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Friday, 12 April 2019

What It Means To Be A Social Entrepreneur

By James Watson


Starting a social venture is one of the most fulfilling undertakings. These start-ups, however, have been known to face many challenges as they get off the ground. As is the case with many other start-ups, a great majority of them fail to make it past their first birthday. We will look at some of the main challenge of a social entrepreneur in this article.

Starting these enterprises is more than just popularity and obsession with people. Rather, it is rooted upon the desire to bring about societal change. This potential payoff, in combination with the likelihood of making a profit in the process sets them apart from other forms of investment.

Many people who decide to get into entrepreneurship often venture into new areas with the intention of making profits. However, those who chose the path of social enterprises are socially responsible, and are obliged to contribute to the well-being of the society in which they operate. They usually make it a primary goal to ensure they impact the society positively and the profit making part is always secondary.

There are a number of other ways in which the benefits of these ventures can be passed to the community. For instance, the entrepreneurs may choose to give a donation of their profits in order to fund some specific programs in society. They are also known to make partnerships with the government, existing charities or target communities in order all of which are ways in which the society can benefit from them.

Every investor in this area has the ultimate aim of addressing a certain specific need in the society. Such needs may include provision of education, improvement of crop yields, poverty level reduction, improvement of water quality, creation of adequate health facilities, elimination of environmental threats, and addressing societal inequalities based on gender, race and age among others. They can start from their own society or region, but with a more global coverage in mind.

For the ventures that are to be involved in production of goods, locating the right manufacturers is more often than not, quite difficult. Faced by the entrepreneurs as they bargain their hunt to find the most affordable one in accordance to their financial capabilities. However coming up with the cash to meet the minimum order is usually a problem to the entrepreneurs.

The structure of these kind of ventures is such that it does not promote innovation and risk taking. More specifically, this form of investment is likely to suffer from financial constraints thus many prospective investors find themselves with limited room for risk taking. As is the case for every other sector, there is a need to encourage experimentation and risk taking without which the likelihood of failure is increased many times over.

Therefore, the entrepreneur puts together commerce and social issues, in such a way that this combination has the capability of improving the lives of the people that are connected to the venture. Their success is not only measured in terms of the profits they have made, but it is hugely based on the ability to improve the lives of people. It involves the identification and attempts to solve a variety of societal problems.




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