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At the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative there was a great deal of discussion about how people with good intentions and good bank balances can contribute to solving social ills. In the past, of course, individuals and organizations have made donations to non profits doing good work. In recent years there has been much excitement about creating business enterprises that can achieve social goals. At the Clinton meeting two types of such enterprises were explored...
Double Bottom Line Enterprises. Most of the conversation at the meeting focused on businesses that can generate a profit while also having a positive social impact. The most famous example of this is micro-financing. This concept, in which an organization loans tiny amounts of money to poor people so they can start their own businesses. The founder of this concept, Muhammad Yunus, won a Nobel Prize for inventing this concept when he made loans averaging 60 cents to 42 women in Bangladesh. Thirty-three years later, his organization, the Grameen Bank, has made loans totaling $8 billion to the poor of Bangladesh. So now investment groups are springing up all over the place raising hundreds of millions to invest in other double bottom line businesses. The problem is that, outside of more micro-finance ventures and an occasional micro-insurance enterprise, there is a paucity of such businesses being created. Note: One would think that these investors should take a close look at early childhood education.
Social Businesses. At the Clinton meeting, Yunus campaigned for the concept of social businesses — businesses whose only bottom line is social impact. These would be run like businesses in that they would need to be operationally self-supporting. But their products would benefit people in need and/or the environment. Yunus even proposed a "social stock market" where the impacts of these organizations could be showcased and where people could find and fund such operations. To learn more about this, read Yunus' inspiring book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.
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