Cynical me thinks that for-profit companies primarily work to benefit their executives and shareholders. Non-profit companies primary work to benefit their executives alone. How is this better? My source is overhead conversations in bars in Seattle where I heard Gates Foundation executives bragging about how they were getting paid $300,000 a year to do absolutely nothing.
If I was doing this, I would feel guilty as hell and wouldn't tell a single soul. I'd probably also be looking for something else to do. The messed-up stuff some people boast about, it's sickening.
The only people making more than 300,000 are their 4 directors.
Oh, come on, that was one of the few places I semi-idealize as ethical and "clean".
Humans will be humans I guess...
Granted, I didn't talk to this executive, but I feel somewhat comfortable hypothesizing this due to what I know of this area.
I’m sure B Corp as term suffers from the same issues as social enterprise does, namely who knows or cares what a B Corp is outside of those that have achieved B Corp status?
Sometimes it seems much simpler to just be a business and outline your social impact on your website and marketing materials, or register as a straight charity so there’s no questions asked.
How are you looking to monetize the platform? Would you mind talking things over with a potential competitor?
A lot of these organizations seem to be ideologically possessed by Critical Race Theory. The above snippet is essentially identical to:
> B Lab Takes a Stand: A Commitment to Dianetics and Scientology
I find that “social enterprise” as a term isn’t really known by anyone outside of the social enterprise bubble, e.g. those running, funding or volunteering for a social enterprise.
The funding structures available to social enterprises seems to be an issue - you can be anything from a private limited company through to a registered charity or anything in between (and don’t get me started on CICs...).
I know a fully for-profit company who claims they are a social enterprise just because their main client base is registered charities.
I also think that the B Corp movement (https://bcorporation.net/) is building a much better brand than the social enterprise movement - and the whole process to becoming a registered B Corp is much more stringent than become a social enterprise, and has the added benefit of helping improve the social impact of organisations that apply to become B Corp registered.
I’m currently building a database of social good organisations in the UK and beyond here: https://goodhere.org/
Would love to see more projects and funders submitted. Email is in profile if you’re interested in discussing more.