Missed the Social Enterprise World Forum? Here are five key insights

This story is in partnership with Common Good Solutions.

“For some people, it may be a turn of words to put together ‘social’ and ‘enterprise’ in the same phrase — blending social values into the design, delivery, and outcomes of the business, but that’s our purpose,” said David LePage, board member of the Social Enterprise World Forum at the forum’s opening ceremony. 

“We use a business model that’s not about economic transactions, but about business as a tool for community transformation,” he said, ushering in two days of panels and workshops for organizations to connect around the topic of using business for social good. 

Canada hosted this year’s Social Enterprise World Forum, with Common Good Solutions broadcasting the forum from Nova Scotia in late September, shining a light on social enterprise in Atlantic Canada. 

More than 3000 participants from nearly 90 countries convened for the online summit to share lessons on issues including climate change, social finance, and Indigenous visions for social entrepreneurship. 

If you missed it, here are five key takeaways from the event:

While systems are often designed to be inaccessible, working within them is important.

Lindell Smith, who was elected to Halifax city council in 2006, making him the first Black councillor in 16 years, spoke about the importance of working within public sector systems despite the inherit struggles that come with this. 

“Our systems were not built for folks like us [people of colour] to challenge them,” he said. “[What’s important is] understanding the system itself and operating with the system. That was one of the things I wanted to do by being elected… understand the system so I can challenge it and also be able to make those changes within it.”

Smith went on to say that he has faced numerous challenges while pushing for social change as a councillor. “That’s all part of trying to work within a system that wasn’t really built for me to be part of. But as we are seeing across the world, more and more people who we don’t see within leadership roles, are beginning to take on those roles, so it’s changing slowly — and it has to.”

In Brazil, social entrepreneur Arthur Lima, is similarly working within the country’s health care system to close the gap on racial disparities. While Afro-Brazilians make up 56 percent of Brazil’s population, they “suffer the most” when it comes to accessing health services and are more likely to die from preventable diseases such as diabetes, Lima said. 

According to Lima, while conversations on racism in the health field are difficult to have, they are necessary. “I understand the importance of my presence in some of these spaces [intersection of technology and health] because it’s like opening doors,” he said. Lima is hopeful that he will be “the last one of [his] generation” to encounter these challenges, as he works to dismantle race-related barriers in the health sector

Think of COVID-19 as a dress rehearsal for the climate change crisis — and support the organizations on the frontlines.

Hina West, who leads World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)’s social enterprise work on climate change, which the organization calls Nature Pays, supports 200 enterprises in 50 countries that focus on social, economic, and environmental return. These small, locally-led businesses — many of whom are led by Indigenous groups, oceanographers, and scientists — are typically early stage ventures working to prevent or respond to climate change. 

“Covid can be seen as a dress rehearsal for the full impact of climate change, and we can move quickly when we need to. It’s proven,” West said. “The globe has moved quickly when we have had a major shock on us, so we can use this ‘build back better’ language…. [to] take action and make real change.”

West said these grassroots organizations who are at the “frontlines of the full impact of climate change” need to be better supported, adding that the world needs to view the climate emergency as just as pressing as the coronavirus pandemic. 

Based in Canada, Taking Root works globally to enable local communities to earn a livelihood from growing trees, which contributes to reforestation and mitigates climate change. Kahlil Baker, the executive director said that typically, organizations approach funders to ask what they can fund, instead of telling funders what they need funding for — but that this sequence should be reversed.

“That shift in thinking is so fundamental because then we can move away from a top-down approach,” Baker said, which would enable locally-led climate change initiatives to acquire much-needed funds.  

Take a people-centred approach to employment.

Some social enterprises use hiring as a means of social impact. In Winnipeg, BuiltINC is a non-profit contractor and a training program for people who face barriers to employment, such as those without a high school education or formal work experience, or people who’ve had contact with the criminal justice system or are struggling with addictions. 

According to Sean Hogan, the social enterprise manager at BuildINC, the most important skills when considering a new hire are: whether they are teachable, have a good attitude and can show up for work. 

“To get to those three things, it’s usually dealing with childhood trauma, generational trauma, understanding expectations of workplace culture. People are coming with significant baggage and trauma that needs to be dealt with [in order to] be successful in the labour market,” he said. 

BuiltINC has an Indigenous elder on staff who has a background in social work and counselling, and is accessible to those in the employment program. 

“Every problem has a solution, but the problem isn’t what you think it is,” Hogan said, explaining that employers should get to the root of the problem. For example, he said if an employee is repeatedly showing up to work late, this may be a “symptom” of a more serious problem they are facing, like struggling with substance abuse or facing houselessness. 

By emphasizing the soft skills needed in the workforce and being compassionate in their approach with employees, Hogan says companies can reduce turnover and more importantly, support their employees to create a win-win situation. 

Use storytelling to share your impact.

Amid buzzwords in the social impact sector, being able to simplify one’s work and explain it in layperson’s terms is essential. 

Tori Williamson, from Buy Social Canada — which works to help organizations purchase goods and services in a way that maximizes economic, environmental and social impacts on communities — said that social procurement can seem complicated for the public, so it’s up to organizations who do this work to truly communicate how it makes a difference.

“In Canada, we do have the barrier that [few] people know what a social enterprise is… So, how do you explain that? How do you explain your social value in a way that is going to inspire a buyer to work with you?” she said. 

“Storytelling — explaining impact — is something that social enterprises need to do really well.” 

Earlier this year, Williamson’s team was enthusiastic to bring more companies on board to commit to social procurement but “realized organizations weren’t there yet — they need to learn more about social procurement, understand it and take baby steps to see that it’s possible.” 

In response, rather than immediately selling organizations on the concept of social procurement, Buy Social Canada created a DIY option for organizations to select various activities from workshops to a supply chain audit. This helped break down the learning process of what social procurement is and show people how their organizations could achieve it, and what impact it would ultimately make in their community. 

Consider unconventional business models to address social finance gaps.

When it comes to funding businesses and entrepreneurs, marginalized groups, such as women and people of colour, disproportionately struggle to secure financing. To address these social finance gaps, Carly Mohamed, a board member at First Australians Capital, says funders need to think outside the box on how to provide funding to and otherwise support the entrepreneurs they’re backing. 

She says the firm’s mandate of providing low-interest loans to Indigenous businesses and entrepreneurs is connected to the history of colonization in Australia. “The reason we’re here to provide that gap in finance is all about the lack of intergenerational wealth…Indigenous communities have and that largely stems back to land being stolen and not being able to enjoy profit or ownership of land.”

As a result, she said Indigeous people may face barriers such as not knowing a guarantor to help them secure a loan. To combat that, First Australians Capital provides loans as well as business education to entrepreneurs to fill a gap of “business capability” among those who have business ideas but need skills training and education to start or operate a business. 

By embracing unconventional financing models, organizations can level the playing field when it comes to providing capital to founders, which in turn, can help create generational wealth for historically disenfranchised groups.

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