Imagine a profitable business that hires only former inmates. Imagine an enterprise that is devoted to curing childhood malnutrition but never takes a dime in grants. Imagine a financial instrument that uses private dollars for upfront costs like preventive care or early childhood, letting governments pay only when cost savings are realized. Imagine a stock exchange that measures both financial value and social impact.
The Social Enterprise Law Association goes beyond imagining to explore impact models just like these. We investigate and promote a wide range of entities that combine market principles and social impact. These innovations range from B corporations, private companies that write a social mission into their charter, to enterprising nonprofits. They include “classic” social enterprises that are autonomous and sustainable like regular companies, but whose purpose is to facilitate a social good, alongside major corporations that simply desire enhanced impact. In addition, we analyze legal and financial innovations that could further catalyze a social economy.
Why care about social enterprise? Firstly, social enterprise implies a focus on answers. Faced with issues like mass incarceration and global poverty, it often seems like problems are more prevalent than solutions. In many cases, though, there are ideas that work. Social entrepreneurs are creating impact bonds to reduce chronic homelessness and juvenile incarceration. They are developing enterprises that provide fortified yogurts to malnourished children, using differentiated pricing to remain economically viable and avoid grant dependence without compromising their mission.
Secondly, social enterprise is a way to build bridges. As a society, we have artificially decided that the “public” and “private” sectors are distinct. HLS students, much like students everywhere, must ultimately make a choice, electing to enter either private firms or nonprofit organizations. At SELA, our goal is to demonstrate that there is a gray area between these extremes. As we have described, there are financial models that combine mission and market to produce social change. Our purpose is to highlight and catalyze these models, building a new economy that lets people truly have it all.
With SELA, we have a chance to build something new. Nationwide, only NYU Law School has a group that is focused on social enterprise. Here, SELA is only applying for “official” recognition this November, meaning that this is truly time zero. Through our speakers series, our workshops on social entrepreneurship, our trips to social enterprises and more, there is a chance to help guide a vanguard organization as it becomes a thought leader in a new and exciting field.