Sustainable models of social innovation

This week's reading on D-Light pinpoints some of my greatest concerns about the way America has historically handled the crowd-sourcing of market failures to meet social needs. America's entire country has been centered around an almost altruistic view of non-profit business structure without taking into account the realistic functions of our world. We hear about people who "give back" after earning plenty of money using for-profit companies and some heroic non-profit employees who live on the passion of their mission but those are the old legends of the American social system. We give tax breaks to 501(c)(3) because our historians and ethical leaders reverberate through time: "Money is the root of all evil" a mythos which is dying out as academia overcomes religious and superstitious thought in America. Today if some one wants to "give back" we suggest they not "take" in the first place.

Christina Keller's talk on CSR from her perspective at Cascade Engineering says that exact thing. If a business was responsible for its actions, it would take as much as it could give back in current time. As a socially responsible company accrues wealth, there is a portion of their wealth which could not have been done without community and their customers alike. This 360 degrees of social responsibility goes deeper than the Triple Bottom Line perspective of corporate responsibility. Because the very business model incorporates it's mission with the profit and it's profit with the community and environmental considerations it must take to make it a sustainable company. This is meant as a truly sustainable company as a part of a sustainable community and sustainable planet. Many non-profit organizations are not sustainable. Purposefully unsustainable financially but also unsustainable in some of their missions. Some missions which should have an end, for instance reaching a 95% literacy rate in Kenya would be a great mission with a fantastic result once completed and those involved should be glad to have participated in such a success- but afterward these jobs, the community surrounding the goodwill of the company is lost in time. A sustainable company can harness the positive externalities (from things such as namesake) not offered to short mission driven non-profits.

The system of socially driven market failure recovery is flawed. Our tax incentives surrounding non-profit donations would be better spent with targeted programs or social innovation capital investment structures offered through government tax breaks. Without a profit driven model we do not see the types of innovation being brought to the bottom of our World's pyramid in ways like D-Light and Smart in the MIT Article. Endowments do no better, since most non-profits do not calculate the present value of their endowments each year, they tend to under-invest back into them and those financial pillars from our forefathers decay with the rates of inflation. Our governmental policies need to reflect the changing social structure and our global markets for socially responsible economic growth. If our policies surrounding 501(c)(3)'s have been so successful for so many years, certainly we can find a way reinvent this great system. Now, if you managed to make your way through my blog post- please take another moment and tell me something: how we can change our policies and practices to encourage these sustainable companies to succeed?