Social business –- by Muhammad Yunus

Yunus is the Nobel prize-winning economist from Bangladesh who developed the microcredit system. When he wrote this on 25 Dec 07, Grameen Bank had 7.31 million borrowers, 97% percent of them women. The article is reprinted from his foundation’s website.

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Social business is a cause-driven business. In a social business, the investors/owners can gradually recoup the money invested, but cannot take any dividend beyond that point. Purpose of the investment is purely to achieve one or more social objectives through the operation of the company, no personal gain is desired by the investors. The company must cover all costs and make profit, at the same time achieve the social objective, such as, healthcare for the poor, housing for the poor, financial services for the poor, nutrition for malnourished children, providing safe drinking water, introducing renewable energy, etc. in a business way.

The impact of the business on people or environment, rather the amount of profit made in a given period measures the success of social business. Sustainability of the company indicates that it is running as a business. The objective of the company is to achieve social goal/s.

Clarifications on Social Business
I am not opposed to making profit. Even social businesses are allowed to make profit with the condition that profit stays with the company, owners will not take profit beyond the amount equivalent to investment. Social business is a new category of business. It does not stipulate the end of the existing type of profit-making business. It widens the market by giving a new option to consumers. It does not intend to monopolise the market and take the existing away option. It adds to the competition. It brings new dimension to the business world, and a new feeling of social awareness among the business people.When we approach the concept of social business from the philanthropy side it looks very convincing and logical. Why everything in philanthropy should be given away. After all our purpose is to achieve the social goal. If some of these goals can be achieved more efficiently and sustainably in a (social) business format why not take that route ?But when you approach it from the orthodox business side, it tends to look a bit out of tune. Why on earth give up profit ? Why should any one run a business without profit ? I understand the surprise perfectly.

Let me clarify : I am not asking any businessman to give up any of their businesses. Nor am I asking them to convert some of their businesses into social business. The idea of "giving up" something creates this shock wave. I am not asking anybody to "give up" anything. All I am saying, if you are worrying about a social problem (while totally engaged in your routine business) I have a message for you, you can make a significant contribution in resolving the problem. If you put your mind seriously into it, you may even open the door to eliminate the problem globally. You can do both : conventional business and social business.It is all up to you to decide whether you want to do a such thing or not. Nobody will raise an accusing finger at you if you do no such thing. But you may feel happy if you do it. I am suggesting a way which may make you a happier person.

A Learning Process
It is a great learning process. You are doing things which you never did before. You are thinking in a way which you never did before. You are surprised to see you are enjoying it a lot. You start digging into your experiences to see what is relevant for the task. You check through the reservoir of technology that you are familiar with start contacting the pool of experts that you got to know in your business, to achieve your new goal. You start exploring a new world which was totally unknown to you. You realise that you are now wearing "social business glasses" on your eyes, you see things which you never saw before. You start sensing that your eyes were fitted with "profit-maximizing glasses" all along, while you thought these were your natural eyes in your economic world.

Now when you turn your eyes to your own profit-making businesses you start noticing things which you never noticed before. You bring new-gained experiences from your new business to your old businesses. Slowly you move towards becoming an multi-dimensional person, rather than a robot-like person.

Some people ask me why can't you run businesses with some profit and some social benefit — "doing well by doing good", as it is popularly described.Of course, it can be done. I am never against it. But I am trying go to the ultimate point where you don't make any profit for yourself at all. This is easy to identify, easy to handle in day to day decision making.

When you mix profit and social benefit it gets complicated for the CEO. His thinking process gets clouded. He does not see clearly. More often this CEO will take decision in favour of profit, and exaggerate the social benefit. Owners will go along with it. Social business gives a clear unambiguous mandate to the management. There is no balancing act involved. If you can agree to take a "small" profit, you can also persuade yourself to take zero profit. Once you get there you get rid of all old ways of thinking. You prepare yourself to explore a new world, a new way of seeing things, and doing things in a different way. When you were in the world of a "small profit" you were still operating in the old world, with old ways of doing things, only restraining yourself here and there. Another way to put the same question is : Why can't you allow the investors in social business to get a small fixed profit — say, 1% dividend. My answer is the same. I may describe by saying something like this : you are in a "no smoking" building, you are arguing "Why can't I be allowed to take just one small puff ?" Answer is simple — it destroys the attitude. In Ramadan, Muslims are not allowed to eat or drink until the after the sunset. Why not take a sip of water during the day ? It destroys the strength of the mental commitment. You lose a lot for a small favour. Social business is about making complete sacrifice of financial reward from business. It is about total delinking from the old framework of business. It is not about accommodation of new objectives within the existing framework. Unless this total delinking from personal financial gain can be established you'll never discover the power of real social business.

Sometimes you can set up a technically correct social business with the purpose of making profit through your other companies by selling products or services to this social business company. This will be a clear sabotage of the concept. There may be many other subtle ways by which one can weaken the concept and practice of social business. A genuine social business investors must make all efforts so that he does not walk into this trap unwittingly.

Capitalism has created poverty by focusing exclusively on profit. It built a fairy-tale of prosperity for all. This never happened. That's why Europe decided to entrust the government to take care of poverty, unemployment and health. They were smart enough to figure out the emptiness of capitalism in solving these problems.

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See also Wikipedia on Yunus and microfinance. Gandhi on the values shift: "Great nations can hardly be expected in the ordinary course to move spontaneously in a direction the reverse of the one they have followed and according to their notion of value..."