What is social business?

According to wikipedia definition for social business, it is a new kind of capitalism that serves humanity’s most pressing needs.

It is a business that has been created and designed to address social problems. Unlike people think that social business should be purely a non-profit organization and depends on donations or sponsorships only. One of the main social business characteristics, which will be considered in more details later, is self-sustainability. The social organization should be tagged as a non-loss organization.

On other words, the social organizations must generate profits that are reinvested in the business itself (or used to start other social business) with the aim of creating lasting and widespread improvements in social and environmental conditions.

Social Business Model Components

The social business model is the components and the structure in which the business will be operate and generate revenues. So defining the core components of the SBM is too important step to explore the readability of the business. For example

• Determine the Beneficiary Segments through clearly identify who the beneficiary segments are, even if they aren't paying money.
• Social and Customer Value Proposition through compelling rationale that will drive your customers to buy without forgetting about your impact on society.
• Impact Measures through developing a clear thinking around what kind of social impact the business is creating and how it could be measured.
• Surplus through planning and communicating what happens with profits and where are the next steps to reinvest them in.

Real Example - DC Central Kitchen (DCCK)

During my first visit to USA, Washington in March 2016, attending Social Entrepreneurship course in GW University. We had the chance to visit the DC Central Kitchen, it is America's leader in reducing hunger with recycled food, training unemployed adults for culinary careers, serving healthy school meals, and rebuilding urban food systems through social enterprise.

At DC Central Kitchen they are operating innovative programs that fight poverty, hunger, and poor health 365 days a year.

DCCK has been fighting food waste by recovering leftover food and converting it into meals for hungry and at-risk neighbors. Every day, they transform 3,000 pounds of leftover, unwanted food into 5,000 healthy meals. They loads these meals onto their fleet of trucks and delivers them to 80 partner agencies in the Washington metropolitan area, including homeless shelters, rehabilitation clinics, and after school programs.

DCCK provides not just a meal, but a long-term solution to hunger. With every meal delivered goes a message: “If you’re ready to change your life, come to DC Central Kitchen.” The Meal Distribution Program provides a classroom for the DC Central Kitchen’s Culinary Job Training Program.

During 2014, they distributed 1.7 million meals to at-risk women, men, children, and families.

In 2015, they achieved $15 M USD as revenue $7 M from donations and sponsorship programs.