Social Enterprise Movement

Nonprofit organizations across are awakening to the possibility of a different future. Traditionally dependent on grants and public subsidies, these organizations are increasingly aware of the role earned income can play in diversifying revenue sources and improving sustainability.

From those in the early exploratory stages to those whose social enterprises have grown into multi-million dollar ventures, the community of enterprising nonprofits covers the spectrum of nonprofit missions.

At Axion Business Solutions’ Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Grants, Research and Development We:

• Recognize social enterprise as a distinct way of doing business that seeks to meet social and environmental needs rather than maximizing shareholder value.
• Recognize that for-profit organizations and industry stand to benefit from better integration with the community through social enterprise.
• Recognize and support the work of non-charitable social enterprises delivering substantial public benefit.
• Share knowledge that helps individuals and organizations create social value in the nonprofit, private, and public sectors.
• Help our clients create social value in the world is through leadership in social enterprise as managers and board members of nonprofits and as corporate leaders engaging their businesses in social purpose activities.
• Help our clients rise beyond the traditional view of nonprofit organizations and corporations as largely dichotomous, focusing instead on the belief that these organizations individually and collaboratively can generate significant social value.
• Help both our not-for-profit and for-profit clients engage in a way that recognizes that the social sector as a crucial and strategically important for businesses in order to realize their private goals and their societal role.

Nonprofit Sector: A key sector of the economy

The nonprofit sector comprises 7 percent of U.S. gross domestic product—a number that grows even larger when health care and public education are included. There are more than a million nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and their inception rate exceeds that of private businesses. They employ approximately 8.6 million people and mobilize another 7.2 million unpaid volunteers, which together constitute 14 percent of the labor force. Worldwide, the sector makes up almost 5 percent of the GDP.

The philanthropic capital markets are also significant. Charitable giving by individuals, foundations, and corporations was over $240 billion in the U.S. in 2002. Over the next fifty years there will be an estimated six trillion dollars of intergenerational wealth transfer that will be flowing into this sector. Additionally, most corporations are involved with social sector issues and nonprofit organizations, and do not function in isolation from the society around them.

The social enterprise sector is of great economic, social, and political significance. It also poses important and distinctive management challenges.