What is it?

Is it a new trend? Is it a new word to partake in social justice issues? Can it help implement systemic change on a wide scale? Social entrepreneurship is a process or business model that focuses on creating positive social, and environmental change.

Social Entrepreneurship is like water, it can take many forms such as nonprofit organizations, for-profit businesses, and even hybrid models. This particular discipline can be as specific as possible for some socents (I know not the best, but someone will come up with a better shorthand) and just as holistic as well.

They often face the same issues as traditional entrepreneurs such as funding, scaling, and measuring the impact. The key difference is that the goals are more focused on creating positive change rather than maximizing profits.

What Is The Impact?

As mentioned above social entrepreneurship can have a huge impact on society by addressing social and environmental issues such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and many more that couldn’t be addressed by governments or traditional businesses. When developing innovative solutions to these issues, social entrepreneurs can create positive change in the world and improve the lives of individuals and communities.

However, social impact can be hard to measure. Especially, if the social impact varies depending on a number of factors. Here is a great example of a business that has an impact report based on what they’ve done, and showing how they’ve impacted their communities and customers:

Alex Husted, is the Founder & CEO of Helpsy. Helpsy is the largest textile collection company in the Northeastern part of the US. Their mission unlike most used clothing businesses is an environmental one: to keep clothes out of the trash. This business and its founder are perfect examples of social entrepreneurship currently in action at the moment.

Their 2021 impact report, covers 3 areas they are trying to impact: environmental, community, and economic. Let’s check their environmental impact first. In terms of impact here is the following:

• Kept 29 million lb of clothes, shoes, and other items from the waste stream. Which equates to 4.3% of all clothing diverted from Virginia to New Hampshire
• That is 100 items of clothing every minute
• Only counting the clothes they’ve collected which went back into thrift stores for resale, they removed 560 million lbs of CO2 and saved 14 billion gallons of water.
• They are the only Certified B Corp and now Public Benefit Corporation in the clothing collection.
• They have helped dozens of brands become more sustainable by responsibly reusing their unwanted goods and returns

Now, let’s check out their community impact. According to them:

• They paid more than $400,000 to charities and municipalities for bin placements, clothing drives, purchased materials, and as donations
• Maintained industry-leading service throughout the Covid pandemic
• Launched collection partnerships with 15 new towns and cities
• Facilitated 340 school and community clothing drives
• Safely performed thousands of touchless curbside pickups
• Helped municipalities reach diversion goals by detailing the weight they collect

Lastly, here is their economic impact. According to the report:

• They added more than 150 full-time employees at living wages
• They pride themselves on paying the best wages in the industry
• Spent $8 million with local vendors, including bin hosts and thrift stores
• Saved municipalities more than $1.6 million in waste disposal tipping fees
• Helpsy’s operations also support thousands of full-time jobs at their company and their customers.

This is just one example of social entrepreneurship in action. From what you read, does it inspire you to dive deep into the field? Does it pique your interest in wanting to be a change-maker with the sometimes ironic help from capitalism?

What It Means For Us

What does social entrepreneurship mean for us? Well, it is can be one of the most transformational ways to impact individuals and our communities. It is a continuously growing sector which according to Financier Worldwide, which got their data from the European Commission checks that the sector currently employs around 40 million people, and engages with over 200 million global volunteers which are still growing.

Hell, according to the World Economic Forum, argued that social enterprises can change entire industries and that the global economy needs massive change in order to overcome a lot of the challenges mankind faces both social and environmental. It is a sector that will have far-reaching impacts in the future, and we are just starting to see some ideas of how they can help sustain us.

It shows that there are more ways to make an impact, than what was previously done before. And it offers people a new path they can take in this everchanging world being led by fast technologies and most of the time questionable practices from businesses that only truly care about maximizing profits.

Take a dive into the field, and see how it could change our world for the better but most importantly give good people the means to act on the changes they would like to see in their communities and individuals.

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