THE ART OF SOCIAL BUSINESS

Social Business (Microfinance):

A human being is much bigger than that. We are infinitely capable of so much more. A human being can do many other things, but economics doesn't leave any room for expressing them. There are other kinds of business we can create that are about doing good for people.

Social business involves getting into business not only for the sole benefit of profit, but also to better the lives of our client(s), their living standards and the environment as a whole. Daring to be a social entrepreneur is a business trend that leading businesspeople globally believe will determine whether the 21st Century entrepreneur will indeed succeed in this new business frontier.

Global business leaders such as Laura Scher, Chairman and CEO, Working Assets, are strong advocates of this. She observes that,” if you look at companies that have successfully developed a business, they have an element of social responsibility entrenched in them.”
She goes on to give an example of Starbucks (coffee-maker in the US) whose excellent personnel policy sparks greater staff morale, customer loyalty and therefore one would probably surmise, higher sales. She also quotes Wal-Mart’s case whose rival-competitor’s, Target Supermarkets, deep outreach policy of building schools and giving back a lot to the community has enabled it surpass sales by Wal-Mart in its established territories.

Similarly, Muhammad Yunus, Founder Grameen Bank; Winner, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize asserts that, “business is about problem-solving, but it does not always have to be about maximizing profit.”

The Ubuntu Microfinance Project shares a lot with the Grameen Project. “Grameen” means “rural or village” in Bangla language (Bangladesh), just as “Ubuntu” means “of the people, for the people” in Bantu language (Africa).

Yunus continues to explain: “When I went into business, my interest was to figure out how to solve problems I see in front of me. That's why I looked at the poverty issue. I got involved in lots of things to address it, and one of them was money lending with loans and credits and savings accounts, and in the process I created Grameen Bank.”

This shows that a company can also have social objectives. Ask yourself these questions, he says: “Who are you? What kind of world do you want?”

Most of the problems mankind have and talk about today sound very complicated, but they aren't. They're simple. And complications actually hide solutions. “So when I'm faced with a problem that looks complicated, I try to bring it back to its simplest state. Like poverty. Poverty is not complicated. It's deprivation, a denial of resources. Credit is not available to you, so you cannot move forward. Simple. All it takes is one little step: My first loan was one for $27 that I gave to 42 people.”

However, micro-credit is about simplifying the complex and remaining relevant. This is achieved by developing a simple credit delivery system (CDS). Yunus concludes: “At Grameen it's not that we lend money to people in small or big amounts; it's that we loan in an appropriate amount to their needs. The size is small because the need is small. I could complicate things: I could lend a person $1 million, but if that someone can only handle $20, that would be stupid. But if she can handle $20, it makes sense, and that's still big money for her. So I say, when you're trying to solve a problem, always bring it back to the simplest formulation.”

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