Social entrepreneurs are people who care for other people and think beyond making a profit. They are also exceptional people who want to make a difference in society. They believe in empowering people, making donations, and creating products that they can give away to people who need them. They do this by selling off a certain part of their product line and donating the rest of it to the needy.
To become successful as a social entrepreneur and be an inspiration, you need to have a purpose-driven business idea. You need to have a plan that works step-by-step and a commitment to make sure that you make things happen. After all, to make a difference in the world and to earn a living, you need to have a clear roadmap and some specific directions to start an initiative from the scratch and make it bloom.
Many organizations out there help people who have a clear goal to start, run and grow their own small businesses. You can find countless examples like this using WOW internet and get information on the economic ecosystem using WOW Channels. WOW Cable TV offers a wide range of news and business channels to users almost everywhere in America.
For now, let’s have a look at the different steps needed to become a successful social entrepreneur.
Write a Mission Statement for Your Initiative
You can start by deciding the audience that you want to serve and think about the hows and wheres of your service. Be very clear about the problem you have at hand and the way you want to solve it for the demographics using your product and services. Also, think about your natural talent, your professional skills and training, and core competencies. Also, make sure that you have access to the required resources.
Research Your Field
You must learn more about social entrepreneurship and the social business landscape that you want to work on and see the major players in the field. Also, learn how they are making a difference in society and do not reinvent the wheel. If a certain social entrepreneur is already doing something that resembles your forthcoming initiative, then use that as your inspiration and use your knowledge to come up with some unique idea and a different purpose-driven offering.
To get this done, you can simply use Google or any of the search engines out there and find people who might be either your collaborators or your competitors. You can also engage with a business that offers what you are offering. Look out for things that they might search for and see yourself as an ideal customer or beneficiary and search for things online just like your competitors. You can also look for trade associations from the social entrepreneurship perspective.
Conceptualize the Unique Things You Want to Offer
You can dig in deep to provide your future prospects. Remember, the more research you will do, the more unique your social enterprise will be for your future audience. A very helpful practice is to use post-it notes and put a word related to your social enterprise goals. Then place the notes on the walls and move them around in different combos.
Prolong this practice for at least a week and then you will notice that you have come up with your own specific niche to work with. Or if you have come up with something slightly unique, then think about ways in which you can add more value to that concept.
Reach Out For Feedback and Support
You can reach out and present your concept to people who you think can get you honest advice and can add more value to your plan. This can be a business partner, an employee, or somebody who is experienced in the field of business. You can ask for their support and look for people who are in your life and career and can mentor you or would collaborate with your cause.
You can even seek information from your competitors in a smart way. There is a chance that if they like your concept, then they can collaborate with you as well. You can present your mission statement and simply see what they think about it. Be very open about criticism and learn from their strong corrective criticism.
Develop a Business Model
Your business model works like a roadmap of your enterprise and the ways it is going to generate money. You can think about ways you can provide your products and services and ways it will reach your audience. Also, look for the extent your initiative is going to make an impact in the world.
You might also want to determine and document the amount of money you might need to support your mission and initiate operations. Also, decide the following things:
The type of business model that will lead to earnings
The beneficiaries who will be paying for your enterprise,
The certain group of people that is going to pay for your products and keep another group of people be beneficiaries
Once you decide the type of social enterprise business model that is going to be a better fit for your business concept think about putting your selected model in a local social entrepreneurship competition. Here you can pitch your goal and refine it as much as possible.
Identify Your Initial Source of Funding
You have to do a lot of homework in this aspect of your social startup and find out where you will be generating the seed money. Also, plan where you will be obtaining the funding that you need for the launch. A major source could be crowdfunding if you already have success as some startup social venture, and have a large list of subscribers and email recipients. If you don’t have a large audience to cater to then crowdfunding might not be able to produce enough funding.
Conclusion
In the end, one can say that once you have everything in place, you can devise your action plan that outlines to-do tasks and actionable items that are needed to commit to and a timeline. It includes exact dates when you want to launch your social enterprise and how long it will take you to get to your mark. Once you get everything in place, you can create a good example of social entrepreneurship that others can follow.
