Can I echo this? We started a $1.7 million technology center in Ghana exclusively with philanthropic/social motivation, but quickly moved from a 'non-profit' model to a for-profit private sector investment. There are all sorts of benefits positioning yourself in the private sector, from attracting certain personnel, investors, strategic partners as well as having a disciplined financial environment to operate within.
The problem is that I think we lack more models of this hybrid social/profitable venture. There's no easy way to explain (or replicate!) our motivations and people tend to be extremely suspicious when you say that you seek a social return over and above a financial one (this is slightly different to starting a business that also has 'social' goals). I'd like to argue that a good social objective (actually delivering something people want or need) may even be better crafted if left (to varying degrees) to the marketplace itself to vote by buying the services themselves (affordability is key here, and various assistance can help target and serve under-served communities... InfoDev is about to leverage our organization to incubate some SMEs). Anyway, not being purely 'social' or purely 'profitable' has left our model of investment somewhere in the middle and I think there's no language for us to have a comfortable conversation. I also have encountered some NGOs that don't want to be involved in our programs to discuss or promote ICT4D because there's a profit element in our organization. That's really frustrating. I don't quite know whether the development world has really gotten to the point where they can have an honest discussion about leveraging the private sector to deliver services. I hear lots of talk about this, and some 'transformative' period at the World Bank, but they still seem to be estranged partners unwilling to have constructive dialogue to truly co-operate. I think people should be able to make profits out of delivering socially beneficial services. But what words do we use, how do we classify this, how can we assess motives and reward in a more modern vernacular. What does 'social' mean anyway? And I also think that in many developing communities there is a donation-dependency syndrome, where gifts are the model people are comfortable with, attracted to, and receives the social recognition in the media. Clearly, there's been a historical context where outside intervention merits a decent amount of suspicion with regard to motives. But I just hope that participants on this list, and working in this area, can recognize a variety of models for development that harness the private sector and social entrepreneurship. I think it may be a much quicker, more efficient, and more responsive model than traditional development organizations that are focused on next year's board meeting to secure the next round of funding. Mark Davies BusyInternet Ghana www.busyinternet.com On Tuesday, November 9, 2004, Al Hammond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sam Lanfranco makes some nice points about profitability as an indicator > and driving force, even for "non-profit" or socially-motivated projects. > I'd like to turn the point around and argue that being profitable, or > the profit motive, is not a good basis for judging the social motivation > or social potential of an activity. In effect, I'd like to challenge the > more-or-less automatic assumption, which I see expressed in many parts > of the NGO and development communities, that a for-profit activity > cannot also have a socially beneficial goal. Of course, many businesses > have no social motivation. However, in our research, we have found that > many of the successful companies in BOP markets have an explicit social > metric or goal as well as a business goal. This is true in large > companies as well as in entrepreneurial start-ups. > > I agree that profitability is, in several senses, an important indicator > for many activities--and I think that the profit motive does not > disqualify an entity from also having a social motive. ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
