For-Benefit Organizations
July 21, 2003 | Business & Commerce
There's a real resonance between many of my latent thoughts on humane business organization and the Tutor's quest to foster "a life well-lived." Witness the output generated in 12 hours of full-time blogging yesterday. Today, he points to the Fourth Sector Network, grouping organizations into "for-benefit" class of business.
Quote: "For-Benefits are a new class of organization. They are driven by a social purpose, they are economically self-sustaining, and they seek to internalize their social costs by being socially, ethically, and environmentally responsible.
Like non-profits, For-Benefits can organize in pursuit of a wide range of social missions. Like for-profits, For-Benefits can generate a broad range of beneficial produc ts and services that improve quality of life for consumers, create jobs, and contribute to the economy. For-Benefits seek to maximize benefit to all stakeholders, and 100% of the economic "profits" they generate are invested to advance social purposes. Because of their architecture, For-Benefits can embody some of the best attributes of other organizational forms. They strive to be democratic, inclusive, open, transparent, accountable, effective, efficient, cooperative, and holistic.
For-Benefits represent a new paradigm in organizational design. At all levels, they aim to link two concepts which are held as a false dichotomy in other models: private interest and public benefit."
Their taxonomy includes co-ops, esops, socially-responsible investing, open source, and the whole cultural creative/LOHAS market.
This is a great lens to view the emergence. I do hope, however, that we can soon move beyond defining ourselves and get to work. Granted, some of this delay is caused by all of us just now waking up that we are not alone, that in fact we may be a silent majority, and that many of our friends, neighbors and colleagues might choose this path if they felt safe enough to do so. Having a big mortgage and a local community reputation to maintain can keep a status quo employed for a whole lifetime.
There's an election cycle coming up, if we need a deadline.
Comments
There's always an election cycle coming up. Just recently spoke with an old friend who was a political fundraiser and consultant for progressive Democrats for many years. I found her with google and that she is now a development director for The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. The first thing she said to me was that she was working on her twelve step program to get away from politics. Not to say it isn't important, but it isn't where real change happens. I do have a $10 dollar bet with my brother in law that W will lose in 04; he doesn't want him to win either, he's just more cynical than me.
For twenty years, the hackers have been just working on the code without any business models and really without any plan to make things better in society generally, but it still is a model of how to just get out and do things by linking up in small groups and networks. Now, the rest of the world is waking up to what is possible and studying the phenomena, bringing their own expertise. And you know what, the speed and connectivity enabled by the technology is new, but the idea of getting together to accomplish big things with networks of voluteers is not, and there is a lot of diverse experience to bring to bear. The Tutor contributes his knowledge of philanthropy and the advisors that the wealthy use to manage their wealth and makes it accessable, and you bring knowledge of organization structures, and more. So, maybe the co-op structure isn't as familiar to some advisors, but if it is to be available to our emerging networks of progressive enterprises, the details must be worked out and particular forms and implementations tested, and the tried and true best practices can be found by putting it out there for people to try and tinker with, then report back to the network how it worked. The network of independents beats the big enterprise the same way Linux beats Windows, we have more eyes, more experts looking at the work product and tuning and tweaking it to our needs. No, it's not always fast, but it is very efficient.
If you're game, it love to role play creating an organization with you in a similar way to Tutor's role playing with Dorothea on philanthropy. Similar caveats to WB, for teaching and learning, get your own professional advisors when you are ready to do it for real.
Posted by: Gerry at July 23, 2003 02:01 AM
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