Social Enterprise of One

Published about 5 years ago

Cool kids scale their impact.

"Scale" is one of the most important words in the social impact conversation.

Some of the best social enterprises are considered the best for two reasons:

Andrew Youn (cofounder and executive director of One Acre Fund, one of the most successful and respected social enterprises in the world) argued that social enterprises with proven success and the ability to expand should take intentional steps to do so. More specifically, they should position themselves to receive "big bets," or multi-million dollar investments/donations, then use that cash to buy assets, hire more staff, fund programs, or do anything else that will increase the organization's impact, now and in the future.

I trust Youn's judgement, I think his analysis is spot on, and to an extent, I agree. But in the article he wrote, the statement that really caught my eye was, "An analysis by The Bridgespan Group identified only 144 US nonprofits founded since 1975 that reached a size of at least $50 million in annual revenue by 2007. That’s a pretty low bar—a large supermarket in your neighborhood, for example, probably has $50 million in annual revenue."

Do I think big bets can help solve this problem? Yes. While we wait for that idea to catch on, am I comfortable entrusting our world's most complex, intractable problems to ~150 local-grocery-store-sized nonprofits? Not so much, and I don't think these nonprofits are comfortable with it either.

The cool kids need help!

Our world is facing important, urgent, complex problems. For example:

These problems intimidate me, but it does seem like new, promising solutions emerge every week. This gives me hope, if not confidence, that our biggest problems can be solved before the end of this century.

That said, I don't think it's smart or effective to task the leading social enterprises or even world governments with solving everything.

I do think that smaller scale, bespoke-but-still-replicable impact activities deserve their day in the sun, and I think that social enterprises of one might be a way to make that happen.

What's a social enterprise of one?

In 2019, Paul Jarvis released a book, titled Company of One.

Here's the main idea: "The real key to richer and more fulfilling work could be to not create and scale something into a massive corporation, but rather, to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a highly profitable and sustainable company of one."

In the book, Paul explores unconventional but practical business tactics that companies of one often employ. The one that really catches my attention is the idea that, to be a successful company of one, you need to define your own version of "enough" success in your business.

Companies of one should constantly question axiomatic, endless business growth, They also should at least consider making a conscious effort not to exceed their "enough" goal—even if it means turning away new customers.

Paul posits that reaching your "enough" goal without exceeding it will not only give you enough (money, skills, colleagues, free time, etc.), but also will make sure your business doesn't grow for the sake of growth. It won't demand business management skills you may not have, saddle you with larger, more stressful business decisions, and ultimately, spiral out of control until it becomes something you never wanted it to be.

Also, per Paul's definition, a company of one doesn't have to be just one single person. It can be a small group of people, as long as those people agree on their "enough" goal and are able to keep control of their shared business.

Paul's ideas catch my attention, and things gets even more interesting when you apply those same ideas to the impact created by a social enterprise.

What happens when you consider how much impact is "enough" impact for your social enterprise? How does the scope and strategy of your social enterprise change when you define precisely how much good you can do before you risk getting sucked into complicated, trolley-problem-esque ethical dilemmas that you may not have the capacity to solve?

If we start questioning impact growth more openly, rather than constantly pushing for scale, we'll give breathing room to "social enterprises of one". Social enterprises of one may even have the potential to replicate widely, positively impacting communities and ecosystems that were previously unreachable.

Tying this all together: a social enterprise of one is:

In practice, a lot of enterprises have a good chance of meeting that working definition:

Impact starts with a good definition

When you hear the phrase "social impact", a discussion of scale is usually not far behind.

"Our problems are big. Our resources are finite. The clock is ticking. An incremental, project-by-project approach won’t cut it. We need ideas that can go big. We need scalable solutions," writes Kevin Starr in SSIR.

I think that's a great thing! I'm thrilled that, when people talk about the impact they make, our collective response is diversifying.

We're replacing the traditional "Oh, that's nice" with authentic gratitude, critical thinking, and curiosity about optimization and scale.

That said, maybe it's not smart to swing the pendulum too far away from the "think globally, act locally" adage. Small-scale, low-stakes impact activities play an important role, especially in a world where proper-sized funding mechanisms don't even exist for the largest social impact organizations.

And that said, I think it's important to formally define small-scale, low-stakes impact, so that we can properly identify it, get curious about causal relationships, and make progress on complex, intractable problems.

Hopefully, my definition of the social enterprise of one pushes us a little further in that direction.