Social Business
Overview
What is a 'social business'? There are many definitions none of which strike me as entirely satisfactory. In practice, social business is a form of organisation that is self-sufficient financially (ie it earns money and pays its way) whilst dedicated to achieving social good, cultural development and / or environmental sustainability - preferably all three!
The prompt to my life-long exploration of this kind of organisational model - one that is based on a commitment to a more sustainable, inclusive and integrated approach to living and working - was, I guess, frustration with the alternatives. Both 'business', with its primary focus on financial gain, and 'charity', with its tendency to breed dependence, seemed to me in their entirely different ways to be one-sided and unsatisfying. But both also had elements that were appealing - business by creating goods and services, innovation and growth and charitable ventures in their focus on people's wellbeing, personal development and environmental stewardship.
Others have developed far further in their thinking about social business, my engagement to date has been largely experimental and, more recently, somewhat peripheral. But it matters a lot to me, and I do see it as a modest movement with a big message. I believe that social business has a really huge potential for adoption worldwide as other organisational structures break down or prove unsatisfying or damaging.
Of course, some of the most exciting social enterprises and social entrepreneurship have arisen out of the most challenging situations. For example, in Bangladesh - one of the world's poorest countries and one of the most vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change - there is the remarkable Grameen Bank that has led the world in developing micro-credit and gone far beyond that in creating a range of self-sufficient social businesses run for the poor, by the poor.
If we create the right environment, social business entrepreneurs can use market mechanisms to significant effect and can turn the market into an exciting place for fighting social battles in ever more innovative and effective ways. Let us get serious now about social business entrepreneurs. They can brighten up this gloomy world for us all.
Muhammad Yunus Director, Grameen Bank
Social Experiments
- The influence of India
As stated elsewhere my parents had a deep love of India - where they spent 2 years working with Quakers in West Bengal in the late 1940's. I feel as if I was fed on Ghandian thought and practice along with my mother's milk - so strongly had they adopted his philosophy and life-style at the time of my birth. But it wasn't only Ghandi who influenced them, but that great genius Rabindranath Tagore - poet, artist, storyteller, musician and social reformer.
Under these influences, it has just seemed to me to be natural to aspire to building much more conscious and creative models for a just and healthy society. In fact, I guess I am still quite surprised that others don't have this aspiration!
One of the connections between my current work and my life-long interest in communities has been the opportunity to connect with India direct (I currently carry responsibility for the organisation's work in that region). India continues to inspire with its social experiments - one of my current favourites is The Barefoot College where women from poor communities in Rajasthan are trained as solar engineers and life in their villages is transformed by the generation of energy from the sun, recycling whatever can be recycled and water harvesting.
- Alternatives to custody
One of my first jobs was to create a care programme for juvenile offenders - part of a new approach to non-custodial sentences. I was ridiculously young and inexperienced to be heading up this project, but I had got the job, I believe, because of my commitment to a community-based approach. By this, I meant creating a small-scale, rural community that the young people would join on a regular basis (one weekend a month over two years, was the most common arrangement).
The young people were offered the experience of living in a small-scale version of society where cause and effect was obvious, where building strong and trusting relationships mattered and where the working of the whole genuinely depended on each person playing an important part.
It was extraordinary to watch what happened - and quite a challenge to convince the sceptical social workers that their charges were demonstrating such completely different behaviour and characteristics. Youngsters, staying with us because they had been convicted of theft or arson or assault: collecting chickens eggs and carrying them carefully to the kitchen so they wouldn't break; telling each other bed-time stories because the youngest were afraid of the dark; getting up on time to be ready for work and being too busy to watch TV or just sitting and talking over meals to each other and to adults who were interested in what they had to say.
- Building inclusive communities
A later project, undertaken under the auspices of a housing co-operative in London, was to be part of an experiment in urban community living. In this case, a purpose-built, 14-bedroom house in which lived a rich mix of people - adults and children - some with obvious special needs (learning disability, history of mental illness) some with less obvious needs (emotional fragility, rootless-ness) and some with few discernible needs (beyond the need to live beyond the limitations of a nuclear family).
This project baffled those who funded it since it was not a housing scheme with a single discernible purpose and since there were no paid residential staff. But fund it they did, in those days there was enough money allocated to social housing for slightly mad ideas to be given a chance to be taken seriously. It baffled the architects because we insisted on spending huge sums on soundproofing and resisted to the end the idea of having a dishwasher. Our arguments were that on the one hand in a household where residents had very different sleeping patterns, it was vital that everyone could get a quiet night's sleep and on the other hand, washing dishes was something that all residents could join in with and would rapidly become an important social activity binding the residents together.
Nearly 20 years later, this house is still going strong. Some residents have been there the whole time - giving the place stability and a continued sense of purpose - others have moved through, their lives indelibly changed and, in many cases, with a lasting sense of gratitude for a place that suited their needs so well at a particular time.
- Three Key Questions
There are three questions that consistently run through these social experiments:
- Is it possible to create projects and situations that are appropriate to what is really needed? Can one's imagination rise above the conventional ways of living and working to co-create new ways that are more satisfying and bigger in their capacity to be inclusive?
- Is it possible to create truly inter-dependent models where individuality can flourish without being entirely self-centred and where one's sense of relatedness is experienced as strength not weakness?
- Is it possible to build life-styles and working arrangements that - whilst they may transmute into new forms and evolve in unexpected ways - have strong enough foundations to be sustainable without over-reliance on one or two charismatic personalities?
Trigonos
In 1996, three of us started a new 'social business'. Building on our long-standing friendship, many conversations about doing something different and a shared idea about the integrated nature of social, economic and environmental development, we embarked on the project. We had to find a property, persuade others (family, friends and a bank) to lend us the purchase price and work out how to start putting our idea into action.
It was, for us, a big venture… and we were pretty daunted. But a surprising number of aspects simply fell into place and quite quickly it just became unstoppable. We came to recognise and cherish the aptness of Goethe's adage 'The minute you take the first step, then providence moves too'. Shortly after we had registered the name 'Trigonos' as a company limited by guarantee, someone told someone else who told us that a residential arts centre set in 18 acres of land on the edge of an unspoilt lake and with an uninterrupted view of Snowdon had recently gone bankrupt and was up for sale. We went to see it and we all knew without needing any discussion that it was right, even though it was 3 times the size of anything we had viewed till then and even though we had no way of knowing how we would raise the much higher price than we had anticipated.
From the project's first year until now, some 12 years later, Trigonos has earned enough income each year to invest further in the land and the buildings and in developing the site as a model of sustainability - most recently by installing a large wood chop generated boiler to cut exorbitant gas and oil costs. It has found its place in the locality, supplying organic vegetables, offering a venue for community celebrations, employing 15+ people and providing useful voluntary activity for youngsters (and the not so young) finding it hard to get paid work. In the past year, Trigonos has won awards for 'Most Sustainable Business' and for 'Green Tourism' in North Wales.
It has required dedicated and relentless work, but is deeply satisfying. And our efforts are confirmed and rewarded by the enthusiasm of our colleagues and well-wishers and, above all, by the numbers of groups and individuals who return again and again to Trigonos as a place to hold their courses, bring their families or provide a setting where they can simply be themselves.
The Goethe quote above, starts with an inspiring challenge: 'Whatever you think you can do, do it' we hope that Trigonos has inspired others to break a mould and to just 'have a go' at doing things differently.
Tools and Technologies
Section under development