Social Enterprise: The Next Business Model

On October 20 and 21, I attended the Social Enterprise Conference organized by the Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF) together with Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP),  Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), League of Corporate Foundation (LCF), and PinoyME Foundation held at the Intercontinental Hotel. 

The Conference brought together social enterprises, NGOs, People's Organizations, Cooperatives, and big business in a two day forum of sharing experiences, dialogue, and determining next steps. It was great to see old faces and meet new practitioners in the field. The social enterprise space is growing and the conference was a great way to start building an ecosystem of support, from the ground level to the "industry" level, to enable social enterprises to continue to grow and flourish.

All the sessions were informative and provided a lot of insight. The forum opened strong with the Keynote address by the father and son team of Ramon Uy Sr. and Ramon Uy Jr. who shared their journey from manufacturing spare parts for sugar mills to putting up RU Foundry that creates appropriate technology machines for smallholder farmers, to creating Fresh Start Organics. 

Thanks to Ms. Gisela Tiongson Executive Director of Jollibee Foundation, for mentioning Gifts and Graces in her presentation on the landscape of social entrepreneurship in the Philippines. Gisela shared Jollibee's inspiring initiative to open their supply chain to farmers in Nueva Ecija.

One of the speakers that made an impact on the audience was Rico Gonzales, Managing Director of X Change. Rico talked about the 5Ms of social entrepreneurship and shared a tool he uses for visually representing our social enterprise models at www.businessmodelgeneration.com. It looks like a great tool to understand, review, and tweak business models to ensure that we are able to deliver value to our clients. Rico also made a very compelling case for scaling up, both for impact and sustainability, and scaling up fast or else risk not being able to achieve the impact we want.

Finally in the last session facilitated by Dan Songco, Executive Director of PinoyME Foundation, PinoyME, PBSP, and PEF shared their initiatives for continuing to encourage social entrepreneurship. Read our blog post about the People Powered Markets initiated by PinoyME in February on the occassion of their 5th year anniversary. Dan then opened the discussion to suggestions from the floor. 

My own suggestion was to look at how we can respond to social enterprises' HR needs and challenges. It is imperative that we build the team right, and as we grow, we need to find the right people for G&G. Ateneo de Manila has several programs to offer social entrepreneurship as an alternative career to undergraduates. Perhaps PinoyME can add a jobstreet for social entrepreneurs portal in its People Powered Markets website. 

For those of us already in an SE I think continued executive education, such as the MAGIS workshop the Ateneo GSB conducted for G&G and our partners, and the Social Enterprise Management Training Program conducted by Fundacion Codespa and the University of Asia and the Pacific will help ensure that SEs are able to build the necessary HR capabilities for growth and scale. 

Overall I learned a lot at the conference and with initiatives like this, it is hoped that social entrepreneurship model will one day become the norm. Kudos to the organizers. I'm looking forward to the next one!

-Greg