Meng Fang's Blog

Social Entrepreneur: making money or social good

Many people may have the question about social entrepreneurs. Are they making money or looking for social good? A definition of social entrepreneurs is that social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovation solutions to society’s most pressing social problems, and they are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. According to the definition, the major thing that social entrepreneurs do is solving social problems. However, making profit is vital for those social entrepreneurs. They are not doing charity.

There are several example of social entrepreneurs. TOMS is famous for its “one for one” policy. With every pair consumers purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. When TOMS company benefits poor children, they get the profit from purchase of consumers. Some of them may be motivated by the social good to buy the shoes because what they pay for shoes will be used to help people in need.

Another example is that a woman called Zeritu Tadesse invested a large amount of money in opening stores to sell fresh milk. She is the only person who sell fresh milk in her place, and what she does benefits local people. Local people can get organic food in an affordable price. Because the fresh milk is gotten by local farmers who have about 2 to 3 cows, she helps country-side farmers to sell milk. Additionally, she expands her business while helping street vendors. As a result, Zeritu gets a lot of profit by creating social good.

According the two examples, what social entrepreneurs do is making money by solving social issues. It is quiet hard to analyze which is more important for them. However, they manage to do two things at the same time.

Adrianne’s blog mentions Mr. Muruganatham. As Adrianne mentioned, he is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize and create a social change. Maybe we can learn something from social entrepreneurs, their spirits: ambitious and mission driven. As long as they find an opportunities, they have actions.