notes from 42nd year of cataloguing social enterprises and microfranchises

[chris macrae]

This post will aim to build on  the following questions as well as maintain an updating 9 minute audio on each- how to catalogue social enterprises; how to identify meta-connectors of social enterprises such as bangladesh's 2 main pro-poor banking systems ; what change processes may most help youth fast track more social enterprises or replicate good enough ones to collaborate with? other approaches eg is a region best off with a hi-trust industry leader who may both help invest in some social entreprises and will have the most triusted contacts in searching out others ......................................

Language problems- my family has been connected with entrepreneurial and open educational searches for pro-youth business and social models since 1972. references:  10 characteristics bottom-up ngos develop whenever market opportuni... ; update of search for top100 microfranchsises   As alumni of Keynes, we do not believe economics is capable of sustaining futures that worldwide youth need most unless such a search is publicly celebrated everywhere and as linkiin the young as early and cross-culturally possible in schools. You may  may not agree with why and how we helped The Economist coin ENTREPREURIAL REVOLUTION (1976) to linkiin all such efforts towards leaders (www.wholeplanet.tv ) investing in the early 21st centiury as worldwide youth's most productive and heroic time. However in this thread we have tried to make the  cataloguing notes independent of any of our favorite approaches . We welcome questions that improve on this. Let;s note straight away, in spite of personal project research in 40 countries,   I am lingiusitocally limeited to English language searches and that is actually the bias I fear most. [e-mail] Norman Macrae Youth Foundation Back in 1972, The Economist's first response to seeimg young eole experiment with early digtal networks was to invite the world to join the genre of entrepreneurial revolution - what organiiational models would need to replace the 20th century's biggest if the net generation was to be free to work with collaboration technologies and to scale global networking impacts as large as natures. By 1984 my dad's book was calling for identification of 30000 microfranchises to generate 3 billion community-sustaining jobs. A microfranchise replicates a service franchise but in such a way that most of the value produced stays in the community where the service was interacted so that youth and others in the community are empowered / mobilized with as much open knowhow as can make their service of the microfranchise self-sufficient in all but the most expert components required.

how to catalogue social enterprises:

we recommend cataloguers - index models so that impacts of models of the same type can be understood. The next post shows the list we use (comments welcome)

we believe everyone can be a job creating entrepreneur but this interacts with how market value chains and open knowledge systems are designed- for example my father's search for 30000 intercommunity replicable franchises assumes that these were served and mobilised by hard-working, community-trusted and passionately dedicated people but not necessarily risk-takers- to say that such people need to take financial risks in serving life-critical needs (especially childrens) is to say that the value chain design operating in that nation or place is not yet community-sustainable

[chris macrae]

OUR MODEL INDEX FOR 42nd year of CATALOGUING SOCIAL ENTERPRISES

 

(A) 100% strict yunus social business model ie

• transparent multi-win model with sustainable cash-flow
•  lending partners of capital needed to start r scale social business get no dividends & no equity only reputation gain and network connections of aiming to be faster design to specified purpose.

 

We find the 2008  -sampled by Norman Macrae Foundation to 1000 Youth leaders-  book 1 on social business by Muhammad Yunus the clearest  description of his approach. It summarises how he had intuitively designed each different development service around a model with sustainable cashflow, and how after a 2005 luncheon at Paris HEC with CEO Riboud of Danone (and soon a cluster of other French CEOs) he launched global social partnerships starting with Grameen DANONE yogurt -see more at www.grameenfrance.com  Yunus 2 races - to poverty museums and to capitals with Social Business stockmarkets remain for many youth the most exciting collaboration goals of any living celebrity , recently joined by the Free University concept MOOCYunus

 

(B) Yunus social business model but relaxes issue of who owns equity - as far as we know in the west this is as far as publicly distributed investment funds in social business have got towards A  - see eg www.danonecommunities.com whose French legal technicaliities is produced with support of Grameen's partnership with Credit Agricole which also structures its own funds out of Luxembourg. If you are interested in discussing Yunus social business models we maintain 2 companion NIngs - http://yunuscity.ning.com where we try to spot social business and pro-youth news by different capital cities and http://leadersandyunus.ning.com  where w invite you to help track yunus partnership commitments with leaders around the world

 

(C) 51% social business model- this is a model in which majority (ie 51% or more) of ownership is always in trust to those in greatest need of the social purpose

 

(D) NGOs which operate a portfolio of enterprises representing mixture of the above - but in such a way as to  never alter any microfranchise founders rules regarding ownership, Positive example- BRAC which we currently bechmark as youth world's most purposeful partner -  - negative example any ngo that gets involved in IPO of a microcredit is excluded from our cataloguing of A to D

 

(E) a model where a national or regional government has permanently transferred funds corresponding to taxes of a service it used to operate in such a way that communities now serve a microfranchise -parallel mechanisms might include dormant funds (eg unclaimed accounts of banks) as discussed in UK big society approaches (we are not aware that anywhere in Europe has really started with this in spite of a EU summit championing such in Nov 2011)

(F ) modelslisted by a leader where that industry leader is recognized as most trusted in nation or continental region in aiming to make region self-sufficient in industry and to maximize life long job quality among hardest workers in the industry sector

(G) youth-led early stage models -eg from youth entrepreneur competitions- still looking for exact model but demonstrating a lot of youth peer empowerments

(H) other models that are linked to collaboration searches of microfranchsies as first mapped in 1984 book the 2024 report

(J) other certified patient capital or bottom-billion (prahalad) models - eg Acumen fund has a clear set of development rules; it would be a nice testimony to CK's life if someone set this up for bottom-billion models- even during his later years in personal correspondence he agreed that maintaining records on constitutions of once admired bottom-billion models called for a collaboration process beyond any one person's remit

(K) other generally applicable models that appear to demonstrate win-win-wins of all involved with a social concern

(L ) models so specific to a market category or a cultural conflict situation that it is worth knowing of the project even if the model is currently fluid or unspecifiable in the terms we usually require to be made transparent

 

(M) a social entrepreneur model largely composed by one inspirational person's passion where there appears to be no attempt to replicate model beyond the guru other than saying come, learn, be inspired, work out your own local way if you wish

Please note in our 42th year of cataloguing models, we are interested in how the above interacts with these issues

• how to identify meta-connectors of social entreprises such as bangaldesh's 2 main pro-poor banking systems
• ; what change processes may most help youth fast track more social enterprises or replicate good enough ones to collaborate with

 

Please help us take a second look - why would someone wishing to linkin a most purposeful solution for a particular goal choose one approach versus another

 

A 100% social business model - a philanthropist might make such a loan if purpose matched philanthropic vision and the model sustainability is convincing; a corporation might make such a loan for reputational or relationshio gain in the development region (eg DANONE inbeing corporation to inaugurate global social business partnerships may believe that in advancing long-term connections with markets in bangaldesh and china it can become dr yunus best friends in nutrional projects serving extreme needs across those 2 countries); individuals might create their own 100% social businesses if they were confident this matched their lifes greatest competence- please note there is no greater challenge on entrepreneurial earth than the 100% social business model so we should want such youth sb entrepreneurs to pay themselves and any leading co-workers a fair wage for their family's development

 

B,C are models that relax A - you might need to do this to sustain model if its in a highly conflicted environment or to maintain the best open tech staff  or generally to keep cash up sleeve to protect constitutional independence of the organisation; conversely if you are a technologist who is starting with a bit of code (say a better search) you might simply want to anchor this on most life-critical network searched; you could give away one doubling of your company's equity by putting trust in stewardship of those in need; this could be much more purposeful marketing than organisations who iamge over purspoe and never get to eralsie what youth most want for practice experts; however models B and C probably mean that you can no longer channel 100% of volunteer issues the way model A deserves to do, ; they may make collaboration partners harder to find: and they raise questions on what the organsiaatin's tax status needs to be

 

As we try to recognize in D and F - some of the world's greatest connectors of social enterprsies will be linking in hundreds which may have varied modeling forms (including A, B ,C) as individual entities

 

 

[chris macrae]

how to identify meta-connectors of social enterprises such as bangladesh's 2 main pro-poor banking systems -BRAC & Grameen ;

Kenya's Jamii Bora - the culture in Kenya has proved second to none in celebrating mobile entrepreneurship connections with empowering youth - search MPESA, IHUB, Ushahidi to see how Nairobi has become a top African social enterprise capital

strangely neither microcreditsummit nor any of the other millennium goal summits have developed a cumulative cataloguing approach of social enterprises in a model indexed way;

 

Today, this suggests a huge opportunity for open education partnership to focus on curriculum of social enterprises.  If run in a MOOC format,  youth could also be involved in continuing to audit social enterprises with local impacts.  What we have learnt from microcredit crises around the world is:

in many cases there had been no attempt to replicate the real bangladeshi models

that transition of microcredit from a pre-mobile age to a mobile age required the sort of investment thar less well known microcredits had difficulty in attracting, thus leaving them vulnerable to takeovers

 

 There are no guarantees in this world that an organisational model's ownership (even in the case of meta -networks of social enterprises) will stay the same unless supporters get much more informed . Perhaps worldwide youth networks in the age of MOOC can celebrate maintaining such local appraisal in ways that traditional advocacy networks have failed to do.

In terns of generating new social enterprises, the opportunity to converge youth social enterprise competitions online may also be taken to the next level by an opportune host of a MOOC on social enterprise and pro-youth economics

 

 

 

 

 

 

coming soon

[chris macrae]

what change processes may most help youth fast track more social enterprises or replicate good enough ones to collaborate with?

coming soon

[chris macrae]

model F - is it better to start with the highest trust industry leaders map of social enterprises

 

-this model is most simply understood by cross-examining some lead cases such as

 F1 an industry leader like Wole Food's John Mackey whose purpose is to change nutritional impact of supermarkets in usa and to develop equitable relationships anwyhere that whole foods has a long-run sourcing partnership

Fortune 500 CEO John Mackey probably spends over 20 days a year searching social entreprise models as part of his invitation to ceis to join in bencmarjing conscious capitalism

 

at a worldwide development level - how searching out of the most trustworthy local partners in agriculatural area microfinance offers one of the most trusted catalogues of its kind - see www.wholeplanetfoundation.org  ; his invitation to university students to join in reforming the nutrition of us school lunches offers one of the most interesting collaboration models inside USA www.wholekidsfoundation.org

 

CASE F2 at a MIT ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology)  development conference I met 20 or so interesting African Industry leaders all linked in to www.africa24tv.com -this tv station has been co-founded by an ex alumn of mo Ibrahim (a billionnaire) whose foundation makes awards to the most transparent of national leaders  across Africa when they retire; africa24tv.com woants to be the good news cable tv channel of accomplishments by and for Africans; certainly the kinds of industry leaders it has already found, and which I got introduced to, are an exciting way to see collaboration flow across Africa in most needed social purposes