Entrepreneurs are people with a “can do” attitude who spot a problem, devise a solution and turn a few quid in the process. Social entrepreneurs are all that and more.
That’s because their primary objective is to make the world a better place. They work to improve the lives of others and the money they derive from the products or services they provide is ploughed back into doing more.
“Most people who get into the social enterprise space are driven by social change,” explains Tammy Darcy of The Shona Project, a social enterprise that helps to empower teenage girls.
The prompt to set up the enterprise often stems from the field in which the social entrepreneur is working, she points out, which could be anything from social care to addiction services. “Whatever the issue is that they are trying to address, they see a gap,” she says.
Having a strong sense of purpose, or mission, drives them. “They want to change the world and then they build the structure around that, whereas a traditional entrepreneur has an idea for a product and wants to build a business,” she says.
Because a social entrepreneur so often has hands-on experience of the issue they are trying to address, they are less likely to have experience in the practicalities of starting, growing and managing an organisation. “They have to figure out all about things like finance and governance,” says Darcy.
In Darcy’s case, having previously undertaken a master’s degree in social enterprise, she well understood the theory. “But you are still learning from scratch, on your feet,” she points out.
There’s a lot to learn. “For most companies the bottom line is the financials, but we have a double bottom line that means managing the financials but also measuring the impact,” says Darcy.
“I think there’s a little confusion around social entrepreneurs and enterprises because we are absolutely driven to create profit. For us to grow we have to be able to generate our own income. But we reinvest that profit.”
On a mission
It’s a point about which Mick Kelly of GIY (Grow it Yourself) Ireland feels similarly. The Waterford-based social enterprise teaches people and communities to ditch the carbon impact of food miles by growing their own produce.
“As a social entrepreneur you are primarily focused on purpose and mission. That’s the key driver. But that’s not to say that you are not focused on income and generating revenue. They are two sides of the one coin, only that the impact and purpose is a slightly bigger side of the coin, if that’s possible,” he says.
His purpose is to help develop a food system that nourishes both people and planet. “That sense of purpose is what gets us up in the morning and I know from speaking to other social entrepreneurs, it’s an incredibly tough slog,” he says.
One of the biggest challenges is that all the decisions made by a social entrepreneur have to be weighed twice – once commercially, and once for their social impact. It’s a tough balancing act with which ordinary businesses don’t have to wrestle.
“It can be difficult to make it all viable from a business perspective, which is why ensuring you keep your purpose as your North Star is so important,” says Kelly.
For example, GIY Ireland has a cafe, called Grow HQ. Right now the landscape for cafes of all kinds is tough. But it’s even harder to manage costs when you grow the organic food you serve.
“We’re trying to do things on the basis of ethos and purpose, so it’s difficult. In some ways there’s a freedom in being really clear what your mission is, in that we’re not interested in making huge profits and we don’t have any shareholders demanding it. For us it’s about are we achieving the mission. But at the same time, you have to be viable,” he says.
Education for Sustainability is a social enterprise aimed at increasing climate literacy, fostering behavioural change and addressing climate anxiety among schoolchildren. For its founder Susan Adams, one of the biggest advantages social entrepreneurs have over the traditional kind is just how keen social entrepreneurs are to share information, help, contacts and just overall support for one another.
“The sense of community is off the charts. In the for-profit space, everybody is thinking don’t copy me. But in the social enterprise space, we know we all got into this to solve a social problem. There’s very little ego. If you go into a room with your peers and say ‘I don’t know how to do this’, someone will say ‘I’ll help you. No problem’,” she explains.
With organisations such as Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI), that sense of support is bolstered. “You literally feel like there’s an arm around you the whole time. If you’re having a problem, you can just ring them up and they’ll help you with it,” she says.
The programmes SEI runs also help social entrepreneurs get to grips with the practical aspects of running a business, including robust governance. “They put you through your paces, spot the holes in your plan, and show you what you need to adapt, or sidestep, or just do better, which really lights the road ahead for you,” she says.
High performance
With their social enterprise Change By Degrees, founders Tara Shine and Madeleine Murray have developed a sustainability platform that allows organisations to get all their sustainability upskilling, engagement and advice in one place, through one subscription and with one expert partner.
Before cofounding it, Shine authored How to Save Your Planet, a book with a similarly practical theme.
“We created Change By Degrees because it was another way to help people – including employees, and people who own businesses – to take action. It’s about directly answering the questions of what can I do? How can I not be paralysed in the doom and gloom of all of this? How do I actually get on with doing something?,” she explains.
As a certified B Corp company, Change By Degrees aims to create benefits for both people and planet, “not one or the other”, she points out. Unfortunately, she too believes the concept of a social enterprise is not yet widely understood here.
“Sometimes people think that you’re going to rock up and work for them for free because you’re a B Corp or you’re a social enterprise,” she explains.
The services it provides in relation to sustainability training are for the common good, but they’re not woolly “nice to haves” for clients to indulge in. “We are hard core business critical,” she explains. It’s not about “two nice women doing nice things for the planet”; it is about delivering business critical skills to organisations.
Success for her is about delivering benefits to all stakeholders, including the community in which it operates – customers, employees, and the planet.
“We’re trying to create benefit across those multiple dimensions so it’s about much more than profit. But if we’re not a profitable business, we can’t grow and we can’t pay our staff well. So we have to be a high-performing business,” she adds.
“With a social enterprise you can make a profit but your focus is on investing that profit back into the business to maximise the impact of the business. You’re not there just trying to give massive payouts to everybody who’s invested in it. It is about trying to perpetuate and amplify the mission of the business.”
That’s something that Joan Connolly understands deeply, both from having worked as a mentor for Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, and in her current role as chief executive of jumpAgrade, which provides tutoring to disadvantaged students at secondary level.
“Ultimately, I don’t believe there is a difference between an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur,” she says.
Connolly believes all entrepreneurs share the same qualities, including “an ability to recognise opportunities where others see problems” and “a creative and disruptive mindset”.
All are, too, resilient risk-takers who are internally motivated, whether by profit or purpose, and have the ability to inspire others to share their vision.
“Hopefully entrepreneurs will continue to apply their talents for purpose over profit, supported by organisations such as SEI,” says Connolly, because “society needs you, more than ever”.
