Mechai Viravaidya didn’t start out as a social entrepreneur. He began as a businessman with a freshly granted MBA who realized his country’s situation–Thailand–would never grow economically if its population explosion couldn’t be tamed. Mechai’s understanding that economic development was ultimately tied to population control led him to create the Population Community Development Association (ironically, […]
Tag Archives: social enterprise
How Turning His Non-profit Into a Profitable Company Helped His Social Mission–with Aseem Das
If you want the real story from a successful for-profit social entrepreneur, click the player to listen to Aseem Das talk about founding and transforming World Centric. Prefer MP3? Right-click and download. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] World Centric evolved from a nonprofit to a nonprofit with a revenue-earning component to a for-profit […]
A Social Business Venture Can Make You an Iconoclast, But You’ll Have To Do a Lot of Balancing
A social business venture packs a lot of punch. If you care strongly about mission and impact but don’t want to solicit donors and institutional funding, it might be the right model for your work. By definition, this type of enterprise generates profits, which are reinvested into the business to advance the cause and sustain […]
What Is a Social Business Venture and Is It Right For You?
I’m refocusing on the crux of cause capitalism: building a business to drive social (or environmental) change because I believe that the force of capitalism can be used to solve many of the problems we face and because it’s in companies’ best business interest to do so. I see cause capitalism is a continuum with […]
How Vittana Is Using Micro-lending To Help Students Triple Their Earning Power–with Kushal Chakrabarti
Click the player to listen to our conversation. Prefer MP3? Right-click and download. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] After he left Amazon (“one of the hardest, scariest and best decisions” he’s made in his life) Kushal Chakrabarti knew he would start a company. He’d done well at Amazon, helping to improve its product […]
If Businesses Can’t BOGO and NGOs Are Crushing Entrepreneurship, Where Does That Leave Us?
If you caught my poll earlier this week asking what areas you find meaningful in the cosmos of business and social responsibility, you know that I’ve been thinking hard about how to make the biggest impact. On one hand, there’s the CSR approach, which I’ll generalize as reaching more people but having less direct impact […]
How Catchafire Is Changing the Way You Volunteer–with Rachael Chong
Click the player to listen to our conversation or right-click and save for the MP3. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Rachael Chong thought it was inevitable that someone would create a platform that matched professionals to skills-based volunteer opportunities. As an investment banker, she realized there were better better ways for her to […]
Want to Change the World? Read This First
I’ve read a string of great books lately, parts of which occasionally flash into my consciousness, but none has made the same impression as Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. It’s the self-told story of John Wood’s departure from Microsoft to create libraries at first, then classrooms, then schools and finally scholarships in Southeast Asia and […]
Two Questions You Need To Answer Before Choosing a Structure For Your Social Enterprise–with Brian Howe
How much control of your company are you willing to give up in exchange for funds? is a question that all investment-seeking entrepreneurs need to answer. Social entrepreneurs are confronted with another key question that impacts how they want to set legally establish their organization: How important is profit versus mission? With these two questions […]
Stay Out Of The Hallway and Other Tips From a Serial Conference-goer
We’ve heard from entrepreneurs before on this blog about the importance of building a network that can support and guide your social enterprise. While he was developing Energy Inside, Veer Gidwaney “networked pretty aggressively over a couple of years,” and Teju Ravilochan who co-founded the Unreasonable Institute “went to where the action was.” Conferences can […]
I'm Olivia Khalili. I created Cause Capitalism to show you how to grow your business by incorporating a social mission. I've worked extensively with both nonprofits and for-profits. I found that when you combine the two, you grow your profits, impassion all your stakeholders and do good in the world. Read more.
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