All in a good cause
Businesses doing good
Profit and charity aren’t two words usually associated with one another, but a growing number of Kiwi entrepreneurs are mixing business with karma to create social change.
Think Eat My Lunch, Cook’s Night Off, Frank stationary, Stories Espresso, and Pomegranate Kitchen; businesses that want to succeed, but also drive innovation.
The A¯ kina Foundation has seen a significant rise in the number of people seeking its support to grow their social enterprises.
’’Social enterprise isn’t a new thing,’’ said the foundation’s chief executive Alex Hannant. ‘‘What we’re seeing now is something that’s been part of the fabric of our society and economy, but not very visible.’’ But that’s about to change. A government cross-agency working group established in December last year in response to the report: Social Enterprise and Social Finance: A Path to Growth, wants to pull down the barriers between welfare and profitable business.
Massey business school executive director Jeff Stangl was on the committee, and said New Zealand needed to build its infrastructure to grow social enterprise and social finance.
‘‘The infrastructure and legislation isn’t there yet. You’ve got amazing thing happening in that space already, but some businesses lack scalability to get enterprises investment-ready,’’ he said.
‘‘There’s a rising social conscience, and on the back of limited government funding resources for welfare, there’s more of a need for the private sector to lend a hand.
Founder of social enterprise Cook’s Night Off Suzanne Cannell, said social enterprises were criticised in the beginning for being commercially orientated.
‘‘What they really missed though in that criticism, is that people are going to buy the products anyway, so buying through a social enterprise is a form of activism,’’ she said.
‘‘Nearly all social enterprises are for-profit and it’s a way to combine a social element into the DNA of your business. For too long there’s been this divide between businesses being a faceless separate entity. A business is made up of people, and that’s too often forgotten.’’
But establishing a profitable model for a social enterprise isn’t easy, and Hannant wants government support to shift up a gear.
‘‘Although social enterprise has been here for a long time it’s very unsupported and undeserved,’’ he said. ’’The government is interested but they’re only starting to recognise it.
Founder of Eat My Lunch Lisa King said the concept that a business can make money and do good at the same time was taking off in New Zealand.
‘‘I think when we first started 18 months ago, the concept of businesses that emerge with a charity model that’s still commercially viable was a new concept for a lot of people,’’ she said.
‘‘But people have seen how Eat My Lunch works and embraced it.
‘‘People aren’t just going to hand over money into a big black hole anymore,’’ she said.
The Council for International Development found New Zealanders’ donations to non-government organisations and charities had fallen 15 percent in the past 10 years. Donations to charities and NGOs dropped from $120 million in 2005 to $102.4 million in 2015.
‘‘It’s not that the public have stopped giving,’’ Pagani said. ‘‘They’re more focused on impact and wanting to see results,’’ said the council’s director Josie Pagani.
‘We’re dramatically behind the likes of Australia, England, Scotland, and even America. We’ve got a lot of room to grow.’ Massey business school executive director Jeff Stangl.