Sustainability and Social enterprise
Sustainability is always the key for a functional social enterprise, which aims to maximize social welfare and environmental well-being through a set of business strategies. Famous examples of social enterprise are Save-on-Meats and Toms (purchase one for one giving to needy child). They differentiate themselves from non-profit organization by being self-sustained and they generate paid employments. In other words, social enterprises actually attempt to solve the problem rather than simply giving a certain amount of money every year to delay the problem like what most charities did.
However, being a social enterprise is very different with, or in my words, harder than being a non-profit organization such as charity. The specific issue has to be identified and an attainable and usually innovative solution has to be generated for the problem. After everything is planned out, the business still has to compete with other profiting corporations.
After all, it could be very hard to be both competitive while being a social enterprise. But by being genuinely ethical, a corporation would have the power to a larger volume of products than its competitors. For example, considering that fact that many children in developing countries grow up without a pair of shoes, Toms conducted its One for One movement that promises to give a pair of shoes to these needy children with each pair bought by customers. In addition to consumers’ increasingly ethical-buying attitude, this movement ended up becoming successful and actually helped lots of kids.
Related link: http://www.toms.ca/our-movement/