Project Everest - Defining Social Enterprise - YouTube

Hi its Tink here from Project Everest just following up from our last video about why

we are for profit what i want to go through in this video is our definition of social

enterprise is - how we define it and why that is important.

So what i’m going to cover in these next four minutes is that exact definition.

So firstly, what we define as social enterprise is that there is a socially beneficial product

or service at the core of it.

The social benefit is in the product or service itself that the end user is purchasing and

ultimately the reason why that is, is because it aligns financial and moral incentives.

When you’ve got a business where the benefit is the product or service itself, it means

that you will push everything into making that product available to more people and

improve the product.

If you have a situation like Thank you water that i have talked about before where you

have got water in Australia - bottled water and the sale of that bottled water funding

projects overseas then if there is an issue of the sales of bottled water in Australia

then they will need to divert financial and personal resources to save the core revenue

driver of the business - which is a product in Australia that can be gained anywhere it

doesn’t provide any social benefit.

Whereas, if your product is selling into communities in developing countries and the sale of that

product goes down, you need to divert resources and everything into ensuring that product

is something that is working for the communities and is making profit and making money.

So we make sure that is our definition at the core - that we have that benefit in the

product or service.

Now we have four components to what makes up our businesses and what we try to make

sure they have.

Firstly is the social benefit in the product or service - that’s number one and is the

cornerstone.

The next thing is that it is tailored to the community that we work with or what we are

doing overseas.

The next thing is that there is healthy and profitable cash flows - which means we seek

to ensure that we can bootstrap if possible.

So we can fund or self fund through the sale of the product or service.

This also means there is low risk in terms of we have product market fit and we know

that that product is wanted and therefore we are reducing risk.

And the final thing is, that low risk in terms of the characteristics of the business, the

capital that is required to create the business, to make it successful and deliver this socially

beneficial product is low risk.

We are not looking to making railways or making huge capital investments in the countries

we operate so that is one of the key components.

so to sum up this video the key thing about our definition of social enterprise is that

the social benefit is in the product or service itself.

Thats where the social benefit exists and with the four components of the business that

we are creating it needs to have firstly that key component, secondly to have a product

or service that is tailored to the community, healthy and profitable cash flows and finally

low risk.

What this delivers ultimately in the end is this social benefit and it is a way in which

it is ultra affordable, it is consistent and it is tailored to the community.

Which is our promise to the people we work with.

So that’s it in terms of looking at our videos, we have a video on why we are for

profit which is a good lead in into this video and we have a whole bunch of other videos

so check them out on our website and we will see you soon.

Cheers!