Activist or entrepreneur?
Someone who came on one of our start-up courses earlier this year emailed me this week to tell me that she’d decided not to set up the social enterprise that she’d enthused us all about on the course.
Working with pre-start ups as I do, people not setting up social businesses is just as common as people setting them up. You may think that I should be questioning the support that I offer (which I do of course), but I’d say that enabling someone to realise that setting up a social business (or at least this particular social business) isn’t the right thing to do is a real outcome.
One of the first things we ask people to think about is: are you an activist or an entrepreneur? I won’t get into definitions here but a social activist tends to be someone who has a clear idea of what they want to achieve, and who then fights tirelessly to achieve their goal. A social entrepreneur, in my experience tends to have an equally clear focus on doing good, but tends to have a more pragmatic approach to achieving their aims.
To give you an example, I came to social enterprise through working for a fair trade shop. Before that, I arrived at the fair trade shop because I campaigned on third-world development issues. As an activist, I was clear about who was on my side, and who the enemies were – supermarkets, the World Bank, most politicians and the capitalist system. But through fair trade I realised that things aren’t that simple, and that you can often achieve your social aims by working with – not against – some of the people who you’ve traditionally classed as the “enemy.” If the aim of fair trade is to secure better living conditions for third world farmers, then selling more to supermarkets has to be a good thing. Doesn’t it?
I’ve certainly become more pragmatic as I’ve got older – which can be harder work because you have to think in every situation “so, what should I do here”, instead of thinking “they’re on our side, so we’ll work with them.” I suppose that’s why values – personal or organisational – are so important – as they’re the things that help you to make those tough decisions.
