The Face of Social Entrepreneurship

The Face of Social Entrepreneurship

Recently, I did a financial request presentation to our student society, and for the first time, understood the difficulty in accessing publicly available funds for our venture. The idea of entrepreneurship is quite different in Africa than in North America: people here become entrepreneurs by choice; people in Africa become entrepreneurs out of necessity. Many of these young entrepreneurs come from the slums, and have learned the hard way, that they cannot afford to sit around and wait for the government to do things for them. That is why there is tremendous significance in supporting a social program designed to help entrepreneurs of these developing countries, but unfortunately this idea still relatively far back on many priority lists.

Most of Africa’s growth in the last several years has been stimulated by entrepreneurship. Young people are seeking to become entrepreneurs rather than finding employment, either tempted by overnight millionaire stories, fueled by a passion to succeed, or driven by the determination to improve conditions around them. Therefore, business ideas pitched by these youths seems to gravitate towards several patterns:

• Businesses are clones of pre-existing ones.
• The business is intended to “make a name” for the owner.
• The business has a valuable and viable idea.

 

Our mission is to work with young entrepreneurs of all backgrounds and goals to help them develop a viable business plan, with a strong emphasis on social entrepreneurship ideas. The objective is to look for more than just monetary profit, but innovative answers in social problems. These entrepreneurs will represent the upcoming faces of Social Entrepreneurship in Africa, and in a way we, as North American students of higher education, are also the grassroots social entrepreneurs of the West. There is no accounting profit to be had in our initiative, but the value that it generates for each student involved is immeasurable.

I feel like there are several important aspects to nurturing entrepreneurs in Africa:

• Mentorship: Ensure that the entrepreneurs have the education and assistance they need to run their business sustainability.
• Localization: Think “local”. Encourage the youths to establish businesses that are for the benefit of the local people, that would solve local problems, and would employ locally available resources.
• Financial Assistance: Start-up financing for social initiatives, as well as micro-financing (for a must-read on this topic check out Muhammad Yunus' book "Banker to the Poor").

With the emergence of international programs, academic interest, and workshops in Africa, mentorship and idea generation is becoming less of a burden, whereas finance assistance is still heavily sought after. I hope that in time, more people would realise the importance of social entrepreneurship in developing countries, understand why students and volunteers choose to dedicate their time to these initiatives, and consequently be more willing to invest capital into programs like ours, so that our teams in 2013, 2014, and 2015 will have better luck securing the necessary funds to expand the Sauder Africa Initiative.

The Challenges of Fundraising

OK - I admit - non-profit fundraising is a thousand times harder than I had given credit for. After years of working for high powered consulting firms with seemingly endless amounts of capital and resources, I now find myself on the complete flip side of the spectrum with no job, few contacts, and very limited resources. Raising money for profitable organizations is challenging in itself. Even though you have developed a fail-proof, fully profitable forecasting model you still risk being turned down by investors because they "don't see enough in it for them" or "the return on investment isn't in line with our growth model". These are corporations with relatively large access to capital and who understand their line of business very well,yet fail to invest internally because the returns are not profitable enough and they don't see the value of investing. In hindsight, raising money for SAI is exponentially more difficult and requires way more creativity to achieve even half the results.

In entrepreneurship, raising capital is the second hardest part to developing any new business venture. The hardest is, of course, developing a product or service that people truly want. This seems to be the deadliest inhibitor to any start up company, as more and more ventures fail to develop a product that directly solves their customers problems. Thankfully the Sauder Africa Initiative has developed a service that is truly unique and inspiring. Our mission helps develop the essential fabric of entrepreneurship amongst those who are passionate about starting / growing a business but lack some of the necessary tools, resources and knowledge to accomplish their goal. Our group is extremely passionate and desperately wants to help our fellow students achieve professional and personal success, but how do we enlighten others with similar passion in order to generate the voluntary donation that supports our cause? One solution is to share success stories of the program with those who may be on the fence in donating to our cause. This helps people understand your passion and the cause to which they are investing. Telling stories is a powerful method to establish a link between the intrinsic value of our program with the inherited social benefit that one receives when donating to the program. I encourage everyone to get excited by reading some of our success stories on the Sauder Africa website. I know these stories will inspire you to give, and support our wonderful cause.