Social Profit Organisation
We need a whole new language to hold the work of social change. Currently, many organisations working to bring about a social impact are defined by what they are not: non-governmental, non-profit, not for profit or as charities. Yet social change is absolutely about profit. It is about a profit returned to society, a social impact benefit, lasting social change. And it need not be charity.
We believe it is time to move away from commercial understandings of profits, shareholders and bottom lines, move away from non-commercial purposes as being charitable, voluntary, non-accountable and build a strong language and frame of reference for the work of social business that defines what it is.
Social profit is the purpose of a social profit organisation (SPO). The work to change the problems of society cannot be left to governments, established charities, the commercial sector or a good idea. These on their own are not enough. Broad participation, and across sectors, is the cross pollination needed for growing ideas, shifting paradigms and having societal impact. Across the globe, the cry is for far more social innovation, for investing in people, in networks, in ideas, in visible social impact. People are becoming dissatisfied with incremental change, old ways of doing and thinking that grew out of a different time and need. We live in a time when banking has been turned on its head with the micro-credit movement, when shared power is dramatically saving infant lives (Tanzania's community health fund) and when a black man can lead the free world. Our working methods need to fit the environment, time and need.
We, at Change for our Children, have proposed the SPO as a mechanism for bringing together commmitted funding and accountable development for designing solutions to the current human and environmental challenges of society. The legal form of private company provides the imperative to return a (social) profit, to make a societal difference, to improve individual quality of life. It expects the organisation to run on best practice business principles in order to achieve this and so is rooted the trio of principles: innovation, accountability, results.
We have launched our first independent SPO, Smokechange Limited, and have our next one lining up for an independent future when the time is right, Tender Shoot Limited. The SPO is a business vehicle for focused and accountable action in the social arena. While the environment is still gearing up to think differently about achieving social change, we hope that the SPO will become an important part of the business landscape of New Zealand with measurable change enabled through these enterprises.