Jamie McDonald, Chief Giving Officer of Network for Good, the nation’s largest online charitable giving platform, spoke with the UMBC community on her experiences being a social entrepreneur in her workshop titled: Social Entrepreneurship vs. Social Action: Building Enterprises Around Social Good.
If you missed this informative and exciting workshop be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the workshop available below.
Jamie started off by introducing herself and highlighting her son, Cameron McDonald who is a UMBC student in the entrepreneur program. He recently launched his own company, Butter Brothers, and we encourage you to check them out!
Jamie then dove right in to setting the stage for a discussion on social entrepreneurship.
She started off by describing a classic enterprise as a vehicle for delivering profit for the few. She also described what non-profit means. Non-profit is really just a tax status that allows a company to keep their profits without paying taxes. In order to be classified as a non-profit the business cannot distribute their profits. In essence a non-profit should be “doing good” for the community but sometimes that’s not always the case.
As the years have progressed enterprises have started to change. Crises like poverty, climate change, corruption, resource wars, depression, and suicide have become more publically talked about which means companies are address these issues. Enterprises are now a vehicle for delivering purpose to many.
So what is social enterprise? It’s the combination of people, profit, and planet coming together.
Some fundamental values of a social enterprise are:
- Working for the common good
- Caring for human resources
- Thoughtful governance and accountability
- Social: oriented towards community building
After explaining what social enterprises looks like she laid out the key differences of them:
First the companies are ranked from Do Good to Do Well. To “do good” means to give back to the community while “do well” means making profits. Non-profits rely on memberships and donations in order to stay afloat and give back to the community (example- YMCA). An example of a missions based company is Sevenly. Sevenly sells goods from underdeveloped countries and sells those goods in other parts of the world. They then give the profits back to the underdeveloped country. These first who companies are considered social enterprises. An example of a company that shares profits or directly benefits the planet is Toms. Finally a CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility is a company that gives back as a corporate citizen like Pepsi.
Jamie then went on to remind us that it doesn’t matter what kind of company you work at (non-profit or for-profit) because you can still be a social entrepreneur by finding a place in whatever company you’re at that also wants to work towards social change.
People: There are five engines or motivations for entrepreneurs to get involved with social change. These include fear, fortune, fame, frustration, and freedom.Purpose: There are five reasons or purposes that people get involved with social entrepreneurship. These include profit, people, planted, peace and prosperity, and creativity/learning/fun.The combination of these two things lead to thriveability.
Towards the end of the workshop Jamie reminded everyone that the people who are in the industry are constantly changing it. The minllenials are changing the game. In under a decade millennials have caused collisions in the do well/do good priorities that previously divided the workforce. Millenials are demanding companies that they work for or companies they start have a mission to help someone other than themselves.
Jamie’s final question was:
