“How can we continue to do good as we grow?”
This question concerns many organizations that want to do good, especially so-called social enterprises.
A core challenge for them is scaling their impact while maintaining their mission.
From my conversations, I know that social enterprises are under pressure to prioritize profitability over social or environmental impact.
Finding the balance between growth and maintaining their mission can be difficult, and quite a few social enterprises struggle with this.
Two aspects to address this challenge
1. Metrics
Social enterprises would do well to create clear metrics to measure their social or environmental impact and hold themselves accountable to those metrics. This helps them stay focused on their mission even as they grow.
2. Governance structure
Establishing a governance structure that prioritizes the social or environmental mission can also be helpful. For example, a social enterprise board may be established to ensure that decisions are made with the mission in mind or a mission lock may be established to prevent sales of the company or changes to its mission.
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These two points are worth thinking about so that social enterprises can continue to grow and increase their positive impact on our digitally connected world.
