So you’re a Social Entrepreneur…

…that’s great. But, before you book that ticket to the Skoll World Forum with a stack of business cards, investment briefs, and that gleam of hope in your eyes, let’s talk about what it means to really be a social entrepreneur.

It’s not fashionable, it’s bloody hard work

I’ve met a number of people that call themselves Social Entrepreneurs. It’s a great title. It’s an inspirational title. Yet, it’s also a title that you need to earn. Before the days of Social Entrepreneurship as a definitive field, you got two kinds of entrepreneurs: those that identified gaps in markets and created goods or services to service these gaps, the actual entrepreneur, and those who sat in their garage toiling away hours at night trying to get their super-soaker mop in local stores, the ones that called themselves entrepreneurs.

Social entrepreneurship suffers the same duality; those that call themselves social entrepreneurs, and those that really are entrepreneurial in their social interventions. Successful social entrepreneurs earn their titles. They’re the ones that are doing everything in their power to get their business operationally sound, and their impact measurable and provable. Most of them don’t have the luxury of attending every investment clinic, joining the next incubation programme, or attending the next global innovation summit, because they’re too busy making things work with very, very few resources. They only call themselves social entrepreneurs when they see things working. And so do I.

It’s nobody’s fault (although I think there are many stakeholders that have attributed to this problem); social entrepreneurship is very attractive for newcomers for various reasons, not least of it being the emotional reward for operating in this space. We’re always celebrating social entrepreneurship at any opportunity we get, we need to keep doing this. However, sometimes our celebrations could be a little premature. Perhaps it is because we are excited for all the activity; but still it’s difficult to find successful, high-impact, and financially sustainable social enterprises. In fact, those that are successful often go entirely uncelebrated and unnoticed because they don’t even call themselves social enterprises. They are the ones for whom achievement is more important than awards and recognition.

Want to meet a real social entrepreneur? Go to the ground

In South Africa our social entrepreneurship sector is guilty of being too top-heavy. The space developed quickly since it started taking hold in the early-2000’s. Incubation hubs, mentorship and acceleration programmes, investment funds, academic studies, and training programmes sprang up, seemingly overnight, to service a market segment that was still infantile. At most there were two or three handfuls of ‘social entrepreneurs’ for these services to help, and few of them could pay for the services. Even today, most funding to social enterprise support services are either through philanthropic giving, or subsidised by commercial activities on the part of the support organisation; and a lot of the assistance ends up building a good story for donors, not building solid enterprises that change things.

The entrepreneurs that really need the help of these support services are hard to find. This is for a number of reasons, including their lack of access to technology, a lack of free-time for self improvement, and more. Basically, they don’t have the time or resources to find support, networks, or finance. They’re just too busy making their enterprise work. They’re continually innovating their products and models because they have to; necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. Take almost any of the fresh, new grassroots entrepreneurs and you will see a certain degree of social entrepreneurial principle being applied. These are the entrepreneurs for whom failure often isn’t an option, they don’t have the luxurious safety nets that wealthier, ‘call themselves entrepreneurs’, entrepreneurs have.

One innovation a business does not make

Let’s get something straight here. If your social enterprise won’t work as a business, it’s probably not going to work, period. The business of your social enterprise is its heart-beat. For your social enterprise to be successful, you have to have a sound, strategic means of generating reliable income to finance your social interventions. If you don’t have that, you will suffer the same pitfalls of unpredictable, traditional, philanthropic giving. You’ll be on the receiving end of the same capital difficulties that charities suffer, and not having a feasible solution defeats the purpose of being enterprising. So be enterprising, make that business plan solid.

This is not to say your social interventions aren’t as important as your income strategy is; on the contrary, it’s a given that your interventions should be sound. As much as it is necessary to earn income through some market activity (the enterprise component), it’s just as important to have solid evidence of your impact (the social component). Whether you are sincere in your efforts or not, if your your enterprise isn’t proving its value proposition it’s is just applying a form of greenwashing.

This is what makes social entrepreneurship such hard work. It’s not as simple as purchase inputs, process, sell, count money. You have to make sure that the enterprise is solid, that it can adapt to changing markets and isn’t simply a ‘niche’ product or service that will die off in the next few months. Equally the social interventions also have to be measurable, driven by outcomes rather than processes, and ideally replicable.

So what the hell now? Is there really no steak to follow the sizzle?

Don’t get too disparaged yet! The point of this is not to make you feel inferior or scare off anyone wanting to be a social entrepreneur, but it is necessary to be aware of what it takes. Make sure you have a balance, and if you don’t know how to do it then get in touch with people that do. Entrepreneurs are expected to know and do everything themselves, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get help in. Just make sure the help you’re getting is the help you need; don’t expect an impact measurement specialist to help you with your income strategy. Think of yourself as a glorified project manager seeking the right resources to tackle the right problems. Most importantly though, keep at it. If it didn’t work the first time, go back and find out what didn’t work. Don’t hide your failures, engage with them, share them, and learn from them.