The Benefits of Finding Social Enterprise Equilibrium

Cash and Change

Abstract

Three quarters of a typical nonprofit’s budget is spent on programming, easily making programming its largest cost center. It’s difficult, but a nonprofit operating a social enterprise can change the equation where you have a business that is bottom lining cash to fund the nonprofit and creating training opportunities to participants. Embedding program characteristics into a profitable business takes some art and science to find the space where the social enterprise can maximize its mission and profits. While finding the right balance is a win for the nonprofit as the business’s market share grows, it can have implications on for profit competitors who may push down their staff’s wages or it may steal business from minority or woman owned companies, thus creating unwanted tension.