Social enterprises go by a variety of names, including social businesses, social-purpose firms, mission-driven businesses, and social ventures. Whatever their name, social enterprises are businesses that generate a financial return while also furthering a social objective.

The phrase “social entrepreneur” is now used to mean a variety of things. Some people use the word social entrepreneur to refer to a social innovator (a person who addresses a major social problem in a particularly effective or inventive manner). Social companies use business concepts and practices to benefit society. They reinvest their financial gains back into the community to achieve their social mission, such as creating jobs or other economic and social advantages for neglected communities.

Sustainable social enterprises are growing to sell goods and services to tackle social concerns. To be sustainable, social enterprises must focus on both social benefit and profit.

Some fantastic examples of sustainable social enterprises scaling innovative and sustainable solutions utilizing impact data as business intelligence. Some excellent investment possibilities are also available, each with impact proof matched with multiple SDGs!

Oorja – Farming Social Enterprise

Oorja is a mission-driven social enterprise that provides farming as a service (FaaS). The company was founded in 2016 and is registered in the United Kingdom and India. It operates at the crossroads of renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. Oorja is dedicated to replacing dirty diesel engines used across the agricultural value chain. The objective of Oorja is to provide affordable and dependable clean energy services to power revenue-generating appliances in order to reduce energy expenses, increase farm production and income, and combat climate change.

In India, over 30 million farmers rely on expensive and polluting diesel pumps for irrigation. Farmers suffer significant operating expenses due to diesel fuel, engine rental, and maintenance. This has a massive carbon footprint and reduces agricultural output and income. Four out of every five poor individuals are marginal farmers who rely on landholdings that are frequently too tiny to be productive. Farmers lack access to cold storage, resulting in 15-20% wastage of fresh food.

Oorja has created a customer-centric business model to supply smallholder farmers with affordable solar-based electricity infrastructure on a pay-per-use basis. It offers integrated clean energy services that are now divided into three verticals:

• Irrigation as a service – pay per cubic meter of water used on the farm
• Milling as a service – pay per weight of produce available on the farm
• Cooling as a service – pay per crate per day available at the farm gate

These services are provided to smallholder farmers on a pay-per-use basis with no upfront cost and represent 20-25% savings vs. fuel, with operation and maintenance costs included in the price.

Oorja works with smallholder farmers in India’s northern region. They pursue agriculture on 2 acres (0,8 hectare) of farmland, growing 2-3 cereal crops. Their monthly salary ranges between $53 and $80, and they are unable to invest in clean technologies due to a lack of cheap financing. The typical home size is 8.3 persons, and diesel fuel is used for irrigation.

Before partnering with a farmer, Oorja does a demand evaluation, organizes farmer organizations, and acquires clients. Following the decision to finance the implementation and maintenance of decentralized solar infrastructure, hiring local community operators, as well as servicing and payment collection. Finally, Oorja trains and supports farmers both offline and online.

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In terms of outcomes, there is an improvement in agricultural production, income, and profit, as well as crop diversification, reduced fuel use and costs, and job creation, particularly in operation and maintenance.

Oorja has created enough impact evidence to show that its business model is resulting in gains for stakeholders, such as a rise in agricultural production from 6% to 15% (rice and maize) and the cultivation of additional crops such as potato, peppermint, and sugarcane, as well as a 30% increase in income per farmer. Furthermore, based on the data gathered, about 10,000 gallons of diesel were saved, resulting in a reduction of 39 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere – $62-$68/acre/year protected by farmers using diesel fuel for irrigation.

Oorja has discovered that IMM is an iterative process and that it is critical to conduct short experimental surveys on a regular basis to identify changes and find stakeholders’ demands. The next stage is to track the primary impact factors in order to understand the impact of services and, if necessary, make modifications.

Kidogo – NonProfit Social Enterprise

Kidogo is a non-profit social organization that improves access to high-quality, low-cost early childhood care and education in low-income areas in East Africa. Kidogo envisions a society in which all children, regardless of where they are born, have the opportunity to realize their full potential. Kidogo is Kenya’s largest childcare network, with a modest number of ‘centers of excellence’ located throughout Nairobi. The Kidogo Way is a patented strategy to encouraging healthy growth and development in young children. This framework guides the network’s caregivers and centers’ training, curriculum, and quality assurance.

Every day, mothers in Kenya’s informal settlements, which house more than 60% of the urban population, must make a difficult decision about where to leave their children (0-5 years) when they go to work. Typically, older siblings (typically adolescent girls) may take younger siblings out of school to care for them or will leave the younger child in a childcare facility where an inexperienced caretaker provides rudimentary supervision. Unlicensed and filthy facilities cause more harm than good. Poor nutrition, hygiene, neglect, and abuse all have an impact on children’s growth during their formative years. These children will have physical and learning problems in school if they do not receive sufficient supporting care during their early years.

Furthermore, the absence of dependable childcare providers makes it difficult for most single mothers to maintain steady employment. 350 million children globally do not have access to decent childcare.

How do they manage it? Mamapreneurs who join the Kidogo Network receive extensive training and coaching in early childhood care and education, entrepreneurship, and health and nutrition to increase the quality of services provided to young children. Mamapreneurs are also given a beginning kit that includes crucial materials for their centers as well as continuing quality assurance to ensure that Kidogo’s basic standards are met. Kidogo began in 2014/2015 with two childcare providers (mompreneurs) and 150 children.

The program was launched in 2018 with 24 mompreneurs across four villages in two counties, serving over 630 children. In 2021, Kidogo is fast increasing and expanding to 30 villages in 7 counties, with 538 mompreneurs and 10,889 children. Kidogo is in a growth phase, with a 10x increase in 2021.

The management team envisions the assistance required to sustain growth. At this point, questions arise, such as how to scale the process they employed with 45 mompreneurs to 400+. How does the team sustain this scale while maintaining the cost per child as low as possible while not compromising the scale? Kidogo has improved its processes by being more data-driven and responding to the changing environment thanks to IMM and impact trials.

Kidogo has created a Theory of Change that focuses on the short-term, long-term, and communal impact. Initially, they want to ensure that children from low-income families have access to high-quality daycare. Still, they hope to improve caregiving abilities and the environment in which children grow in the long run. As a result, children’s health and cognitive results will improve; hunger will reduce; children will reach developmental milestones; and, at the community level, children will do better in school, ending the cycle of generational poverty.

Kidogo focuses on making impact measurement a central element of its decision-making process. The goals to provide a service that works at the intersection of supporting female entrepreneurs and child development have been to:

• Make early childhood care and education affordable
• Support a variety of workplaces to implement childcare solutions
• Promote young children’s health and development
• Encourage women’s labor-force participation
• Focus now is on analyzing data from their core business model to see how they can improve.

A baseline assessment considers a variety of elements that influence a mompreneur’s and child’s development. Safety, health, nutrition, learning, management and administration, parent interaction, and washing are among these factors. The following findings were made: The majority of daycare centers (73.77%) have a Yellow Score – a quality level that ranges from 8 to 16 points out of a possible 20. The Red Score (18.03%) – 0-7 points out of 20 – is most common among employers who work from home or school. Fewer centers (8.20%) get Green Score, while center-based centers outperform other types. At the end of the examination, 93% had moved to green, 5% to yellow, and 2% had remained in red.

Kidogo used this data to determine that home-based centers need to enhance their rating variability. Also, to confirm that the results are comparable to those of the church and school centers.

Kidogo’s next step is to identify where and what to focus on in the future and create indicators for them, as well as specialized data gathering techniques to monitor impact, such as parent engagement.

FarGreen – Farming Social Enterprise

Fargreen is a social venture that cultivates climate-resilient farming communities in Vietnam and beyond. Fargreen was formed in 2015 with the goal of providing rice farmers with environmentally sustainable livelihood alternatives. Farmers can raise their annual income by 50% by using these services. Fargreen also works hard to ensure that no farmer is left behind in the fight against poverty, especially those who stay on their land. In order to achieve this, the company has established a network of Vietnamese farmers who produce high-quality, environmentally sustainable, and socially responsible edible mushrooms and other agricultural goods.

Vietnam is the world’s second-largest rice exporter, with more than US$ 3 billion (20% of total agricultural exports), and rice is farmed in the Mekong and Red river deltas. Small-scale farmers in Vietnam produce 65% of the rice. Every year, roughly 67 million tons of dried rice straw are accessible. Farmers use this waste to burn on their fields. The open burning of rice straw after harvest emits 20 million tons of greenhouse gases, contributing to the country’s air pollution.

argreen seeks to address three challenges:

• Air pollution
• Lack of knowledge of green farming techniques – lack of training and expertise resulting in dependence on and overuse of chemicals.
• Income instability of farmers – lack of income stream and market access among farmers.

Fargreen primarily assists women farmers in being aware and responsible about green approaches and in sharing that information with other farmers. Their reach will expand the possibility of sustainable and regenerative agriculture. Furthermore, they propose green solutions for urban communities, such as employing rice straw as a substrate for mushroom production, reducing waste and increasing air quality and soil health, resulting in more resilient and engaged communities. Innovating high-quality products, such as mushrooms, allows farmers to boost their revenue and become more stable because they do not require additional labor, so fostering inclusive and equitable growth.

It employs the environmentally favorable closed-loop production approach, which benefits local farmers while reducing waste. Fargreen’s inclusive business concept is purchasing rice straws from local farmers (in order to prevent them from being burned) and collaborating with the farmers to grow high-quality edible mushrooms using rice straw as the only substrate.

After being harvested, the mushrooms are transferred to Fargreen’s processing and packaging center before being delivered to clients under the Fargreen brand. Aside from mushroom production, they also assist farmers in establishing a sustainable garden to grow vegetables and rear honey bees.

The inclusive and sustainable closed-loop production process not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions but also generates no waste. When rice growers harvest the mushrooms, the straw they used decomposes into mulch. Farmers return this mulch to their fields to enhance the soil as a nutrient-rich biofertilizer for rice and vegetable crops, while promoting honey bee rearing and completing the production loop. Their wares have been offered in upscale hotels and restaurants.

So far, 570 tons of rice straw have been rescued from burning, which is comparable to 588 garbage trucks of debris that have been repurposed rather than landfilled. The exact quantity prevents methane emissions, which is comparable to growing 1094 trees in ten years. The many operations established in new crops were able to generate 136k USD. Fargreen works with 150 farmers, and five of them have been trained as local leaders, each representing 50 community farmers. The cash produced from other crops has limited community farmers’ migration to cities.

This IMM method has helped Fargreen increase efficiency and effectiveness, but it must refine its reporting structure and improve the system workflow of the data created in the future.