HEIF 4 Project: Social enterprises and value creation
Prof. Teck Y. Eng, Dr Gordon Liu & Dr Yasmin Sekhon
Overview
Increasingly NPOs are venturing into commercial activities due to intense competition for limited government funds and declining availability of donor funds for third sector organisations that address social problems. This venture is known as social entrepreneurship, where traditional NPOs pursue both social mission and business opportunities. In particular, greater competition for funding is shifting NPOs business focus to commercial activities. But with lack of commercial or marketing experience, differentiated NPO business models, and little published research on mechanisms and processes for social value creation, this project seeks to explore and examine commercial ventures of non-profit organisations. Thus, today’s NPOs face business challenges of transforming their traditional business model and/or social oriented strategies to become more market oriented and competitive in the marketplace.
Specifically, this project will engage social enterprises and NPOs through knowledge transfer schemes/partnerships of existing business models suitable for profit ventures and social value creation. This entails four types of knowledge transfer activities: (1) development of suitable business models to direct and support marketing activities and social value creation such as knowledge-transfer partnerships (KTPs); (2) BU consultancy for assessment of business strategies and impact on key stakeholders; (3) dissemination of industry best practices through both business conference with prominent speakers and academic seminars; and (4) training programmes providing general knowledge and custom made solutions for NPOs and social entrepreneurs in pursuing business opportunity or adapting fundraising strategy to market-driven strategy. For example, training materials address what adaptations of non-profit activities are required to fit market-oriented organisational structure? How stakeholder needs are accounted for in business models? How business relationship management for commercial goals differs from non-profit relations?
The project would be beneficial to academics, practitioners and policy makers. For academics, this presented an opportunity to collect empirical evidence on current practice of NPOs commercial/business strategy. Through the above knowledge transfer activities (e.g., seminars, training, publications), practitioners would be in a stronger position to improve their marketing skills and gain a deeper understanding of business models for fulfilling both profit-making and social goals. By applying and validating (e.g., KTPs, progress reports) the combination of non-profit and commercial activities, the industry best practice of business ventures for NPOs can be disseminated for the benefit of policy makers, local businesses and other regions in the UK. In brief, the project serves as a platform for NPOs to pursue innovative business ideas through knowledge of balancing market-oriented strategy and social strategy, which represents innovation for new industries and reduces dependence on government funds.
Please click here for further information on project staff.
