Jan 6, 2022

Understanding the Tricky Balance When Launching Social Startups

At a time when our world is facing unprecedented challenges, from climate change to political polarization to a global pandemic, entrepreneurs and nongovernmental organization (NGO) leaders cannot afford to operate in silos. Entrepreneurs possess resourcefulness, creativity, and initiative; heads of nonprofit organizations are equipped with depth of knowledge, purpose, and the patient determination that comes with that purpose. Together, these partners can turbocharge impact if they properly calibrate their respective contributions to create new social enterprises.

A social enterprise can be a business with a social mission or a civic effort with an entrepreneurial culture and instincts. When a social enterprise is structured as a business, it can channel market forces to advance the social good while building a self-sustaining enterprise. When a social enterprise is structured as a nonprofit organization, its funding engine relies on donations instead of a commercial stream of income; but it moves more swiftly, acts more resourcefully, and may have a more innovative change model than does a traditional NGO.

The healthy tension between business entrepreneurs and NGO leaders who partner to create new organizations is important to navigate with balance…

Read the full article on Inc.

NGO          social entrepreneurship

More from Daniel

You can’t make big ESG commitments while failing at the basics of kindness

,

Ultimately, what we achieve as corporate leaders, even in the form of social impact, must work hand in hand with how we go about achieving it. How we act along our journeys is at least as important as–if not more so than–the destination. For example, if we are donating a portion of profits to at-need communities, but not being open-minded, respectful, and honest in how we lead in the workplace, we risk undermining our larger goals by contributing to a disrespectful, intolerant, or unethical culture. In fact, a company with no stated social mission that is modeling positive values like integrity and respect may be doing more good for our world than one with a big ESG commitment failing at the basics of kindness.

read more

The Media Is Over-Covering Divisiveness. It’s Going to Destroy Us

,

In 2000, President Clinton hosted a peace conference at Camp David that gave many hope for peace in Gaza; but a few months later, the Second Intifada, a major Palestinian uprising against Israel, began. Having been working in the region for decades to found and build PeaceWorks, a company that used market forces to foster peace between neighbors in the Middle East, I was confused and depressed by the news. On Western television, I saw pictures of ruthless violence and terrorism from Palestinians, giving me the impression, at least initially, that the moderates I knew had succumbed to extreme ways. But when I went to talk to my Palestinian friends, and they showed me what they were seeing on the television, I was shocked:. Their news programs depicted all Israelis as merciless killers.

On both sides of the conflict, the news media seemed like it exclusively published stories portraying the worst of the other side, characterizing all Palestinians or Israelis as hateful enemies. It turned out that my friends hadn’t changed at all; they just weren’t the ones the media were showing. And in portraying things falsely in such a negative light, the media fed the conflict rather than helping resolve it.

We Americans are now facing this same problem, with potentially devastating repercussions for our democracy and our ability to lead the free world.

read more