Social Enterprise
Categories: Ethics/Morals
A social enterprise is an enterprise that's, um...social. In other words, a commercial org with society as the apple of its eye.
Social enterprises have their cake and eat it, too. Profit-maximizing to the max (because they’re commercial), while also being lean and green (environmentally-friendly), and benefiting society with the profits. Yep, most of those sweet profits go toward social programs. Think: job training, low-income housing, after-school activities for kids with working parents, community centers...all kinds of things, usually for lower-income communities, since they have the most room to benefit.
Who said companies have to use their profits to reinvest in themselves and grow, always and forever? Social enterprises don’t listen to whoever that dude was. Life’s not a Monopoly board. A social enterprise could be selling mattresses, eyeglasses, crappy shoes...it doesn’t matter. Then it donates money or goods for social good.
Unlike social entrepreneurship, which uses businesses to try to solve social problems directly, social enterprises are capitalist-profit-maximizers with one hand...and social program patrons with the other.
