Giving Thoughts

What Happens When Corporations and Social Enterprises Join Forces

By Yasmina Zaidman, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Acumen

Corporations are realizing that their own sustainability, growth and license to operate in new markets all require them to experiment with daring business models that are built on collaboration with various stakeholders, including global social enterprises. Beyond Dialogue: Building Sustainable and Inclusive Business Models in Partnership with Social Entrepreneurs, a new report from Acumen and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, highlights examples of these partnerships from leading corporations including Ernst & Young, Levi’s and Unilever.

A global consulting firm that uses its capabilities to support start-ups in emerging markets; an apparel company that strives to improve well-being for workers; and a consumer goods company that seeks to bring clean energy to farmers in its supply chain. Each of these companies and many more are defining their business models in terms that include the environment, communities, and broader social objectives. That’s nothing new.

What’s new is that the launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the adoption of the Paris Agreement at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) has demonstrated that the complex and systemic challenges of today require new models of partnership. These companies are examples of many that believe they can achieve their business and societal goals by linking social impact to core business operations and by collaborating with social enterprises. At the same time, social enterprises that use business models to achieve social impact are looking to large corporations as partners on their path to scale and business viability.

This evolution in business strategy and partnerships is now possible because corporations and social enterprises are showing a willingness to take risks, consider long-term issues, and integrate social and environmental values into decision-making.

Yet, despite the growing interest in partnerships between corporations and social enterprises, collaboration is as hard as it is important.

A major driver of collaboration, according to the report, is the need for large companies to build both ethical conduct and reliability into their far-flung supply chains. According to Daniel Lee, executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation, “we see tremendous potential for social enterprises to support our goals for improving the lives of apparel workers, and we’ve already seen what’s possible in Bangladesh. A stronger landscape of enterprises focused on the needs of low-income communities globally will create significant new opportunities for partnerships that are sustainable, impactful, and that engage with apparel workers to address their needs and aspirations.”

One increasingly popular approach is to link corporate capabilities with smaller businesses in need of support. “There is a disconnect between people with skills and purpose and enterprises on the ground needing those skills,” said Jon Shepard, director of EY Enterprise Growth Services, a not-for-profit unit which supports social enterprises in low and middle-income countries. Among other projects, EY helps Jibu, a water enterprise that delivers safe and affordable drinking water to low-income urban consumers in Africa, to scale its operation with support from an EY consultant.

This report provides insights and lessons through a selection of case studies that allow readers and practitioners to derive what is most relevant and suited to their context and sector. In two cases, partners work together to design and test new products by engaging directly with local consumers. In another, a new technology application is developed to help a healthcare organization to deliver more reliable results in its fight against tuberculosis.

Across each example, key themes of trust, flexibility, and transparent communication emerge. Most important, the case studies reveal the long-term rewards that can come from the hard work of partnerships. This report will hopefully lead to more proactive efforts to develop and expand partnerships that aim to improve the lives of people living in poverty, and to demonstrate how these partnerships can be designed to support both business and social impact goals.

About the author

Yasmina Zaidman is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Acumen, where she leads engagement with strategic corporate partners that share Acumen’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurial approaches to tackling poverty. She was the lead architect for a $5 million partnership launched in 2015 with Unilever to enhance livelihoods for smallholder farmers. She is a regular speaker and convener on ways that corporations can partner with social enterprises to pursue their sustainable and inclusive business goals. She has worked in the arenas of international development, corporate sustainability and social entrepreneurship for the past 20 years.