to go into business for herself last summer, after months of feeling "deeply unhappy" in her role as a marketing director at a fintech startup. 

"I was in this vicious cycle of burnout where I would start a new job, and only a few months in, things would start to go downhill, and I could never figure out why," Doe, 30, recalls. 

It wasn't until Doe started working with a career coach in July 2023 that she realized her job wasn't the problem — it was working in corporate, period.

"I was really scared of failing, of losing the stability of a paycheck coming in each month but it was also exhausting trying to fit into a system that's just not built for me," says Doe. 

Doe had taken on various side projects as a marketing consultant throughout her career since 2011 but didn't consider turning that into a full-time business until her career coach suggested she make the leap to entrepreneurship.

She was laid off from the startup in September, mere days before she planned to put her two-week notice in. Just a few weeks later, in October 2023, Doe, alongside her co-founder Alexis Rivera Scott, launched Verbatim , their marketing agency. Doe works remotely from her home in Phoenix, while Rivera Scott works remotely from Boise. 

"It's been healing working for myself and creating a more fulfilling, supportive space," says Doe. "I didn't realize how much workplace trauma I had built up and wasn't dealing with until I left that system entirely." 

Building supportive ecosystems for Black talent

Three years ago, Leslie Frelow decided to make a full-time entrepreneurial venture out of one of her favorite hobbies: drinking wine.

At the time, Frelow was working as a senior director at the Universal Service Administrative Company, a non-profit organization under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, D.C. 

She loved her job, but she loved her side hustle — leading virtual wine tastings and tours to Maryland wineries — even more. 

Frelow also saw an unmet need she could fill in the wine industry: supporting sommeliers, farmers and winemakers of color. Less than 1% of U.S. wineries are Black-owned, according to the Association of African American Vintners .

She launched The Wine Concierge , an online wine store and subscription-based wine club, in December 2020 and left her job to run the business full-time in October 2021.

Starting a business in a mostly white, male-dominated industry hasn't been without its challenges. 

"When I go to industry events, I'm still one of the few Black people or women in the room," says Frelow, 53. "And if I bring one of my team members who is not a Black woman with me, people will defer to them as if they're the owner of the company, not me."

Still, Frelow says she wouldn't trade being an entrepreneur "for anything."

"It's given me the ultimate flexibility to be there for my aging parents, to pursue something I really love, which is seeing people's excitement from trying wines they didn't know existed," she says. 

Finding success while pursuing their passions

Ofodu, the content creator and voice actor, always had aspirations of becoming a performer in the back of her mind, but those dreams didn't come to fruition until the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. 

"I was truly living the best of both worlds: I had my dream corporate job, and I had this budding entrepreneurship venture, where I was starting to get paid for content I was posting on Instagram and TikTok," says Ofodu, who declined to share her age. 

Ofodu decided to spend her newfound free time practicing voice acting, drawing on her love for animated films and cartoons as a kid. She posted her first voice-acting demo reel on Instagram in June 2021, and within hours, had an offer to do the voiceovers for a podcast in her inbox. 

She quit her job as an integrated marketing manager at Instagram in October 2022 to pursue voice acting and content creation full-time. 

"I could measure the opportunity cost of staying where I was as a tech employee and only creating content or voice acting part-time versus working for myself, and by doing both, I was leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars and job opportunities on the table, simply because I didn't have the time or ability to do it all," she recalls. 

But as soon as Ofodu started voice acting, "it felt like a reactivated childhood dream," she adds. "I knew I had to quit my job and walk by faith, not by sight."

By all measures, Ofodu has succeeded quickly in her career, lending her voice to video games, podcasts, TV series and even a yet-to-be-released animated short with Whoopi Goldberg.

Ofodu says one of her entrepreneurial goals is to make voice acting a more open and inclusive industry. 

"Voice acting and film is still a very male-dominated industry and, in some ways, can feel like a bit of a boys club," says Ofodu. 

Black women and girls represented less than 4% of leads or co-leads in the 100 top-grossing films of the last decade, according to a 2021 report from the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

"Ultimately, when it comes to being a Black woman entrepreneur, I don't want what I am doing to be so rare, it doesn't energize me to be the first or only Black woman to do something," says Ofodu. "I want to fling open the doors for many, many others to join me."

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Join the free virtual CNBC's Women & Wealth event on March 5 at 1pm ET, where we'll bring together top financial experts to offer practical strategies to increase your income, identify investment opportunities, and save for the future. Register for free  here .

My side hustle brings in $400K a year—how I spend my money

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Registration open for LEDA class aimed at entrepreneurs, micro-business owners

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Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA) has opened registration for the fourth round of its Business Life Cycle, a free education series aimed at providing entrepreneurs and micro-business owners with the knowledge and tools to navigate every phase of the business journey.

The four-part program is designed to help turn business ideas into reality, enhance existing operations, and boost sales.

The event will be held on Wednesdays from April 3 to April 24, at 211 E. Devalcourt Street. Check in and lunch begin at 11:30 a.m. and the program runs from noon to 1:30 p.m.

“Business Life Cycle offers participants a unique opportunity to gain insights from industry experts, engage in practical exercises, and access valuable resources,” said Mandi Mitchell, LEDA President and CEO. “Whether you are a budding entrepreneur seeking to transform your innovative idea into a thriving business or a seasoned business owner looking to refine your strategies, this series is tailored to meet your needs. Business Life Cycle promises to be an enlightening series that can shape the future of your business.”

Each session is moderated by LEDA’s Director of Business Retention and Expansion Mark D. Mouton.

  • Compare Business Plan and Business Model Canvas
  • Outline Business Model Canvas
  • Business structure: Explain sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, S-Corp, and others
  • Speakers: Corey Jack (Jack & Associates), Destin Ortego (Opportunity Machine), and Brittany Deal (LEDA)
  • Growth Marketing Strategies
  • Consider the Target Audience
  • Traction Channels
  • Speakers: Theresa Goldkamp (Opportunity Machine) and Tom Cox (Golfballs.com)
  • Mission Statement, Environmental Analysis, SMART Goals, and Planning Horizon
  • Business Development Strategies and Certifications: B-to-C, B-to-B, Government Procurement, and more
  • Speaker: Dr. Patricia Lanier (UL Lafayette)
  • Banks and Alternative Finance Companies
  • Type of Loans and/or Funding Resources
  • Financial Programs and Resources
  • Speakers: Brandy Ledet (Louisiana Economic Development), Lauren Titus (Louisiana Small Business Development Center), Kristen Trahan (Chase), and Eddie A Buttross (First Horizon)

Attendance at all four sessions is encouraged for a comprehensive learning experience, but not required. Attendees should register for each session individually. Lunch will be provided during each session. To register for the sessions, visit https://businesslifecycle2024.eventbrite.com .

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business planning for social entrepreneurs

IMAGES

  1. 9 Social Entrepreneurship Business Model

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  2. 4 Types of Social Entrepreneurs and 21 Enterprises

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  3. Using a better planning process in 2020

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  4. Social Entrepreneurship 101: Business Models and Examples to Inspire

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  5. Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact: A How-To Guide

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  6. 🎉 Social entrepreneurship business plan. Business plans for social

    business planning for social entrepreneurs

VIDEO

  1. Business Development

  2. Business Planning 💯#motivation #billionaire #businessideas #entrepreneur #shortsvideo

  3. Social Enterprise Business Planning

  4. Not Too Late To Write A Business Plan Entrepreneurs Forever Webinar

  5. Business Development || Career Promote 2

  6. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Managing Business Finances with Working Capital

COMMENTS

  1. Creating a Winning Business Plan for Social Entrepreneurs

    1. What is a Social Entrepreneur Business Plan? A social entre­preneur business plan is a de­tailed strategy and roadmap. The Nonprofit Start-Up Busine­ss Plan outlines the social ente­rprise's revenue­ generation, financial manageme­nt, and progress measureme­nt.

  2. PDF Developing a Social Enterprise Business Plan

    Developing your business plan Nailing the Vision The problem and the opportunity Mission Tying the vision to action: Theory of change & your solution What you have to get right early on to succeed * Leadership: team and board Revenue model Measurement and evaluation Messaging/communications What else you need to know before you get started

  3. Social Enterprise Business Plan Template [Updated 2024]

    Written by Dave Lavinsky Table of Contents Social Enterprise Business Plan Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 500 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their social enterprise businesses.

  4. Social Enterprise Business Plan

    Strategy/Planning A social enterprise is an activity of a nonprofit that employs entrepreneurial, market-driven strategies for earned income in support of its mission. This outline for a social enterprise business plan is a guide for research, planning, and writing a business plan for nonprofit social enterprises.

  5. PDF Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact

    Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact: A Social Entrepreneurial Approach to Solving Social Problems is a comprehensive guide for social innovators who want to achieve lasting and scalable results. Written by Andrew Wolk and Kelley Kreitz, the founders of Root Cause, this book provides a framework and tools for developing a clear vision, strategy, and plan for social change.

  6. PDF Developing a Social Enterprise Business Plan

    Social entrepreneurship - The pursuit of an opportunity to create pattern-breaking social change regardless of the resources you currently control (Whether non-profit, for-profit, or public sector) Your business plan: who is it for? You Advisors Potential investors & partners Creating a road map Identifying gaps

  7. MITx: Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises

    People in every corner of the world are innovating to solve social and environmental problems in their communities. In the past decade, new programs like MIT Solve have emerged to support those social entrepreneurs and drive partnerships to accelerate their impact. However, many startups find it difficult to develop business plans that clearly communicate their work and impact — vital ...

  8. 7 Steps to Becoming a Successful Social Entrepreneur

    Good Company Everything that you need to know to start your own business. From business ideas to researching the competition. Practical and real-world advice on how to run your business — from managing employees to keeping the books.

  9. Business plans for social enterprise (SE)& social business

    Business planning will help any social enterprise (SE) or social purpose business (SPB) to: Foreign Investment in 2024: Fueling Global Growth in Tight Markets Join us as we share crucial insights into the anticipated shifts and emerging trends that will define the funding ecosystem in 2024.

  10. Social Business Model and Planning for Social Innovation

    Module 1 • 4 hours to complete. Welcome to Course 2 of this Specialization! In this first Module we will introduce you to the Business Model Canvas - a useful tool that will guide you through the business plan process. You will be able to categorize the elements in the Canvas and start to use it in order to create your business model.

  11. Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises (0.SolveX)

    The main focus of this course is to help early-stage social impact startups define key aspects of their business by examining case studies from leading social entrepreneurs and both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises around the world.

  12. Using Business Model Canvas in a Social Entrepreneurship context

    Social entrepreneurship, a growing field that focuses on creating sustainable solutions to societal problems, requires a unique approach to business planning — the Business Model Canvas. 1. Alexander Osterwalder, one of the men behind the Business Model Canvas, now standing in front of it. Since we here at SteepConsult are supportive of ...

  13. How to Write Successful Social Entrepreneurship Business Plans

    5# Describe your products or services. In this section, you should give a comprehensive look at the features and production steps of your products. The more detailed this section is, the more likely your social entrepreneurship business plan will be successful. You can also include plans for future development to help convince investors.

  14. Social Entrepreneurship: Writing Successful Business Plans

    Therefore, social entrepreneurs must strive for strong, informative, confident, and convincing business plans to receive the support they seek from investors, partners, or the general community. This article will focus on the ultimate steps necessary for writing such a successful business plan. Take your time to study each paragraph and make ...

  15. The 6-Step Social Enterprise Marketing Plan (2021): Boost Sales + Impact

    The Digital Marketing Strategy for Social Entrepreneurs & Triple Bottom Line Businesses: The Grow Ensemble Framework. The Grow Ensemble Framework is the digital marketing plan built for social enterprises and social businesses.. We've engineered this framework to balance the unique challenges of social entrepreneurs and change-makers who want to find a way to use their marketing messages to ...

  16. Social Entrepreneurship Business Plan

    For social entrepreneurship there are generally three customers: 1) the donor or sponsors 2) the traditional customer who buys a product or service 3) the beneficiary of the organization's mission. All three customer types require equal focus and attention as they are crucial to the company's success.

  17. 50 Inspiring Examples of Social Entrepreneurship in Practice

    3. Hannah Davis, Founder & President of BANGS Shoes, on Advice for the First Year Social Entrepreneur. Hannah Davis' and the BANGS Shoes team sell shoes to invest in entrepreneurs all over the world. And this was the mission that Hannah set out with when starting BANGS shortly after starting college.

  18. 11.4 The Business Plan

    The IndUS Entrepreneurs, one of the largest global networks of entrepreneurs, also holds business plan competitions for students through its Tie Young Entrepreneurs program. In contrast, business plans submitted for that competition can usually be up to twenty-five pages. ... Figure 11.20 Hugh Jackman launched a social entrepreneurship venture ...

  19. Social Enterprise Business Plan [Free Template

    Download Template Create a Business Plan The ability to affect positive change and tackle social or environmental issues is one of the most satisfying parts of owning a social enterprise. A strong sense of purpose and the desire to change the world motivates social entrepreneurs to start this business.

  20. PDF A business planning guide for social enterprises Putting the pieces

    For Social Ventures Australia, Olivia Hilton and Miliosh Milisavljevic carried out the initial development work on adapting the above guide for the Australian context. Nigel Hembrow, Kim Sokolnicki and Tatiana Peralta carried out research and development into good practice in terms of the business planning process for social enterprises.

  21. Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises

    In the past decade, new programs like MIT Solve have emerged to support those social entrepreneurs and drive partnerships to accelerate their impact. However, many startups find it difficult to develop business plans that clearly communicate their work and impact — vital factors in securing funding and other growth opportunities.

  22. PDF A business planning guide to developing a social enterprise

    Individual social entrepreneurs who are aiming to set up a business for a social purpose. Cooperative or employee owned social enterprise activity. Community groups exploring whether social enterprise is an appropriate way to ... business planning for social enterprises

  23. Starting a Social & Human Services Business

    Tips for Creating a Great Social & Human Services Company Business Plan. A business plan is the skeletal framework for your social and human services business's mission, goals and strategic vision. Since lenders and investors will use your plan to gauge risk, it needs to contain industry-specific benchmarks and a detailed marketing plan. Early ...

  24. Create a Business Plan

    Open Online Resources These online resources are not restricted to Rutgers students and affiliates. How to Write a Business Plan: a 30-minute course from the U.S. Small Business Administration which reviews how to write a good business plan. Palo Alto Software offers free business plan templates for different industries.

  25. A First-Time Entrepreneur's Cheat Sheet

    A query of U.S. Census Bureau data reveals that through 2023, Americans submitted nearly 62% more applications for new businesses than the same time period in 2019. The post-pandemic drivers for ...

  26. SBA Launches Enhanced Equity Action Plan to Bolster Small Business

    Isabel Casillas Guzman, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator, has unveiled an updated Equity Action Plan in a bid to foster inclusivity and economic opportunity. This initiative is set to transform the landscape for America's 33 million small businesses and startups, particularly benefiting those from underserved ...

  27. 10 Expert Insights for the Optimal (and Most Effective ...

    2. Alignment with business goals. The PR budget should align with the overall business goals and objectives. For instance, a company aiming to launch a new product or enter a new market may need a ...

  28. PDF Social Enterprise Business Plan

    Business plans are a common tool for entrepreneurs when starting or growing a business enterprise. For nonprofits that are starting or growing a social enterprise as a part of their program activities, developing a business plan is an essential step. While social enterprise business plans address all of the questions needed for any

  29. Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in ...

    Starting a business in a mostly white, male-dominated industry hasn't been without its challenges. "When I go to industry events, I'm still one of the few Black people or women in the room," says ...

  30. Registration open for LEDA class aimed at entrepreneurs, micro-business

    Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA) has opened registration for the fourth round of its Business Life Cycle, a free education series aimed at providing entrepreneurs and micro-business ...